Category: TODAY&#8217;S READING

Psalm 22
This psalm is one of the most dramatic expressions of extreme fear, moving into trust in God. God acted in the past, but is doing so no longer. Jesus quotes from this psalm while he is on the cross, (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) and early Christians applied some details in the psalm in their description of the crucifixion. It is appropriately read on Fridays, mini-anniversaries of the day Jesus was crucified.

Jeremiah 29: 1-14
Jeremiah writes to those exiled to Babylon that after 70 years God will bring the people back to their land and make them safe. They are not to trust other prophets who say God will act soon. In the meantime, they should start living normally in their exile, and raise families and live peaceably in the city so there will be a vibrant people to return and rebuild Jerusalem when the time comes.

The details about how the letter was sent are included in order to emphasize the letter’s importance and solemnity.

In fact, the people did return to Jerusalem after about 70 years and they began to rebuild the city and the temple. The re-built temple was the one that was still standing in the time of Jesus, and had by then been greatly enlarged by Herod the Great a few years before Jesus’ birth.

John 11: 1-27
Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, has fallen ill, which means “gravely ill,” but Jesus dismisses this and deliberately delays travelling for three days in order that there be no doubt that Lazarus is really dead. Since Lazarus, Mary and Martha live just outside Jerusalem, the disciples are reluctant to go there knowing the implications are that Jesus will be in danger of being killed. Indeed, a week today Jesus also will be dead, and three days later, just like Lazarus, he will be raised. When Jesus arrives at Bethany the conversation continues about what it means that Jesus is the resurrection.

As always in John, conversations have multiple layers of meaning, and this story is intended to lead us to trust that Jesus’ resurrection will be available for us all, regardless of how unlikely that may seem to us.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
your Son came into the world
to free us all from sin and death.
Breathe upon us with the power of your Spirit,
that we may be raised to new life in Christ,
and serve you in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Readings for Thursday March 25

Thursday March 25 Lent 5

Psalm 131
God is like a mother on whom I rest in complete confidence.

Psalm 132
The psalm reminds God that David was committed to finding a permanent place for the ark to stay in Jerusalem and that God swore an oath that God would never abandon David or Jerusalem.

In our time we can understand this oath to be God’s absolute commitment to creation and to our rescue which is accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Psalm 133
Another short psalm expressing joy in the abundance we experience when humanity lives in unity – that is, in justice and inclusion of all.

Jeremiah 26: 1-6
Jeremiah reminds the people that they were warned about the consequence of abandoning the justice that God made the foundation of the world. If they change their ways and begin to enact justice and inclusion, all will be well, but if they persist in injustice, the consequences will be unimaginable—the city of God, Jerusalem, the location of the temple of justice and inclusion, will be cursed.

We can see the same process working out in public policy in our day—not caring for the poor in our country or around the world has dreadful consequences for all of us. It’s not that God is angry or wanting to punish, but that the world is designed for fulfillment of everyone and abandoning that principle makes everything break down. For God to change that basic principle would require God to become selfish like us and that would result in total disaster.

John 10: 19-42
The conversation about the significance of Jesus as shepherd-king is concluding. The festival commemorates the re-dedication of the temple altar after it had been desecrated under Greek occupation. Shortly there will be the first attempt to kill Jesus—John is making this event coincide with the re-dedication of the temple sacrifices of which Jesus will be the culmination.

The critics are accusing Jesus of blasphemy by claiming to be God. Jesus quotes from a psalm (82) where God is addressing the minor gods saying that if they don’t act with justice God will overrule them. Jesus takes the phrase ‘you are gods’ (meaning, ‘you may be gods but that won’t prevent me overruling you’) and interprets it to mean that God was calling people “gods” so he can call himself “Son of God.” It’s a method of interpreting scripture that’s not persuasive to us, but was normal then and may have been an effective argument used by early Christians to defend their faith in Jesus.

Jesus goes on to say, “The Father and I are one.” Jesus is saying that we when see him (healing others or being executed himself) we are seeing God. This is blasphemous to many religious people because God cannot be imagined suffering such degradation as Jesus will. Some people are convinced and others not, based on whether or not they “see” the deep nature of God in the dying and rising of Jesus. Jesus then associates himself with John the Baptist who was the first to call him the sacrificial “Lamb of God.”

John, the gospel writer, will then immediately lead us, in tomorrow’s reading, into one of the most dramatic experiences of death and resurrection which may mirror Jesus’ approaching execution.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Wednesday March 24

Wednesday March 24 Lent 5

Psalm 119 Part 7
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 Q, R, S, and T, the final letters of the Hebrew alphabet. As you read them, imagine the effect of each line in today’s first section beginning with “Q” and so on.

