Thursday April 25 Easter 4
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Psalm 59
People all around hunt me down, like dogs attacking, but I insist that God is on the side of the innocent.
We can apply the dramatic imagery not only to people, but to the policies and global forces that are destructive to societies and to the planet, and yet we insist that God’s goodness and justice is always present.
Psalm 60
God seems to have abandoned us, and we are being defeated even though God claimed for us the territory of all our tribes. We pray that God will turn things around and do great deeds through us.
This psalm can easily be applied to the threat of destruction of the planet in our day, but we will continue to insist that God’s goodness and care is supreme over all the forces of evil.
Exodus 34.1-17 What’s Exodus about?
The breaking of the first stone commandments symbolized the people’s breaking of God’s covenant to live in justice. However, God’s faithfulness to the people is shown by God giving a second set of stones with the commandments written on them, thus showing God’s over-riding compassion to thousands of generations. It’s not that there aren’t consequences for exploiting others, but the consequences will last only a short time—just a couple of generations.
When they reach the land God will give them, God warns against abandoning justice as their central loyalty. By joining the religions there dedicated to greed and terror (as the Israelites understood them to be), the people will put themselves in great danger. The same can be seen to be true in our time—religious practices, even Christian versions, that make power and oppression a priority have the potential to wreck havoc on the world.
Matthew 5.21-26 What’s Matthew about?
Matthew understands that Jesus, giving us commandments on a mountain (the “sermon on the mount”), is calling us to an even higher level of justice than the Ten Commandments did—justice is to be the basis of our motivations as well as our outward actions. The dramatic punishments for not being just in motivation were not intended to be taken literally, but to illustrate how deeply we are to be as committed to justice in our relationships with others as if the consequences of not doing so were literally going to be like being in prison for life. Which is what following injustice does to us.
To claim, by the symbolism of the “mount” that Jesus was improving on the Ten Commandments, was a radical and perhaps even dangerous stance for the early Christians.
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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