Friday July 26 Pentecost 9
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Psalm 40
All my life God lifted me up and I rejoiced in God’s care. But now my own sin, and my enemies, have nearly destroyed me. Do not wait any longer, God!
Psalm 54
I am in dire straights. Put everything back to right, God. I praise you, because you have done that.
Joshua 9.22-10.15 What’s Joshua about?
Despite the objection by the people Joshua insists that the Gibeonites be allowed to live because he had sworn to protect them even though they had lied to get that protection. But they are made slaves to the Israelites.
Five local kings threaten to attack Gibeon because the city had made a treaty with Israel and the rest of the local land is therefore under threat of being conquered by the Israelites. With God’s help, the Israelites defend the people of Gibeon and defeat the local kings. God even makes enormous hailstones fall on the kings and the writers quote an ancient poem about God making the sun and moon stand still for a day when Joshua asks for it, to enable the day to be long enough for the Israelites to complete their victory. The writers explain that this was because God cared for Israel and listened to what they needed.
These are ancient stories recounting how God remained faithful to the promise to give the Israelites a land. From our modern perspective all this looks like inter-tribal warfare and magical myth, but from the Israelites’ perspective it was a celebration of how deeply God cared. We can translate their certainty of care as being for the entire human race and we can anticipate unexpected assistance in enacting the justice for the whole of the living world and for the whole of humanity which can alone assure our future.
Matthew 27.1-10 What’s Matthew about?
Judas repents and returns the payment the religious leaders had given him to betray Jesus—thirty pieces of silver is the traditional price of a slave. Matthew quotes a text in Zechariah (originally describing how God had punished the Israelites for their abandoning justice 500 years earlier) and uses it to assure his readers that all this was part of God’s plan. By taking his own life even Judas affirms the depth of the horror he has carried out by enabling the execution of the Son of God.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence.
Give us pure hearts and constant wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.