Friday March 17 Lent 3
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Psalm 88
A lament that I have been crushed and am beyond hope. When I am dead, there is nothing left, there is no life beyond the grave.
Astonishingly, to be fully with us, Jesus enters completely into such a death. This psalm is appropriately read on a Friday as Jesus is placed in the grave. Only God’s act, on Saturday night—the eve of the resurrection—can reverse death—even Jesus’ death. That’s the only hope there is.
Jeremiah 11: 1-20 What’s Jeremiah about?
In this part of the book Jeremiah repeatedly warns the people about the consequences of their ongoing injustice. In this passage, Jeremiah is asking for an exception to the consequences—he is arguing against God’s insistence there must be consequences, otherwise God wouldn’t be serious about all people being given dignity. But God responds that it was clear when God rescued the people from Egypt that in return for God’s generosity, they must practice justice for the poor just as God did for them. God repeatedly taught this to the people. But the people have continued to ignore that truth, and done what was selfish. God tells Jeremiah not to ask for an exception for the people, because that would invalidate God’s command to be just. Jeremiah accepts that the consequences will happen.
We can hear the arguments going on, following the disaster of defeat and enslavement by Babylon, about whether God is just or not, and if God is just and caring, why God allowed this disaster to happen.
The whole book is like a poem trying to warn people, using a variety of story-telling techniques, that injustice in society has terrible consequences. It applies just as clearly to our society not caring for the poor in our world and not caring for the creatures. The result of that is the looming humanitarian and climate disaster. We may ask why God isn’t intervening to fix this, the way the ancient Jews did, and Jeremiah would reply that God says it’s because of what we didn’t do, we didn’t care. God didn’t prevent Jerusalem and the temple from being destroyed, but did provide a way for the people to return. Perhaps the same is true in our time.
John 8: 33-47 What’s John about?
John continues to develop the theme of Jesus’ parentage. Although reputed to have no father, Jesus proclaims that through his Father he will make people free. Next, the Christians of John’s time were being pressured to think of Jesus as just another prophet. Much as Jesus is thought of in our time. John remembers Jesus arguing that he is not a great leader like Abraham, but, far more important, in him the very essence of God can be seen. If people don’t see that, as the religious leaders didn’t, that is because they have not experienced God and therefore aren’t faithful to their own tradition embodied by their father Abraham. Jesus has turned the tables of the argument. that he should be despised as a bastard.
In our time, too, Jesus is often mistakenly thought to be someone who set a great example for us to follow. But if that’s all he is, then nothing has really changed. But if we see in his death and resurrection the depth of God’s love, that gives us and the whole cosmos new hope and new life and freedom from our failures.
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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