Reflecting on the Fourteenth
Sunday after Pentecost
Year C

Daily Readings for Tuesday
September 13, 2022

Prayer

Merciful God, 

your desire to bring us into your commonwealth 

is so great that you seek us 

in the places of our ignorance, 

and the forgotten corners where we hide in despair. 

Gather us into your loving embrace, 

and pour upon us your wise and holy Spirit, 

so that we may become faithful servants 

in whom you rejoice with all the company of heaven. Amen.

 

Psalm 94

God disciplines the nations

 

Lord, you God of vengeance,

you God of vengeance, shine forth!

Rise up, O judge of the earth;

give to the proud what they deserve!

Lord, how long shall the wicked,

how long shall the wicked exult?

They pour out their arrogant words;

all the evildoers boast.

They crush your people, O Lord,

and afflict your heritage.

They kill the widow and the stranger,

they murder the orphan,

and they say, “The Lord does not see;

the God of Jacob does not perceive.”

Understand, O dullest of the people;

fools, when will you be wise?

He who planted the ear, does he not hear?

He who formed the eye, does he not see?

He who disciplines the nations,

he who teaches knowledge to humankind,

does he not chastise?

The Lord knows our thoughts,

that they are but an empty breath.

Happy are those whom you discipline, O Lord,

and whom you teach out of your law,

giving them respite from days of trouble,

until a pit is dug for the wicked.

For the Lord will not forsake his people;

he will not abandon his heritage;

for justice will return to the righteous,

and all the upright in heart will follow it.

Who rises up for me against the wicked?

Who stands up for me against evildoers?

If the Lord had not been my help,

my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.

When I thought, “My foot is slipping,”

your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.

When the cares of my heart are many,

your consolations cheer my soul.

Can wicked rulers be allied with you,

those who contrive mischief by statute?

They band together against the life of the righteous,

and condemn the innocent to death.

But the Lord has become my stronghold,

and my God the rock of my refuge.

He will repay them for their iniquity

and wipe them out for their wickedness;

the Lord our God will wipe them out.

 

Jeremiah 5:18-31

The people love falsehood

 

But even in those days, says the Lord, I will not make a full end of you. And when your people say, “Why has the Lord our God done all these things to us?” you shall say to them, “As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve strangers in a land that is not yours.”

 

Declare this in the house of Jacob,

proclaim it in Judah:

Hear this, O foolish and senseless people,

who have eyes, but do not see,

who have ears, but do not hear.

Do you not fear me? says the Lord;

Do you not tremble before me?

I placed the sand as a boundary for the sea,

a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass;

though the waves toss, they cannot prevail,

though they roar, they cannot pass over it.

But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart;

they have turned aside and gone away.

They do not say in their hearts,

“Let us fear the Lord our God,

who gives the rain in its season,

the autumn rain and the spring rain,

and keeps for us

the weeks appointed for the harvest.”

Your iniquities have turned these away,

and your sins have deprived you of good.

For scoundrels are found among my people;

they take over the goods of others.

Like fowlers they set a trap;

they catch human beings.

Like a cage full of birds,

their houses are full of treachery;

therefore they have become great and rich,

they have grown fat and sleek.

They know no limits in deeds of wickedness;

they do not judge with justice

the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper,

and they do not defend the rights of the needy.

Shall I not punish them for these things?

says the Lord,

and shall I not bring retribution

on a nation such as this?

An appalling and horrible thing

has happened in the land:

the prophets prophesy falsely,

and the priests rule as the prophets direct;

my people love to have it so,

but what will you do when the end comes?

 

2 Peter 3:8-13

That all may come to repentance

 

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.

 

Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

 

 

Prayer

Persistently forgiving God, 

we are a stiff-necked and stubborn people 

who try your patience; 

yet, instead of giving us up for lost, 

you seek us out until we return to you. 

Break our willfulness 

and bring us back from our wanderings; 

bend our pride 

and create in us pure and faithful hearts, 

which rejoice in your forgiveness 

made known through Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

Psalm 73

God is my portion

 

Truly God is good to the upright,

to those who are pure in heart.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled;

my steps had nearly slipped.

For I was envious of the arrogant;

I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

For they have no pain;

their bodies are sound and sleek.

They are not in trouble as others are;

they are not plagued like other people.

Therefore pride is their necklace;

violence covers them like a garment.

Their eyes swell out with fatness;

their hearts overflow with follies.

They scoff and speak with malice;

loftily they threaten oppression.

They set their mouths against heaven,

and their tongues range over the earth.

Therefore the people turn and praise them,

and find no fault in them.

And they say, “How can God know?

Is there knowledge in the Most High?”

Such are the wicked;

always at ease, they increase in riches.

All in vain I have kept my heart clean

and washed my hands in innocence.

For all day long I have been plagued,

and am punished every morning.

If I had said, “I will talk on in this way,”

I would have been untrue to the circle of your children.

But when I thought how to understand this,

it seemed to me a wearisome task,

until I went into the sanctuary of God;

then I perceived their end.

Truly you set them in slippery places;

you make them fall to ruin.

How they are destroyed in a moment,

swept away utterly by terrors!

They are like a dream when one awakes;

on awaking you despise their phantoms.

When my soul was embittered,

when I was pricked in heart,

I was stupid and ignorant;

I was like a brute beast toward you.

Nevertheless I am continually with you;

you hold my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel,

and afterward you will receive me with honor.

Whom have I in heaven but you?

And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Indeed, those who are far from you will perish;

you put an end to those who are false to you.

But for me it is good to be near God;

I have made the Lord God my refuge,

to tell of all your works.

 

Jonah 3:1-10

God relents from punishing Nineveh

 

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

 

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

 

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

 

2 Peter 3:8-13

That all may come to repentance

 

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.

 

Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

 

 

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Prayer reprinted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers, © 2002 Consultation on Common Texts. Reproduced by permission.

Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings copyright © 2005 Consultation on Common Texts admin. Augsburg Fortress. Reproduced by permission. No further reproduction allowed without the written permission of Augsburg Fortress.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.


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