Harold – Page 13 – Daily Office

Readings for Tuesday July 30

Tuesday July 30 Pentecost 10

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Psalm 61
I was burdened and God became my strength—be with me always.

Psalm 62
In face of evil, we trust in God to be our solid foundation.

Judges 2.1-5, 11-23 What’s Judges about?
We now begin reading the story of how the people were governed and behaved in the land as they settled it. The ‘judges’ are not judges in the modern meaning of that word, but local and temporary military leaders. There is no central political leadership at the time, each group governs itself independently. But when there is a general threat, always brought on by the people abandoning the God of justice, a temporary leader (a ‘judge’) is chosen to lead all twelve tribes and rescue them from the consequences.

Today’s reading contains the theological analysis which undergirds most of the historical books. The whole of their history is seen as God being loyal to the people who are not loyal in return and who suffer the consequences of being disloyal to the God of justice.

In Judges we will read a series of stories about dramatic military victories by these temporary leaders, each story in different ways illustrating that it is God and not the strength of the people which is the source of their victories. Each time the people abandon God they suffer defeat and each time God raises up a “judge” who leads them back to safety. The message is that even in their greatest moral or military weakness, God remains faithful and powerful in their defence. It would be good for us to become aware of that in the modern world.

The reading begins with an angel speaking who says he, the angel, brought the people out of Egypt. This is one of many examples in the Hebrew Bible in which “angel” is a euphemism for “God.” If the writer felt it was presumptuous or even sacrilegious to speak about God directly, then they might substitute “angel” but readers always knew they were speaking of God.

Matthew 27.32-44 What’s Matthew about?
Jesus is crucified. As was common practice, abuse of the dying person was allowed and even encouraged by the Roman military as a warning against rebellion. Jesus’ desolation is absolute. But the early Christians experienced this willingness to undergo such horror as God’s absolute commitment to us.

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.

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Readings for Monday July 29

Monday July 29 Pentecost 10

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Psalm 56
In the face of intense attack by evil, we trust that God will act for what is right.

Psalm 57
Another psalm expressing our trust that God will act for what is right in the face of intense attack by evil.

Psalm 58
An impassioned plea for evil to be overcome. We should read the violence not literally but as an expression of our determination that good will prevail.

Joshua 24.16-33 What’s Joshua about?
In response to Joshua’s exhortation to follow the God of justice and dignity for all, the people commit themselves to the God of Israel, the God of justice who made the freedom of slaves God’s priority. They commit themselves to do the same for others.

We have come to the end of Joshua’s life and to the end of the book. In the final verses all the great leaders from the past have died and a new life is beginning. Tomorrow we begin to read about the leadership of the people after they had settled into the land and how they did or did not follow the God of justice.

Matthew 27.24-31 What’s Matthew about?
In Matthew’s understanding Pilate formally transfers responsibility for Jesus’ execution to the religious leaders, perhaps reflecting, in Matthew’s time, the growing resistance by Jewish leaders to proclamations about Jesus.

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Readings for Sunday July 28

Sunday July 28 Pentecost 10

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Psalm 24
While entering through the doors of the temple the poet sings a hymn of praise to God who brought order out of the dangerous primordial ocean. Appropriate for a Sunday as we enter into our worship.

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.

Joshua 24.1-15 What’s Joshua about?
Joshua recounts the history of God’s care for the people since the time of Abraham, almost in the form of a traditional credal statement about their origins and how God repeatedly came to their rescue. Joshua places before the people the choice of being committed to this God of justice and commitment to them, or to the local gods whom God has defeated so many times.

For us in the modern world, the choice remains the same. The church has the role of giving loyalty to justice which comes from God and thereby to stand against the gods of wealth, violence, and exploitation who claim to rule our world.

