Reflecting on the Seventeenth
Sunday after Pentecost

Year C

Prayer

Psalm 3

Deliverance comes from God

O Lord, how many are my foes!

Many are rising against me;

many are saying to me,

“There is no help for you in God.”    Selah

But you, O Lord, are a shield around me,

my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.

I cry aloud to the Lord,

and he answers me from his holy hill.    Selah

I lie down and sleep;

I wake again, for the Lord sustains me.

I am not afraid of ten thousands of people

who have set themselves against me all around.

Rise up, O Lord!

Deliver me, O my God!

For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;

you break the teeth of the wicked.

Deliverance belongs to the Lord;

may your blessing be on your people!    Selah

Habakkuk 1:5-17

The wicked swallow the righteous

Look at the nations, and see!

Be astonished! Be astounded!

For a work is being done in your days

that you would not believe if you were told.

For I am rousing the Chaldeans,

that fierce and impetuous nation,

who march through the breadth of the earth

to seize dwellings not their own.

Dread and fearsome are they;

their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.

Their horses are swifter than leopards,

more menacing than wolves at dusk;

their horses charge.

Their horsemen come from far away;

they fly like an eagle swift to devour.

They all come for violence,

with faces pressing forward;

they gather captives like sand.

At kings they scoff,

and of rulers they make sport.

They laugh at every fortress,

and heap up earth to take it.

Then they sweep by like the wind;

they transgress and become guilty;

their own might is their god!

Are you not from of old,

O Lord my God, my Holy One?

You shall not die.

O Lord, you have marked them for judgment;

and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.

Your eyes are too pure to behold evil,

and you cannot look on wrongdoing;

why do you look on the treacherous,

and are silent when the wicked swallow

those more righteous than they?

You have made people like the fish of the sea,

like crawling things that have no ruler.

The enemy brings all of them up with a hook;

he drags them out with his net,

he gathers them in his seine;

so he rejoices and exults.

Therefore he sacrifices to his net

and makes offerings to his seine;

for by them his portion is lavish,

and his food is rich.

Is he then to keep on emptying his net,

and destroying nations without mercy?

James 1:2-11

Faith produces endurance

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low, because the rich will disappear like a flower in the field. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the field; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. It is the same way with the rich; in the midst of a busy life, they will wither away.