Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁴ Encourage those who are afraid. Tell them, “Be strong, fear not, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you.” ⁵ And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf. ⁶ The lame man will leap up like a deer, and those who could not speak will shout and sing! Springs will burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. ⁷ The parched ground will become a pool, with springs of water in the thirsty land. Where desert jackals lived, there will be reeds and rushes!

146 Praise the Lord! Yes, really praise him! ² I will praise him as long as I live, yes, even with my dying breath.

³ Don’t look to men for help; their greatest leaders fail; ⁴ for every man must die. His breathing stops, life ends, and in a moment all he planned for himself is ended. ⁵ But happy is the man who has the God of Jacob as his helper, whose hope is in the Lord his God— ⁶ the God who made both earth and heaven, the seas and everything in them. He is the God who keeps every promise, ⁷ who gives justice to the poor and oppressed and food to the hungry. He frees the prisoners ⁸ and opens the eyes of the blind; he lifts the burdens from those bent down beneath their loads. For the Lord loves good men. ⁹ He protects the immigrants and cares for the orphans and widows. But he turns topsy-turvy the plans of the wicked.

¹⁰ The Lord will reign forever. O Jerusalem,^[a] your God is King in every generation! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

2 Dear brothers, how can you claim that you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, if you show favoritism to rich people and look down on poor people?

² If a man comes into your church dressed in expensive clothes and with valuable gold rings on his fingers, and at the same moment another man comes in who is poor and dressed in threadbare clothes, ³ and you make a lot of fuss over the rich man and give him the best seat in the house and say to the poor man, “You can stand over there if you like or else sit on the floor”—well, ⁴ judging a man by his wealth shows that you are guided by wrong motives.

⁵ Listen to me, dear brothers: God has chosen poor people to be rich in faith, and the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs, for that is the gift God has promised to all those who love him. ⁶ And yet, of the two strangers, you have despised the poor man. Don’t you realize that it is usually the rich men who pick on you and drag you into court? ⁷ And all too often they are the ones who laugh at Jesus Christ, whose noble name you bear.

⁸ Yes indeed, it is good when you truly obey our Lord’s command, “You must love and help your neighbors just as much as you love and take care of yourself.” ⁹ But you are breaking this law of our Lord’s when you favor the rich and fawn over them; it is sin.

¹⁰ And the person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who has broken every law there is.

¹¹ For the God who said you must not marry a woman who already has a husband also said you must not murder, so even though you have not broken the marriage laws by committing adultery, but have murdered someone, you have entirely broken God’s laws and stand utterly guilty before him.

¹² You will be judged on whether or not you are doing what Christ wants you to. So watch what you do and what you think; ¹³ for there will be no mercy to those who have shown no mercy. But if you have been merciful, then God’s mercy toward you will win out over his judgment against you.

¹⁴ Dear brothers, what’s the use of saying that you have faith and are Christians if you aren’t proving it by helping others? Will that kind of faith save anyone? ¹⁵ If you have a friend who is in need of food and clothing, ¹⁶ and you say to him, “Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat hearty,” and then don’t give him clothes or food, what good does that do?

¹⁷ So you see, it isn’t enough just to have faith. You must also do good to prove that you have it. Faith that doesn’t show itself by good works is no faith at all—it is dead and useless.

²⁴ Then he left Galilee and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon,^[a] and tried to keep it a secret that he was there, but couldn’t. For as usual the news of his arrival spread fast.

²⁵ Right away a woman came to him whose little girl was possessed by a demon. She had heard about Jesus and now she came and fell at his feet, ²⁶ and pled with him to release her child from the demon’s control. (But she was Syrophoenician—a “despised Gentile”!)

²⁷ Jesus told her, “First I should help my own family—the Jews.^[b] It isn’t right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

²⁸ She replied, “That’s true, sir, but even the puppies under the table are given some scraps from the children’s plates.”

²⁹ “Good!” he said. “You have answered well—so well that I have healed your little girl. Go on home, for the demon has left her!”

³⁰ And when she arrived home, her little girl was lying quietly in bed, and the demon was gone.

³¹ From Tyre he went to Sidon, then back to the Sea of Galilee by way of the Ten Towns. ³² A deaf man with a speech impediment was brought to him, and everyone begged Jesus to lay his hands on the man and heal him.

³³ Jesus led him away from the crowd and put his fingers into the man’s ears, then spat and touched the man’s tongue with the spittle. ³⁴ Then, looking up to heaven, he sighed and commanded, “Open!” ³⁵ Instantly the man could hear perfectly and speak plainly!

³⁶ Jesus told the crowd not to spread the news, but the more he forbade them, the more they made it known, ³⁷ for they were overcome with utter amazement. Again and again they said, “Everything he does is wonderful; he even corrects deafness and stammering!”