Thursday July 29 Pentecost 9
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Psalm 74
About 600 years before Jesus, the Babylonians invaded Israel and the Jerusalem temple was completely destroyed. This was a time of deep despair, and many thought Judaism would disappear forever. The psalm asks God to remember what great things God did in controlling the forces of nature when God made the world, and how God rescued the people from Egypt, and to do great things again to rescue the people. They trust this is possible because God is in charge of the whole earth. We face similar issues in terms of the entire planet in our time.
2 Samuel 4: 1-12 What’s Samuel about?
People loyal to David kill the last of Saul’s sons, thus ensuring that the royal line of Saul will die out and never be a threat to David. But David, contrary to the practice of rulers at that time has them killed for executing a just person in his own home. David has Saul’s last son buried with honours.
Violent as these stories are, we see a pattern emerging: David refuses to follow normal custom by taking revenge on his enemies, and instead David respects God’s original choice of king even at the cost of endangering his own future. David has taken the same action in regard to Saul himself. We see the writer of these stories assuring us that David was always loyal to God’s original intention that Saul should be king.
Mark 7: 1-23 What’s Mark about?
Jesus is in conflict with the religious leaders. They insist that loyalty to God requires demonstrating that loyalty through religious practices such as ritual washing before eating. This was not modern washing for the purpose of sanitation, but a holiness ceremony. Jesus insists that justice, in caring for parents for example, is more important than religious holiness. Evil does not arise from being complacent about religious ceremonies, but from lack of love that comes from inside us.
This week’s collect:
O God,
the protector of all who trust in you,
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy,
increase and multiply upon us your mercy,
that with you as our ruler and guide,
we may so pass through things temporal,
that we lose not the things eternal;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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