Author: Harold

Psalm 18 Part 1
A meditation on God’s immense power to save:—a poetic imaginative recounting of the crossing of the Red Sea. It can be read as if it were the experience of one person being rescued or as if the nation is speaking with a single voice.

Daniel 2: 31-49 What’s Daniel about?
Daniel tells the king what his dream was, and interprets it. The various metals in the statue stood for a series of kingdoms—the Persian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and at the time of the writing, the Greek and Roman. Yet the one true God of justice will prevail by establishing a just kingdom—the rock that destroys all the violent kingdoms. Daniel and his three friends are given immense honour.

For Jews living shortly before the time of Jesus under the crushing weight of the Greek and Roman empires who had little respect for Judaism, this imaginary story from the ancient past of spiritual, intellectual and social victory would have provided hope and restored confidence that God would again rescue them. The passage is read in Easter-tide for its message of God’s victory over all kinds of oppression.

Luke 3: 1-14 What’s Luke about?
For the next three months we will read through Luke’s gospel.

We begin with Luke’s account of John the Baptist. John is re-enacting Joshua’s entrance through the Jordan into God’s promised land. John expects that just as city of Jericho was destroyed upon their original entrance into the land, so now in John’s time the foreign Roman empire will also fall if they re-enact that original crossing of the Jordan river. John invites everyone who longs for the overthrow of Rome to join him. John was inviting people to re-enact Joshua’s claiming of the land by walking through the Jordan, with the expectation that Rome would then shortly be overthrown. Luke quotes a passage from Isaiah anticipating the return of the enslaved Jews to Jerusalem when they returned from Babylon 500 years earlier. This great event, John the Baptist hopes, is about to be repeated.

Notice how Luke, who believes that Christianity can partner with Rome, carefully notes the dating of John’s leadership in reference to the Roman governing structure, and notes that even Roman soldiers want to be part of this new world.

Each of the gospel writers brings their own perspective to the understanding of Jesus. That fact gives us permission in our time to apply our perspective from our historical context. Luke finds hope for God’s victory in looking at oppression from a global perspective. Does this suggest a way for us to understand that victory in our global context?

This week’s collect:

Almighty and eternal God,
the strength of those who believe
and the hope of those who doubt,
may we, who have not seen, have faith
and receive the fullness of Christ’s blessing,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings for Wednesday April 14

Wednesday April 14 Easter 2

Psalm 119 Part 1
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 three sections begin with the letters A, B and G (in Hebrew alphabetical order). As you read them, imagine the effect of each line in today’s first section beginning with A” and so on.

Daniel 2: 17-30 What’s Daniel about?
Daniel prays and is shown the dream and its meaning. He tells the king that it is the God of Israel, the God of justice, who can reveal dreams, and not any power on Daniel’s part.

John 17: 20-26 What’s John about?
Jesus is saying that we, and he, and God, are all united. That means that God, as the source of sacrificial love, Jesus as the enactment of that love, and we as the ongoing enactors of that love, are all united in the same character. In that way, we are not to see ourselves as lone, struggling, failures at loving, but as those who live constantly in the glory of participating in the love which upholds the universe.

This concludes our reading in John’s gospel of Jesus’ great prayer, just before he is arrested, in which he focuses on how people who did not live in his historical time will participate in his life.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Tuesday April 13

Tuesday April 13 Easter 2

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.

Daniel 2: 1-16 What’s Daniel about?
We continue with the book of Daniel consisting of imaginary stories written not long before Jesus, but set in the Babylonian exile 600 years earlier. Today’s story story opens with the Babylonian king requiring his official interpreters to guess what dream he had the night before, an impossible request. However, at the risk of his life, Daniel volunteers to describe the dream.

The idea of being superior to the conquering culture, and having miraculous success with dreams the way Joseph did long ago with the dreams of the Egyptian Pharaoh, would have been of great encouragement to the Jews under the control of the Greeks and later the Romans at the time of Jesus.

We are in the same situation in our exploitive culture which seeks to enslave the Christian faith as a servant of power and oppression. How might we imagine God’s power working through us to challenge our culture?

John 17: 12-19 What’s John about?
One way in which we are to be protected against the forces inside and out which will deter us from loving fully, is that Jesus intends that we be immersed in his love, expressed in his sacrifice. His love is about to made complete in his death, and he asks not that we be removed from similar rejections by society, but that we be be given the character of that love which he calls “Truth.” This will be the role of the Holy Spirit to continue to lead us into that truth.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Monday April 12

Monday April 12 Easter 2

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.

Daniel 1: 1-21 What’s Daniel about?
Today we begin reading the book of Daniel. The book contains a series of imaginary stories set in the time of the exile 600 years before Jesus. In each story the Jews are under threat and are rescued by God. These stories would have given much courage to the Jewish people who had just been conquered by the Greeks. It’s appropriate to read this book of victories over oppression as we celebrate God’s Easter victory for the next six weeks.

The book opens with Daniel enslaved in Babylon refusing to eat non-kosher meat assigned by the Babylonian king, yet with God’s power he and his companions are more healthy after 10 days of eating only vegetables (considered not to be nutritious) than those who had eaten nutritious food.

So we, who are under the control of evil forces in our modern world, can use our imagination to anticipate God’s victory over evil and oppression.

John 17: 1-11 What’s John about?
Jesus assures us that our loyalty to his love will receive protection even when he is no longer physically present. This is particularly important for we who find ourselves living in a time when faith is widely rejected—which is like not having Jesus physically present anymore—but, John says, Jesus anticipated that, and assures us of his support and that he showed us in his death and resurrection everything we need to live fully alive lives.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Sunday April 11

Sunday April 11 Octave day of Easter

Psalm 146
Joy in God’s victorious justice for the oppressed, the blind, the strangers and the orphans—that justice for all is built into God’s magnificent creation. Appropriate for Sunday, and for the “octave of Easter” today, the Sunday which completes a full week of celebrating the resurrection—God’s victory over all evil.

