Wednesday September 8 Pentecost 15
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Psalm 119 Part 3
Psalm 119 is a meditation on responding to God’s call to justice. Every verse contains some synonym for “justice”, such as “word”, “statute”, “commandment” or the like. The psalm is arranged in groups of eight verses. Each verse in the group starts with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet – the first group of eight verses all start with A, the second group all start with B and so on. The first seven verses mirror the seven days of creation, with the eighth sometimes pointing to the next group. This very careful construction mirrors God’s creating the universe by overcoming chaos with order. In the human world, justice, dignity and fulfilment – the outcomes of justice – are the expressions of order in the human world. The human world and the rest of creation are thus united. Today’s three sections begin with the letters Z, H, and Th (in Hebrew alphabetical order). As you read them, imagine the effect of each line in today’s first section beginning with “Z” and so on.
1 Kings 17: 1-24 What’s Kings about?
For the next two weeks we read the stories of how the prophet Elijah repeatedly challenges king Ahab’s injustice.
God sends famine and drought to persuade Ahab to change his ways, and God protects Elijah from Ahab by having Elijah flee from the land back into the wilderness from which Joshua originally crossed into Canaan. There ravens feed Elijah and when the water dries up God arranges for a poor widow from the non-Jewish (and therefore one of the disgusting aboriginal people) near death to feed Elijah with the last of her food. But her jug of oil and of flour never run out. When her son is about to die, leaving her destitute without a male to protect her, Elijah saves her son from death. We see God committed to justice for the poor—even a poor aboriginal widow, the poorest of the poor, and God gives a central role to this poorest of all people as she enables Elijah to continue his challenges to Ahab.
Matthew 2: 1-12 What’s Matthew about?
We now start reading through Matthew’s gospel. Where Mark was focused on Jesus’ proclamation that God’s just rule was actually emerging, Matthew is interested in how members of the Christian faith behave towards each other, thus embodying God’s kingdom. Matthew is also interested in how followers of Jesus embody the kingdom in relation to God’s directions in the Hebrew Bible.
The birth of Jesus is so significant that scholars from a distant country are aware of it. But the local leaders are not aware and plot to execute the baby.
This week’s collect:
Stir up, O Lord,
the wills of your faithful people,
that richly bearing the fruit of good works,
we may by you be richly rewarded;
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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