Mark 2.23-28 What’s Mark about?
The Sabbath was originally intended as a weekly re-enactment of the joy of the completed creation when every part of creation had dignity and fulfilment. Jesus and his disciples pick grain to eat on a sabbath, which technically is to break the sabbath by doing work. Jesus is accused of desecrating the Sabbath. Jesus responds by quoting an Old Testament text in which David’s followers ate forbidden holy bread. This demonstrates that Biblical commands should sometimes be broken. Jesus then deliberately reverses the normal assumptions about the purpose of the sabbath saying that the Sabbath is intended for human health, not for religious observance.

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Readings for Saturday July 27

Saturday July 27 Pentecost 9

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Psalm 55
I am terrified at what is happening. The city is full of corruption and my dear familiar friend has betrayed me. I will not cease imploring God to intervene and put things right.

Appropriate for a Saturday, when Jesus, betrayed by friends, waits in silence in the grave.

Joshua 23.1-16 What’s Joshua about?
Our readings skip the details of many similar battles and the distribution of the land to the various tribes, and we come to the end of Joshua’s life. Joshua exhorts the people to remain faithful to the God of justice so that they may continue to live in the land. This is parallel to the speech that Moses gave when he died before entering the land. Joshua is being remembered as a second Moses.

Joshua’s speech entreating the Israelites not to become absorbed within the cultures of the surrounding people may reflect the urgent concerns of the compilers of these stories who lived a thousand years later during the Babylonian exile and were concerned about the Jews being integrated into Babylonian life. The exile itself was seen at the time as punishment for the people, and especially the kings, for having abandoned the justice and inclusion of everyone as required by God.

Remaining faithful to justice which gives a place and dignity to all—both to people and to the rest of life and to the planet—will be the only way humanity can continue to live on this land which God gave us. If we don’t, as Joshua and Moses warned, the consequences may be dreadful.

Matthew 27.11-23 What’s Matthew about?
As Jesus’ death approaches, Matthew recounts a series of events revealing the truth about Jesus.

Matthew is assuring us that Jesus’ execution is not just history gone wrong. Matthew is saying that God’s power remains present and can work victory despite this horrific betrayal, injustice and execution.

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.

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Readings for Friday July 26

Friday July 26 Pentecost 9

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Psalm 40
All my life God lifted me up and I rejoiced in God’s care. But now my own sin, and my enemies, have nearly destroyed me. Do not wait any longer, God!

Psalm 54
I am in dire straights. Put everything back to right, God. I praise you, because you have done that.

Joshua 9.22-10.15 What’s Joshua about?
Despite the objection by the people Joshua insists that the Gibeonites be allowed to live because he had sworn to protect them even though they had lied to get that protection. But they are made slaves to the Israelites.

Five local kings threaten to attack Gibeon because the city had made a treaty with Israel and the rest of the local land is therefore under threat of being conquered by the Israelites. With God’s help, the Israelites defend the people of Gibeon and defeat the local kings. God even makes enormous hailstones fall on the kings and the writers quote an ancient poem about God making the sun and moon stand still for a day when Joshua asks for it, to enable the day to be long enough for the Israelites to complete their victory. The writers explain that this was because God cared for Israel and listened to what they needed.

These are ancient stories recounting how God remained faithful to the promise to give the Israelites a land. From our modern perspective all this looks like inter-tribal warfare and magical myth, but from the Israelites’ perspective it was a celebration of how deeply God cared. We can translate their certainty of care as being for the entire human race and we can anticipate unexpected assistance in enacting the justice for the whole of the living world and for the whole of humanity which can alone assure our future.

Matthew 27.1-10 What’s Matthew about?
Judas repents and returns the payment the religious leaders had given him to betray Jesus—thirty pieces of silver is the traditional price of a slave. Matthew quotes a text in Zechariah (originally describing how God had punished the Israelites for their abandoning justice 500 years earlier) and uses it to assure his readers that all this was part of God’s plan. By taking his own life even Judas affirms the depth of the horror he has carried out by enabling the execution of the Son of God.

