Author: Harold

Tuesday, August 20        Pentecost 13

Psalm 120
God saved me from those who lie and rely on deceit. Even though I am committed to peace, those around me still seek war.

Psalm 121
Confidence that God will watch over us to protect us from natural calamities and everyday situations.

Psalm 122
Joy at entering Jerusalem to worship in the temple. Prayers for Jerusalem.

Judges 18.1-15                           What’s Judges about?
The Tribe of Dan has no territory of their own, and in exploring the surrounding area, five men of an advance party discover the silver idol and the Israelite priest who has become its servant. They enquire of the priest if God will bless their exploration. The priest says that God will bless their exploration, and indeed they find a fertile region ideal for their tribe. They return home and six hundred warriors accompany them to conquer the peaceful city they had discovered. On the way they prepare to steal the idol and its priest.

The story-teller is describing how God remains faithful to the Israelites even when they, and a priest, turn to idols.

John 5.30-47                           What’s John about?
We are likely overhearing the discussions that went on in John’s time regarding the significance of Jesus. John understands Jesus to have anticipated these issues and to have described his significance in these series of passages.

Jesus first says that his decision to break the sabbath commandment comes not from himself but from God. Secondly, that he points out that he should not be believed if he is defending himself, but since it is God who is speaking of him, through John the Baptist, that testimony is reliable. However, since the leaders dodn’t believe John the Baptist’s testimony about Jesus, that proves the leaders weren’t listening to God and so their critique is not valid. Third, the leaders believe that the scriptures contain God’s word, but they don’t believe the scriptures which testify that Jesus is from God—Moses wrote about Jesus, but the leaders don’t accept what Moses wrote.

Taken at face value, we likely don’t find these arguments to be convincing. But what lies behind them—the claim that Jesus expresses the foundational character of what is ultimately real, that is, God—remains a decision that we must make. Does the priority Jesus gives to healing and enacting the wedding celebration of God’s kingdom trump the claims of society and religion? Even if that priority will cost Jesus his life? John, the gospel writer, argues that if we do see that significance in Jesus, we are already part of God’s triumphant kingdom.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you have broken the tyranny of sin
and sent into our hearts the Spirit of your Son.
Give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service,
that all people may know the glorious liberty
of the children of God;
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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Monday, August 19        Pentecost 13

Psalm 106 Part 1
God, you are wonderful, but we have done wicked things. God, you acted with immense generosity when you rescued the people from Egypt, but the people stopped trusting in you, and there were terrible consequences, yet you continued rescuing them. The second half of this psalm has a long list of such examples and concludes with a plea for God to continue rescuing us despite our wickedness.

Psalm 123
We keep our eyes trained on God’s direction to us, like servants alert to their owner’s slightest hand signal. We are oppressed by the wealthy and we anticipate God’s signal at any moment that God will act.

Judges 17.1-13                           What’s Judges about?
Towards the end of the book of Judges we read a story of how, without temporary leaders, the Israelite society devolves into chaos.

An Israelite has stolen a significant sum of money from his own mother. As the story begins he confesses and returns the money, but his mother uses it to give thanks to her god by having an idol cast in silver and placing it in her home. Her son then installs his own son as a priest to preside over the idol. For Israelites this would be the ultimate sacrilege. But the offences against the true God will continue.

A priest of the true God arrives in the town and the idol owner invites him to stay and supervise the idol, hoping that he will be blessed by the priest’s presence. The priest agrees, but this is an abomination for a priest to preside over an idol and not the real God of justice.

John 5.19-29                           What’s John about?
In response to the criticism that he is breaking the Ten Commandments by working on the sabbath to heal someone and claiming that God never stops working to heal us, Jesus says that he has no choice, as God’s son, to do whatever God is doing. If God raises people from death, Jesus must do the same. Those who honour Jesus are free from the criticism of breaking this commandment. The time will come, he says, when everyone will see the truth of this.

