Mad Padre: Daily Devotional, Thursday 23 July

Prayers at Mid-day for Thursday, 23 July, 2020 (Proper 16, Trinity 6)

Commemoration of Bridget of Sweden, Abbess (d 1373)

Invitatory

O God, make speed to save us.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.

Amen.

The Lord is our refuge and our strength: O come, let us worship.

Hebrew Scriptures

Joshua 9.3-21 (The Ploy of Gibeon)

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=462465463

Psalm

Psalm 50

¹ The mighty one, God the Lord,

speaks and summons the earth

from the rising of the sun to its setting.

² Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,

God shines forth.

³ Our God comes and does not keep silence,

before him is a devouring fire,

and a mighty tempest all around him.

⁴ He calls to the heavens above

and to the earth, that he may judge his people:

⁵ ‘Gather to me my faithful ones,

who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!’

⁶ The heavens declare his righteousness,

for God himself is judge.

Selah

⁷ ‘Hear, O my people, and I will speak,

O Israel, I will testify against you.

I am God, your God.

⁸ Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you;

your burnt-offerings are continually before me.

⁹ I will not accept a bull from your house,

or goats from your folds.

¹⁰ For every wild animal of the forest is mine,

the cattle on a thousand hills.

¹¹ I know all the birds of the air,

and all that moves in the field is mine.

¹² ‘If I were hungry, I would not tell you,

for the world and all that is in it is mine.

¹³ Do I eat the flesh of bulls,

or drink the blood of goats?

¹⁴ Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,

and pay your vows to the Most High.

¹⁵ Call on me in the day of trouble;

I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.’

¹⁶ But to the wicked God says:

‘What right have you to recite my statutes,

or take my covenant on your lips?

¹⁷ For you hate discipline,

and you cast my words behind you.

¹⁸ You make friends with a thief when you see one,

and you keep company with adulterers.

¹⁹ ‘You give your mouth free rein for evil,

and your tongue frames deceit.

²⁰ You sit and speak against your kin;

you slander your own mother’s child.

²¹ These things you have done and I have been silent;

you thought that I was one just like yourself.

But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.

²² ‘Mark this, then, you who forget God,

or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to deliver.

²³ Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honour me;

to those who go the right way

I will show the salvation of God.’

Epistle

Romans 15.1-13

We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. ²Each of us must please our neighbour for the good purpose of building up the neighbour. ³For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written, ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’ ⁴For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. ⁵May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, ⁶so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

7 Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. ⁸For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, ⁹and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,

‘Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles,

and sing praises to your name’;

¹⁰and again he says,

‘Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people’;

¹¹and again,

‘Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,

and let all the peoples praise him’;

¹²and again Isaiah says,

‘The root of Jesse shall come,

the one who rises to rule the Gentiles;

in him the Gentiles shall hope.’

¹³May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Gospel

Matthew 26.69-75

69 Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant-girl came to him and said, ‘You also were with Jesus the Galilean.’ ⁷⁰But he denied it before all of them, saying, ‘I do not know what you are talking about.’ ⁷¹When he went out to the porch, another servant-girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, ‘This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.’ ⁷²Again he denied it with an oath, ‘I do not know the man.’ ⁷³After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, ‘Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.’ ⁷⁴Then he began to curse, and he swore an oath, ‘I do not know the man!’ At that moment the cock crowed. ⁷⁵Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: ‘Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly.

Commentary (Father Michael)

As he concludes his long and intricate letter to the Romans, Paul begins to conclude his great theme about how God has reimagined race, gender, and class in one new people, the body of Christ. Here he reminds Jewish followers of Jesus that the gentiles, non-Jews, are taking their places in this new people, just as the Hebrew prophets such as Isaiah foretold. The coming together of this new people out of such disparate elements will require much more than mere forbearance. It will require active and generous love.

Recently I received an email from Fresh Expressions, an evangelical group working on renewing the mainline churches in Canada. One of the leaders profiled in the email mentioned that Romans 15.7 was her favourite verse: “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” It’s a brilliant choice, I think.

We talk a lot about being welcoming churches, as we should. The language of welcoming always needs to be theologically underpinned by verses such as Romans 15.7, in the sense that God’s gracious welcoming of us into the Body of Christ obligates us to be as gracious as we can possibly be to others in imitation of Christ, even if that is a poor, human, imitation. The church, then, is God’s new creation, where we along with other believers are welcomed and brought in by the Holy Spirit, and in that gracious community we show something of the glory of God.

Questions

Can you remember a time when you felt God welcoming you into the church as the body of believers? Who needs to be welcomed into your church? What other questions come to mind in today’s passages?

Intercession

Let us pray in faith to God our Father, to his Son Jesus Christ, and to the Holy Spirit, saying, “Lord, hear and have mercy.”

For the Church of the living God throughout the world, let us ask the riches of his grace. Today we pray in the Anglican Communion Cycle of Prayer for the clergy and people of the Diocese of Northwest Texas (The Episcopal Church) and their bishop, The Rt Revd Scott Mayer, the clergy and people of the Diocese Benin (Nigeria) and their bishop, The Rt Revd Peter Imasuen , and the clergy and people of the Diocese of Bermuda (Bermuda) and their bishop, the The Rt Revd Nicholas Dill