Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
8-9 I can’t wait to hear what he’ll say.
God’s about to pronounce his people well,
The holy people he loves so much,
so they’ll never again live like fools.
See how close his salvation is to those who fear him?
Our country is home base for Glory!
10-13 Love and Truth meet in the street,
Right Living and Whole Living embrace and kiss!
Truth sprouts green from the ground,
Right Living pours down from the skies!
Oh yes! God gives Goodness and Beauty;
our land responds with Bounty and Blessing.
Right Living strides out before him,
and clears a path for his passage.
Destroyed from the Roots Up
6-8 God’s Message:
“Because of the three great sins of Israel
—make that four—I’m not putting up with them any longer.
They buy and sell upstanding people.
People for them are only things—ways of making money.
They’d sell a poor man for a pair of shoes.
They’d sell their own grandmother!
They grind the penniless into the dirt,
shove the luckless into the ditch.
Everyone and his brother sleeps with the ‘sacred whore’—
a sacrilege against my Holy Name.
Stuff they’ve extorted from the poor
is piled up at the shrine of their god,
While they sit around drinking wine
they’ve conned from their victims.
9-11 “In contrast, I was always on your side.
I destroyed the Amorites who confronted you,
Amorites with the stature of great cedars,
tough as thick oaks.
I destroyed them from the top branches down.
I destroyed them from the roots up.
And yes, I’m the One who delivered you from Egypt,
led you safely through the wilderness for forty years
And then handed you the country of the Amorites
like a piece of cake on a platter.
I raised up some of your young men to be prophets,
set aside your best youth for training in holiness.
Isn’t this so, Israel?”
God’s Decree.
12-13 “But you made the youth-in-training break training,
and you told the young prophets, ‘Don’t prophesy!’
You’re too much for me.
I’m hard-pressed—to the breaking point.
I’m like a wagon piled high and overloaded,
creaking and groaning.
14-16 “When I go into action, what will you do?
There’s no place to run no matter how fast you run.
The strength of the strong won’t count.
Fighters won’t make it.
Skilled archers won’t make it.
Fast runners won’t make it.
Chariot drivers won’t make it.
Even the bravest of all your warriors
Won’t make it.
He’ll run off for dear life, stripped naked.”
God’s Decree.
2 I want you to realize that I continue to work as hard as I know how for you, and also for the Christians over at Laodicea. Not many of you have met me face-to-face, but that doesn’t make any difference. Know that I’m on your side, right alongside you. You’re not in this alone.
2-4 I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we’ve been shown the mystery! I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret.”
5 I’m a long way off, true, and you may never lay eyes on me, but believe me, I’m on your side, right beside you. I am delighted to hear of the careful and orderly ways you conduct your affairs, and impressed with the solid substance of your faith in Christ.
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson