Sunday, August 18 Pentecost 13
Psalm 118
An enthusiastic song of thanksgiving for everything God has done for us—God has protected us from evil forces, and we give praise in the temple and in processions. Appropriate for a Sunday as an anniversary of the triumph of Easter Day.
Portions of the second half of this psalm are traditionally sung on Easter Day.
Psalm 29
Astonishment at the overwhelming presence of God in nature who rules the untameable ocean and even makes mountains cavort like calves and oak trees “writhe” in a gale! We worship such a God, who makes such strength and peace available to us.
Judges 16.15-31 What’s Judges about?
Samson has given his wife three incorrect answers to her query about the source of his amazing strength, but finally tells her the truth. The truth is that his strength comes from his faithfulness to God’s requirement of his parents that he never shave his head. By entrusting his life to this godless woman who he has allowed to seduce him, and by abandoning God’s command, God abandons him and he is blinded and becomes weak and is set to work and humiliated by Israel’s enemies like a donkey grinding grain. However, God’s faithfulness does not fail, and Samson’s hair gradually grows back, and so God gives him strength again and he destroys more Philistines at his death than in his whole life.
Although we may be offended by the violence in these stories, they were understood by the ancient Jews as great celebrations of God’s victories over evil and were of immense encouragement to Jews living under foreign rule by Assyria, Greece, and in the time of Jesus, by Rome. Many Jews were allowing themselves to become assimilated by those powerful cultures and Jews trying to be faithful to the ancient covenants told such stories to encourage one another to trust in God’s faithfulness to protect them in the face of overwhelming foreign power.
Mark 5.25-34 What’s Mark about?
This is an example of Mark’s technique of folding one story inside another in order to heighten the meaning of both. A Jewish leader has asks Jesus to heal his daughter. Meanwhile, and this is where today’s reading starts, a woman with severe menstrual problems, who therefore causes disgust in everyone and is prevented from reaching social maturity, risks insulting Jesus by touching him, and she is instantly healed. Mark is describing how the kingdom is breaking in by enabling a woman to become a full adult through Jesus’ complete acceptance of someone society considered a revolting failure.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
you have broken the tyranny of sin
and sent into our hearts the Spirit of your Son.
Give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service,
that all people may know the glorious liberty
of the children of God;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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