Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
A psalm of David when he was in the Desert of Judah.
63 God, you are my God.
I seek you with all my heart.
With all my strength I thirst for you
in this dry desert
where there isn’t any water.
2 I have seen you in the sacred tent.
There I have seen your power and your glory.
3 Your love is better than life.
So I will bring glory to you with my lips.
4 I will praise you as long as I live.
I will call on your name when I lift up my hands in prayer.
5 I will be as satisfied as if I had eaten the best food there is.
I will sing praise to you with my mouth.
6 As I lie on my bed I remember you.
I think of you all night long.
7 Because you have helped me,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
8 I hold on to you tightly.
Your powerful right hand takes good care of me.
The Song of the Vineyard
5 I will sing a song for the Lord.
He is the one I love.
It’s a song about his vineyard Israel.
The one I love had a vineyard.
It was on a hillside that had rich soil.
2 He dug up the soil and removed its stones.
He planted the very best vines in it.
He built a lookout tower there.
He also cut out a winepress for it.
Then he kept looking for a crop of good grapes.
But the vineyard produced only bad fruit.
3 So the Lord said, “People of Jerusalem and Judah,
you be the judge between me and my vineyard.
4 What more could I have done for my vineyard?
I did everything I could.
I kept looking for a crop of good grapes.
So why did it produce only bad ones?
5 Now I will tell you
what I am going to do to my vineyard.
I will take away its fence.
And the vineyard will be destroyed.
I will break down its wall.
And people will walk all over my vineyard.
6 I will turn my vineyard into a dry and empty desert.
It will not be pruned or taken care of.
Thorns and bushes will grow there.
I will command the clouds
not to rain on it.”
7 The vineyard of the Lord who rules over all
is the nation of Israel.
The people of Judah
are the vines he took delight in.
He kept looking for them to do what is fair.
But all he saw was blood being spilled.
He kept looking for them to do what is right.
But all he heard were cries of suffering.
A Tree and Its Fruit
43 “A good tree doesn’t bear bad fruit. And a bad tree doesn’t bear good fruit. 44 You can tell each tree by the kind of fruit it bears. People do not pick figs from thorns. And they don’t pick grapes from bushes. 45 A good man says good things. These come from the good that is stored up in his heart. An evil man says evil things. These come from the evil that is stored up in his heart. A person’s mouth says everything that is in their heart.
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