Jeremiah 25: 30-38
God’s power extends to the whole of humanity—many people at that time thought that each nation had its own god who ruled it, but Jeremiah claims that the God of justice rules the whole earth, and that people everywhere are required to respect justice, not just the Israelites. The violence in the second half of the reading is a way of insisting that this is to be taken seriously. The consequences for not making justice a priority are very real and destructive, and happen in every place and time—ours included.

John 10: 1-18
John now begins an extended conversation about Jesus as a shepherd. Israel’s founding king, David, was a shepherd called to be king, so the idea was that true kings act like shepherds, not like autocratic rulers as in other societies.

For the first time in this gospel, Jesus speaks explicitly about his calling to die for the people. Jesus describes himself as such a shepherd who is faithful to the sheep, or as the door by which the sheep go freely in and out. He proves he is faithful because he is ready to die for the sheep. Such care is not given to us by other leaders who are motivated by their own safety. It is such love that self-evidently proves its reality in our human relationships and, Jesus is claiming, in our relationship with God.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Tuesday March 23

Tuesday March 23 Lent 5

Psalm 120
God saved me from those who lie and rely on deceit. Even though I am committed to peace, those around me still seek war.

Psalm 121
Confidence that God will watch over us to protect us from natural calamities and everyday situations.

Psalm 122
Joy at entering Jerusalem to worship in the temple. Prayers for Jerusalem.

Psalm 123
We keep our eyes trained on God’s direction to us, like servants alert to their owner’s slightest hand signal. We are oppressed by the wealthy and we anticipate God’s signal at any moment that God will act.

Jeremiah 25: 8-17
Because the people have abandoned justice, God will use the surrounding nations to capture the people and destroy their cities. God will call Nebuchadrezzar, the pagan king of Babylon, to capture the people and enslave them in Babylon as the consequence of what they have done. But God is not relentless, and after 70 years God will punish those nations for having enslaved God’s people, and will set the people free. Despite their suffering the consequences of the oppression they have carried out against the poor, God will not abandon them and will continue to protect and rescue them.

Jeremiah is interpreting the historical events of his time—the capture and destruction of Jerusalem and the people’s subsequent return to Jerusalem a generation later—as God’s underlying commitment even to people who have deliberately betrayed God. The challenge to us is whether we can interpret the events of our day in a parallel way, able to see God operating behind the international events of our time.

John 9: 18-41
Today we conclude the long conversation arising from Jesus healing someone born blind. As always in John’s gospel this conversation about sight and blindness is intended to be understood at multiple levels and perhaps is a response to criticisms of Jesus being levelled at Christians at the time this gospel was written.

In an attempt to disprove the miracle, the religious authorities call the man’s parents who are too frightened of being thrown out of their faith to admit that it was Jesus. It may be that religious leaders at this time were threatening Christians with the equivalent of excommunication if they continued to affirm that Jesus had given them insight. The authorities then once again confront the man who insists that he was healed, impossible though that seems. They contend that he is unreliable because his former blindness is proof of his sinfulness. These may have been arguments used against early Christians as being unreliable sinners.

Finally, Jesus comes to the man and explains that he is the image of God (the “Son of man”), and that Jesus’ role is to heal people so they see that the death and resurrection of love is the only way to live. Ironically there will be some who choose to be blind to that truth.

John is saying that this is the normal process of coming to understand the significance of Jesus: it’s a gradual process which can involve criticism by others, but Jesus’ self-offering death and subsequent resurrection is the lens through which we see life clearly, even if that insight is rejected by others who are blind to it and insist it is nonsense.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Monday March 22

Monday March 22 Lent 5

Psalm 31
I am being attacked from all sides but trust that God will rescue me. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus quotes from this psalm as he is dying. While often used on Fridays, and on Good Friday, this psalm is chosen as we approach Holy Week and the anniversary of Jesus’ execution next week.

Jeremiah 24: 1-10
Jeremiah uses the image of two baskets of figs—one basket with delicious figs and the other with rotten figs to represent two groups of Israelites. Those who are suffering in exile in Babylon because of their faithfulness to the God of justice will be returned to Jerusalem and will be like wholesome and delicious figs presented at the temple there. But the leaders and the kings whose unfaithfulness caused this disaster and who tried to cooperate with the invading king and with the king of Egypt will be like rotten figs which would be an insult to present at the temple in Jerusalem when it is rebuilt.

When we avoid the cost of caring for the oppressed with justice, we also court becoming repugnant like rotten figs.

John 9: 1-17
Jesus heals someone who has been blind from birth—in ancient culture an absolute impossibility. In John, such stories about blindness always operate symbolically as well as on the obvious level—it is us and our world that have always refused to “see” that self-sacrificing love is the only way for the world to be whole. Yet, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, a miracle can still happen and even though we and our world have always been blind, we will be able to “see.”