Jesus’ generosity is the way in which we see God’s generosity. If we respond with generosity of our own, that will be to live fully, and if we reject acting in generosity and justice, there will be dire consequences. We all know this to be true.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you have broken the tyranny of sin
and sent into our hearts the Spirit of your Son.
Give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service,
that all people may know the glorious liberty
of the children of God;
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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Sunday, August 18        Pentecost 13

Psalm 118
An enthusiastic song of thanksgiving for everything God has done for us—God has protected us from evil forces, and we give praise in the temple and in processions. Appropriate for a Sunday as an anniversary of the triumph of Easter Day.

Portions of the second half of this psalm are traditionally sung on Easter Day.

Psalm 29
Astonishment at the overwhelming presence of God in nature who rules the untameable ocean and even makes mountains cavort like calves and oak trees “writhe” in a gale! We worship such a God, who makes such strength and peace available to us.

Judges 16.15-31                           What’s Judges about?
Samson has given his wife three incorrect answers to her query about the source of his amazing strength, but finally tells her the truth. The truth is that his strength comes from his faithfulness to God’s requirement of his parents that he never shave his head. By entrusting his life to this godless woman who he has allowed to seduce him, and by abandoning God’s command, God abandons him and he is blinded and becomes weak and is set to work and humiliated by Israel’s enemies like a donkey grinding grain. However, God’s faithfulness does not fail, and Samson’s hair gradually grows back, and so God gives him strength again and he destroys more Philistines at his death than in his whole life.

Although we may be offended by the violence in these stories, they were understood by the ancient Jews as great celebrations of God’s victories over evil and were of immense encouragement to Jews living under foreign rule by Assyria, Greece, and in the time of Jesus, by Rome. Many Jews were allowing themselves to become assimilated by those powerful cultures and Jews trying to be faithful to the ancient covenants told such stories to encourage one another to trust in God’s faithfulness to protect them in the face of overwhelming foreign power.

Mark 5.25-34                           What’s Mark about?
This is an example of Mark’s technique of folding one story inside another in order to heighten the meaning of both. A Jewish leader has asks Jesus to heal his daughter. Meanwhile, and this is where today’s reading starts, a woman with severe menstrual problems, who therefore causes disgust in everyone and is prevented from reaching social maturity, risks insulting Jesus by touching him, and she is instantly healed. Mark is describing how the kingdom is breaking in by enabling a woman to become a full adult through Jesus’ complete acceptance of someone society considered a revolting failure.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you have broken the tyranny of sin
and sent into our hearts the Spirit of your Son.
Give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service,
that all people may know the glorious liberty
of the children of God;
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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Saturday, August 17        Pentecost 12

Psalm 107 Part 2
When the Israelites completed their journey through the wilderness God brought disaster on the evil people who lived there (as the Israelites understood them) to make a fertile place for God’s own people. When God’s people were oppressed, God rescued them. Wise people, the poem says, will take this to heart and will trust in God’s care and justice to prevail.

One of our tasks today is to cultivate that trust in God’s care for humanity so that when disaster happens in our world we will have something solid to offer.

Psalm 108
I will praise God because God is so powerful and I ask you, God, to act on behalf of the poor. God replies by listing all ways in which land will be given to God’s people and taken from those who are evil. I respond by asking God to act to save us because it seems God has abandoned us.

These two psalms are often scheduled for Saturdays while Christ is still in the grave and we wait for the resurrection.

Judges 16.1-14                           What’s Judges about?
Samson is ambushed while using a prostitute, but he rips out the city gates and carries them to the top of a mountain. He falls in love with Delilah and the Philistines ask her to find out the secret of his great strength. Three times he lies to her about how he can be bound. The story of Samson’s first wife cajoling the riddle from him, is being repeated but in more extreme terms.

The story teller is saying, in this saga of the unbelievably strong man being brought to his knees (perhaps a deliberate symbol of the Israelite people), that no matter what forces oppose Sampson, God will provide even greater strength.

John 5.1-18                           What’s John about?
John started his gospel with Jesus’ celebrating a wedding, and John continued that theme with the challenge to abuses in the temple, the calming of a storm, and the gift of new life to the Samaritan woman and to the royal supporter of the occupation. Today Jesus heals someone for whom hope of healing has almost run out after 38 years of waiting. The wedding banquet is indeed breaking into everyone’s lives!

