Saturday December 4 Advent 1
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Psalm 20
We delight that God upholds us with strength far greater than military technology.
Psalm 21
Joy at how with great power God has blessed the king and removed the threats against him. This psalm would originally have been sung to the king, as God’s blessed one, but it is equally applicable to us and can be read with ourselves as the subject of the psalm.
These psalms are often used on Saturdays to suggest the power God is about to use to raise Jesus and us from death.
Amos 5: 18-27 What’s Amos about?
Amos understands that God does not care at all about religious practices if justice is not happening. No matter how faithful the people are in their religion, that counts for nothing, and the people will be conquered if they do no justice.
Matthew 22: 15-22 What’s Matthew about?
The religious leaders try to force Jesus into choosing between affirming the emperor as a god thus committing blasphemy or denying the emperor’s right to extort taxes (which would be popular because the common people hated the extortion that Rome imposed) but would be to commit treason and risk execution. Jesus responds that Caesar and God should each receive their due. Jesus means that since Caesar claimed to be God but wasn’t, nothing is due to Caesar! Only the Jewish God of justice is God, and Caesar is the one committing blasphemy.
Sadly, this passage in which Jesus insists only the God of justice is real has often been misunderstood to mean that Jesus was blessing human governments which so often claim to be enforcing God’s will, and that he was limiting God’s authority to heaven and to religious matters. That is the exact opposite of what Jesus was saying—he proclaims that God’s heavenly rule is breaking out on earth and that the forces of oppression by human rulers are doomed.
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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