Tuesday August 13 Pentecost 12
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Psalm 97
God’s power in creation is an expression of God’s commitment to justice—righteousness and justice are the foundations of God’s throne (the same image is used in Psalm 89) and therefore of all creation. We can count on God to uphold those who are without power as surely as we experience enormous power in creation.
A wonderful image for our age when science shows us so much power in creation – dignity and justice are equally embedded in the way God has put the world together.
Psalm 99
God’s justice was shown in the way God rescued the people from slavery and cared for them throughout history. Praise the Lord!
Psalm 100
A short hymn of praise that God has remained faithful forever.
Judges 13.1-15 What’s Judges about?
This is the final story of how God raised up “judges” to rescue the Israelites from their faithlessness to God. The Israelites have been conquered by the Philistines but a certain woman who is barren, is promised by God to have a son who will be Samson. The details of how an angel announced this news to his mother may have inspired some of the details that Luke used in the story of how Mary was told she would have a son, Jesus.
This story continues the long theme of how God so often acts through barren women or outcasts to save the people. This remarkable insight about how God acts, discovered by the ancient Jews, will continue in the life of Jesus, a person of no social or religious authority and who was outcast at his execution, but who became the ultimate “judge” who Christians understood to have saved the entire world.
John 3.22-36 What’s John about?
John the Baptist responds to the fact that more people are following Jesus than him. John speaks of Jesus being the way by which the world returns to God, and that John, like the best man at a wedding, is delighted when the groom gets all the attention. John and early Christians were suggesting that allowing Jesus to have the attention, and not ourselves, is the best evangelism.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
you sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church.
Open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love, joy, and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.