Tuesday March 4 Epiphany 8
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Psalm 26
“I do not sit down with the wicked”: this gives us words to say how we wish to live, that deep in our heart we really are such people as keep God’s commands to love and do justice. “My foot stands on level ground” because we ground our lives on the solid base of justice.
Psalm 28
Like many psalms, this asks that the wicked be punished: “give them their just deserts.” (“Deserts” is “What is deserved,” not miles of sand or misspelled sweets!) This desire for evil people to be destroyed seems very unlike Jesus’ request that we forgive our enemies and love them, but it is really giving us words to express our own intense desire that oppressive and violent policies should come to an end. We might pray, “May any international trade agreements that make the poor even poorer, be utterly done away with.”
The violent images in many psalms are not to ask God to be violent, but to ask that all evil actions and policies be completely defeated so people around the world can live in peace and fulfilment. The second half of the psalm gives thanks that God has indeed been victorious over oppression.
Deuteronomy 6: 16-25 What’s Deuteronomy about?
Since God rescued you when you were a people of no importance, you are to obey God’s commands to enact justice for everyone else of no importance. If you don’t, then you violate the way God made the universe and things will not go well. We see the consequences today of not putting justice first—war, exploitation and extreme poverty.
This passage is read near the beginning of Lent to focus us on what Jesus will redeem us from so we can become what we are.
John 1: 19-28 What’s John about?
John the Baptist clarifies who the real messiah is—since John had made such an intense public impression, many thought he was the one to lead Israel to throw off the Romans. John the gospel writer, looking back from long after the events, imagines John the Baptist clarifying that his role was not to throw off the Romans but to announce the coming of Jesus.
This image of pointing not to our selves but to Jesus as the source of death and resurrection became a central theme of faithful discipleship—we acknowledge that we live and are rescued not by our own moral power, but by God’s initiative.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
on the holy mount you revealed to chosen witnesses
your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured:
mercifully deliver us from the darkness of this world,
and change us into his likeness from glory to glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
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