Author: Harold

Psalm 8
God is amazing in what God has created. It is astonishing that God cares for humans who are so small in comparison, because God has even given humans care for God’s amazing earth.

Psalm 84
I love to be with God. In verse 2 it may be that a bird built a nest near the actual altar in the temple, and the poet, seeing that, is thinking that if a tiny bird can be accepted by God and have a home in the temple, so God completely accepts me when I am at home in God’s presence. God cares for us more than we can imagine!

Some of the imagery is of people climbing the hill up to the temple in Jerusalem. Appropriate for a Sunday as we come to the presence of God at worship.

2 Samuel 1: 17-27 What’s Samuel about?
David sings a song of lamentation for Johnathan and Saul. The compilers of these stories, half a millennium later, wanted to portray David as profoundly loyal to God’s original choice of Saul for king and to Saul’s family. In that way David couldn’t be accused of deposing Saul.

Matthew 25: 31-46 What’s Matthew about?
We continue to read Matthew on Sundays at the daily office.

At the end of the world it will make all the difference how loving we have been to the needy. Our actions become our character, and if we have not followed Jesus in such love and respect especially for the poorest, then the inevitable consequence will be smallness of our own character. In that stunted experience we will feel as if we have missed life and are outcast.

This week’s collect:

O God,
the protector of all who trust in you,
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy,
increase and multiply upon us your mercy,
that with you as our ruler and guide,
we may so pass through things temporal,
that we lose not the things eternal;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings for Saturday July 24

Saturday July 24 Pentecost 8

Psalm 138
I praise God because God helped me, even though I am one of the lowly.

Psalm 139
God, you know everything about me, even when I was still in my mother’s womb, and I am amazed at your knowledge. Help me to remove all evil from the world.

2 Samuel 1: 1-16 What’s Samuel about?
In a different version of how Saul died, David hears from a resident foreigner that Saul had asked the foreigner to kill him so he would not have to undergo humiliation and torture by the Philistines. David is deeply distressed and has the foreigner killed because he killed the king God had anointed. These stories show David as utterly determined to respect God’s original choice of king.

Originally the stories of the first two kings were in a single book, called Samuel because it began with the birth and life of Samuel who anointed Saul, the first king. But later, because it was so long, the book was divided at the point at which David’s reign began. Today we begin reading the second part, now called Second Samuel.

Mark 6:1-13 What’s Mark about?
The opposition to Jesus is starting to grow. First his own home town rejects him, and when he sends out his disciples they are prepared for rejection on their travels even though the kingdom is breaking in around them. As we will read tomorrow, the opposition is becoming very serious indeed. Very soon this gospel will focus, in its second half, on Jesus’ approaching death.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
your Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence.
Give us pure hearts and constant wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth;
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 July 23

Friday July 23 Pentecost 8

Psalm 51
I have committed evil acts and I long that God will wash me clean. If I am forgiven, I will tell everyone of God’s goodness. I would have given expensive sacrifices, but what you want, O God, is that I change my priorities. Then God will be pleased with us and our religious practices.

This psalm is often used on Fridays, the anniversary of the death of Christ through which forgiveness is possible. Our world would receive new life if we were as committed to changing direction in matters which are bringing death to the planet.

1 Samuel 31: 1-13 What’s Samuel about?
As Samuel had predicted, the Philistines defeat the Israelites, kill all Saul’s sons, including Jonathan, and Saul takes his own life thus denying the Philistines the ultimate victory, showing that God remains mindful of God’s original choice of king. Some brave Israelites retrieve Saul’s body and give him a full burial, thus honouring God’s choice of king. The writers five centuries later understood this disaster to have been the consequence of Saul’s refusal to trust his life to God’s justice, repeated by subsequent kings, a disaster which they had experienced in their country’s horrific defeat by Babylon. Because Saul and all his sons are killed, David can receive the royal house which God had originally established under Saul without violating God’s original intention.

Mark 5: 21-43 What’s Mark about?
Jesus has calmed a storm on a lake, then inside a person, and now calms social storms around two women both of whom have had adulthood denied to them. The older woman was an outcast because of her constant menstrual bleeding and because this illness meant she could never have children. She would be considered a failure, hardly even an adult because having a child is what made a woman a full adult in the ancient world. Around this story Mark wraps another story about a young woman unable to become an adult. Jesus heals a 12 year old girl, born the year the other woman first became ill, who at the point of death would have had adulthood snatched from her.

Jesus is healing the things that keep us from being our full mature selves – particularly those who are most vulnerable such as women in the ancient world. These healings are more than of individual bodies—Jesus is also healing the body of society by restoring people to full life and participation.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Thursday July 22

Thursday July 22 Pentecost 8

Psalm 59
People all around hunt me down, like dogs attacking, but I insist that God is on the side of the innocent.

We can apply the dramatic imagery not only to people, but to the policies and global forces that are destructive to societies and to the planet, and yet we insist that God’s goodness and justice is always present.

