Monday February 22 Lent 1
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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.
Deuteronomy 8:11-20
Moses continues his instructions before the people leave the wilderness and enter the land God promised them. Moses warns them that when they become wealthy, living in cities, if they forget the justice and equality they experienced in the desert when God miraculoulsy provided food and water, then disaster will follow.
The warning applies to countries in our time, too. We have also accumulated immense wealth and if we do not share it with the poor in our country or the poor around the world, disaster will happen for us. We can see this playing out when more and more money is spent on military equipment to kill people, and less and less on food and medicine for the poorest. As the disparity between wealth and poverty grows, health and security decline for everyone. Moses’ warning is universal and reminds us that there is urgency to change our direction.
John 2: 1-12
John’s gospel begins with this story of Jesus’ attending a wedding reception at which he miraculously provides 180 gallons of the very best wine after everyone had already drunk too much! A foretaste (literally!) of the joy we will experience in the resurrection for which we are longing in Lent.
John sets the story of the wedding “on the third day” and thus suggests this event as a way of understanding the resurrection, which happened on the third day—the resurrection, says John, is the ultimate wedding! This is the first miracle in John’s gospel (John calls them “signs” which is a clue to what John thinks the point of miracles is) and by putting this one at the start of his book John suggests that’s where the whole story of Jesus is heading.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
whose Son fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are but did not sin, give us grace to discipline ourselves
in submission to your Spirit,
that as you know our weakness,
so we may know your power to save;
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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