Psalm 147
God’s wondrous creation and God’s commitment to justice are intertwined. Other cultures are not aware of this. What a helpful insight in our day!

Isaiah 43: 3-13 What’s Isaiah about?
God states that no god has ever done anything like rescuing God’s people from slavery as happened with the Babylonians 600 years before Jesus. God’s people are the witnesses that no god ever did anything like that. We are witnesses of the resurrection which no current power or politician can begin to emulate.

John 14: 1-7 What’s John about?
Jesus explains he is preparing a way for future disciples to join him. But the disciples, like us, feel lost without a plan of how to experience God when Jesus is no longer present physically. Jesus’ response is that if we’ve known Jesus, which we do through Holy Spirit, then we’ve experienced God. His point is that God isn’t some great distance away from us, but that if we have experienced Jesus’ death and resurrection we’ve experienced God’s central character and that means we are already living in God.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Saturday April 10

Saturday April 10 Saturday

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

Isaiah 25: 1-9 What’s Isaiah about?
While the people are enslaved in Babylon 600 years before Jesus, the prophet uses a series of striking weather images to promise that Babylon will but utterly crushed by God and that the people will experience God like a cool breeze on a hot day and their oppressors will worship the God of Israel. They will rejoice in this God who has been a shelter for the poor and needy. They will return to Jerusalem to find a magnificent feast there waiting for them and that death (meaning violent death and war) will be no more. The reference to the end of death is no doubt the reason this passage is read after Easter.

John 16: 16-33 What’s John about?
Shortly before his arrest, Jesus interprets the pain that future disciples will suffer because they no longer experience him physically, as labour pains before giving birth. That birth will be their full affirmation by God in which they will receive peace through Jesus’ presence in Holy Spirit. Even if the world rejects God’s love, and his future disciples, God’s love will still be fully present and fill them with joy.

This week’s collect:

Lord of life and power,
through the mighty resurrection of your Son,
you have overcome the old order of sin and death
and have made all things new in him.
May we, being dead to sin
and alive to you in Jesus Christ,
reign with him in glory,
who with you and the Holy Spirit is alive,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings for Friday April 9

Friday April 9 Friday

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.

Daniel 12: 1-4, 13 What’s Daniel about?
Daniel was written (not long before Jesus’ birth) to encourage the Jewish people who had been conquered by the Greeks. The story expresses hope that those who have died will be raised. Appropriate for Easter week.

John 16: 1-15 What’s John about?
A generation after Jesus the early Christians were facing two challenges. They were being “excommunicated” from the synagogues and Jesus wasn’t returning. In this passage John’s gospel addresses these two problems. Jesus says that being expelled from Judaism isn’t a sign that Christianity is mistaken but that those throwing them out don’t know God—that’s why they are revolted by the Christian claim that God could want to undergo the horror of crucifixion. The reason Jesus hasn’t returned is that Jesus is preparing something better—the gift of the Spirit who will lead and empower them and prove their faith is well founded.

This is of particular support to us in a time when God’s self-offering love is so spurned by powerful forces in society which believe that oppression and the threat of violence is the only way to find safety and fulfillment. Although Jesus’ life may seem very distant from our modern world, we too are offered the Holy Spirit as our way of experiencing the presence of Jesus in our time.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Thursday April 8

Thursday April 8 Thursday

Psalm 146
Joy in God’s victorious justice for the oppressed, the blind, the strangers and the orphans—that justice for all is built into God’s magnificent creation. Appropriate for the anniversary of the resurrection—God’s victory over all evil.

Psalm 147
God’s wondrous creation and God’s commitment to justice are intertwined. Other cultures are not aware of this. What a helpful insight in our day!

Ezekiel 37: 1-14
God will give life to the dispirited of Israel, languishing in exile. Their dead bones (their hopelessness) will be brought back to life, as was Jesus, and as are we.

John 15: 12-27
Jesus continues to explore the image of the vine. The community of disciples are the branches of Jesus’ love. His disciples (who are us) are not asked to observe that love from a distance, the way a servant might, but are asked to be full participants in that love. That’s how Jesus calls us siblings, not servants. Even though self-sacrificing love will be rejected by our society, the Holy Spirit (God’s self welling up in our lives), will be present to act with us and give us courage and strength to continue that love.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Wednesday April 7

Wednesday April 7 Wednesday

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 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.

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!

Micah 7: 7-15
Expectation of God’s victory over those who would enslave ancient Israel, a way of expressing our joy at God’s rescue of us at Easter.

John 15: 1-11
Using the image of a vine’s branches, which actually almost constitute the vine, Jesus asks us to imagine ourselves as the constituents of the life of Jesus after his physical departure. If we remain in his life of deep love, we will do great things, but if we leave that life of love, then we will accomplish nothing.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Tuesday April 6

Tuesday April 6 Tuesday in Easter

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!

Isaiah 30: 18-21
A promise to those enslaved in Babylon that God will act. As God did on Easter Day.

John 14: 15-31
Jesus uses further images to assure us that in the absence of physical contact with him, the Holy Spirit will be present to provide the same support. We will be in contact with the Spirit and with Jesus as we enact the same kind of love. Even though the wider world does not see or understand or follow this kind of love, we are able to do so, enabled by God’s power in the Holy Spirit.

This week’s collect: