Thursday March 25 Lent 5
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Psalm 131
God is like a mother on whom I rest in complete confidence.
Psalm 132
The psalm reminds God that David was committed to finding a permanent place for the ark to stay in Jerusalem and that God swore an oath that God would never abandon David or Jerusalem.
In our time we can understand this oath to be God’s absolute commitment to creation and to our rescue which is accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Psalm 133
Another short psalm expressing joy in the abundance we experience when humanity lives in unity – that is, in justice and inclusion of all.
Jeremiah 26: 1-6
Jeremiah reminds the people that they were warned about the consequence of abandoning the justice that God made the foundation of the world. If they change their ways and begin to enact justice and inclusion, all will be well, but if they persist in injustice, the consequences will be unimaginable—the city of God, Jerusalem, the location of the temple of justice and inclusion, will be cursed.
We can see the same process working out in public policy in our day—not caring for the poor in our country or around the world has dreadful consequences for all of us. It’s not that God is angry or wanting to punish, but that the world is designed for fulfillment of everyone and abandoning that principle makes everything break down. For God to change that basic principle would require God to become selfish like us and that would result in total disaster.
John 10: 19-42
The conversation about the significance of Jesus as shepherd-king is concluding. The festival commemorates the re-dedication of the temple altar after it had been desecrated under Greek occupation. Shortly there will be the first attempt to kill Jesus—John is making this event coincide with the re-dedication of the temple sacrifices of which Jesus will be the culmination.
The critics are accusing Jesus of blasphemy by claiming to be God. Jesus quotes from a psalm (82) where God is addressing the minor gods saying that if they don’t act with justice God will overrule them. Jesus takes the phrase ‘you are gods’ (meaning, ‘you may be gods but that won’t prevent me overruling you’) and interprets it to mean that God was calling people “gods” so he can call himself “Son of God.” It’s a method of interpreting scripture that’s not persuasive to us, but was normal then and may have been an effective argument used by early Christians to defend their faith in Jesus.
Jesus goes on to say, “The Father and I are one.” Jesus is saying that we when see him (healing others or being executed himself) we are seeing God. This is blasphemous to many religious people because God cannot be imagined suffering such degradation as Jesus will. Some people are convinced and others not, based on whether or not they “see” the deep nature of God in the dying and rising of Jesus. Jesus then associates himself with John the Baptist who was the first to call him the sacrificial “Lamb of God.”
John, the gospel writer, will then immediately lead us, in tomorrow’s reading, into one of the most dramatic experiences of death and resurrection which may mirror Jesus’ approaching execution.
This week’s collect:
Almighty God,
your Son came into the world
to free us all from sin and death.
Breathe upon us with the power of your Spirit,
that we may be raised to new life in Christ,
and serve you in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
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