Saturday March 27 Lent 5
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Psalm 137
Another psalm expressing terrible grief that the nation had been abandoned. When the people were captured and taken to Babylon about 700 years before Jesus, they were asked to amuse their captors with funny songs, and were horrified to have to entertain those who had destroyed their land and the glorious temple dedicated to justice. The concluding couple of verses of this psalm are disturbingly violent. We sometimes also feel violent when we are abused, so there is an honest recognition of that truth here. Or we can think of this part as a commitment to ensuring that all evil should be completely removed from the world.
Psalm 144
This psalm expresses the feeling that we are not very strong in face of terrible forces, but that God can act to save us, and the end result will be unimaginable prosperity and happiness.
Jeremiah 31: 27-34
Six hundred years before Jesus, Jeremiah uses several images to provide hope to the exiled people: God will put people and animals back in to the abandoned city of Jerusalem as if God were planting seeds; people may suffer consequences for their lack of justice, but won’t suffer for their ancestors’ infidelity; and there will—astonishingly—be a new covenant with the people. It was unimaginable that God would undertake a new covenant. In the first covenant, God promised a permanent home, rescued the people from Egypt and provided the ten commandments, as if God had married the Israelites. But in this new covenant God will write justice on people’s hearts and minds (not on stone tablets) so nobody has to teach anybody anything about God—everyone will already know that God is the God of justice and fairness. All their injustice will be completely forgiven and they will be returned to the home their husband-God had promised.
John 11: 28-44
This story of Jesus raising Lazarus from death comes just as Jesus is himself coming closer to being executed. It may be that John is using the story as a way of understanding the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection—there are many details in this story that are similar to those of Jesus’ death.
Mary believes that Jesus could have prevented her brother from dying by curing him as he cured many others, but she doesn’t believe that Jesus can raise him from death. Jesus is “greatly disturbed” perhaps meaning he is greatly frustrated that they still don’t understand that he is the resurrection from death. Jesus raises Lazarus and calls him from the tomb. A week today Jesus will be laying dead in his tomb, awaiting the unexpected call from God to rise again. So will we.
John, the gospel writer, is dealing with doubts about Christ that are often still ours. He presents Mary as having the same struggles we do. Is Jesus someone who is an example of good and helps us, or is he, as John believes, somehow the one who destroys death? There are all kinds of deaths that we have been called out of into new life. That’s how Jesus’ resurrection happens in us.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son came into the world
to free us all from sin and death.
Breathe upon us with the power of your Spirit,
that we may be raised to new life in Christ,
and serve you in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
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