Tuesday November 30 Advent 1
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Psalm 5
There is evil all around, but I will go into your presence, O God, and know that you are more powerful than all evil and will protect us.
Psalm 6
I have been hounded almost to death, help me, God. Thanks be to God that God heard me and the evil people will be overcome.
Amos 3: 1-11 What’s Amos about?
The Israelites have abandoned God, the God of justice. With a series of self-evident acts and consequences—lions only roar when they have prey, snares only spring when they have caught something—the prophet makes clear that the evil of the Israelites will ensure that their capital city will be destroyed.
Matthew 21.12-22 What’s Matthew about?
Jesus attacks the temple authorities who are extorting money from the poor through religious taxes to purchase favour from the Roman empire. As his popularity grows, understandably since he stands for the people who are being oppressed, the religious authorities become angry.
The next day Jesus curses a fig tree for not having fruit, and it instantly withers. Since Israel was often described as a fruitful fig tree, it is probable that Jesus described the leadership of Israel as a fruitless fig tree which would be destroyed, as did indeed happen forty years later when the Romans destroyed the temple, around the time Matthew was writing his gospel. It is likely that Jesus’ comment on the leaders’ faithless leadership being like a fruitless fig tree was later misunderstood and was re-told as an actual act by Jesus of a miracle of cursing.
What’s clear is that as Jesus enters our world exploitation and abuse will result in disaster.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life
in which your Son Jesus Christ
came to us in great humility,
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge both the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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