Saturday August 31 Pentecost 14
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Psalm 110
This psalm is written as if God is speaking to King David, the first great king of Israel, assuring David of God’s absolute support in battle.
The violence in the next to last verse can be understood as expressing God’s absolute commitment to removing oppression and injustice from the world.
Psalm 116
God rescued me when I was at the point of death, and I give thanks!
This psalm is often read on Saturdays, the mini-anniversary of Jesus being in the grave and awaiting God’s victory over death.
Psalm 117
A delightful short two-verse psalm of praise.
Job 9.1, 10.1-9, 16-22 What’s Job about?
Job accuses God of being indifferent to him, whom God created in his mother’s womb. At least God could explain why God has treated him so badly when God knows he is innocent. At least God could let him alone for the brief time before he dies forever in eternal darkness.
John 8.12-20 What’s John about?
Jesus declares himself to be light for life. The religious leaders accuse him of being self-serving by complimenting himself. Jesus responds that it is God who guarantees that he is who he says he is, so he isn’t complimenting himself, and that it’s their fault if they don’t see this. And anyway, he and God provide the two legally required witnesses. The leaders question his origin, perhaps implying that he had no father (an insult that arises in other places and may have been widely suggested at the time), but Jesus turns this critique back on them, saying that the reason they suggest he has no father is that they don’t know God, who is his father.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
we are taught by your word
that all our doings without love are worth nothing.
Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts
that most excellent gift of love,
the true bond of peace and of all virtue;
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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