This healing was on a Sabbath, the first time Jesus has done a healing on a sabbath, and Jesus is criticized for abusing the Sabbath by doing “work” on the day one of the ten commandments had set aside as a day of complete rest. Jesus is also accused of encouraging the healed man to do the same. Jesus responds that since God, his father, never stops working to heal people, so he should not either. His challenge to the tradition is so intense that the leaders begin to plan his execution.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church.
Open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love, joy, and peace;
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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Friday, August 16        Pentecost 12

Psalm 102
A lament at the destruction of Jerusalem 600 years before Jesus. It ends with hope of God’s faithfulness. The imagery of desolation is appropriate for Fridays, the mini-anniversary of Jesus being betrayed, abandoned, and in hours will be dead. Yet God will remain faithful.

Judges 14.21-15.20                           What’s Judges about?
In revenge for his fiancé having been given by her family to his best man, Samson sets fire to the Philistines’ wheat fields. The Philistines burn down the house of the woman’s father for initiating this disaster and begin to attack the Israelites. To save themselves, the Israelites persuade Samson to allow himself to be bound and given to the Philistines. Samson breaks the ropes and slaughters the Philistines. When he is thirsty, God makes water come from a rock, and we recall the rock from which God produced water in the wilderness before the people entered the promised land. Samson leads Israel for 20 years.

Stories like these would have given the Israelites great encouragement when these accounts were complied while they were conquered a thousand years later.

John 4.43-54                           What’s John about?
Immediately after spending two days with the hated Samaritans and with the woman at the well, Jesus returns on the third day (in John “the third day” is always symbolic of Easter Day) to Cana of Galilee where he had provided 180 gallons of the best wine after everyone had already had too much to drink.

The royal official in Cana is colluding with the Roman oppression, yet he, too, drinks of the abundant wine when his child is cured, just as the outcast Samaritan woman drank deeply from the well of Jesus’ acceptance. Both these outcasts, one with great power and one with none, have their lives restored.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church.
Open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love, joy, and peace;
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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Wednesday August 14          Pentecost 12

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Psalm 101
I am determined to live a life of justice and not to support exploitation.

Psalm 109
A desperate plea for God’s assistance, and rejoicing that God is faithful to the poor. The middle section, which uses violent images against those who oppress the powerless, expresses a profound desire that oppression be removed from the world. At the conclusion the writer rejoices that God is committed to the needy and to protecting those who are unjustly accused.

Judges 13.15-24                           What’s Judges about?
Just as with Jacob and later Moses, the angel (who is God) refuses to reveal his name, but grants the favour of the barren woman conceiving a child thus continuing the long theme of barren women becoming mothers of great leaders. The child is to be a Nazarite (set apart for God), and Matthew will much later perhaps use this story as background for Jesus’ birth, and refer to Jesus as a “Nazorean” and possibly associate that with the town of “Nazareth.” The angel accepts an offering of a sacrifice, and the barren woman has a son, and names him Samson.

John 4.1-26                           What’s John about?
Jesus’ next major event is to have a lengthy conversation alone with a foreign woman (therefore subjecting both of them to all sorts of insinuations). John uses the various circumstances of their meeting to unfold Jesus’ significance: they meet at a well, the source of life, and then speak of water and running water, and Jesus claims to be running water. They speak of her own failure in relationships and Jesus’ compassion, and she being a Samaritan (a type of apostate Jew) and of how God is to be worshipped. She is astounded at Jesus’ compassion and insight. John is challenging his readers to see the world entirely differently, as did Jesus.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church.
Open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love, joy, and peace;
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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Tuesday August 13          Pentecost 12

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Psalm 97
God’s power in creation is an expression of God’s commitment to justice—righteousness and justice are the foundations of God’s throne (the same image is used in Psalm 89) and therefore of all creation. We can count on God to uphold those who are without power as surely as we experience enormous power in creation.

A wonderful image for our age when science shows us so much power in creation – dignity and justice are equally embedded in the way God has put the world together.

