Friday September 27 Pentecost 18
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Psalm 91
Those who shelter under God like a chick beneath its mother’s wings will be safe from all danger and will see how disaster befalls those who put their trust in evil. In the final three verses God is speaking: we are safe because God has decided to be bound to us in love.
The verse about not hurting one’s foot on a stone was applied by the early Christians to Jesus’ temptation in the desert to throw himself off the top of the temple without being hurt.
Psalm 92
Those who trust in God will be upheld and will flourish like trees with lots of water. Evil will be utterly destroyed. The God who does this is as solid as a rock.
Esther 8.1-8, 15-17 What’s Esther about?
The king raises Mordecai to high honour and gives Haman’s property to him and Esther. At Esther’s request, the king writes a formal decree that all Jews are allowed to be free in his empire. Everyone lives happily ever after.
This story, quite improbable in actual history, became an image of hope for Jewish people during persecution under the Greek and Roman empires and is still celebrated in the feast of Purim, usually in March. The final chapter of this book, omitted in the daily readings, describes how the feast of Purim arose from this story and how the Jews violently freed themselves from their oppression.
Interestingly, God never appears in this book, the only book in the Bible with no reference to God. The author was writing for Jewish people living within the very successful Greek culture which did not believe in God. Many Jews would have been wondering if God really does act or if God really is a myth, the way sophisticated Greeks believed. The writer may have written this story to demonstrate that God acts powerfully even when God never appears explicitly.
The Bible deliberately contains a variety of interpretations about how God can be experienced. Job, for example, which we read before Esther, has a very different approach—God is very present but simultaneously very absent from Job’s experience. In Esther, by contrast, God never appears or is even mentioned. This variety of understandings about God ensures we don’t have a naive or simplistic view of God who, after all, is beyond all understanding.
Luke 4.31-37 What’s Luke about?
Jesus brings the kingdom into real life by his first miracle of throwing out an unclean spirit. The common people, who were oppressed by the oppressive spirit of the empire, rejoice.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth,
and ourselves in your image.
Teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and to serve you with reverence and thanksgiving;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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