Author: Harold

Psalm 5
There is evil all around, but I will go into your presence, O God, and know that you are more powerful than all evil and will protect us.

Psalm 6
I have been hounded almost to death, help me, God. Thanks be to God that God heard me and the evil people will be overcome.

1 Kings 1: 38—2:4 What’s Kings about?
Solomon is anointed king and pardons Adonijah his younger brother, who had proclaimed himself king. David is about to die and commands Solomon to walk in God’s justice so that his descendants, as God promised, will reign permanently. The compilers of these stories decided that because subsequent kings do not reign with justice as God had commanded the result was their disastrous defeat by Babylon.

It may be that the reference to riding on King David’s mule may have been used by Jesus as a deliberately symbolic act as he critiqued the Roman army on what we call Palm Sunday.

Mark 13: 28-37 What’s Mark about?
Jesus concludes the “Little apocalypse” by telling us to stay awake when the dangers start—don’t go to sleep by pretending they won’t happen, but stay awake waiting for God to be victorious. Despite this warning, the disciples will fall asleep in two more days when he is arrested. The warning about staying alert during times of danger applies equally to us in an oppressive world.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
we are taught by your word
that all our doings without love are worth nothing.
Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts
that most excellent gift of love,
the true bond of peace and of all virtue;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings for Monday August 23

Monday August 23 Pentecost 13

Psalm 1
Those who live in righteousness—which means with justice to all—will be as strong as healthy trees planted near water. Injustice will be blown away like chaff.

Psalm 2
Other nations laugh at God and God’s people, but God has chosen this people and their king, and God will have the final word.

Christians may understand this to be a way of saying that God has made self-offering love and justice in the death and resurrection of Christ to be the ultimate reality. All other attempts at finding full life through pursuing self-interest are laughable and doomed to fail.

Psalm 3
Because of God’s protection, I have nothing to fear.

1 Kings 1: 5-31 What’s Kings about?
When David is very old, his son Adonijah is plotting to make himself king, but Bathsheba, David’s wife, insists that her son Solomon had been selected by David to be the next king. David agrees. God’s plan for another great king has not been thwarted.

Mark 13: 14-27 What’s Mark about?
We continue reading Mark’s “Little apocalypse” in which Jesus describes the disasters that will happen. Mark is writing about 40 years after Jesus’ earthly life and understands Jesus was describing the Romans’ deliberate act in 70 AD of desecrating the temple by setting up in the temple a statue of the emperor as a divine god—this is the “desolating sacrilege.” But, Jesus assures them, in spite of horror, and in spite of others claiming to be the true messiah, God will finally be victorious. How apropos for our time!

This week’s collect:

Readings for Sunday August 22

Sunday August 22 Pentecost 13

Psalm 111
God’s work of justice and restoration of the people are marvellous and we are in awe of God.

Psalm 112
People who are loyal to the God of justice and generosity are never afraid and are always generous.

Psalm 113
Praise God who has made creation and who lifts the poor up out of the dust like the sun shining on everyone.

2 Samuel 24: 1-25 What’s Samuel about?
David decides to take a census of all the people who could be soldiers. By doing this he is not trusting God from whom all victories really come. God offers three punishments, and David chooses that there be a deadly disease. But when David sees God’s angel bringing death to the people he pleads that it is not right that the people suffer for his sin, so he insists on buying a plot of land on which to sacrifice to God and the plague is averted. This plot, which was believed to have been the location of Abraham’s planned sacrifice of his son, will become the place of sacrifice in the temple in Jerusalem and by insisting on purchasing the land David makes the site to be legally owned so that the temple can be built there. By concluding the book with this purchase, the writers direct our attention to David’s son Solomon who will build the temple on this site and be the subject of the next book.

This concludes the books of Samuel which trace the evil and good in the lives of the first two kings of Israel. We now turn to the books of Kings, which recount the gradually increasing oppression and injustice carried out by subsequent kings which were understood to have caused the downfall of the nation when it is conquered in 600 BC.

John 8: 12-20 What’s John about?
Jesus is confronting the religious leaders and uses legal arguments to insist that he is the image of God. He is being accused of self-serving by insisting that he is the image of God, but he responds by claiming that God is an independent witness who corroborates his claim.

