Reflecting on the Second
Sunday after the Epiphany

Year A

Prayer

Psalm 40:6-17

Not sacrifice, but divine mercy

 

Sacrifice and offering you do not desire,

but you have given me an open ear.

Burnt offering and sin offering

you have not required.

Then I said, “Here I am;

in the scroll of the book it is written of me.

I delight to do your will, O my God;

your law is within my heart.”

I have told the glad news of deliverance

in the great congregation;

see, I have not restrained my lips,

as you know, O Lord.

I have not hidden your saving help within my heart,

I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;

I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness

from the great congregation.

Do not, O Lord, withhold

your mercy from me;

let your steadfast love and your faithfulness

keep me safe forever.

For evils have encompassed me

without number;

my iniquities have overtaken me,

until I cannot see;

they are more than the hairs of my head,

and my heart fails me.

Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me;

O Lord, make haste to help me.

Let all those be put to shame and confusion

who seek to snatch away my life;

let those be turned back and brought to dishonor

who desire my hurt.

Let those be appalled because of their shame

who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”

But may all who seek you

rejoice and be glad in you;

may those who love your salvation

say continually, “Great is the Lord!”

As for me, I am poor and needy,

but the Lord takes thought for me.

You are my help and my deliverer;

do not delay, O my God.

 

Isaiah 48:12-21

God saves the people through water

 

Listen to me, O Jacob,

and Israel, whom I called:

I am He; I am the first,

and I am the last.

My hand laid the foundation of the earth,

and my right hand spread out the heavens;

when I summon them,

they stand at attention.

Assemble, all of you, and hear!

Who among them has declared these things?

The Lord loves him;

he shall perform his purpose on Babylon,

and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.

I, even I, have spoken and called him,

I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.

Draw near to me, hear this!

From the beginning I have not spoken in secret,

from the time it came to be I have been there.

And now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit.

Thus says the Lord,

your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:

I am the Lord your God,

who teaches you for your own good,

who leads you in the way you should go.

O that you had paid attention to my commandments!

Then your prosperity would have been like a river,

and your success like the waves of the sea;

your offspring would have been like the sand,

and your descendants like its grains;

their name would never be cut off

or destroyed from before me.

Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea,

declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it,

send it forth to the end of the earth;

say, “The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!”

They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts;

he made water flow for them from the rock;

he split open the rock and the water gushed out.

 

Matthew 9:14-17

Christ, the bridegroom, the new wine

 

Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”