Devotion for January 16 and 17 (LCMS Daily Lectionary)

Above:  A Bullseye

Image Source = Alberto Barbati

Cleansing and Restoration

JANUARY 16 and 17, 2024

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Blessed Lord, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

–The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 236

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The Assigned Readings:

Ezekiel 38:1-23 (January 16)

Ezekiel 39:1-10, 17-29 (January 17)

Psalm 15 (Morning–January 16)

Psalm 36 (Morning–January 17)

Psalms 48 and 4 (Evening–January 16)

Psalms 80 and 27 (Evening–January 17)

Romans 7:1-20 (January 16)

Romans 7:21-8:17 (January 17)

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…the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want–that is what I do.  But every time I do what I do not want to do, then it is not myself acting, but the sin that lives in me….What a wretched man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death?  God–thanks be to him–through Jesus Christ our Lord.  So it is that I myself with my mind obey the law of God, but in my disordered nature I obey the law of sin.

–Romans 7:19-20, 24-25, The New Jerusalem Bible

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A note on page 1115 of The Jewish Study Bible tells me that Gog, leader of the land of Magog, might have been “Gyses, a 7th-century ruler of Lydia in Asia Minor.”  Anyhow, Ezekiel 38 and 39 (which I have kept united for the sake of clarity; the lectionary splits the passage into two parts over as many days) speaks in apocalyptic terms of the divine defeat of the cleansing of the land of Judea, then the restoration of the Jews in their ancestral homeland.  One must be careful not to use such texts to justify blind Zionism, therefore excusing the abuses which the present State of Israel has perpetrated against the Palestinians; the Golden Rule applies to everyone.  Yet the text does indicate the reliability of divine promises.

The concepts of cleansing and restoration (in a different context, of course), apply also to Romans 7:1-8:17.  We human beings are mixed bags of good and bad.  We are, as the Lutheran confessions tell us, capable only of civic righteousness on our own power; we cannot save ourselves from ourselves.  “Sin” is not an abstraction; it is “missing the mark.”  And we are naturally inaccurate spiritual archers.   We find God by a combination of grace and free will.  And the existence of the latter is a function of the former, so everything goes back to grace.  Through this grace we have cleansing and restoration.  May we, by grace, cooperate with God so that we may become what God has in mind for us to become.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MARCH 25, 2012 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF THE ANNUNCIATION OF OUR LORD

THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B

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http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/cleansing-and-restoration/

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