Saturday, August 17 Pentecost 12
Psalm 107 Part 2
When the Israelites completed their journey through the wilderness God brought disaster on the evil people who lived there (as the Israelites understood them) to make a fertile place for God’s own people. When God’s people were oppressed, God rescued them. Wise people, the poem says, will take this to heart and will trust in God’s care and justice to prevail.
One of our tasks today is to cultivate that trust in God’s care for humanity so that when disaster happens in our world we will have something solid to offer.
Psalm 108
I will praise God because God is so powerful and I ask you, God, to act on behalf of the poor. God replies by listing all ways in which land will be given to God’s people and taken from those who are evil. I respond by asking God to act to save us because it seems God has abandoned us.
These two psalms are often scheduled for Saturdays while Christ is still in the grave and we wait for the resurrection.
Judges 16.1-14 What’s Judges about?
Samson is ambushed while using a prostitute, but he rips out the city gates and carries them to the top of a mountain. He falls in love with Delilah and the Philistines ask her to find out the secret of his great strength. Three times he lies to her about how he can be bound. The story of Samson’s first wife cajoling the riddle from him, is being repeated but in more extreme terms.
The story teller is saying, in this saga of the unbelievably strong man being brought to his knees (perhaps a deliberate symbol of the Israelite people), that no matter what forces oppose Sampson, God will provide even greater strength.
John 5.1-18 What’s John about?
John started his gospel with Jesus’ celebrating a wedding, and John continued that theme with the challenge to abuses in the temple, the calming of a storm, and the gift of new life to the Samaritan woman and to the royal supporter of the occupation. Today Jesus heals someone for whom hope of healing has almost run out after 38 years of waiting. The wedding banquet is indeed breaking into everyone’s lives!
This healing was on a Sabbath, the first time Jesus has done a healing on a sabbath, and Jesus is criticized for abusing the Sabbath by doing “work” on the day one of the ten commandments had set aside as a day of complete rest. Jesus is also accused of encouraging the healed man to do the same. Jesus responds that since God, his father, never stops working to heal people, so he should not either. His challenge to the tradition is so intense that the leaders begin to plan his execution.
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.
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