Wednesday April 24 Easter 4
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Psalm 49
Why should I worry about the rich who oppress me? Even the wealthiest person could never pay for their life so that they could live forever. Everyone dies and the rich oppressors are led like sheep to the grave. Why should I be afraid of the wicked when I know they will all die!
Psalm 53
Everyone has abandoned God, and God’s justice. We long for God to restore justice to the world.
Exodus 33.1-23 What’s Exodus about?
To a modern person, it feels like colonial oppression and deep injustice when God promises to throw out the aboriginal people that were living in the land already, in order to give their land to the Israelites. Jesus reversed this injustice when he deliberately went into the aboriginal lands and fed thousands of people with a miraculous overflowing meal in which seven baskets were left over—one for each of the seven tribes whose land was taken. Our understanding of God’s justice and love deepens over time, and this is a warning to us not to assume that what feels good for us is automatically good for everyone.
God sends the people on towards the land they will be given, but God is seen to be so angry with the people’s disobedience, that to save them from being destroyed, God will not go with them. The story-tellers want to present both God’s absolute faithfulness to the covenant to always care for the people as well as God’s absolute commitment to justice. So they present God as having to struggle about whether to be faithful or to destroy the people who are unjust because of their worship of wealth.
Moses and Joshua are allowed to meet God, and Moses persuades God to reconsider and to go with the people, otherwise, if they go on their own, they will be no different from any other nation. Moses will be allowed to see the back of God, but not God’s face. This detail is the way the writers interpreted the danger of being close to God as the danger, not of God’s anger, but of God’s glory. Thus God’s faithfulness to unfaithful people is more fundamental than God’s desire to destroy injustice.
Matthew 5.17-20 What’s Matthew about?
Matthew is concerned that the freedom we have in Christ could be misinterpreted as our no longer needing to follow the God of justice. Jesus insists that the Old Testament laws, which fundamentally were about treating all people with justice, are not superseded by Jesus, but completed in his life.
As often in Matthew, Jesus insists on the importance of the Hebrew traditions. It may be that this gospel was written in part to be persuasive to Jewish people who were doubtful about this new concept of the significance of Jesus.
This week’s collect:
O God of peace,
who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ,
that great shepherd of the sheep,
by the blood of the eternal covenant,
make us perfect in every good work to do your will,
and work in us that which is well-pleasing in your sight;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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