Monday, August 19 Pentecost 13
Psalm 106 Part 1
God, you are wonderful, but we have done wicked things. God, you acted with immense generosity when you rescued the people from Egypt, but the people stopped trusting in you, and there were terrible consequences, yet you continued rescuing them. The second half of this psalm has a long list of such examples and concludes with a plea for God to continue rescuing us despite our wickedness.
Psalm 123
We keep our eyes trained on God’s direction to us, like servants alert to their owner’s slightest hand signal. We are oppressed by the wealthy and we anticipate God’s signal at any moment that God will act.
Judges 17.1-13 What’s Judges about?
Towards the end of the book of Judges we read a story of how, without temporary leaders, the Israelite society devolves into chaos.
An Israelite has stolen a significant sum of money from his own mother. As the story begins he confesses and returns the money, but his mother uses it to give thanks to her god by having an idol cast in silver and placing it in her home. Her son then installs his own son as a priest to preside over the idol. For Israelites this would be the ultimate sacrilege. But the offences against the true God will continue.
A priest of the true God arrives in the town and the idol owner invites him to stay and supervise the idol, hoping that he will be blessed by the priest’s presence. The priest agrees, but this is an abomination for a priest to preside over an idol and not the real God of justice.
John 5.19-29 What’s John about?
In response to the criticism that he is breaking the Ten Commandments by working on the sabbath to heal someone and claiming that God never stops working to heal us, Jesus says that he has no choice, as God’s son, to do whatever God is doing. If God raises people from death, Jesus must do the same. Those who honour Jesus are free from the criticism of breaking this commandment. The time will come, he says, when everyone will see the truth of this.
Jesus’ generosity is the way in which we see God’s generosity. If we respond with generosity of our own, that will be to live fully, and if we reject acting in generosity and justice, there will be dire consequences. We all know this to be true.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
you have broken the tyranny of sin
and sent into our hearts the Spirit of your Son.
Give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service,
that all people may know the glorious liberty
of the children of God;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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