Devotion for Monday and Tuesday After Proper 23, Year A (ELCA Daily Lectionary)

Above:  Paul Writing His Epistles, by Valentin de Boulogne

Image in the Public Domain

Godly Desires

OCTOBER 16 and 17, 2023

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The Collect:

Lord of the feast, you have prepared a table before all peoples

and poured out your life with abundance.

Call us again to your banquet.

Strengthen us by what is honorable, just, and pure,

and transform us into a people or righteousness and peace,

through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.  Amen.

–Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 49

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The Assigned Readings:

Exodus 19:7-20 (Monday)

Amos 9:5-15 (Tuesday)

Psalm 34 (Both Days)

Jude 17-25 (Monday)

Philippians 3:13-4:1 (Tuesday)

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The troubles of the righteous are many:

but the Lord sets them free from them all.

The Lord guards every bone in the body of the righteous:

and so not one of them is broken.

Evil brings death to the wicked:

and those who hate the righteous are brought to ruin.

–Psalm 34:19-21, A New Zealand Prayer Book (1989)

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Psalm 34 is a prayer of thanksgiving by one whom God had delivered from great difficulty.  Much of the text constitutes timeless truth, but I detect a level of optimism which many people from Jeremiah to Jesus might have called excessive.  I, as one who has studied Christian history, add to that list nearly two thousand years’ worth of suffering Christians, many of them martyrs, from St. Stephen to contemporary martyrs.

Nevertheless, the text does provide the unifying theme for this devotion:

Turn away from evil and do good:

seek peace and steadily pursue it.

–Verse 14, A New Zealand Prayer Book (1989)

The reading from Jude speaks of the duties of love.  Among these is practicing compassion, something one can do only if self does not occupy the throne of one’s life.  In that lesson we read also that there will be mockers who follow their godless desires.  That description fits the rape gang at Sodom in Genesis 19.  Lot, who offers his two virgin daughters to that gang, is also of dubious character.  The reading from Amos reminds us that divine favor does not function as a talisman protecting people from the consequences of their sins.  And St. Paul the Apostle, in Philippians, mentions the suffering of many of the faithful (including himself) and the different fates of the righteous and the unrighteous in the afterlife, thereby bringing the readings back around to Psalm 34, but with a more sober and realistic tone.

 May we, following the Apostle’s advice, stand firm in the Lord, walking compassionately in the way of divine love and disregarding the humiliation which enemies of the cross of Christ heap upon those who are of our Lord and Savior.  And may we strive properly

toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

–Philippians 3:14, The New Revised Standard Version (1989)

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

AUGUST 31, 2014 COMMON ERA

PROPER 17:  THE TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST, YEAR A

THE FEAST OF SAINT AIDAN OF LINDISFARNE, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP

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Godly Desires

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