Monday November 28 Advent 1
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Psalm 1
Those who live in righteousness—which means with justice to all—will be as strong as healthy trees planted near water. Injustice will be blown away like chaff.
Psalm 2
Other nations laugh at God and God’s people, but God has chosen this people and their king, and God will have the final word.
Christians may understand this to be a way of saying that God has made self-offering love and justice in the death and resurrection of Christ to be the ultimate reality. All other attempts at finding full life through pursuing self-interest are laughable and doomed to fail.
Psalm 3
Because of God’s protection, I have nothing to fear.
Isaiah 1: 10-20 What’s Isaiah about?
For nearly three months we will read from this most famous of the prophets. Likely there were three authors—the first, in the first 40 chapters, attributes the disaster of their defeat 700 years before Christ, to the consequences of exploiting powerless people. The second author, in chapters 40 to 55, proposes a revolutionary new way of understanding God who can work through pagan rulers, who allowed the Jews to return after the defeat of 600 B.C., and the final author, in the last 11 chapters, is concerned with continuing policies of justice after the people have returned to the city.
In this passage from the first of the authors, Isaiah understands God to be saying that God has no interest in, and even is revolted by, religious worship when it is not accompanied by care for the oppressed, orphans and widows—the people in their society who were homeless, destitute, and subject to extreme abuse. If the nation changes its ways, as military disaster looms, there is still hope for a prosperous future.
Luke 20.1-8 What’s Luke about?
In Advent we are encouraged to look at the challenges involved as God arrives in our lives. For the next two weeks we will be reading about the challenges confronting Jesus as the kingdom comes close in his death and resurrection.
Opposition to Jesus grows. The religious leaders confront Jesus with the fact that he has no authorization to teach. He responds by asking who gave John authorization. John was highly popular because of his rejection of Roman rule, and became a martyr after being executed by Herod. So the leaders cannot criticize John for fear of a popular uproar, and cannot support John for fear of Herod executing them. Jesus has exposed their true loyalty to their survival and not to God’s call for justice. That is Jesus’ authority—it lies in loyalty to God’s justice for all.
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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