Wednesday November 17 Pentecost 25
Click here for simplified daily office prayers
Psalm 119 Part 6
Psalm 119 is a meditation on responding to God’s call to justice. Each of the 178 verses is a variation on the theme of what it means to follow God’s call to justice, using terms such as “command”,”law”, “word”, “statute”, and the like. The psalm is arranged in groups of eight verses. Within a group, each of the eight verses starts with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and the groups are in Hebrew alphabetical order. So the first group of eight verses all start with A, the second group all start with B and so on. The first seven verses mirror the seven days of creation, with the eighth sometimes pointing to the next group. This very careful construction mirrors God’s creating the universe by overcoming chaos with order. In the human world, justice, dignity and fulfilment – the outcomes of justice—are the expressions of order in the human world. Thus the human world and the rest of creation are united in the same foundation. Today’s sections are based on the letters Ayin (which is not pronounced but which looks like o, or an eye), P, and Z (in Hebrew alphabetical order). As you read them, imagine the effect of each line in today’s first section beginning with a silent letter that looks like an eye and so on.
1 Maccabees 3: 42-60 What’s Maccabees about?
Judas Maccabeus gathers the people at an ancient site of prayer near Jerusalem, organizes the people into battle formation, sends home those who are fainthearted or preoccupied (thus trusting in God rather than in superior military power), and encourages the people to face death the next day rather than see the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.
Matthew 17:22-27 What’s Matthew about?
Jesus announces his coming execution. He is then challenged about paying the hated tax for the temple (which was enforced by the Roman empire which then took most of it). Jesus says that rulers do not tax their own families, so therefore the family of the temple (the ordinary people) should not pay taxes to the temple because they are family. Jesus has just predicted his own death and now we see why—it is sacrilegious to propose not paying temple tax and treasonous to propose not paying tax to the Roman empire. Jesus then arranges for their temple tax to be paid through this strange story of the temple tax coin being found in a fish. Finding the coin in a fish’s mouth must have originally had some special meaning which is no longer known to us.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
you sent your Son Jesus Christ
to be the light of the world.
Free us from all that darkens and ensnares us,
and bring us to eternal light and joy;
through the power of him
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Click here to share a comment on the web site.