Author: Harold

Psalm 33
A psalm of praise for God creating the earth, and for being equally in charge of the nations and for rescuing us. We rejoice in this God!

2 Samuel 16: 1-23 What’s Samuel about?
On his flight from Jerusalem, David is first warmly welcomed by one person and then cursed and insulted by someone else for his violent oppression. David refuses to have his attacker killed because he knows that what the man says about his evil ways are true and David hopes that God will forgive. Notice that David’s reaction is opposite to that when he was insulted by Naban, whose wife David subsequently married after her husband’s mysterious death.

When Absalom enters Jerusalem to claim his kingship his father’s trusted advisor Ahitophel abandons king David and transfers his loyalty to Absalom. Ahitophel advises Absalom to lie with his father’s concubines in public to insult his father, solidify his own power as king, and to establish himself as head of the royal lineage. We know that the God of justice will not be pleased with these profound violations and disaster will befall Absalom.

Mark 11: 1-11 What’s Mark about?
It is a week before the Passover, the annual commemoration of God rescuing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Jews in Jesus’ time felt equally enslaved by the Roman empire and many hoped that God would act at a Passover to overthrow Roman rule just as God had overthrown the Egyptians in the ancient past. To prevent a rebellion, every year at Passover the Romans sent an entire legion to Jerusalem which was welcomed by the leaders of the city and religious authorities, all of whom held their positions at the pleasure of the Roman governor.

By riding into the city on a young colt, at the same moment as the legion entered the city led by a Roman general seated on a great stallion, Jesus deliberately mocks the enormous military operation and makes it clear that the God of justice stands against the violence and oppression of Rome. Jesus’ enacting of a peaceful society was immensely popular with the common people and the Roman authorities saw in it the beginning of a revolt against them.

Jesus’ message is clear and popular—God rejects the violence and abuse of Roman occupation. That defiance of Roman rule is exactly what the legion was ordered to suppress, exactly what ordinary people wanted, and it is no wonder that Jesus is executed by the Romans only five days later.

The early Christians interpreted these events as meaning that Jesus defied not only the Roman empire of their day, but all cruelty, oppression, and evil on a cosmic scale. By embracing evil and passing through death into resurrection God took evil on, and won.

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.

Readings for Friday August 13

Friday August 13 Pentecost 11

Psalm 107 Part 1
The first part of this psalm sings about how faithfully God has rescued people on many occasions: from slavery, from their own foolishness and rebellion against God, and from the dangers of travelling on the ocean. The ocean was a terrifying place for the Israelites, and the reference to God calming the storm and bringing them to harbour may have influenced the stories of Jesus calming storms.

2 Samuel 15: 19-37 What’s Samuel about?
Absalom’s insurrection against his father has grown stronger and David is fleeing from Jerusalem taking the ark and the original stones with the 10 commandments as protection. However, David sends the ark back to Jerusalem as a sign that he refuses to use the central symbol of justice for his personal gain. Some of his most loyal supporters are foreigners. David arranges for spies to remain in Jerusalem and report Absalom’s plans to him and prays that Absalom’s advisers will provide bad advice.

The writers struggle with the dilemma that God has anointed David as king, and yet royal abuse of power and abandonment of justice will bring disaster upon them when the country is conquered by Babylon five hundred years later just as David’s abuse of power has brought him to the point of being overthrown by his son. So David is described both as an abuser and as faithful to the Israelite God and as a successful military strategist to whom even foreigners are loyal.

Mark 10: 46-52 What’s Mark about?
The three occasions on which Jesus insists on moving towards death and the three refusals of the disciples to follow are bracketed by two healings of blind people. In contrast with the first, this second healing is immediate. This is also the only time someone healed by Jesus is identified by name. It is clearly an extremely significant event—the disciples are still blind to what Jesus was about, but soon will see.

Verse 52 says Bartimaeus “followed Jesus on the way.” This is a pun: “The Way” is what Christianity was originally called. And in the very next verse, “the way” is the path to Jerusalem and the last five days of Jesus’ life culminating in his execution and resurrection.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Thursday August 12

Thursday August 12 Pentecost 11

Psalm 105 Part 2
The first half of this psalm sang about how God cared for the people up to the time of their becoming slaves in Egypt. This second half sings about how God forced the Egyptians to release the Israelites so God could bring them to their own land. God is being praised for consistently enacting justice in history.

2 Samuel 15: 1-18 What’s Samuel about?
Absalom begins to undermine his father’s leadership and consolidate his own power. He lies about attending a religious ceremony and instead organizes a rebellion against his father. David is afraid that Absalom may asassinate him and he flees from Jerusalem.