Psalm 60
God seems to have abandoned us, and we are being defeated even though God claimed for us the territory of all our tribes. We pray that God will turn things around and do great deeds through us.

This psalm can easily be applied to the threat of destruction of the planet in our day, but we will continue to insist that God’s goodness and care is supreme over all the forces of evil.

1 Samuel 28: 3-20 What’s Samuel about?
Saul is fighting the Philistines, but God does not give Saul guidance in the usual ways. So Saul seeks someone to communicate with the dead Samuel, an act that was absolutely forbidden and which Saul himself had forbidden because the person inquiring was putting their trust in dead people rather than God. Samuel appears and tells Saul that because he has tried to force God to obey him through the use of magic, God will remove his kingdom and that the next day he will die in battle with the Philistines.

We still experience some leaders attempting to force God to do their will by manipulating religious faith. But as surely as with Saul, this is a profound violation of our relationship with our source and will have consequences.

Mark 5: 1-20 What’s Mark about?
Jesus calms another kind of storm—inside someone who has been overcome with evil. Notice that the demons are called “Legion”—it is no coincidence that that is the name of the military force oppressing the country. The Roman empire is being experienced as a herd of demons. Notice that the Jews who are raising the pigs—which are disgusting—want Jesus to go away so they can continue with their disgusting business. Not hard to realise what this meant at a deeper level in Jesus’ time when many Jews cooperated with the Romans. Today our society’s priorities are often driven by the gods of profit regardless of how damaging the outcomes are.

Like Jesus, we also may be asked to leave when we challenge our society’s selfish priorities, but the good news is that God’s justice will prevail regardless. Trust in that enables us to be active disciples.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Wednesday July 21

Wednesday July 21 Pentecost 8

Psalm 49
Why should I worry about the rich who oppress me? Even the wealthiest person could never pay for their life so that they could live forever. Everyone dies and the rich oppressors are led like sheep to the grave. Why should I be afraid of the wicked when I know they will all die!

Psalm 53
Everyone has abandoned God, and God’s justice. We long for God to restore justice to the world.

1 Samuel 25: 23-44 What’s Samuel about?
Abigail, the wife of the man who had insulted David secretly leaves her husband and takes enormous gifts to David bribing him not to kill her and her husband. David is impressed and pardons her husband. Shortly after, the husband dies and David sees this as God’s punishment for the insult. David then marries Abigail. This will not be the last time that David takes a wife after her husband dies in mysterious circumstances and may suggest that kings with power are dangerous because they do not always act with justice and being so powerful cannot be trusted.

Mark 4: 35-41 What’s Mark about?
Like many miracles, this miracle of Jesus calming a storm is a miracle with a meaning. To people of that time, the waves swamping the boat would have meant the return of chaos over which the Spirit triumphed at the beginning in Genesis. Jesus calming the sea would have meant that God’s original creation was happening again. If the story is set on Lake Galilee, such a storm would have been understood to be the economic disaster common people were experiencing as Herod built an enormous palace near the lake, driving the local people into destitution by over-fishing the lake to finance his palace and also by extorting immense levies on the fishing people to pay for his palace. For Jesus to stop such a storm had clear political implications. We can think of the storms inside us or in the world as being ultimately under God’s control. In tomorrow’s reading, Jesus calms the storm inside a mentally disturbed person.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Tuesday July 20

Tuesday July 20 Pentecost 8

Psalm 47
God reigns over history and over the nations and has protected us. Praise to God!

Psalm 48
A song of praise for how Jerusalem has been blessed by God— the forces which would destroy us are overcome.

We might understand this psalm as rejoicing in the beauty of creation, and of our own self as a glorious city, made possible by God’s commitment to justice.

1 Samuel 25: 1-22 What’s Samuel about?
David is insulted by a wealthy man whom he had earlier protected, and David decides to kill him. Although provoked, David is not exhibiting the justice to which kings are called. This is the first time that David abandons God’s justice, as later writers understood all the kings to have done. This infidelity to justice was understood by the writers of these stories to have been the root cause of the disastrous defeat, occupation, and captivity in Babylon around 600 B.C. The wealthy man’s wife leaves secretly with immense gifts to offer to David. She can foresee what the outcome will be, and has decided to align herself with David.

Mark 4: 21-34 What’s Mark about?
Jesus uses a series of images to imagine the triumph of God’s kingdom of justice: a lamp in the dark, a fair and just measure, grain growing automatically, and a tiny mustard seed. All are startling ways in which the kingdom is different from the usual conception of kingdoms.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Monday July 19

Monday July 19 Pentecost 8

Psalm 44
This is a psalm for times when bad things happen to us when it’s not our fault. The psalm starts off by recounting how God did amazing things for us in the past—God rescued us out of Egypt through the Red Sea. But now God no longer cares for us and terrible things are happening to us, even though we have done nothing wrong. At the end the psalm says there is nothing to do but call on God to put things right.