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Readings for Thursday July 25

Thursday July 25 Pentecost 9

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Psalm 50
This psalm imagines God’s response to the people carrying out their religious practices but doing evil and abandoning justice. Rather than simply reacting or punishing, God lays out the case as if God were taking them to court—the idea is that God is being completely fair and getting an unbiased opinion about what the people have done. They have refused to be thankful for what God has done for them in rescuing them from Egypt and have substituted religion for being just to their own poor people and if this continues there will be consequences, but if they return to justice and thanksgiving all will be well.

Psalm 98
The people, the nations, and the whole of creation delight in God’s victory and rejoice when God comes to put all creation right. This psalm is used at Easter, and is often used on Sundays, mini-anniversaries of Easter. There is some lovely imagery of the sea deliberately making a noise with its waves and rivers doing the same by clapping their hands.

Joshua 9.3-21 What’s Joshua about?
A group of the local people from the nearby Canaanite city of Gibeon trick the Israelites into making a treaty with them, by pretending to be from a distant country. Joshua insists on keeping the treaty when he discovers the trick, thus placing loyalty to their oath to God for the benefit of lying foreigners above their own self-interest. Such integrity is still rare in our time, but it became the Israelites’ central understanding of God’s nature. However, there are consequences for the trick—the Gibeonites are allowed to live in the land but must serve the Israelites like slaves.

The purpose of the story is to emphasize the necessity of keeping relationship with God even when it is to one’s own disadvantage, but that God finds a way to compensate us when we do.

Matthew 26.69-75 What’s Matthew about?
Despite his earlier protestations of loyalty to Jesus, when in danger Peter repeatedly denies knowing Jesus. It is remarkable how this story, which puts Peter in such a bad light, was remembered and widely circulated during Peter’s subsequent leadership of the Christian community in Jerusalem. It demonstrates how profoundly the early leaders experienced freedom from their guilt and failure otherwise such stories would never have been repeatedly told and ultimately written down. Something about the resurrection set the early leaders completely free from their betrayal of Jesus.

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Readings for Wednesday July 24

Wednesday July 24 Pentecost 9

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Psalm 119 Part 3
Psalm 119 is a meditation on responding to God’s call to justice. Each of the 176 verses is a variation on the theme of what it means to follow God’s call to justice, using terms such as “command”,”law”, “word”, “statute”, and the like. The psalm is arranged in 22 groups of eight verses—one group for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Within a group, each of the eight verses starts with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and the groups are in Hebrew alphabetical order. So 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 human expressions of order. Thus the human world and the rest of creation are united in the same foundation. 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.

Joshua 8.30-35 What’s Joshua about?
Joshua reads the entire law to the Israelites at the first altar they build in the promised land. The people are to live in the land in accordance with God’s justice for all—even including non-Israelites.

This altar was associated with Mount Gerizim in Samaria north of Jerusalem. The Samaritans built a temple around the location of that first altar, and to this day they consider it to be the real temple and the one in Jerusalem to be an imposter. This is the origin of the hatred which Israelites and Samaritans had for each other in Jesus’ time.

Matthew 26.57-68 What’s Matthew about?
Jesus is arrested and taken to the High Priest, the person ultimately responsible for ensuring God’s justice and inclusion is enacted in the temple, dedicated to that justice, and in the entire society. But at the time of Jesus the religious leaders had aligned themselves with the Roman invasion and supported Rome’s rule using oppression and violence. Jesus’ popularity in championing an alternative society of justice has come to their attention and was seen as a potential threat to the religious leadership and to the Roman military. That’s why Jesus is arrested and convicted of a trumped-up charge and beaten and likely abused in worse ways.

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Readings for Tuesday July 23

Tuesday July 23 Pentecost 9

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Psalm 45
A poem about King David, using the imagery of an ancient oriental king, describing his personal and public magnificence and the glory of his relationship with the queen. Note that his prime duty is to serve truth and justice.

