Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

The Lord Our Shepherd^[a]

¹⁷ Listen to me, everyone! There are terrors, pits, and traps waiting for you. ¹⁸ Anyone who tries to escape from the terror will fall in a pit, and anyone who escapes from the pit will be caught in a trap. Torrents of rain will pour from the sky, and earth's foundations will shake. ¹⁹ The earth will crack and shatter and split open. ²⁰ The earth itself will stagger like a drunk, sway like a hut in a storm. The world is weighed down by its sins; it will collapse and never rise again.

²¹ A time is coming when the Lord will punish the powers above and the rulers of the earth. ²² God will crowd kings together like prisoners in a pit. He will shut them in prison until the time of their punishment comes. ²³ The moon will grow dark, and the sun will no longer shine, for the Lord Almighty will be king. He will rule in Jerusalem on Mount Zion, and the leaders of the people will see his glory.

The Question about Fasting^(A)

¹⁸ On one occasion the followers of John the Baptist and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came to Jesus and asked him, “Why is it that the disciples of John the Baptist and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but yours do not?”

¹⁹ Jesus answered, “Do you expect the guests at a wedding party to go without food? Of course not! As long as the bridegroom is with them, they will not do that. ²⁰ But the day will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.

²¹ “No one uses a piece of new cloth to patch up an old coat, because the new patch will shrink and tear off some of the old cloth, making an even bigger hole. ²² Nor does anyone pour new wine into used wineskins, because the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins will be ruined. Instead, new wine must be poured into fresh wineskins.”