Psalm 99
God’s justice was shown in the way God rescued the people from slavery and cared for them throughout history. Praise the Lord!

Psalm 100
A short hymn of praise that God has remained faithful forever.

Judges 13.1-15                           What’s Judges about?
This is the final story of how God raised up “judges” to rescue the Israelites from their faithlessness to God. The Israelites have been conquered by the Philistines but a certain woman who is barren, is promised by God to have a son who will be Samson. The details of how an angel announced this news to his mother may have inspired some of the details that Luke used in the story of how Mary was told she would have a son, Jesus.

This story continues the long theme of how God so often acts through barren women or outcasts to save the people. This remarkable insight about how God acts, discovered by the ancient Jews, will continue in the life of Jesus, a person of no social or religious authority and who was outcast at his execution, but who became the ultimate “judge” who Christians understood to have saved the entire world.

John 3.22-36                           What’s John about?
John the Baptist responds to the fact that more people are following Jesus than him. John speaks of Jesus being the way by which the world returns to God, and that John, like the best man at a wedding, is delighted when the groom gets all the attention. John and early Christians were suggesting that allowing Jesus to have the attention, and not ourselves, is the best evangelism.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church.
Open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love, joy, and peace;
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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Monday August 12          Pentecost 12

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Psalm 89 Part 1
God’s faithfulness in creation is the basis for our trust in God’s justice and care for us. Just as God created order from chaos in creation, so we can rely upon God to create order out of the chaos in human society. God’s original goodness, intended for humanity and the world, is that everyone have a place and dignity and worth. Accomplishing that is the work of justice, often translated into traditional English as “righteousness.”

Judges 12.1-7                           What’s Judges about?
There is a revolt against Jephthah, but Jephthah defeats the traitors. The traitors can be identified by their accent which may be a way of the story-teller saying they weren’t true Israelites after all.

God has used the son of a prostitute to keep Israel holy—it is a remarkable statement of God’s gift of power and dignity for all regardless of their background.

John 3.1-21                           What’s John about?
Nicodemus, a Jewish leader sympathetic to Jesus, wants to know more about Jesus, perhaps because of Jesus’ strong stance that day against the abuses being carried out in the temple dedicated to the God of justice.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church.
Open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love, joy, and peace;
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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Sunday August 11          Pentecost 12

Click here for simplified daily office prayers Continue reading Readings for Sunday August 11

Saturday August 10          Pentecost 11

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Psalm 87
A vision of Jerusalem as the source of life for all the world, as if every nation and every beautiful thing originated there. Christians might interpret this as Jesus’ death and resurrection in Jerusalem being the source of life and beauty for the whole world.

Psalm 90
Our lives are very short, like a breath we are gone, we are so insignificant. Bless us, God.

Judges 9.22-25, 50-57                           What’s Judges about?
As predicted, Abimalech becomes the centre of revolt and is killed in battle by a woman, a shameful thing to happen to a semi-king as Abimalech had made himself. God has ensured that Abimalech’s crime of killing his brothers has consequences—it’s no accident that one of the powerless, a woman, enacts God’s justice in defying the powerful abusers. It’s a frequent theme in this book that women are given powerful roles in enacting God’s will.

The “Lords of Schecem” who enabled Abimalech to become an abusive semi-king, are the ancestors of the Samaritans who worshipped at a “false” temple in Jesus’ time. The compilers of these stories are no doubt reading back into their ancient history the unholy origins of the hated Samaritans.

John 2.13-25                           What’s John about?
John continues his multi-layered account of Jesus’ significance.

When Jesus is challenged about his stance against the abuse of the temple, he points to his future resurrection as proof of the victory of justice over exploitation, and as John understands it, the fulfilment for all humanity of the great wedding with which Jesus begins his public work.

Nevertheless, Jesus knows he is not accepted, just as he knew the character of Nathaniel. Even in our day his path of self-sacrificing love and resurrection is still so often rejected.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
your Son Jesus Christ fed the hungry
with the bread of his life
and the word of his kingdom.
Renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness
sustain us by your true and living bread,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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