Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹⁴ “But I will court her again and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak to her tenderly there. ¹⁵ There I will give back her vineyards to her and transform her Valley of Troubles into a Door of Hope. She will respond to me there, singing with joy as in days long ago in her youth after I had freed her from captivity in Egypt.

¹⁶ “In that coming day,” says the Lord, “she will call me ‘My Husband’ instead of ‘My Master.’^{[a] 17} O Israel, I will cause you to forget your idols, and their names will not be spoken anymore.

¹⁸ “At that time I will make a treaty between you and the wild animals, birds, and snakes, not to fear each other anymore; and I will destroy all weapons, and all wars will end.

“Then you will lie down in peace and safety, unafraid; ¹⁹ and I will bind you to me forever with chains of righteousness and justice and love and mercy. ²⁰ I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and love, and you will really know me then as you never have before.

103 I bless the holy name of God with all my heart. ² Yes, I will bless the Lord and not forget the glorious things he does for me.

³ He forgives all my sins. He heals me. ⁴ He ransoms me from hell. He surrounds me with loving-kindness and tender mercies. ⁵ He fills my life with good things! My youth is renewed like the eagle’s! ⁶ He gives justice to all who are treated unfairly. ⁷ He revealed his will and nature to Moses and the people of Israel.

⁸ He is merciful and tender toward those who don’t deserve it; he is slow to get angry and full of kindness and love. ⁹ He never bears a grudge, nor remains angry forever. ¹⁰ He has not punished us as we deserve for all our sins, ¹¹ for his mercy toward those who fear and honor him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. ¹² He has removed our sins as far away from us as the east is from the west. ¹³ He is like a father to us, tender and sympathetic to those who reverence him.

²² Let everything everywhere bless the Lord. And how I bless him too!

3 Are we beginning to be like those false teachers of yours who must tell you all about themselves and bring long letters of recommendation with them? I think you hardly need someone’s letter to tell you about us, do you? And we don’t need a recommendation from you, either! ² The only letter I need is you yourselves! By looking at the good change in your hearts, everyone can see that we have done a good work among you. ³ They can see that you are a letter from Christ, written by us. It is not a letter written with pen and ink, but by the Spirit of the living God; not one carved on stone, but in human hearts.

⁴ We dare to say these good things about ourselves only because of our great trust in God through Christ, that he will help us to be true to what we say, ⁵ and not because we think we can do anything of lasting value by ourselves. Our only power and success comes from God. ⁶ He is the one who has helped us tell others about his new agreement to save them. We do not tell them that they must obey every law of God or die; but we tell them there is life for them from the Holy Spirit. The old way, trying to be saved by keeping the Ten Commandments, ends in death; in the new way, the Holy Spirit gives them life.

¹³ Then Jesus went out to the seashore again and preached to the crowds that gathered around him. ¹⁴ As he was walking up the beach he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at his tax collection booth. “Come with me,” Jesus told him. “Come be my disciple.”

And Levi jumped to his feet and went along.

¹⁵ That night Levi invited his fellow tax collectors and many other notorious sinners to be his dinner guests so that they could meet Jesus and his disciples. (There were many men of this type among the crowds that followed him.) ¹⁶ But when some of the Jewish religious leaders^[a] saw him eating with these men of ill repute, they said to his disciples, “How can he stand it, to eat with such scum?”

¹⁷ When Jesus heard what they were saying, he told them, “Sick people need the doctor, not healthy ones! I haven’t come to tell good people to repent, but the bad ones.”

¹⁸ John’s disciples and the Jewish leaders sometimes fasted, that is, went without food as part of their religion. One day some people came to Jesus and asked why his disciples didn’t do this too.

¹⁹ Jesus replied, “Do friends of the bridegroom refuse to eat at the wedding feast? Should they be sad while he is with them? ²⁰ But some day he will be taken away from them, and then they will mourn. ²¹ Besides, going without food is part of the old way of doing things.^[b] It is like patching an old garment with unshrunk cloth! What happens? The patch pulls away and leaves the hole worse than before. ²² You know better than to put new wine into old wineskins. They would burst. The wine would be spilled out and the wineskins ruined. New wine needs fresh wineskins.”