As usual in John’s gospel, a significant event if followed by lengthy discussion about its significance. Did the blind man’s parents somehow cause his blindness? Was he really healed or is this someone else? Would God do a healing on the Sabbath when God commanded there be no work on the Sabbath? We may be hearing the responses Christians were making to criticisms of Jesus and Christianity at the time when John wrote his gospel. These discussions will take up the next two days of our gospel readings.

When we are healed, as the man born blind was, and come to see the way to live life fully, there will be challenges for us, too. Because we no longer go along with the crowd, challenges will come from inside ourselves and from outside. We will find ourselves pressed to deny what we saw when we were healed from the blindness of thinking that always looking after our self first is the way to be safe and fulfilled.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Sunday March 21

Sunday March 21 Lent 5

Psalm 118
An enthusiastic song of thanksgiving for everything God has done for us—God has protected us from evil forces, and we give praise in the temple and in processions. Appropriate for a Sunday as an anniversary of the triumph of Easter Day.

Portions of this psalm are traditionally sung on Easter Day.

Jeremiah 23: 16-32
God accuses the religious leaders of leading the people astray, and just because they say “God said so” and promise everything will be well, they are not to be believed. God rejects their leadership. It is this false leadership that has caused the ruin of the people.

It remains tempting to make the “safer” route in life our priority. By our actions we become prophets, pointing to what we think is the right direction. But if we are not faithful to the priority of love and justice for all, we point to a false direction.

Mark 8: 31—9: 1
Half-way through Mark’s gospel, this is the very first time that Jesus speaks about his death. Peter refuses to accept Jesus’ insistence on dying because if the leader chooses death, so must his followers. The same remains true for us today—none of us is prepared to die in order to love. But if we are not prepared to die out of love, then we will never really be alive. As Jesus says, if we make life all about ourselves (i.e. don’t take up our cross of loving sacrifice) then we are never really alive. The message of Christianity is not, “You are too weak to love that deeply,” but “Christ’s love can live in you and then you’ll be able to love at that depth.”

This week’s collect:

Readings for Saturday March 20

Saturday March 20 Lent 4

Psalm 107 Part 2
When the Israelites completed their journey through the wilderness God brought disaster on the evil people who lived there (as the Israelites understood it) to make a fertile place for God’s own people. When God’s people were oppressed, God rescued them. Wise people, the poem says, will take this to heart and will trust in God’s care and justice to prevail.

One of our tasks today is to cultivate that trust in God’s care for humanity so that when disaster happens in our world we will have something solid to offer.

Psalm 108
I will praise God because God is so powerful and I ask you, God, to act on behalf of the poor. God replies by listing all ways in which land will be given to God’s people and taken from those who are evil. I respond by asking God to act to save us because it seems God has abandoned us.

These two psalms are scheduled for Saturdays as we experience the wait for the resurrection while Christ is still in the grave.

Jeremiah 23: 9-15
Jeremiah is devastated because the political and religious leaders have encouraged the people to abandon justice. The people of Samaria (the capital in the north) have followed other gods, but the people of Jerusalem (the capital in the south) have done even worse. The accusation of adultery is not about personal adultery, but about a nation committing adultery with greed as if they had taken greed as a lover, and so they are committing adultery against the God of justice. This abandoning of God’s justice has been led by both prophets and priests, and they will have bitter consequences.

Religion is still tempted to use its power to oppress people, and for leaders of a faith based on a God of love to exploit people remains a horrific offence.

John 6: 60-71
Jesus’ claim that we must eat and drink him—in other words that his life is to become our life—precipitates a decision now, as it did then. Do we want to go through death and into resurrection by caring that deeply? For most of us the answer is No, we don’t want to love that much. That’s why Judas and the betrayal of Jesus now appears for the first time in this gospel—Judas is us when we want to have nothing to do with Jesus’ calling to such deep caring. So is there no hope?

Peter responds that there is no real alternative to taking Jesus’ life into ourselves. Judas is the alternative: to reject full life, becoming centred on ourselves. But that’s the way of death.

So, Peter says, there’s no option. I may not want to practice sacrificial caring at all (and Peter does betray Jesus), but the only other option is to choose death, and so we choose Jesus, even with the implications.

Calling us to sacrificial love is crazy, but it’s the only solution for the future of the human race or the maturity of individuals, so taking Jesus’ life into ours is the only way forward that makes sense. That’s how people respond to Jesus—not because following him is satisfying or enjoyable, but that it’s better than any alternative. And then we end up fulfilled.

This week’s collect:

Almighty God,
through the waters of baptism
your Son has made us children of light.
May we ever walk in his light
and show forth your glory in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings for Friday March 19

Friday March 19 Lent 4

Psalm 102
A lament at the destruction of Jerusalem 600 years before Jesus. It ends with hope of God’s faithfulness.

