Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost, August 22, 2010
“Woman, you are freed from your disability” (Luke 13:12b).
BCP: Isa. 28:14-22; Psalm 46; Heb. 12:18-19, 22-29; Luke 13:22-30
RCL: Jer. 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; or Isa. 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Heb. 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17
In today’s lessons (RCL), there are people who find remarkable blessings from God. In the lesson from Jeremiah we have a portion of his call to serve God as a prophet — a ministry he accepts and carries on for several decades. In the call, God tells Jeremiah that he had been chosen before he was born to be “a prophet to the nations,” but Jeremiah protests that he is an unskilled youth. The Lord responds that he will ensure Jeremiah’s success; more than that, he appoints him “over nations and over kingdoms.” Although it is not provided in this lesson, Jeremiah’s call includes the prediction that the people will resist him vehemently and make him suffer for his ministry, but God assures him that he will not be brought down. The psalm connected with this reading describes the Lord as “a rock of refuge, a strong fortress,” the rescuer from the wicked.
The lesson from Isaiah is one of the most intriguing, encouraging appeals to repentance one can find. First, all the sins that are described are first identified as “a yoke”; that is, it is the sinner who is bound up by his own sins. The appeal to repentance is described as a deliverance that can be achieved simply by following the basics of the Law of God: avoid speaking evil, feed the hungry, satisfy the needs of the afflicted, and keep the Sabbath. Doing these things causes those who follow this course to “delight in the Lord.”
Many other blessings are depicted inmost attractive terms. The lesson from the letter to Hebrews says the same thing in a different way — more intensely but just as surely. Believers are called beyond the terrifying experience of thunder and trumpets and warnings of the time of Moses on Mount Zion to “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering” (Heb. 12:22). The awe-inspiring, purifying encounter with the kingdom shakes free from the believer all that is ungodly so that what “cannot be shaken may remain” (Heb. 12:27b). The result is being able to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe” (Heb. 12:28b). Finally in the gospel lesson we are brought from these mighty and awe-filled images down to ordinary life: Jesus heals a woman crippled for 18 years. The shameful opposition of the authorities to this deed done on a Sabbath is easily brushed aside and the glory of God is manifested clearly to all and thoroughly rejoiced in.
Look It Up
Note Moses’ extreme reluctance to accept God’s call to deliver the Hebrews from slavery. “Send someone else,” he whines (Exod. 4:13). Yet he proved to be not only faithful but very effective.
Think About It
Have you ever reluctantly departed from a course that was contrary to God’s will in order simply to obey him, and then suddenly found an unexpected great deliverance and joy?
Next Sunday
The Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 17C), August 29, 2010
BCP: Ecclus. (Sirach) 10:(7-11)12-18; Psalm 112; Heb. 13:1-8; Luke 14:1,7-14
RCL: Jer. 2:4-13; Psalm 81:1, 10-16 or Ecclus. (Sirach) 10:12-18; or Prov. 25:6-7; Psalm 112; Heb. 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14
