Monday July 5 Pentecost 6
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Psalm 4
So much of the world trusts in “dumb idols” and “false gods”—those seductive priorities which do nothing to bring goodness and justice. But the true God can still do wonders and we can trust God to care of us and so we can fall asleep peacefully.
Psalm 7
I am pursued by evil. This would make sense if I had done something terribly wrong, but I haven’t. God, sit like a supreme judge, and make that evil self-destruct. I will then proclaim that God is indeed just.
1 Samuel 15: 1-23 What’s Samuel about?
King Saul is sent to complete God’s cleansing of the promised land from the evil of the aboriginal people (as the Israelites understood them) but Saul disobeys God by keeping some of the battle spoils. While the command to utterly destroy the enemy and their animals is cruel from a modern perspective, the meaning then was that Saul’s greed had overcome his commitment to God’s command to remove evil from the world. Saul blames the common people and insists he kept the best animals for religious reasons. The passage concludes with a poem in which it is clear that God wants obedience to justice more than religious animal sacrifices and that Saul will be deposed for not giving absolute priority to God’s call to act with justice.
We can interpret this passage for ourselves as God’s command to remove oppressive policies from our world and not to compromise when oppressive policies bring us profit or benefit our religion. How applicable this is to our modern social and international arrangements! Our own treatment of aboriginal people turns out to have been motivated by self-interest and the consequences are horrific.
Luke 23: 44-56a What’s Luke about?
Jesus dies under torture. A Roman soldier affirms his innocence and the Roman governor Pilate gives permission for Jesus to be given a formal burial in a unused tomb. Historically such affirmations by a Roman soldier and by Pilate are most unlikely, but this was a way that many early Christians, including Luke, could demonstrate Jesus’ significance —even the Romans understood who he was and honoured him. In that way the faith might be more credible to Roman citizens who were considering becoming followers of Jesus.
We are challenged to honour God’s total participation in the horrors and suffering of our time, and to honour the victims of our world as if they are Christ.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son Jesus Christ has taught us
that what we do for the least of your children
we do also for him.
Give us the will to serve others
as he was the servant of all,
who gave up his life and died for us,
but lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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