We can perhaps overhear the Christians of the writer’s time struggling with why many people still rejected Jesus eighty years after his earthly life. The explanation of this failure to persuade people was that if you know God as profoundly opposed to injustice and exhibiting a depth of love that may involve self-sacrifice, then you will recognize that Jesus is the image of God. Either your eyes are open and you see God in Christ or you don’t—the responsibility is ours to see the truth and respond, not Christ’s responsibility to prove himself to us.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Saturday August 21

Saturday August 21 Pentecost 12

Psalm 104
God has wondrously set everything in its place—from oceans to storks to whales to the sun. Praise to God who has made this earth and whose power and care is expressed in every part of the world.

2 Samuel 23: 1-17 What’s Samuel about?
The text appears to be out of order—the following song and summary of David’s military leaders and brief accounts of victories would originally have come at the end of the story of his reign.

Mark 13: 1-13 What’s Mark about?
Jesus has successfully challenged those who are intending to kill him, and he now speaks about the dangerous circumstances that are about to happen. In Mark’s mind Jesus is describing both the imminent fate of Jerusalem which was soon to be destroyed under Roman occupation while Mark was writing his gospel, as well as the cosmic implications of God’s justice being rejected by humanity. This chapter is often called “The Little Apocalypse” and its account of a violent future was a commonly used style of imagery. The point of the dramatic descriptions in this chapter is that no matter how bad things get, in the end God is in charge.

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.

Readings for Friday August 20

Friday August 20 Pentecost 12

Psalm 141
Help me to be faithful to you, O God, and not be caught in evil.

Psalm 143
I am almost crushed by my enemy, and by my own weakness. But I remember how good you were in the past, and I still hope in you. Otherwise, there is no hope.

2 Samuel 19: 24-43 What’s Samuel about?
David is generous to the leaders of the people who are welcoming him back to Jerusalem. But the people of northern Israel complain that David is showing favouritism to the people of Judah in the south where he is from.

Mark 12: 35-44 What’s Mark about?
It is now Jesus’ turn to challenge the leaders. He uses what to us is an obscure riddle — who is the “Lord” mentioned in Psalm 110? At one point “Lord” seems to refer to an ancestor of the ancient King David, but a moment later “Lord” refers to the messiah who is expected to arrive in the near future—a thousand years after David. Jesus seems to be using an obscure grammatical argument to critique the official belief, based on this psalm, that the messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Why would Jesus argue against the messiah being born in Bethlehem? He may be deliberately undermining the authority of the religious leaders who have abandoned loyalty to the messiah for loyalty to the wealth and power of Rome. Whatever the original point was, the people experience their oppressive leaders being bested in the argument and they are delighted.

Jesus then goes on to criticize the religious leaders who make themselves rich at the expense of the very poor—Jesus draws attention to a very poor woman who puts a tiny offering into the temple collection and Jesus says it is worth more than what all the rich people gave because it was everything she owned. Praising a penniless woman above the wealthy male leaders was an unimaginable insult to them. Jesus is clear that cultivating generosity and dying to greed is the way into God’s kingdom, not the life-style of the wealthy oppressors. No wonder he will be executed in a couple of days.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Thursday August 19

Thursday August 19 Pentecost 12

Psalm 134
A very brief two-verse psalm of praise for God, and of blessing from God.

Psalm 135
Praise to God who brings fertility and defeats foreign kings, and who defeated the Egyptians so Israel could go free, and who upholds justice. This God is so much greater than the pointless non-gods that other nations worship.

Thank goodness we know the God of justice is real, and the competing destructive public policies in our day are ultimately powerless.

2 Samuel 19: 1-23 What’s Samuel about?
David continues to mourn for Absalom, and Joab accuses him of caring more for his son than for the people. His kingship is only about himself. Joab outlines the consequences: David will lose his kingship. David secures the loyalty of all who had previously followed Absalom and forgives the man who had cursed him. He is now acting like a responsible king.

Mark 12: 28-34 What’s Mark about?
A religious leader poses a final and highly controversial question about which of the six hundred Old Testament commandments is the most important. He agrees with Jesus that being just, which is to love God completely, is more important than purely religious observances. Jesus praises his insight even though he had asked the question to lure Jesus into controversy. The confrontation is escalating and from now on Jesus takes the initiative in confronting his attackers by posing questions to them.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Wednesday August 18

Wednesday August 18 Pentecost 12

Psalm 128
Joy and prosperity come for those who seek God’s justice. Although the imagery is of abundance in family life, we may also experience that abundance in our sense of being full persons as we deepen our ability to care.

Psalm 129
We have been oppressed since our youth, but God ensures those who oppressed us will be defeated. They will be as useless as wheat growing on a roof, and nobody will wish them well.

We may have confidence that evil directions in our world will come to nothing.

Psalm 130
There isn’t much hope of us getting things right by ourselves. But I am waiting, as if in the darkness of night for the tinniest glimmer of dawn, for God to bring God’s loving kingdom into being.

2 Samuel 18: 19-33 What’s Samuel about?
David receives the news of his son’s death and is prostrated with grief. David cares for his son, even though his son had tried to kill him.

Not only is this sophisticated story-telling with psychological insight, but it also portrays David as simultaneously forgiving and as abandoning God’s call to serve the people.

Mark 12: 13-27 What’s Mark about?
The challenges to Jesus grow more intense. He is challenged to make a public commitment either to pay tribute to Rome or not. Whichever he chooses, the leaders can arrest him. He can be arrested for blasphemy if he chooses the emperor (because the emperor claims to be god), or for treason against the emperor if he refuses. Jesus points to the picture of the emperor on the coins, and to the inscription which identifies the emperor as God, and he replies that we must all give God what is due to God, and give to the emperor what is due to the emperor. But what he means is that nobody owes anything to the emperor because the emperor owns nothing—God is in charge of the world, not the Roman emperor! This is not just a clever trick on Jesus’ part—he is challenging all our assumptions about who runs the world and to whom we give our loyalty.

The next challenge to Jesus is to ridicule the idea of resurrection with the suggestion that a widow of many husbands would have to commit adultery in heaven when they all came back to life! Jesus responds that God is interested in people who are alive now and not interested in clever arguments. While to us these critiques seem like clever puzzles, these were attacks which, if successful, could carry the death penalty. The more Jesus insists on loyalty to the God of justice and inclusion, the more those in power are determined to attack and silence him forever.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Tuesday August 17

Tuesday August 17 Pentecost 12

Psalm 124
We would have been destroyed in Egypt if God hadn’t been acting on our behalf. A beautiful short psalm of appreciation.

Psalm 125
A prayer that God will continue to protect God’s people by being like the protective hills around Jerusalem. God’s protection included ensuring that good people don’t turn to selfishness under pressure.

Psalm 126
Joyful memories of when they escaped from captivity by God’s act, and returned to their land. A prayer that God will do it again.

Psalm 127
It is useless to trust your own hard work—it is God who makes your household succeed.

2 Samuel 18: 9-18 What’s Samuel about?
Joab, David’s nephew, disobeys David and kills Absalom, David’s son. The plotting and chaos within the royal family continues.

Mark 11: 27—12: 12 What’s Mark about?
On Sunday Jesus had mocked the Roman army, on Monday he had disrupted the religious extortion of money used to pay for the occupation, so today he is confronted. Jesus claims John the Baptist as his mentor and asks if they agree. This puts the authorities in a quandary—if they agree with John the Baptist, the Romans may execute them the way they executed John for starting a rebellion. If they don’t support John’s teachings the people will hold them in contempt as collaborators with the Romans. Jesus is forcing them to choose between collaboration with injustice and the kingdom of God, a choice he has made in his actions the previous two days. They demur. They do not choose the kingdom of justice. Jesus then tells a story illustrating how the religious leaders are being unfaithful to God’s vineyard—a common symbol of the people of God. When they realize the story is a powerful denunciation of their betrayal of the people and of God, they determine to kill Jesus. Within a couple of days he will be dead.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Monday August 16

Monday August 16 Pentecost 12

Psalm 106 Part 2
In the wilderness the people repeatedly betrayed God, and then joined horrible religions when they entered the promised land, and there were terrible consequences. Even so, God took mercy on them when they were captured and influenced their captors to let them return.

