Readings for Thursday September 9

Thursday September 9          Pentecost 15

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Psalm 50
This psalm imagines God’s response to the people doing evil and abandoning justice. Rather than simply reacting or punishing, God lays out the case as if God were taking them to court—the idea is that God is being completely fair and getting an unbiased opinion about what the people have done. They have substituted religion for being just and if this continues there will be consequences, but if they return to justice all will be well.

Psalm 98
The people, the nations, and the whole of creation delight in God’s victory and rejoice when God comes to put all creation right. This psalm is used at Easter, and is often used on Sundays, mini-anniversaries of Easter. There is some lovely imagery of the sea deliberately making a noise with its waves and rivers doing the same by clapping their hands.

1 Kings 18: 1-19                            What’s Kings about?
Obadiah is a very senior official in the court of Ahab at Samaria and he is secretly loyal to the God of justice. A famine has come upon the land in punishment for Ahab’s commitment to injustice. When Elijah approaches Obadiah to arrange a meeting with Ahab, Obadiah is  afraid that Ahab will kill him for associating with Elijah. The reader is learning how ruthless Ahab is. But Elijah declares that God will protect Obadiah and the meeting is arranged.

At the meeting Elijah challenges Ahab to bring the eight hundred and fifty false prophets he and his wife use to support their injustice. The challenge is to take place at an ancient holy site on Mount Carmel.

Matthew 2: 13-23                            What’s Matthew about?
God warns Joseph of the danger that Herod wants to kill the infant Jesus. We know from other sources that Herod was indeed a ruthless despot and Matthew’s description of his attempt to kill all children under two years old is consistent with Herod’s historical reputation. For Matthew, this act of horror anticipates what the rulers will do to Jesus in adulthood. This is one of Matthew’s themes: that Jesus is rejected starting right from his birth. For Matthew, the Christian community will become the new Judaism who will follow God’s will for justice revealed in the Hebrew Bible.

Matthew  uses a verse from a psalm, originally referring to Moses, to explain that the reason Jesus lived in Egypt as an infant and travelled from there to the promised land is because he is repeating the life of Moses. In this way Matthew presents Jesus as being the new exodus by which God will save the people. To  drive the point home that God is guiding every detail of Jesus’ life, Matthew recounts angels, messengers from God,  repeatedly appearing to Joseph in dreams, and uses multiple quotes from the Hebrew Bible to show that Jesus is the fulfilment of everything the Jewish faith had hoped for.

This week’s collect:

Stir up, O Lord,
the wills of your faithful people,
that richly bearing the fruit of good works,
we may by you be richly rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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