Monday June 17 Pentecost 4
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Psalm 77
God is not responding when I call in trouble. But I will not forget the amazing things God did in the past.
Psalm 79
Evil people have destroyed your temple. Come and help because we are your sheep.
Numbers 9: 15-23, 10: 29-36 What’s Numbers about?
These stories were compiled about 500 years before Jesus, when the Israelites were rebuilding their destroyed temple. The central object in the temple was the tabernacle which housed the ark in which the original stone commandments had been carried through the wilderness.
The repeated focus on the cloud hovering over the tabernacle instructing the Israelites when to travel and when to stop emphasized that God’s leadership was unquestionably obeyed by their ancestors. Leaders at the time of the return to Jerusalem were hoping their people would trust just as deeply in God’s wisdom to guide them in restoring the temple. Interestingly, Moses’ father-in-law, a non-Jew, assists them.
These stories about the obedience of the community of a millennium earlier would have inspired the discouraged Israelites as they struggled to reconstruct the destroyed temple and perhaps made use of non-Jewish resources to do so.
Matthew 17.14-21 What’s Matthew about?
Having just seen Jesus transfigured in his eternal glory, the disciples are unable to cast out an epileptic demon. When they ask why, Jesus explains that their trust is too little—they do not yet trust that God’s power is sufficient to overcome all evil. If they had trust the size of a mustard seed—even trust that was vanishingly small—they could do seemingly impossible things. God’s power working through them could move mountains.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God, without you we are not able to please you.
Mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit
may in all things direct and rule our hearts;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.