Wednesday mixed bag
This is the report I promised if it turned out well, and it's better than well, it's excellent. Not outstanding, but excellent. No picture because it's already half eaten, but I think it's the first pie I ever made in my life.
Baked strawberry pie. Following a recipe found on line, it turned out well. A bit too sweet, so if I make another one I'll cut the sugar in half as a friend does when baking desserts. Also, it was more a strawberry jam pie because I cooked the strawberries too long in the saucepan before pouring them into the pie crust for the trip to the oven, so nobody gets a whole strawberry, but I've got it down now for next Time if there is one.
Strawberry pie with hot & black for my protein breakfast, eh? Starting my Wednesday with a sugar high. Mox nix mir, we're having smash burgers for noon dinner, with spinach soufflé. On my burger sans bun I'll have either Swiss cheese or that crumbly Leister red cheese from England. There's a half-finished can of Miller Lite in the little fridge, it'll be flat, but maybe I'll have that with my cheeseburger; maybe just pour the flat beer into my ice water, for the flavor.
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How sacrificing our national honor, cratering our integrity, and stabbing a besieged ally in the back during warTime - - betraying Ukraine and cozying up to Russia - - is making America great again beats the hell out of me.
Not in my lifeTime, but this too shall end, pray God, and perhaps in coming generations America will recover the international respect we once had.
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Moving on, here's the gospel for the upcoming Sunday, 25 October
Matthew 22:34-46
The Greatest Commandment
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
37 He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
The Question about David’s Son
41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: 42 “What do you think of the Messiah?[a] Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David by the Spirit[b] calls him Lord, saying,
44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet” ’?
45 “If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” 46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.
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This is two pericopes, GOK why the lectionary framers had us read them together, but fine.
The first one, 22:34-40, is perfectly clear.
The second one, 22:41-46 - - not to mention it being a great high school freshman English test question about where to put all the quotation marks - - which Matthew lifts from Mark 12, is Jesus' trick question, sophistry, like a riddle, based on Psalm 110:1. It's just as puzzling to the Pharisees as the gospel writer has Jesus mean it to be. Jesus confounds them.
Taken literally in English, it can be as confounding to us as it was to the Pharisees:
"the Lord said to my Lord" or "the lord said to my lord"
Here's Psalm 110:1 in the Greek Septuagint that was used in Jesus' day, and that Mark used for his trick question:
Τῷ Δαυεὶδ ψαλμός. Εἶπεν ὁ κύριος τῷ κυρίῳ μου Κάθου ἐκ δεξιῶν μου ἕως ἂν θῶ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου ὑποπόδιον τῶν ποδῶν σου
literally, "of David psalm. Said the lord to the lord my ... "
here's the Hebrew of the same verse
לְדָוִ֗ד מִ֫זְמ֥וֹר נְאֻ֤ם יְהוָ֨ה׀ לַֽאדֹנִ֗י שֵׁ֥ב לִֽימִינִ֑י עַד־אָשִׁ֥ית אֹ֝יְבֶ֗יךָ הֲדֹ֣ם לְרַגְלֶֽיךָ׃
literally, "of David a declaration of YHWH to my lord ... "
In the English (Lord ... Lord or lord ... lord), and in the LXX Greek (κύριος ... κυρίῳ), the verse is ambiguous, it can seem that lord David is speaking to lord Messiah ("the son of David) and calling him lord.
If the Pharisees did not read and understand the Hebrew bible, which is not unlikely, it could be a standard unanswerable riddle to them.
But in the Hebrew it's quite clear. It's not David speaking to the Messiah at all. Flattering David (which is common in the psalms), the psalmist has Yahweh say to the psalmist's lord (David) ... - - and there's no riddle at all.
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Now I need a picture at the top of this wandering mess. How about a car? Or, how about one of my all Time favorite pickup trucks, a 1941-1947 Chevrolet?
RSF&PTL
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