Jeremiah 23: 1-8
God says that leaders who have encouraged injustice will be replaced with leaders who will encourage justice. Verses 5-7 say that God will rescue the people and even that where they once said the greatest thing that ever happened was the crossing of the Red Sea, now people will say the greatest thing that ever happened was God rescuing them from Babylon. This was a revolutionary claim that God was moving beyond the ancient events in the Bible and was doing something much more amazing right now.

We might ask if we have any expectation that God might do amazing things in our times, beyond anything in our faith. It’s a startling suggestion that God is very much active now. If we think it is, the challenge is to discover in what way that is happening.

John 6: 52-59
John, the gospel writer, is continuing this conversational method of presenting what Jesus’ importance is.

Jesus says that he is the real food of life, and that his flesh must be eaten and his blood drunk. That image was even more startling for ancient Jews than for us. The most fundamental kosher rule, still obeyed by Jews, is that there must be no blood in food, because all blood, as the source of life, is holy. For Jesus to say he must be eaten and drunk would be sacrilegious and revolting. The idea suggests cannibalism. John is using that startling image on purpose to ensure we pay attention to this central idea that Jesus’ life can become everyone’s life. John began his gospel with the story of Jesus pouring out astonishing volumes of wine at a wedding reception—now John is moving to the next level: Jesus is astonishingly going to pour out his entire life for us, and by implication, the life of God. Because, as Jesus has said repeatedly, he and the Father are one.

It’s possible that by the time this gospel was written, sixty or seventy years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, communion had become the main way of experiencing Jesus’ still being present. Some early opposition to Christianity, misunderstanding communion whether on purpose of not, had claimed that Christians were practising human sacrifice and cannibalism when they met for communion. So John may have been taking those criticisms and re-interpreting them as deeper insights into Jesus’ significance.

John is suggesting that Jesus’ life of death and resurrection can become the central dynamic of our lives when we also give our life to others in caring love. Communion had become the central experience of that happening in us.

This week’s collect:

Readings for Thursday March 18

Thursday March 18 Lent 4

Psalm 69
A desperate plea for help in the midst of betrayal, disaster and defeat. Some imagery is violent, which we can interpret as expressing a deep desire that there be no evil in the world. The references to gall and vinegar may have influenced the early Christians’ description of Jesus’ crucifixion. Often used on Fridays, the weekly anniversary of the crucifixion.

Jeremiah 22: 13-23
A dramatic passage criticizing king Jehoiakim’s accumulation of wealth at the expense of the poor, and describing the terrible consequences which will be his country’s defeat and enslavement in Babylon. In this passage the connection between justice for the poor and security for the country is explicit. Our modern awareness that extreme disparity in wealth has bad consequences for the entire country is our rediscovery of the same truth.

John 6: 41-51
The conversation continues regarding Jesus’ significance. Jesus is claiming to be humanity’s ultimate food, far more important than the holy manna given long ago in the desert and still preserved in holy vessels in the temple. Upon being challenged that he is only an ordinary person and cannot therefore be that important, Jesus responds that everyone who has experienced God will see God working in him and will live forever by “eating” him. Jesus will continue to press the startling implications of this image of “eating” him as this passage continues tomorrow.

This week’s collect:

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Readings for Wednesday March 17

Wednesday March 17 Lent 4

Psalm 101
I am determined to live a life of justice and not to support exploitation.

Psalm 109
A desperate plea for God’s assistance, and rejoicing that God is faithful to the poor. The middle section, which uses violent images against those who oppress the powerless, expresses a profound desire that oppression be removed from the world. At the conclusion the writer rejoices that God is committed to the needy and to protecting those who are unjustly accused.

Jeremiah 18: 1-11
Jeremiah is told to go to a potter who forms a pot out of wet clay, but when the pot becomes mis-shaped the potter re-forms it into another shape. In the same way, God claims to be a potter who can change the shape of history in any way God wants depending on how the people act. It is up to the people to make justice their priority, then the resulting shape of the nation will be very good.

John 6: 27-41
John continues the conversation about food, which began with Jesus’ miraculous feeding of a huge crowd. In their journey through the wilderness God miraculously fed the Israelites with manna and some of that manna was still kept in the temple. Jesus claims to be the food for feeding of all people in their modern wilderness so that everyone will have full life. Jesus asserts that he himself is a far more important food than manna. This claim to be of greater importance than a central Old Testament experience was sacrilegious and dangerous.

Discussions about whether Jesus is more important than manna likely don’t seem very important to us. But the implication is that even though God has fed us in important ways in the past, Jesus’ death and resurrection will feed us more deeply and can make everyone fully alive.

This week’s collect: