Wednesday December 1 Advent 1
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Psalm 119 Part 1
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 three sections begin with the letters A, B and G (in Hebrew alphabetical order). As you read them, imagine the effect of each line in today’s first section beginning with A” and so on.
Amos 3: 12—4: 5 What’s Amos about?
God is critiquing Israel’s leaders for abandoning justice and oppressing the poor and living in extreme luxury in houses made of ivory. God hurls the ultimate insult by calling the indolent rich “cows” who perform rituals with no intention of keeping their meaning. Amos is clear that God is utterly opposed to the oppression such wealth depends upon.
Matthew 21.23-32 What’s Matthew about?
Jesus is challenged to explain his actions of confronting the rule of power. He compares his critics to a faithless son who claims to do what his father wants and then does the opposite in contrast to those who refused to live good lives, such as notorious sinners, but who later followed God’s call. Jesus is saying that despite their confronting him, his critics really do know that acting with love and justice is the only way the world is to be—that’s why they won’t accuse John the Baptist of being a fraud. Jesus confronts them by revealing that their challenge to him has nothing to do about finding out who authorized him, but is about their resistance to enacting God’s justice for all.
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,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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