Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
A song for those who go up to Jerusalem to worship the Lord.
123 I look up and pray to you.
Your throne is in heaven.
2 Slaves depend on their masters.
A female slave depends on the woman she works for.
In the same way, we depend on the Lord our God.
We wait for him to have mercy on us.
3 Lord, have mercy on us. Have mercy on us,
because people haven’t stopped making fun of us.
4 We have had to put up with a lot from those who are proud.
They were always laughing at us.
27 “Jeremiah, when you tell them all this, they will not listen to you. When you call out to them, they will not answer. 28 So say to them, ‘You are a nation that has not obeyed the Lord your God. You did not pay attention when you were corrected. Truth has died out. You do not tell the truth anymore.’ ”
29 The Lord says to the people of Jerusalem, “Cut off your hair. Throw it away. Sing a song of sadness on the bare hilltops. I am very angry with you. I have turned my back on you. I have deserted you.
The Valley of Death
30 “The people of Judah have done what is evil in my eyes,” announces the Lord. “They have set up statues of their gods. They have worshiped them in the house where my Name is. They have made my house ‘unclean.’ I hate those statues. 31 The people have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom. There they worship other gods. And there they sacrifice their children in the fire. That is something I did not command. It did not even enter my mind. 32 So watch out!” announces the Lord. “The days are coming when people will not call it Topheth anymore. And they will not call it the Valley of Ben Hinnom either. Instead, they will call it the Valley of Death. They will bury the dead bodies of some people in Topheth. But they will run out of room. 33 Then they will not be able to bury the bodies of other people there. So the bodies will become food for birds and wild animals. And no one will scare them away. 34 I will put an end to the sounds of joy and gladness. The voices of brides and grooms will not be heard anymore. There will be no sounds of joy in the towns of Judah. And there will be no joy in the streets of Jerusalem. The land will become a desert.
The Cost of Following Jesus
18 Jesus saw the crowd around him. So he gave his disciples orders to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. 19 Then a teacher of the law came to him. He said, “Teacher, I will follow you no matter where you go.”
20 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens. Birds have nests. But the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
21 Another follower said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
22 But Jesus told him, “Follow me. Let the dead bury their own dead.”
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