Monday, the Propers
In my new, sanitized routine for the Duration, today, Monday is my morning to post the Propers for the upcoming Sunday, May 17, which will be Easter 6A. The Sixth Sunday of Easter, Lectionary Year A. You may wonder why I do this for you. I don't do it for you, I do it for myself, to help me keep up with what is going to be read the following Sunday. This way I can just flip back to my Monday blogpost without bothering to search online.
One or more of these lessons I may comment on as my blogpost for Wednesday, which is billed as a Bible Study of some sort. Or it could be something else. Indeed, it might be almost anything. If you scroll down, you'll see that Luke, who wrote this, has Paul preaching at the Areopagus in Athens. Our psalm 66 selection that responds to the Acts reading is interesting but not very.
First Peter caught my eye soon as we started reading it as our epistle series for the season. In this Sunday's reading there's some remarkable stuff, so maybe I'll remark on it Wednesday. As I mentioned a week or two ago, First Peter is new to most folks, and if our adult Sunday School class were still gathering in the parish library on Sunday mornings, we'd be reading and discussing our way through it. And I'd bring up First Peter in Greek and compare to see if the author, like Matthew, lifts verbatim from LXX, the Greek language Hebrew bible. That might not interest you, but it will me and I may do it if I get round to it. Both the Septuagint and First Peter in Greek are readily available online if you'd like to do that yourself.
What got me into that years ago was comparing Matthew's Greek quotations, with LXX verses he cites from Isaiah 7, confirming that he used the LXX, did not himself start with the Hebrew bible. And later comparing KJV Isaiah with RSV Isaiah and seeing for myself why people all around me got so exercised when the RSV update of the KJV came out in 1952, my senior year in high school. In the King James Version of Isaiah, the virgin conceives and bears a son. When the RSV said the young woman would conceive and bear a son, the fundamentalists in my high school class went berserk. I remember our priest, Father Tom Byrne, telling our young people's group that all the fuss was ignorance about Hebrew הָעַלְמָ֗ה ha-alma that was translated into Greek parthenos for the Septuagint, and that Isaiah'd had no idea of being a basis for the Doctrine of Virgin Birth.
Anyway, it'll be fun to see if 1 Peter uses the Septuagint. If I get to it. This business of Duration is keeping me busy on interesting things, but as someone else mentioned of their housekeeping, I found out that the reason my den/office/study is so messy is not because I don't have time to keep it neat, as I used to claim. There are other reasons, having to do with my very Being.
In the Gospel according to John, Jesus is still on what scholars call his Farewell Discourse.
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The Collect
O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The First Lesson
Acts 17:22-31
Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we too are his offspring.’
Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
The Response
Psalm 66:7-18
Jubilate Deo
7 Bless our God, you peoples; *
make the voice of his praise to be heard;
make the voice of his praise to be heard;
8 Who holds our souls in life, *
and will not allow our feet to slip.
and will not allow our feet to slip.
9 For you, O God, have proved us; *
you have tried us just as silver is tried.
you have tried us just as silver is tried.
10 You brought us into the snare; *
you laid heavy burdens upon our backs.
you laid heavy burdens upon our backs.
11 You let enemies ride over our heads;
we went through fire and water; *
but you brought us out into a place of refreshment.
we went through fire and water; *
but you brought us out into a place of refreshment.
12 I will enter your house with burnt-offerings
and will pay you my vows, *
which I promised with my lips
and spoke with my mouth when I was in trouble.
and will pay you my vows, *
which I promised with my lips
and spoke with my mouth when I was in trouble.
13 I will offer you sacrifices of fat beasts
with the smoke of rams; *
I will give you oxen and goats.
with the smoke of rams; *
I will give you oxen and goats.
14 Come and listen, all you who fear God, *
and I will tell you what he has done for me.
and I will tell you what he has done for me.
15 I called out to him with my mouth, *
and his praise was on my tongue.
and his praise was on my tongue.
16 If I had found evil in my heart, *
the Lord would not have heard me;
the Lord would not have heard me;
17 But in truth God has heard me; *
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.
18 Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer, *
nor withheld his love from me.
nor withheld his love from me.
The Epistle
1 Peter 3:13-22
Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you-- not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
The Gospel
John 14:15-21
Jesus said, ”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
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Pic: tourists visiting the Areopagus where Paul preached and won some souls.
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Pic: tourists visiting the Areopagus where Paul preached and won some souls.