Author: Harold

Psalm 50
This psalm imagines God’s response to the people doing evil and abandoning justice. Rather than simply reacting or punishing, God lays out the case as if God were going to court – the idea is that God is being completely fair and getting an unbiased opinion about what the people have done. They have substituted religion for being just and if this continues there will be consequences.

Isaiah 9: 18 – 10: 4
Evil acts like a forest wild fire consuming everything – greed knows no limits. There will be no escape from the consequences of oppressing those without power – “writing oppressive statutes…making orphans your prey.”

Matthew 3: 1-12
John, announcing the coming of the saviour, challenges people to change their life priorities. That is the challenge of Christmas for us.

This week’s collect:

God of power and mercy,
you call us once again
to celebrate the coming of your Son.
Remove those things which hinder love of you,
that when he comes,
he may find us waiting in awe and wonder
for him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings for Wednesday December 16

Wednesday December 16 Advent 3

Psalm 119 Part 3
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 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.

Isaiah 9: 8-17
Nobody is taking God’s warnings seriously – they interpret God’s warnings as accidents from which to build success. Isaiah insults the prophets by calling them the tail of an animal (implying a more vulgar epithet). Isaiah is saying that leading people in faith isn’t a way of getting ahead and those who provide such leadership are causing the downfall of the people and should be considered dung. This is strong language.

How often our culture assumes the normalcy of commending greed as the way to a full society. And so the disaster arrives inevitably. Isaiah is pulling no punches in challenging the norms of society.

Mark 1: 1-8
Mark interprets John the baptist by quoting a passage from Isaiah about preparing the way for God’s new kingdom. The imminent arrival of God’s kingdom—God’s fulfilled society—is the major them in Mark’s gospel. In Mark, Jesus arrives not as a baby but as a full adult. What might the adult consequences be of Jesus’ immanent adult arrival among us?

This week’s collect:

Readings for Tuesday December 15

Tuesday December 15 Advent 3

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.

Isaiah 9: 1-7
God is determined to restore the people of Israel to the greatness they had been rescued for. A descendant of King David will rule with complete justice. Early Christians saw in this passage a prediction of Jesus.

Luke 22: 54-69
Peter totally rejects Jesus, and Jesus is abused by soldiers and condemned by the leaders. It is for this act of love that he was born.

This concludes our readings from Jesus’ arrest and betrayal, which will culminate in fulfilling the purpose of his incarnation in his death and resurrection to heal the entire cosmos. The gospel readings until Christmas will now recount the stories of his birth.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Monday December 14

Monday December 14 Advent 3

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.

Isaiah 8: 16-9: 1
Isaiah is determined to trust only in the God of Israel, the God of justice. The people may trust in magic and divination, but that leads only to ignorance and darkness. But we wait for God to transform the land and make it glorious again.

Luke 22: 39-53
Jesus is abandoned even by his disciples who cannot stay awake with him in Gethsemane. Jesus heals the wound a disciple inflicts on a servant of those coming to kill him. The darkness seems to engulf Jesus as he is arrested. This seems at first a strange series of passages to read as we approach Christmas, but it is because the birth of Jesus was in order that God in Christ could give us God’s full life. Otherwise there is no real point in Jesus being born.

This week’s collect: