Wednesday September 18 Pentecost 17
Click here for simplified daily office prayers
Psalm 119 Part 4
Psalm 119 is a meditation on responding to God’s call to justice. Each of the 176 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 22 groups of eight verses—one group for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. 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 human expressions of order. Thus the human world and the rest of creation are united in the same foundation. Today’s three sections begin with the letters Y, K and L (in Hebrew alphabetical order). As you read them, imagine the effect of each line in today’s first section beginning with “Y” and so on.
Job 42.1-17 What’s Job about?
The book probably originally concluded with Job giving the final statement of his ignorance of God’s working, using the poetic form the rest of the book is written in. That would represent a radical commitment to the God of justice by someone who refuses to give up, even when God seems to do nothing about the injustice he suffered. It is a profound statement of trust when we cannot understand what is going on.
The rest of the ending isn’t written in poetic style, and uses different kinds of words and was likely added by a later editor who felt that Job had to be vindicated and everything put right. This is exactly what Job’s friends had argued for and Job had refused! That editor, sadly, missed the whole point of the book and has God reward Job with more riches than he ever had before. This editor had a traditional idea of God and religious faith—that when we trust in God everything goes well. The original author had dealt with a more difficult problem.
John 12.20-26 What’s John about?
As Jesus deliberately confronts Roman violence, he is approached by some Greeks for whom the concept of deliberate participation in death would make little sense, especially when this approach is understood as God’s character. Jesus’ illustration of a seed being buried and rising as a fruitful plant may be an argument that was used by early Christians in John’s time who were encountering sophisticated Greek people who couldn’t take seriously the claim that God had undergone torture and death for us.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
you call your Church to witness
that in Christ we are reconciled to you.
Help us so to proclaim the good news of your love,
that all who hear it may turn to you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Click here to share your thoughts on the web site.