Sunday October 17 Pentecost 21
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Psalm 114
Praise that God frightened the sea so the people could escape from Egypt and frightened the Jordan river so they could enter the land. Even mountains danced at these wondrous acts! God still does wondrous things.
Psalm 115
God, you are strong, we aren’t. The idols that other people worship are not real, but you are real—so, everyone, worship the real God.
The false idols such as power and wealth are still very much alive today, but only the true God of justice can give us full life.
Jeremiah 29: 1-14 What’s Jeremiah about?
Jeremiah, living in Jerusalem, writes to those who have been captured and exiled to Babylon. He says God encourages them to live as normal and have children there and make the foreign city their home so that in seventy years, when God will allow them to return, there will be a strong community ready to resume life in Jerusalem. In this way they not only survive, but live in expectation of the return to Jerusalem.
This principle of making their home within foreign lands while retaining their sense of identity and connection with their ancient roots served the Jewish people well in the time of the Greeks and Romans and continues to this day.
Luke 7.36-50 What’s Luke about?
Jesus accepts a formal dinner invitation with a Jewish leader and has his feet bathed by a prostitute. The host imagines that Jesus must not be genuine or he would know who the woman was and would refuse her affection. Jesus responds by saying that her passion arises from her sense of freedom of having been forgiven, and that those who have little to be forgiven (like his host who thinks he is upstanding but is full of prejudice) will have little affection for him. No wonder opposition grows to Jesus’ radical reinterpretation of social norms.
This week’s collect:
Almighty and everliving God,
increase in us your gift of faith,
that forsaking what lies behind
and reaching out to what is before,
we may run the way of your commandments
and win the crown of everlasting joy;
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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