Monday May 3 Easter 5
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Psalm 56
In the face of intense attack by evil, we trust that God will act for what is right.
Psalm 57
Another psalm expressing our trust that God will act for what is right in the face of intense attack by evil.
Psalm 58
An impassioned plea for evil to be overcome. We should read the violence not literally but as an expression of our determination that good will prevail.
Wisdom 9: 1-18 What’s Wisdom about?
King Solomon is only an ordinary mortal, but with Wisdom at his side, he does wonderful things such as building the temple in Jerusalem. Humanity knows next to nothing about the earth and cannot fathom what God has in mind, but with Wisdom, we can know the way to go.
The author is taking the Greek ideas of goddesses, a very credible concept at the time for Jews dominated by Greek culture, and explaining how Jews could understand God being present to them in a Jewish form of a feminine divine being called Wisdom. The writer imagines Solomon, who lived a thousand years in the past, inventing this idea, and thus giving credibility to this way of experiencing God.
Luke 7: 36-50 What’s Luke about?
Jesus is invited to dinner with a Pharisee, a person with deep commitment to living in accordance with God’s expectations. At dinner a prostitute arrives and Jesus allows her to kiss him repeatedly. To accept her intimacy was as inconceivable then as it would be now. When the religious leader objects, Jesus explains that we love the person who forgives us if we have much to be forgiven for, but love little if we have little to be forgiven for. Since the host hasn’t cared for Jesus’ needs the way the prostitute has, he must not have needed much forgiveness! Only then does Jesus speak of forgiveness to the woman, meaning that she had experienced his love for her even before he spoke of fully accepting her. When there is more complaint about Jesus’ behaviour, he tells the woman that she was responsible for her forgiveness “your faith has saved you” rather than attributing her acceptance to himself, and tells her to go in peace, a deep acceptance which is breaking in through Jesus, but which the wider society refuses to give her.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.
Give us grace to love one another
and walk in the way of his commandments,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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