Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Psalm 128
The Happy Home of the Faithful
A Song of Ascents.
1 Happy is everyone who fears the Lord,
who walks in his ways.(A)
2 You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands;
you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you.(B)
3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots
around your table.(C)
4 Thus shall the man be blessed
who fears the Lord.
The Glorious New Creation
17 For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.(A)
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating,
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy
and its people as a delight.(B)
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it
or the cry of distress.(C)
20 No more shall there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime,
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.(D)
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.(E)
22 They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat,
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.(F)
23 They shall not labor in vain
or bear children for calamity,[a]
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord—
and their descendants as well.(G)
24 Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.(H)
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together;
the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord.(I)
6 So also David pronounces a blessing on those to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works:
7 “Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven
and whose sins are covered;(A)
8 blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin.”
9 Is this blessing, then, pronounced only on the circumcised or also on the uncircumcised? We say, “Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.” 10 How then was it reckoned to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith[a] while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe[b] without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them,(B) 12 and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised who are not only circumcised but follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised.
God’s Promise Realized through Faith
13 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.(C)
New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.