Saturday July 31 Pentecost 9
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Psalm 23
I am like a sheep being looked after by God. Even when death comes close, you look after me and feed me and I will live always in your presence.
Psalm 27
Even though there is trouble all around, I am glad that God is with me. Even if my parents were to disown me, you, God, will stay faithful to me.
These two psalms are often used on Saturdays when Jesus lies dead in the grave. God is now the only hope.
2 Samuel 5: 22—6: 11 What’s Samuel about?
David wins a battle against the Philistines with God’s mysterious help. David intends to bring the ark, which held the actual stone 10 commandments of justice, to his new city of Jerusalem thus consolidating his power as king and as chief protector of the religion. The presence of God is so powerful in the ark that when there is danger of it falling off the wagon and someone steadies it, God kills that person for touching it. This is not a story about an arbitrarily violent God, but an insistence that there will be consequences for being casual about justice. The stone commandments inside are the quintessential nature of justice and David is rightly afraid that he may not be able to stand before God’s demand for justice, so David sends the ark to be kept by a Philistine—just in case! But when the ark blesses the Philistine with prosperity, David is encouraged and will complete his plan to house the ark in Jerusalem.
Mark 8: 1-10 What’s Mark about?
Jesus is still in the province where the aboriginal people lived. He feeds them from almost nothing, exactly the same way he fed the Jewish people earlier. And just as there had been so much food that there were twelve baskets left over—a superabundance of food for every Jewish tribe, now there are seven baskets left over—one for each of the aboriginal nations that the Israelites had been told to exterminate when they entered the land. Jesus is enacting God’s decision to include the former enemies as equals in the kingdom—an unimaginable, almost sacrilegious act in that time. In our time when divisions between people are being encouraged, can we imagine the radical inclusion of outsiders to which we are called?
This week’s collect:
O God,
the protector of all who trust in you,
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy,
increase and multiply upon us your mercy,
that with you as our ruler and guide,
we may so pass through things temporal,
that we lose not the things eternal;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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