Monday July 22 Pentecost 9=====
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Psalm 41
Just as we care for the poor and needy, so God cares for us. I am needy in that I have sinned and my enemies and even my friends are all conspiring against me and hoping that I will die. All I can do is trust that God will protect me.
When we, or our world, seem to have little hope, we ground ourselves in knowing God holds us fast.
Psalm 52
Cruel powerful people seem to run the world, but we trust that God will enable the world to be as fertile as a green olive tree and evil will be ended.
Joshua 7.1-13 What’s Joshua about?
Some of the Israelites do not obey Joshua’s order, and they steal some “devoted things” (loot from the destroyed city of Jericho which had been designated for use in Isrealite worship)—and this begins the long theme that the Israelites were not faithful to God and do not trust God to care for them despite God having given them the land.
Perhaps this theme reflects the worry from a thousand years later when the book was compiled—while in exile the people were starting to accept the religion of the Babylonians. So the first attack by Israelite soldiers after they have entered the land results in a humiliating defeat because the people have not been faithful to God’s commands. That’s how the compilers of these stories interpreted the meaning of their own humiliating defeat by the Babylonians.
In our day we may understand this as meaning that if we do not follow practices of justice, all our best initiatives will come to failure.
Matthew 26.36-46 What’s Matthew about?
Jesus is in profound distress at the prospect of his crucifixion and pleads with God that it not happen. Nevertheless, if this is the only way to love, he will do so. Peter, James and John, the senior disciples, sleep through his entire struggle. Matthew and the early Christian community were very aware of how unfaithful they were as followers of Christ, but discovering their inclusion in God’s kingdom anyway, a discovery they called “resurrection,” transformed their lives.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence.
Give us pure hearts and constant wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.