Saturday November 26 Reign of Christ
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Psalm 137
Another psalm expressing terrible grief that the nation had been abandoned. When the people were captured and taken to Babylon about 700 years before Jesus, they were asked to amuse their captors with funny songs, and were horrified to have to entertain those who had destroyed their land and the glorious temple dedicated to justice.
The concluding couple of verses of this psalm are disturbingly violent. We sometimes also feel violent when we are abused, so there is an honest recognition of that truth here. Or we can think of this part as a commitment to ensuring that all evil should be completely removed from the world.
Psalm 144
This psalm expresses the feeling that we are not very strong in face of terrible forces, but that God can act to save us, and the end result will be unimaginable prosperity and happiness.
These two psalms are chosen for a Saturday when Jesus lies dead in the grave, destroyed by evil as was Jerusalem. Yet Jesus and Jerusalem were to hear a call to new and glorious life.
Zechariah 14.12-21 What’s Zechariah about?
Zechariah assures the abandoned people that God will utterly destroy those who try to kill them, and that all nations, even the world powers of the time will worship the God of justice, that everyone will finally be safe, and even cooking pots, the most disposable kitchen implements will become holy as places where God is worshipped!
Luke 19.41-48 What’s Luke about?
Jesus laments the fact that the city will reject the kingdom and wishes that it had welcomed God’s kingdom. Luke imagines that Jesus was aware of the coming destruction of the city by Rome forty years later and that Jesus interpreted that future disaster as what happens inevitably when we abandon care and justice for everyone. But God’s attitude is not of violence but of longing to embrace the people like a mother hen with her chicks.
This week’s collect:
Almighty and everlasting God,
whose will it is to restore all things
in your well-beloved Son, our Lord and King,
grant that the peoples of the earth,
now divided and enslaved by sin,
may be freed and brought together
under his gentle and loving rule;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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