Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Psalm 78
God’s Goodness and Israel’s Ingratitude
A Maskil of Asaph.
1 Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth.(A)
2 I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,(B)
3 things that we have heard and known,
that our ancestors have told us.(C)
4 We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might
and the wonders that he has done.(D)
52 Then he led out his people like sheep
and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.(A)
53 He led them in safety so that they were not afraid,
but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.(B)
54 And he brought them to his holy hill,
to the mountain that his right hand had won.(C)
55 He drove out nations before them;
he apportioned them for a possession
and settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.(D)
56 Yet they tested the Most High God
and rebelled against him.
They did not observe his decrees(E)
57 but turned away and were faithless like their ancestors;
they twisted like a treacherous bow.(F)
58 For they provoked him to anger with their high places;
they moved him to jealousy with their idols.(G)
59 When God heard, he was full of wrath,
and he utterly rejected Israel.
60 He abandoned his dwelling at Shiloh,
the tent where he dwelt among mortals,(H)
61 and delivered his power to captivity,
his glory to the hand of the foe.(I)
62 He gave his people to the sword
and vented his wrath on his heritage.(J)
63 Fire devoured their young men,
and their young women had no marriage song.(K)
64 Their priests fell by the sword,
and their widows made no lamentation.(L)
65 Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
like a warrior shouting because of wine.(M)
66 He put his adversaries to rout;
he put them to everlasting disgrace.(N)
67 He rejected the tent of Joseph;
he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim,
68 but he chose the tribe of Judah,
Mount Zion, which he loves.(O)
69 He built his sanctuary like the high heavens,
like the earth, which he has founded forever.(P)
70 He chose his servant David
and took him from the sheepfolds;(Q)
71 from tending the nursing ewes he brought him
to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
of Israel, his inheritance.(R)
72 With upright heart he tended them
and guided them with skillful hand.(S)
David and the Holy Bread
21 [a]David came to Nob to the priest Ahimelech. Ahimelech came trembling to meet David and said to him, “Why are you alone and no one with you?”(A) 2 David said to the priest Ahimelech, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘No one must know anything of the matter about which I send you and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment[b] with the young men for such and such a place. 3 Now then, what have you at hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here.” 4 The priest answered David, “I have no ordinary bread at hand, only holy bread—provided that the young men have kept themselves from women.”(B) 5 David answered the priest, “Indeed, women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition; the vessels of the young men are holy even when it is a common journey; how much more today will their vessels be holy?”(C) 6 So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.(D)
Jesus Heals on the Sabbath
5 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew[a] Beth-zatha,[b] which has five porticoes.(A) 3 In these lay many ill, blind, lame, and paralyzed people.[c] 5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7 The ill man answered him, “Sir,[d] I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am making my way someone else steps down ahead of me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”(B) 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Now that day was a Sabbath.(C) 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.”(D) 11 But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’ ” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in[e] the crowd that was there. 14 Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.”(E) 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”(F) 18 For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.(G)
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.