Wednesday June 26 Pentecost 5
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Psalm 119 Part 6
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 Ayin (which is not pronounced but which looks like o, or an eye), P, and Z (in Hebrew alphabetical order). As you read them, imagine the effect of each line in today’s first section beginning with an eye and so on.
Numbers 16.36-50 What’s Numbers about?
The ceremonial equipment of the censors used to burn incense at the altar and which had been owned by those who had rebelled against Moses, are beaten flat. They are then used as a decorative cover for the altar as a reminder never to lose trust in God’s underlying promise to save. This strange use of censors may reflect some details of how the new altar was constructed after the people returned from imprisonment in Babylon 1000 years later and rebuilt the temple. Possibly they found the censors had been crushed by the invaders and decided they couldn’t be repaired, but considered them still holy and so used them as decorations on the new altar.
Back in Moses’ time, a plague is understood to be punishment for lack of trust, and the ceremonial equipment is deployed to stop the plague. These would have been powerful stories for the survivors of the Babylonian imprisonment illustrating how important the temple ceremonies were for people who hadn’t experienced them in a generation.
Matthew 20.1-16 What’s Matthew about?
In God’s society, generosity is radical—those who worked a single cool hour at the end of the day get a full day’s wage even though they didn’t deserve it. Those who worked hard all day long are jealous. That’s not the way of God’s society—in God’s society all would rejoice at the good fortune of those who got far more than they deserved. Jesus is upending our normal moral expectations that we should get what we deserve—those who deserve most get most and those who deserve least will get almost nothing. But in God’s kingdom, those who deserve nothing will be treated with overwhelming generosity. It’s a stark challenge to us about the implications of how to live full lives and how to organize our country.
This week’s collect:
O God our defender,
storms rage about us and cause us to be afraid.
Rescue your people from despair,
deliver your sons and daughters from fear,
and preserve us all from unbelief;
through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and ever. Amen.