Monday March 13 Lent 3
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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.
Jeremiah 7: 1-15 What’s Jeremiah about?
God tells Jeremiah to stand in the temple and implore the people to act with justice for the poor instead of putting their trust in God without caring about doing God’s justice. If the temple is the centre of violence and oppression, then the temple will be destroyed. Which the Babylonians did. Six hundred years later Jesus quoted this passage about the temple becoming a den of robbers, intending people to recognize the same infidelity was happening again. He was confronting those who had made the temple a centre of greed and exploitation in his day. And the Romans did destroy the temple, permanently.
In Lent Jeremiah challenges us to ask the same uncomfortable questions about our own faith—are there ways in which we make Christianity serve us rather than God’s desire for dignity, justice and inclusion of those without power or respect? If we don’t, Jeremiah’s words suggest, God could abandon Christianity.
John 7: 14-36 What’s John about?
As so often in John, Jesus is confronting arguments that attempt to prove he cannot be important. Isn’t he making this all up, since he is uneducated? No, he has this challenging teaching because it comes from God, not from learning. How does he dare break the Sabbath? Because God wishes healing and not just injury (circumcision) on the day of creation’s completion. Even if the authorities trust him, he can’t be from God because the true messiah will appear suddenly out of nowhere and we know Jesus’ ordinary background. Jesus responds that what his critics don’t know is God—if they paid attention to God they would know that God is his source for what he says and does. Many people, however are impressed at what he has done and begin to trust him. The religious authorities fear the popularity of his radical call to justice and seek to arrest him. But Jesus says they won’t be able to come where he is. As usual in John’s gospel, the pieces of these conversations are to be understood on multiple levels.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ gives the water of eternal life,
may we always thirst for you,
the spring of life and source of goodness;
through him who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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