1 Samuel 24: 1-22 What’s Samuel about?
Saul and his army go out to kill David. David hides in a cave and has a chance to kill Saul when Saul accidentally goes into the same cave to relieve himself. While Saul is relieving himself David surreptitiously cuts off a piece of Saul’s cloak and afterwards uses it to prove to Saul how much he respects him, and that he refrained from killing him when he easily could have, because God had anointed Saul to be king. David is obedient to God having chosen Saul, even though God is now removing Saul. David swears to Saul that he will not exterminate Saul’s family when David becomes king. Saul dies a while after this, and we anticipate David becoming king.

Mark 4: 1-20 What’s Mark about?
Jesus’ famous parable about the sower and the seeds. Originally Jesus probably meant to use an obvious common experience (wonderful harvests happen even though most of the seeds which were planted never grow) to say that no matter how much opposition his followers, or the kingdom, encounter, God’s generous plenty always wins in the end. It is a very effective image, experienced by all who would have heard Jesus speaking.

The subsequent explanation that each example of seeds has a special meaning was probably added later by an early Christian who misunderstood the point of the story and thought Jesus had been explaining why some people followed him, and others didn’t.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Sunday July 18

Sunday July 18 Pentecost 8

Psalm 103
God has been so generous to us! God has given us life when death was close, has been generous when we abandoned God’s justice, has cared for us as a doting parent does, and all in spite of our lives being so short. Even angels and creation bless God and we join with them!

1 Samuel 23: 7-18 What’s Samuel about?
Saul continues to try to kill David, but David escapes. David and Jonathan make a solemn agreement that David will become king and Jonathan will be his senior officer. It is clear that behind the scenes God is protecting David and that Saul’s end is approaching.

Matthew 25: 14-30 What’s Matthew about?
Jesus tells a story about a king who gave his servants various amounts of money to invest. The poorest, who was faithful to the ancient prohibition against investing for profit, is severely punished and exiled into permanent darkness for keeping the money safe and refusing to invest it. Jesus’ purpose in telling this story may have nothing to do with wise investing, but may be a devastating critique of how wealthy people force poor people into even greater poverty and even condemn them to death for not increasing the wealth of the wealthy. There are clear implications for the way our own society is structured.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Saturday July 17

Saturday July 17 Pentecost 7

Psalm 42
When I am very discouraged, I will remember to put my trust in God. The refrains in these two psalms are said by many Christian priests before presiding at the Eucharist to confess their own sins and to trust in God.

Psalm 43
This psalm is said by many Christian priests as they prepare to go to the altar to preside at a eucharist.

1 Samuel 22: 1-23 What’s Samuel about?
David gathers followers. Saul kills the priests who had assisted David. This is a terrible sacrilegious act, and because the priests were the symbol of God of justice this demonstrates that Saul is not worthy to be king. He has raised his defiance of justice to such an extreme level that his reign cannot continue.

It is not hard to identify parallels in our time, but the challenge for us is to trust that God’s justice is ultimately supreme, whatever happens.

Mark 3: 19b-35 What’s Mark about?
Criticism of Jesus increases. Because his priorities are so out of sync with his society’s, his family thinks he is mentally ill. Religious leaders see him as the incarnation of evil. Jesus responds to the accusation that he can cast out evil only because he is a stronger evil, by pointing out the inconsistency—how can it be evil to heal people? If that is what evil is doing, more power to it—then evil has destroyed itself if it does good! He goes on to say that to deliberately describe something as evil which you know is good, will cut you off from life—this is the so-called unforgivable sin. Returning the attention to his family’s criticism, he insists that all who are connected to God’s justice are his family—so all Jesus’ followers must therefore be mentally ill! He is turning our assumptions, about what makes sense, upside down.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless
until they find their rest in you.
May we find peace in your service,
and in the world to come, see you face to face;
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 July 16

Friday July 16 Pentecost 7

Psalm 35
A demand that God should protect me from evil people who want me to fail. We can read this psalm as applying to our own self, or as a way of experiencing the life of a person or group who are being abused and exploited. In the end we will praise God because God will protect us.

Appropriate for a Friday, the weekly anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion, in which he deliberately experienced ultimate exploitation and abuse.

1 Samuel 21: 1-15 What’s Samuel about?
In fear of Saul, David flees with his men and when they are hungry he asks to eat holy bread (in some ways like communion bread) and he is given it. He also is given the sword belonging to Goliath. He then flees to a foreign king, but is frightened when that king hears how successful David has been and so may be perceived to be a threat to his kingship. David protects himself by pretending to be insane. The story teller is recounting how, without ever appearing as such, God is constantly ensuring David’s safety so that he can become the just king that the nation needs.

A thousand years after this incident, Jesus refers to David eating holy bread as a way of defending himself and his disciples against the charge of being sacrilegious by picking grain on the sabbath.

Mark 3: 7-19a What’s Mark about?
The kingdom arrives in the form of people being made whole, and Jesus begins to build a new community founded on justice and healing to embody that. He selects 12 apostles because that was the symbolic number of the complete Jewish community with 12 tribes descended from Jacob’s 12 sons. Christians might interpret that number as symbolizing a new global community embodying God’s kingdom.

This week’s collect: