Author: Harold

Friday October 18          Pentecost 21

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Psalm 16
I have been loyal to the God of justice, save me from the grave and I will have joy.

Psalm 17
I am innocent, but the evil people surround me-save me and I will be fulfilled.

Both these psalms are appropriate for Fridays, the weekly mini-anniversary of the crucifixion and both conclude with hope for new life.

Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 1.1-10, 18-27                            What’s Ecclesiasticus about?
The book consists mostly of a series of short wise admonitions about how to live well, and is the longest book of this type to survive from the ancient world. It was written about 200 years before Jesus while the Greek empire controlled Israel and reflects the discovery by Jews outside Israel that other cultures, such as the Greek, had traditions of knowing God which were worthy of respect. This created a problem: How could it be that non-Jews, who did not know the true God, had deep experiences of how to live a life with integrity? The answer they devised was that God has a semi-divine female partner, whom they called “Wisdom”. Wisdom (or “Sophia” in Greek) participated in the creation of the universe and so is available to guide all people regardless of their faith.

This image, of Wisdom as a semi-divine being, influenced early Christian thinking about Jesus being present at creation (as the Logos-the fundamental organizing principle of the cosmos) as well as providing ideas which were developed into the Holy Spirit.

Luke 9.28-36                            What’s Luke about?
Immediately after speaking unequivocally about the necessity of his being executed by torture, Jesus appears to three of his disciples in the transfiguration. This may be an anticipation of a resurrection experience, but in the middle of this gospel assures us that God’s kingdom is indeed emerging. “On the eighth day…” may indicate the early Christian association of the day of resurrection with the first day of the week.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
in our baptism you adopted us for your own.
Quicken, we pray, your Spirit within us,
that we, being renewed both in body and mind,
may worship you in sincerity and 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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Thursday October 17          Pentecost 21

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Psalm 18 Part 1
A meditation on God’s immense power to save:—a poetic imaginative recounting of the crossing of the Red Sea and God’s rescue of the people from their slave masters. The psalm 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.

Jonah 3.1-4.11                            What’s Jonah about?
Jonah proclaims to the city of Nineveh that they must change their ways. Their king repents and so God decides not to punish them. Jonah objects to this forgiveness because the people are not Jews and so don’t know God. God provides a bush for shade for Jonah and points out that if God can care about a bush, God can certainly care about an entire city in which there are totally uneducated people and also animals. For Jews living under pagan Greek rule when the story was written, this understanding of God would have challenged all their ideas about religious faith.

This concludes the book of Jonah in which we are challenged to take seriously God’s profound care for people of other faiths.

Luke 9.18-27                            What’s Luke about?
Peter declares that Jesus is the messiah, the image of God bringing the kingdom. But Jesus insists that he must die for that to happen. His followers must also die if they are to bring in the kingdom, but the kingdom of God will arrive regardless of whether some refuse to accept it.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
in our baptism you adopted us for your own.
Quicken, we pray, your Spirit within us,
that we, being renewed both in body and mind,
may worship you in sincerity and 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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Wednesday October 16          Pentecost 21

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Psalm 119 Part 1
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 twenty-two groups of eight verses. 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 expressions of this order. Thus the human world and the rest of creation are united in the same foundation. 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.

Jonah 1.17-2.10                           What’s Jonah about?
Jonah, swallowed by the fish at God’s command, prays an ancient poem not unlike one of the psalms in which the worshipper calls on God when all is lost.

The image of Jonah being entombed for three days and then being returned to the world became an image for the early Christians of Christ’s death and resurrection, and of their own.

Luke 9.1-17                            What’s Luke about?
Jesus sends the twelve out to enact the kingdom—decisions will have to be made by those they encounter about embracing the kingdom. Not everyone will respond. Herod, the great traitor who has betrayed the faith in exchange for power in the Roman empire and executed Jesus’ cousin, is an example of one who rejects the kingdom. But the kingdom will be triumphant—from almost nothing, Jesus feeds five thousand people with plenty left over. Despite Herod and more opposition to come, the kingdom has indeed arrived.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
in our baptism you adopted us for your own.
Quicken, we pray, your Spirit within us,
that we, being renewed both in body and mind,
may worship you in sincerity and 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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Tuesday October 15          Pentecost 21

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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.

Jonah 1.1-17a                            What’s Jonah about?
This book was written during the occupation by the Greek empire, about 300 years before Christ, and tells an imaginary story set in a time 400 years earlier. Although Jonah is famous for being swallowed by a whale, the point of the book is that Jonah is reluctant to imagine that God can be generous to non-Jews. This generosity toward non-Jews would have been a useful directive for Jews living under Greek rule.

