Monday November 7 Pentecost 22
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Psalm 80
After rescuing us from slavery in Egypt, God had planted us in new ground like a well-watered vine, and we grew and filled the whole land. But now we are being attacked by a foreign power and God’s vine is being uprooted. God, rescue us so that we may be a healthy vine again.
Joel 1.1-13 What’s Joel about?
We do not know when this book was written, but likely after the people had returned from exile 500 years before Christ. It emphasizes the consequences of the people not being faithful to God as the explanation for why they were captured and enslaved by the Babylonians.
In this opening section the country has been overrun by grasshoppers as well as by the enemy. Their country is in ruins and their crops, and therefore their lives and their worship and their future are all in tatters.
Notice that the details of the various grasshoppers is an accurate description of the process by which grasshoppers mutate into deadly swarms of locusts.
In our day, it remains true that there are disastrous long-term consequences when countries are unfaithful by not ensuring those with little power are fully included and have dignity in society.
Luke 14.12-24 What’s Luke about?
Jesus says that in being generous we must give to people who cannot return the favour—otherwise it is not actually generosity. He tells the story of a community who gang up to deliberately shame a host by all not turning up at the last minute. The intention was to leaves the host’s immense feast to rot and thus to humiliate him. But in response the host invites the homeless to his feast thus ensuring the feast happens and thus shaming those who had tried to shame him. This reversal of usual social customs is what the kingdom is like—God will ensure that the poor, who deserve feasts more than anyone, will be banqueted and those who refused to be generous will find themselves not enjoying life.
This week’s collect:
Eternal God,
who caused all holy scriptures
to be written for our learning,
grant us so to hear them,
read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,
that we may embrace and ever hold fast
the blessed hope of everlasting life,
which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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