Tuesday July 16 Pentecost 8
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Psalm 26
“I do not sit down with the wicked”: this gives us words to say how we wish to live, that deep in our heart we really are such people as keep God’s commands to love and do justice. “My foot stands on level ground” because we ground our lives on the solid base of justice.
Psalm 28
Like many psalms, this asks that the wicked be punished: “give them their just deserts.” (“Deserts” is “What is deserved,” not miles of sand or misspelled sweets!) This desire for evil people to be destroyed seems very unlike Jesus’ request that we forgive our enemies and love them, but it is really giving us words to express our own intense desire that oppressive and violent policies should come to an end. We might pray, “May any international trade agreements that make the poor even poorer, be utterly done away with.”
The violent images in many psalms are not to ask God to be violent, but to ask that all evil actions and policies be completely defeated so people around the world can live in peace and fulfilment. The second half of the psalm gives thanks that God has indeed been victorious over oppression.
Joshua 2.15-24 What’s Joshua about?
In response to her hiding them, the two spies commit to protect Rahab and her family as long as she is loyal to them and uses the secret identification signal they arrange with her. With her help they evade capture and report to Joshua that the local people in the promised land are terrified of them.
Matthew 25.14-30 What’s Matthew about?
In Matthew’s time, like ours, it’s not at all clear that God’s kingdom of inclusion and fulfillment is about to happen. Jesus tells this story to encourage us.
This would assure disciples living decades after Jesus and becoming discouraged, that Jesus had already known how bad things could become, and how cruel emperors would attempt to crush them. But because Jesus foretold this, they could trust that they were not abandoned despite being treated as badly as the third servant. We can receive the same assurance in our time, that we are not abandoned either.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless
until they find their rest in you.
May we find peace in your service,
and in the world to come, see you face to face;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.