Monday October 11 Pentecost 20
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Psalm 4
So much of the world trusts in “dumb idols” and “false gods”—those seductive priorities which do nothing to bring goodness and justice. But the true God can still do wonders and we can trust God to care of us and so we can fall asleep peacefully.
Psalm 7
I am pursued by evil. This would make sense if I had done something terribly wrong, but I haven’t. God, sit like a supreme judge, and make that evil self-destruct. I will then proclaim that God is indeed just.
Jeremiah 36: 11-26 What’s Jeremiah about?
When the warning that God has sent to persuade the people to change is read to the king, he burns it and orders that Jeremiah be killed, but God hides Jeremiah to keep him safe, and thus makes it possible that with further challenges, the king may repent.
Matthew 10: 5-15 What’s Matthew about?
As typical in Matthew, because he is commending Jesus as restoring true Judaism, Jesus sends his disciples exclusively to Jewish communities to proclaim and enact the kingdom with healings. They are to do this for the sake of the healings, not for pay and to receive from the villagers the kind of generosity that they are proclaiming about the kingdom. But any who do not respond to them have placed themselves outside the kingdom.
In Matthew, Jesus often speaks of the consequences of not following the kingdom. Rather than hearing this as a threat, Matthew probably intends that the early Christians be clear that the gospel of God’s love implies that one must be loving oneself, otherwise one won’t experience God’s kingdom.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
in our baptism you adopted us for your own.
Quicken, we pray, your Spirit within us,
that we, being renewed both in body and mind,
may worship you in sincerity and truth;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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