Monday November 29 Advent 1
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Psalm 1
Those who live in righteousness—which means with justice to all—will be as strong as healthy trees planted near water. Injustice will be blown away like chaff.
Psalm 2
Other nations laugh at God and God’s people, but God has chosen this people and their king, and God will have the final word.
Christians may understand this to be a way of saying that God has made self-offering love and justice in the death and resurrection of Christ to be the ultimate reality. All other attempts at finding full life through pursuing self-interest are laughable and doomed to fail.
Psalm 3
Because of God’s protection, I have nothing to fear.
Amos 2: 6-16 What’s Amos about?
God says that despite the fact that God had rescued the Israelites from their being abused in Egypt and, to protect them had removed those who were stronger than they, the Israelites continue to abuse those with less power, taking peoples’ clothes for guarantees of loan repayment, and fining people arbitrarily and then using the money to buy luxury wines. Because of their abuse of those without power, God will not protect them from the dire consequences of their injustice.
This passage is intended to direct our attention to changes that need to be made in our world to ensure we treat all as generously as God has treated us.
Matthew 21: 1-11 What’s Matthew about?
Jesus enters Jerusalem to challenge the normal assumptions about who is in charge—it it power to oppress or is it love? Advent suggests that Jesus is about to enter the city of our lives and ask that question and offer a solution in his own love for us.
It is probable that Jesus deliberately rode a donkey into Jerusalem at exactly the same time as a Roman commander rode a great stallion into the city at the head of his legion to crush any possible rebellion during Passover—the celebration of release from an occupying nation. Jesus’ execution five days later was likely linked to this act in which Jesus drew the ultimate contrast between a city under the Roman policy of rule enforced by the threat of death and a city ruled by life-giving self-offering love.
For the next four weeks we deepen our expectation of Jesus’ life of self-offering love as the foundation of all life, whether in cities, in towns, in families, within friendships and even with enemies.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life
in which your Son Jesus Christ
came to us in great humility,
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge both the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit,
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