The book opens with Jonah refusing to go to the non-Jewish city of Nineveh to encourage them to repent and so be saved. Jonah flees by ship from God’s command, but cannot avoid God. God sends a storm which swamps the ship Jonah is in. Curiously Jonah is asleep during the storm, and the captain asks if he cares. The details are so similar to Jesus being asleep in a boat during a storm that it may be the account of Jesus in the storm may be influenced by this story. Jonah admits the storm is his fault for fleeing God, and asks to be thrown overboard so the sailors can be saved. As with Jesus, the storm immediately ceases. The pagan sailors, like the disciples much later, now believe in the Jewish God. To prevent Jonah from drowning God provides a great fish which swallows Jonah to keep him safe.

We may refuse to carry out some generosity that God has in store for us to do, but God will provide another opportunity.

Luke 8.40-56                            What’s Luke about?
Jesus heals two women—the adult has been suffering from a menstrual disease which has made her an outcast from society and her own family and has prevented her from being treated as a full adult person. The girl, born at the same time as the older woman had become ill, is on the verge of adulthood and also in danger of never becoming an adult. Jesus ensures that both these two women are restored to their full dignity as women.
The story is about how the kingdom is arriving in which God’s care restores what has been lost in our lives and overcomes even the way failure is internalized by people who are oppressed. Good news indeed!

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
in our baptism you adopted us for your own.
Quicken, we pray, your Spirit within us,
that we, being renewed both in body and mind,
may worship you in sincerity and 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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Monday October 14          Pentecost 21

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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 scorn 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.

Micah 7.1-7                           What’s Micah about?
As disappointed as someone in the fall who cannot find a single delicious fruit to eat, Micah cannot find a single good person left. The powerful exploit everyone and even family relationships are full of betrayal. But even so Micah will continue to hope in God. The following chapter, the last in the book, continues this theme that God will forgive and rescue the people from their injustice.

This concludes our readings from the book of Micah. Tomorrow we begin reading the book of Jonah.

Luke 8.26-39                           What’s Luke about?
Jesus has illustrated the arrival of the kingdom through the parable of the seeds becoming a great harvest, and now the kingdom is arriving through a series of dramatic healings. The first is the healing of a man who has so many demons he is called “Legion”—the Roman term for a five-thousand man unit of the Roman army. Jesus allows the demons to go into a herd of pigs which then go wild and drown themselves. However, the pig-farmers, who are all Jews and thus violating a fundamental Jewish law by the deliberate contact with pigs, reject Jesus for disrupting their business.
Perhaps Luke, following a story originally told by Mark, is pointing out that the justice and inclusion and healing typical of God’s kingdom, will mean profound change for everyone, and that there will be resistance to God’s love and new life.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
in our baptism you adopted us for your own.
Quicken, we pray, your Spirit within us,
that we, being renewed both in body and mind,
may worship you in sincerity and 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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Sunday October 13          Pentecost 21

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Psalm 111
God’s work of justice and restoration of the people are marvellous and we are in awe of God.

Psalm 112
People who are loyal to the God of justice and generosity are never afraid and are always generous.

Psalm 113
Praise God who has made creation and who lifts the poor up out of the dust like the sun shining on everyone.

Micah 6.1-8                           What’s Micah about?
God calls the people into an imaginary law court where God will present the case against the people as if the mountains were judges. The assumption is that the natural world, or as we might say, ‘the cosmos’, is the location of justice. God presents the case against the people—they have been disloyal to justice in spite of how generous God has been to them. The people respond that they will no longer trust in religion as a way of avoidance but will follow God and will act in justice.

Matthew 15.21-28                            What’s Matthew about?
Jesus travels through non-Jewish territory and encounters a pagan woman who demands he heal her daughter. He responds as Jews normally would, treating her as a dog. However, she claims her dignity in arguing and actually winning the argument — and unimaginable insult to Jesus. But Jesus is impressed with her trust and heals her child—the kingdom has already come to those who are complete outsiders.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
in our baptism you adopted us for your own.
Quicken, we pray, your Spirit within us,
that we, being renewed both in body and mind,
may worship you in sincerity and 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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Saturday October 12          Pentecost 20

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Psalm 104
God has wondrously set everything in its place—from oceans to storks to whales to the sun. Praise to God who has made this earth and whose power and care is expressed in every part of the world.

Micah 5.1-4, 10-15                            What’s Micah about?
Micah is holding out hope that God will act to rescue the people from captivity. The first part of this passage was interpreted by early Christians as foretelling the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, but the prophet probably meant that another king would rise in his own time who would bring justice to the land. God will do this by removing from the land all the signs of their commitment to exploitation and will cause nations from around the world to flock to the God of justice. We can join that longing in our time and so stand against the oppression that tells us there is no hope for global justice.

Luke 8.16-25                           What’s Luke about?
Short pieces of good advice: we are to be like light in the world so others can see clearly what is going on beneath the surface; we are to listen carefully to what God is doing, otherwise we will have nothing to contribute to the world; Jesus’ true relatives are not those related by genetics but those who live in his family of love. All these challenges are summed up in Jesus overcoming a storm which had threatened to drown the disciples.
Drowning in private or global dangers sometimes feels immanent to us—Jesus’ call to live in awareness of God’s victory is what calms those storms.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you have built your Church
on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.
Join us together in unity of spirit by their teaching,
that we may become a holy temple, acceptable to you;
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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Friday October 11          Pentecost 20

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Psalm 141
Help me to be faithful to you, O God, and not be caught in evil.

Psalm 143
I am almost crushed by my enemy, and by my own weakness. But I remember how good you were in the past, and I still hope in you. Otherwise, there is no hope.

Micah 3.9-4.5                            What’s Micah about?
God’s accuses the leaders of terribly exploiting the people. The consequences will be that Jerusalem will be ploughed under. “The mountain of the house shall become a wooded height” means “Mount Zion (Jerusalem) where the temple is located (i.e. the ‘house’) shall become an overgrown waste land.” But Micah proclaims that God can overcome even that disaster and God’s justice will become central to all nations.

Luke 8.1-15                            What’s Luke about?
Jesus and his disciples are accompanied by a large group of women who financially support them. He tells the first of a series of stories about seeds. In this story the harvest of the seeds is far beyond what was planted, meaning that although the arrival of the kingdom may seem tiny, the end result will be overwhelming good and justice.
The following interpretation of the seeds as various kinds of response was probably invented later by an early Christian who thought Jesus had been teaching about people’s varied responses to the proclamation of the kingdom rather than trusting in its ultimate victory.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you have built your Church
on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.
Join us together in unity of spirit by their teaching,
that we may become a holy temple, acceptable to you;
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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Thursday October 10          Pentecost 20

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Psalm 134
A very brief two-verse psalm of praise for God, and of blessing from God.

Psalm 135
Praise to God who brings fertility and defeats foreign kings, and who defeated the Egyptians so Israel could go free, and who upholds justice. This God is so much greater than the pointless non-gods that other nations worship.

Thank goodness we know the God of justice is real, and the competing destructive public policies in our day are ultimately powerless.

Micah 3.1-8                            What’s Micah about?
The secular and religious leaders have terribly exploited the people, and they will become like the blind and will be disgraced. But Micah will be filled with the spirit of justice and will confront these leaders.

Luke 7.36-50                            What’s Luke about?
Jesus accepts a formal dinner invitation with a wealthy Jewish leader and has his feet bathed by a prostitute. The host complains that Jesus must not be genuine or he would never allow himself to be caressed by a prostitute. Jesus responds by valuing the woman’s generosity above that of his host, because as he points out those who have been forgiven for much are the most loyal. No wonder opposition grows from those who assume they don’t have much to be forgiven for and so feel insulted when their false pride in their own goodness is punctured.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you have built your Church
on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.
Join us together in unity of spirit by their teaching,
that we may become a holy temple, acceptable to you;
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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Wednesday October 9          Pentecost 20

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Psalm 128
Joy and prosperity come for those who seek God’s justice. Although the imagery is of abundance in family life, we may also experience that abundance in our sense of being full persons as we deepen our ability to care.

Psalm 129
We have been oppressed since our youth, but God ensures those who oppressed us will be defeated. They will be as useless and as stunted as stray wheat growing on a roof, and nobody will wish them well.

We may have confidence that evil directions in our world will come to nothing.

Psalm 130
There isn’t much hope of us getting things right by ourselves. But I am waiting, as if in the darkness of night for the tiniest glimmer of dawn, for God to bring God’s loving kingdom into being.

Micah 2.1-13                            What’s Micah about?
God accuses the people of terrible injustice to the poor and dependent. As a result, foreign nations will conquer them. The people ask for preachers who will tell them everything is OK—they would even be happy to have drunk preachers if they told the people not to worry! Even so, God is ready to offer them safety.

Luke 7.18—35                            What’s Luke about?
John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask if Jesus is the image of God who has come to bring in God’s kingdom. Jesus doesn’t answer directly but points to all the events which are signs of the kingdom breaking in. He then praises John as the greatest prophet, because he had the courage to defy the violence of the Roman empire, but nevertheless, following Jesus’ path of death and resurrection is the only way into the kingdom. If people rejected John because he was too demanding and reject Jesus because he is too joyful, they are simply obstinate.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
you have built your Church
on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.
Join us together in unity of spirit by their teaching,
that we may become a holy temple, acceptable to you;
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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Please unsubscribe me.