The historians, compiling these stories five hundred years later, are demonstrating that royal power degenerates into greed and that betrayal and violence increase with each generation of kings. They believe that abandoning God’s command for justice caused the ruin of the entire country when it was invaded by Babylon five hundred years later

Mark 10: 32-45 What’s Mark about?
Jesus is deliberately walking towards confrontation with the oppressive authorities in Jerusalem. This is the third time in a row that Jesus insists that God’s love involves God sacrificing God’s self for us, God’s beloved. The disciples, for the third time, want nothing to do with this—this time they want to make a secret deal to sit at the head table in heaven with Jesus. They do not want to die for God’s kingdom, they want safety and power.

Of course, the disciples are us. Our world is in such difficulty because safety and power are the priorities of human cultures. Even today it is almost unimaginable that a culture would make significant sacrifices for the well-being of others. But there is hope—God is acting, in Jesus, to reverse what is “normal”.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Wednesday August 11

Wednesday August 11 Pentecost 11

Psalm 119 Part 6
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 sections are based on the letters Ayin (which is not pronounced but which looks like o, or an eye), P, and Z (in Hebrew alphabetical order). As you read them, imagine the effect of each line in today’s first section beginning with a silent letter that looks like an eye and so on.

2 Samuel 14: 21-33 What’s Samuel about?
David officially forgives Absalom, but refuses to personally meet him and welcome him back into royal life. Absalom is attractive and popular and uses violence against Joab who had pursuaded David to allow him back, to ask David to fully reinstate him and rejoin the royal household. David finally forgives Absolom for the murder of Amnon.

Mark 10: 17-31 What’s Mark about?
A young man is determined to follow Jesus and enter the kingdom, but when Jesus says he must personally treat the poor as his equals, the young man is shocked because he is wealthy, and leaves. In those days only wealthy people could afford the full religious ceremonies, so the disciples are astounded when Jesus says rich people will have a hard time entering the kingdom. Jesus’ point is that being faithful to religion as an end in itself is of no use, and but giving up our security to provide justice to those who are oppressed is what gives us unlimited life. Jesus acknowledges that this is as impossible as a camel going through the eye of a needle, but God is able to change our priorities. Jesus says that when we give ourselves away in love, then everything turns up-side down, or right-way up and we will be rich in ways beyond imaging.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Tuesday August 10

Tuesday August 10 Pentecost 11

Psalm 94
Those who oppress and abuse think that God does not care. How wrong they are! God created us, do they think God doesn’t know what is going on? God will act to remove the evil and support us. Some of the feelings in this psalm sound vindictive, but the underlying intention is that God should restore order in the world of human relationships. If oppression has full reign, there will be chaos.

Note that “just deserts” means “just deservings”, not sweet things at the end of a meal!

Psalm 95
The daily office uses the first half of this psalm every morning. We praise God for God’s creation of the world and for our safety in God. Notice that the psalm assumes there are many gods, but that our God (of justice) is in charge of all of them. The second half is a warning that abandoning God by following evil ways, as the people did in the wilderness, will have consequences.

2 Samuel 14: 1-20 What’s Samuel about?
Joab, David’s senior military commander who had colluded with David in the murder of Uriah so David could marry Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, is worried that Absolom will himself be murdered in revenge for his killing his cousin who had raped Tamar. Joab arranges for a wise woman to confront David with his lack of action in protecting his son. She tells David a story about herself in which she is about to become destitute due to the immanent death of both her sons in revenge killings. Her challenge repeats Nathan’s challenge to David’s murder of Uriah when Nathan told the story of the poor man whose lamb had been stolen by a wealthy man. But this time the king is confronted with his selfishness by a woman, an unthinkable insult at the time. The king requires justice for the woman in her imaginary situation and she completes the confrontation by naming him as the one who is making possible the extinction of the “line of David” if Absolom is killed.

The writers are raising the stakes about women being treated with justice by having a woman confront David. The God of justice demands both personal and social justice.

Mark 10: 1-16 What’s Mark about?
The religious leaders challenge Jesus about divorce. Men were allowed to divorce their wives without cause, but Jesus insists that from the beginning of creation women had equal rights. He says male-only divorce arose as a concession to male stubbornness. This critique of Moses was a highly controversial proposal. Then Jesus makes a second proposal. Jesus treats children as valued adults—he is indicating that full equality for all—such as women, and the very immature—is fundamental to the kingdom. He is challenging all the assumptions about who is important.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Monday August 9

Monday August 9 Pentecost 11

Psalm 89 Part 2
The poet accuses God of breaking God’s commitment. God, the poet says in the first part of this psalm, you chose David as king and promised to protect him forever with the same amazing power with which you created the universe. In this second part of the psalm he says to God, You said you would be his father and he would be your son. But now you have broken your promise and have allowed him to be humiliated and his enemies rejoice in his defeat. God, you are faithless. Yet we can only trust in you. There is nothing more to say.

2 Samuel 13: 23-39 What’s Samuel about?
Absalom murders his brother Amnon in revenge for Amonon’s rape of his sister. David is distraught at Amnon’s murder, and Absalom flees. However when his grieving for Amnon is over, David longs to see Absalom again.

For a second time the writers show David in grief over the death of a son as a consequence of murder by royalty (the first was the death of his first son as a consequence of David’s having had Uriah murdered). Yet the possibility of healing is offered.

Mark 9: 42-50 What’s Mark about?
Jesus has just insisted that the disciples make care for each other their priority and that they fully accept non-disciples as equal to themselves. Jesus now uses deliberately exaggerated and almost hilarious images of excessive self-denial to capture the disciples’ attention (and ours) to the absolute importance of our living out the kingdom of justice and inclusion of all. Because without being that kind of salt for the rest of the world, we are as useless to anyone as tasteless salt.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Sunday August 8

Sunday August 8 Pentecost 11

Psalm 19
The first half of this psalm imagines each day telling the next day and each night telling the next night about God’s glory, and of the sun rising out of the sea praising God and running around the sky like an athletic sprinter showing off. The second half of the psalm says that goodness and integrity are as sure and powerful as the sun.

Psalm 46
Neither storms of water or storms of war will shake me because I know that God is behind all the world. Like a river flowing through the city, God is always in our midst.

2 Samuel 13: 1-22 What’s Samuel about?
The royal family are consumed by betrayal and abuse as David’s son Amnon who is first in line to the throne, rapes his half-sister (David’s daughter by a different wife) and abuses her even more by having her outcast despite the possibility which Tamar points out that David could sanction their union. Again, we see royal power being used to violate those who have less power.

These were not intended as titillating stories of royal indiscretions but as horrific descriptions of how royal power is used for cruelty and abuse. The heir to the throne gets away with rape, and the king colludes by favouring his son over his daughter.

The God of Israel, who is the God of justice, will not overlook David’s injustice, just as has happened before when David abused his subjects. We anticipate that just as David’s adultery and subsequent murder resulted in the death of his first child, something similar will happen before long in this violation of justice.

John 3: 22-36 What’s John about?
John the Baptist is continuing to baptize people into commitment to God’s kingdom and not to Rome’s, symbolized by their crossing the Jordan river to claim the land for the true God, not the false Roman emperor-god. But more people are responding to Jesus, who (only in John’s gospel) is baptizing in competition with John. John’s disciples complain, and John affirms that Jesus is the one whom God has called.

The writer of the gospel uses this story as the basis of a meditation on what it means to accept or reject God’s call in Jesus. To follow Jesus is to stop making ourselves the centre of everything, just as John the Baptist chooses not to be the centre of attention.

It’s not clear if it is intended to be John the Baptist or the writer of the gospel who continues with a meditation about how there is no real life outside the life of Jesus—that’s not hero worship of Jesus, it’s a simple fact that insisting on being the centre of everything deprives one of deep life. That’s what John the Baptist has just done and what Jesus will be doing at his crucifixion.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Saturday August 7

Saturday August 7 Pentecost 10

Psalm 136
God’s relentless love (‘mercy’ in the relentless refrain of this hymn) is seen first in creation, then in Israel’s rescue from Egypt as if that rescue was another part of creation, and finally for every creature.

2 Samuel 12: 15-31 What’s Samuel about?
David pleads for his child, but to no avail. When the child dies, David knows that he has suffered the consequences of his adultery, murder, and sacrilege. One of the most moving descriptions of grief and acceptance is in this passage, as David says of the dead baby, “I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” The grief over, David returns to normal life and Bathsheba bears him another boy, Solomon, and David leads his forces into more victories. David has accepted the consequences of his abuse, God has forgiven, and now blesses David.

All these stories are about how kings can be faithless as well as agents of God. But as the history of Israelite kings unfolds in the next five hundred years, the kings consistently become more and more abusive and less and less agents of the God of justice. This is the Israelites’ central insight from the time of their enslavement by Babylon —that national politics and leadership are governed by justice—inclusion and dignity for every person—and that there are consequences for not doing so. The implications for our own times are obvious.

Mark 9: 30-41 What’s Mark about?
For the second time, the disciples resist God’s call to sacrificial love. Jesus uses a child, the most insignificant person in their society, to demonstrate his own acceptance of equality with the powerless, in contrast to the disciples’ desire for power over people. But they continue their lust for power over others by attempting to control an outsider who is healing in Jesus’ name.

