Friday November 19 Pentecost 25
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Psalm 107 Part 1
The first part of this psalm sings about how faithfully God has rescued people on many occasions: from slavery, from their own foolishness and rebellion against God, and from the dangers of travelling on the ocean. The ocean was a terrifying place for the Israelites, and the reference to God calming the storm and bringing them to harbour may have influenced the stories of Jesus calming storms.
1 Maccabees 4: 36-59 What’s Maccabees about?
After Judas and his army have liberated Jerusalem they cleanse and rebuild the desecrated parts of the temple and begin the proper sacrifices and rejoice that they are again worshipping God properly. We are being shown how totally committed Judas and his brothers were to serving God. The writer intended that their courage and commitment would inspire Jews of the time to also remain faithful under the pressure of pagan Greek culture. This restoration of the temple is the origin of the festival of Hanukkah.
We end our readings from Maccabees today, but the book continues with detailed and fairly accurate descriptions of various battles with the Greek armies but in the end all the brothers are killed defending the temple and the Jewish faith in battles with Greece. Their faithful allegiance to the God of justice in opposition to Greek barbarity became famous, and they became known as the Maccabean martyrs.
The deaths of these faithful brothers raised the important question about whether God is really just—if they gave their lives as young men, it wouldn’t be fair if God did nothing to make up for the injustice of their deaths. Some Jewish thinkers proposed that God would provide additional life in some way to those who had had their life cut short for being faithful—they would be returned to life here on earth to live out the full long lives they should have had. This idea was still under discussion at the time of Jesus and the early Christians may have applied that idea as a way of understanding Jesus’ resurrection from his unjust execution as well as the resurrection of all humanity.
Matthew 18: 10-20 What’s Matthew about?
Matthew understands Jesus to have been deeply concerned about loyalty among Christians. The story of the shepherd abandoning a hundred sheep for the sake of finding one is intended to tell early Christians how deeply they are to care about a Christian who has wandered away from the faith. Such a person is never to be abandoned. The same is true if someone has done something wrong—the rest of the community is to go to great length to continue to include the person. But that isn’t to allow the community to be controlled by wrong-doing. Neither does God abandon the community—even if there are only two or three, God is still there, just as with the single sheep.
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.
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