Sunday January 15 Epiphany 2
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Psalm 148
These three psalms are especially appropriate on Sundays, the mini-anniversary of the resurrection. All creation praises God—the heavens, the earth—including fog, sea monsters, and “creeping things” (perhaps even insects or worms)—and humanity—rulers, young people and old people—all things without exception praise God together. Notice that the sequence is taken from the first creation story in Genesis: first light, then the heavens, then creatures of the water, then creatures of the land, and finally people.
Psalm 149
Songs of joy at God’s victory. The joy of military victories toward the end of the psalm was their way of saying that God has ended all injustice.
Psalm 150
A scene of riotous joy as every conceivable instrument and every creature praises God.
Isaiah 43: 14—44: 5 What’s Isaiah about?
Amazingly, God will do something completely new—whereas God once made a dry path in the sea for God’s people to escape from Egypt, now God will reverse that miracle and this time fill the dry desert with water so the people can escape from Babylon and return to Jerusalem across the Syrian desert.
It is almost as if Isaiah is telling people to forget about the Bible and how God rescued them long ago from Egypt because God is not constrained to repeat the past, but can control and change the future. Thus God will have no problem directing Cyrus to allow the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Even though the people abandoned God, God does not abandon them.
How might we experience this in our time?
John 4: 27-42 What’s John about?
On Sundays we continue to read highlights from John’s gospel.
This is the second half of the story about the Samaritan woman, in which Jesus has done the unthinkable by having an intimate conversation alone with a woman whose religion was abhorrent to the Jerusalem form of Judaism. The woman had been thirsty for a deep relationship, and thirsty for a deep understanding of God. She and her community find both in Jesus.
This is another example of one of John’s themes: religiously faithful people reject Jesus and the unfaithful receive him and are fulfilled. John doesn’t mean we should not be loyal in our faith, but that our religion must enable, and not prevent, us growing in God’s justice and inclusion through knowing Jesus.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
is the light of the world.
May your people,
illumined by your word and sacraments,
shine with the radiance of his glory,
that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed
to the ends of the earth;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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