Friday July 16 Pentecost 7
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Psalm 35
A demand that God should protect me from evil people who want me to fail. We can read this psalm as applying to our own self, or as a way of experiencing the life of a person or group who are being abused and exploited. In the end we will praise God because God will protect us.
Appropriate for a Friday, the weekly anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion, in which he deliberately experienced ultimate exploitation and abuse.
1 Samuel 21: 1-15 What’s Samuel about?
In fear of Saul, David flees with his men and when they are hungry he asks to eat holy bread (in some ways like communion bread) and he is given it. He also is given the sword belonging to Goliath. He then flees to a foreign king, but is frightened when that king hears how successful David has been and so may be perceived to be a threat to his kingship. David protects himself by pretending to be insane. The story teller is recounting how, without ever appearing as such, God is constantly ensuring David’s safety so that he can become the just king that the nation needs.
A thousand years after this incident, Jesus refers to David eating holy bread as a way of defending himself and his disciples against the charge of being sacrilegious by picking grain on the sabbath.
Mark 3: 7-19a What’s Mark about?
The kingdom arrives in the form of people being made whole, and Jesus begins to build a new community founded on justice and healing to embody that. He selects 12 apostles because that was the symbolic number of the complete Jewish community with 12 tribes descended from Jacob’s 12 sons. Christians might interpret that number as symbolizing a new global community embodying God’s kingdom.
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.
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