The disciples provide a good mirror for us to look at: we are also tempted to use faith as a way of becoming important, or to imagine that God loves us more than people outside our faith.

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.

Readings for Friday August 6

Friday August 6 Pentecost 10

Psalm 91
Those who shelter under God like a chick beneath its mother’s wings will be safe from all danger and will see how disaster befalls those who put their trust in evil. In the final three verses God is speaking: we are safe because God has decided to be bound to us in love.

The verse about not hurting one’s foot on a stone was applied by the early Christians to Jesus’ temptation in the desert to throw himself off the top of the temple.

Psalm 92
Those who trust in God will be upheld and will flourish like trees with lots of water. Evil will be utterly destroyed. The God who does this is as solid as a rock.

2 Samuel 12: 1-14 What’s Samuel about?
The prophet Nathan now takes on Samuel’s role of confronting the royal abuse of power. Dangerous though it is, Nathan confronts David with his killing of Uriah in order to cover up his adultery with Bathsheba. Nathan confronts David by reporting to him an imaginary story about a rich man who stole a poor man’s only sheep. David is incensed at the cruelty and offence of justice. When Nathan explains that David is the offender, David genuinely repents and God accepts his repentance.

However, even God cannot magically remove consequences, and one of the consequences is that David’s son will die. The child’s death was not understood as punishment of the child for his father’s actions, but of David accepting his role for the consequences of what he had done.

Mark 9: 14-29 What’s Mark about?
Even after experiencing a foretaste of Jesus’ resurrection (in the transfiguration) the disciples are unable to trust Jesus’ insisting that he (and they) must become vulnerable for the kingdom to break in. Now they encounter a distraught father of an epileptic boy who knows he does not trust very much (a better translation of “believe”) and he asks Jesus to help him trust more. In contrast, the disciples do not ask Jesus to help them trust—they want to know how to get the power to throw out the demon. Jesus’ responds that only prayer can do this—he may mean that they don’t trust yet in the power of God to carry them through death into resurrection, and thereby carry the boy through evil into health. Prayer is the way we come to know this startling aspect of God—that only through vulnerability is it possible to love. Even for God.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Thursday August 5

Thursday August 5 Pentecost 10

Psalm 85
Trust that God will save us, despite what we have done, and will fill us with plenty and fill the land with justice.

Psalm 86
O God, you have been so generous to me, I trust you, and ask you to uphold me when I am attacked.

2 Samuel 11: 1-27 What’s Samuel about?
David commits adultery with a married woman, Bathsheba, violating her monthly purification rituals. The offence is not only sexual, but is abusive because David is abusing his power to take advantage both of the woman and of her husband, a soldier under obedience to him and is flouting God’s holiness codes.

When Bathsheba reports she is pregnant by him, David recalls her husband Uriah from battle back to Jerusalem so that it will appear that she became pregnant by her husband. David’s invitation to Uriah to go home and wash his feet has a second meaning in this ancient culture in which “feet” was used as a euphemism for one’s private parts. But Uriah, who is not even a Jew, remains faithful to the commitments to holy war despite David’s repeated cajoling over several days and he continues to practice holy celibacy as God required in battle. In defiance of David’s political, sexual and social pressures, Uriah does not sleep with his wife. David then sends him back into battle with secret instructions that he be killed by the Philistine so David can marry Bathsheba and hide the outcome of his adultery.

King David has used his power to violate personal holiness, commit adultery and murder, and defile the holiness of war (as they understood it). There will be consequences, not only for David personally as we shall soon see, but as the writers make clear, for the entire nation as this sort of injustice becomes increasingly typical of kings who in that world were absolute despots not accountable to anyone.

These stories remain amazingly contemporary in our world. Rather than being fascinated by the antics of those in power in our day, do we put our energy into objecting to the abuse of those who are less powerful, and aware that the God of justice will not be mocked?

Mark 9: 2-13 What’s Mark about?
Jesus has just spoken about some of his disciples seeing the resurrection despite their reluctance to undertake the necessary sacrifices. In the transfiguration, some of the disciples do indeed see Jesus in his resurrected glory, in company with Moses who was given the Ten Commandments, the codification of justice, and with Elijah who challenged the king of his time because of the king’s injustice. It’s clear that Jesus is the new embodiment of justice. But the disciples do not yet understand because they cannot yet put their trust in dying with Christ, the necessary enactment of justice in an unjust world. Jesus reminds them that people rejected Elijah, just as they will reject him. And so, by implication, will the disciples.

This week’s collect: