Friday November 12 Pentecost 24
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Psalm 91
Those who shelter under God like a chick beneath its mother’s wings will be safe from all danger and will see how disaster befalls those who put their trust in evil. In the final three verses God is speaking: we are safe because God has decided to be bound to us in love.
The verse about not hurting one’s foot on a stone was applied by the early Christians to Jesus’ temptation in the desert to throw himself off the top of the temple.
Psalm 92
Those who trust in God will be upheld and will flourish like trees with lots of water. Evil will be utterly destroyed. The God who does this is as solid as a rock.
1 Maccabees 1: 41-63 What’s Maccabees about?
King Antiochus, the Greek ruler about 200 years before Jesus, was the first Greek king to officially refer to himself as God. Antiochus had a policy of enforced assimilation—Judaism is to be wiped out, and on pain of death all Jews are to become followers of Greek religion with himself as its God. Nevertheless some Jews remain faithful. We sense where the story is heading—some Jews will organize a revolt.
Matthew 16: 13-20 What’s Matthew about?
For the first time, Peter grasps that Jesus is the image of God. In Mark’s gospel, from which Matthew took this story, Peter immediately argues with Jesus that he is not to go to the cross, but Matthew is concerned about how Christians are going to live together in the church, and so he remembers Jesus as first telling Peter that he will be the foundation of the church. So, in Matthew’s account, only after Jesus has ensured leadership for the church does he begin to talk about the necessity of his death.
This week’s collect:
Eternal God,
who caused all holy scriptures
to be written for our learning,
grant us so to hear them,
read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,
that we may embrace and ever hold fast
the blessed hope of everlasting life,
which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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