Part 1 of 2
Daily Office Readings for Sunday of Proper 15: Year 1
Morning, Psalm 118; Evening, Psalm 145;
2nd Samuel 17:1 to 23; Galatians 3:6 to 14; John 5:30 to 47:
“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life:” (John 5:39 and 40).
Jesus tells them that the scriptures have the code about who Jesus is. There are many hints in the Hebrew Testament about the One to come. I particularly like Jeremiah 34: 31 to 34. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” I like this one, but there are other references to the coming of the Lord.
Part 2 of 2
New Testament Eucharistic Readings for Sunday of Proper 15: Year B
Ephesians 5:15 to 20 and John 6:51 to 58:
“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them:” (John 6:56).
Perhaps our Lord Jesus is talking over their heads as he uses metaphorical language that turns them off. He is not suggesting cannibalism. But he is telling them that if they have his teachings in them, they will have eternal life. The teachings were the lessons leading up to His Great Remembrance wherein he fully explains what it means to eat his body and drink his blood. As John does not have a proper Lord’s Supper, let us borrow from 1st Corinthians as does our Episcopal Church: Paul says, “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1st Corinthians 11: 23 to 25). This is really what our Lord Jesus was preparing them for. The Lord’s supper is a love meal in remembrance of Him.
Let us live to love, serve and teach, rather than just live to live, listening to what the Spirit is saying through the saints and to us, while pondering anew what the Almighty can do. John
onewhoponders 