We can read this poem as a description of our own fulfilled self and relationships which have been made possible for us in union with Christ’s resurrection.

Joshua 8.1-22 What’s Joshua about?
When the Israelites had first attacked the city of Ai to continue their capture of the land God promised them they had been ignominiously defeated because they had retained forbidden booty from Jericho. But God’s ancient covenant is not to be frustrated, that God’s people will become a great nation, and God gives them a second opportunity and a clever stratagem by which to capture the city. Indeed, God even promises that they can keep all the booty. The city is captured and destroyed so the people can continue to receive God’s gift, because God devised the clever ruse, and God gave permission to loot the city. God’s faithfulness continues despite the people’s previous infidelity.

Matthew 26.47-56 What’s Matthew about?
Jesus is betrayed with a kiss and refuses to condone the violence with which a disciple responds nor to use an immense force of angels to protect himself because then the scriptures could not be fulfilled. Matthew is interpreting that all this was shown beforehand in the ancient scriptures so Jesus’ execution isn’t an accident, and that Jesus is loyal to God’s will above all else.

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Readings for Monday July 22

Monday July 22 Pentecost 9=====

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Psalm 41
Just as we care for the poor and needy, so God cares for us. I am needy in that I have sinned and my enemies and even my friends are all conspiring against me and hoping that I will die. All I can do is trust that God will protect me.

When we, or our world, seem to have little hope, we ground ourselves in knowing God holds us fast.

Psalm 52
Cruel powerful people seem to run the world, but we trust that God will enable the world to be as fertile as a green olive tree and evil will be ended.

Joshua 7.1-13 What’s Joshua about?
Some of the Israelites do not obey Joshua’s order, and they steal some “devoted things” (loot from the destroyed city of Jericho which had been designated for use in Isrealite worship)—and this begins the long theme that the Israelites were not faithful to God and do not trust God to care for them despite God having given them the land.

Perhaps this theme reflects the worry from a thousand years later when the book was compiled—while in exile the people were starting to accept the religion of the Babylonians. So the first attack by Israelite soldiers after they have entered the land results in a humiliating defeat because the people have not been faithful to God’s commands. That’s how the compilers of these stories interpreted the meaning of their own humiliating defeat by the Babylonians.

In our day we may understand this as meaning that if we do not follow practices of justice, all our best initiatives will come to failure.

Matthew 26.36-46 What’s Matthew about?
Jesus is in profound distress at the prospect of his crucifixion and pleads with God that it not happen. Nevertheless, if this is the only way to love, he will do so. Peter, James and John, the senior disciples, sleep through his entire struggle. Matthew and the early Christian community were very aware of how unfaithful they were as followers of Christ, but discovering their inclusion in God’s kingdom anyway, a discovery they called “resurrection,” transformed their lives.

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Readings for Sunday July 21

Sunday July 21 Pentecost 9

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Psalm 63
I delight in the certainty of God’s protection and victory over evil. The violence in verses 9 and 10 can be understood as an expression of our intense desire that all evil will come to an end.

Joshua 6.15-27 What’s Joshua about?
On the seventh day, the Sabbath, the day on which creation is complete, the Israelites circle the city seven times and the city walls fall. The Israelites have been given the new creation. Rahab the prostitute and her family are rescued as promised in return for their help and they remain as honoured members of the Israelite community. Joshua orders that all in the city be killed and that the city never be rebuilt so that the people not be tempted (as they repeatedly were) to adopt the horrible practices (as they understood them) of the original inhabitants. This is a sign that the land will permanently belong to the Israelites.

One of the curses on the city is that if it is rebuilt those responsible will sacrifice their children to do so. Child sacrifice was a practice of some ancient religions, perhaps carried out in Jericho, and this curse may recall the rejection of that religion by the ancient Israelites.

Mark 2.1-12 What’s Mark about?
On Sunday we read from Mark.

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