2 Samuel 17: 24—18: 8 What’s Samuel about?
A battle between David’s army and Absalom’s is won by David. David gives express orders that his son Absalom is not to be killed. But accidents in the forest kill more soldiers than the actual fighting. Even the natural world is rising up against this royal violence, and as we will see tomorrow, may be an agent of God’s displeasure.

Mark 11: 12-26 What’s Mark about?
The story of Jesus cursing a fig tree for not having fruit before it was the season to have fruit is likely a parable Jesus told which was later misinterpreted as a actual event. Israel was often called God’s fig tree, and around the time Mark’s gospel was written, the temple in Jerusalem was permanently destroyed by the Roman empire. So the original parable was likely that Jesus was warning that Jerusalem, like a barren fig tree, was about to be destroyed even though, with Jesus present, it was the ideal time to bear the fruit of justice.

As Mark often does, he wraps one story around another story—the destruction of Jerusalem as a fig tree is wrapped around a second story—Jesus’ overthrowing the tables of the money changers. In the outside story the city—as a fig tree—bears no fruit and is cursed, and in the inside story the religious officials have given their loyalty to the oppression of Rome and so bear no fruit and are overturned.

Jesus overthrew the temple money tables the day after mocking the Roman empire by riding a donkey into the city. The money changers were forcing worshippers to pay exorbitant taxes to the priests who passed the money on to the Roman emperor. Jesus objects to this extortion of the poorest people to support the wealthy in Rome and is incensed that this would happen in the building dedicated to the God of justice whose priority is to include the poor. This action is popular among the poor and no wonder the priests and others start to look for ways to execute him. Each night he leaves the city for the safety of the country.

Today’s passage concludes with Jesus encouraging his disciples, who are us, to trust in our urgent prayers for God’s victory over oppression in the face of overwhelming abusive power, and never to be seduced into violence—that’s the meaning of Jesus’ exhortation that we forgive in prayer so that we are not seduced into responding to violence with more violence of our own.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Sunday August 15

Sunday August 15 Pentecost 12

Psalm 145
Praise to God because God cares for the oppressed and feeds all creation—God is praised everywhere.

2 Samuel 17: 1-23 What’s Samuel about?
Ahithophel, David’s former advisor, wisely advises Absalom to mount a sneak night attack on David, but David’s foreign spy Hushai, who had been ordered by David to remain in Jerusalem, falsely advises Absalom to organize a nation-wide war on David. God causes Absalom to choose the spy’s advice. Other spies, protected by a common woman, alert David to Absalom’s decision. Ahithophel, realising that he has been rejected by Absolom, and by God for betraying God’s king, hangs himself. The chaos in the royal house continues to deepen.

In the stories of how God ensured that Joseph rose to power in Egypt, God never directly appeared but influenced events through people’s actions. In the same way God is ensuring that consequences will be visited on Absalom for having plotted against the king God had anointed even though God never directly appears. This is a sophisticated understanding, from the ancient world, of how God works. It likely arose from the experience that Cyrus, who freed the Jews when he conquered Babylon, had likely never heard of the Jewish God.

John 5: 30-47 What’s John about?
John, the gospel writer, wants to be clear that Jesus is the way in which we see God. In this passage Jesus is using legal arguments, which would have carried weight in those days, to demonstrate that he really is the image of God. He defends himself from the accusation that he is biased toward himself by claiming multiple witnesses who affirm he is the image of God. These witnesses include John the Baptist, Moses, and the Hebrew scriptures. But the most important witness is God. Jesus says that those who don’t think he is the image of God doubt him because they haven’t experienced God.

The message to us is not to worry about the intricacy of these convoluted arguments which were likely developed by John, but to ask ourselves if Jesus’ death and resurrection is indeed the character of God, and therefore our character. If we engage in God’s activity of laying down our lives for justice, then we have already entered into the glory of Christ’s resurrection.

This week’s collect: