Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

106 Hallelujah! Thank you, Lord! How good you are! Your love for us continues on forever. ² Who can ever list the glorious miracles of God? Who can ever praise him half enough?

³ Happiness comes to those who are fair to others and are always just and good.

⁴ Remember me too, O Lord, while you are blessing and saving your people. ⁵ Let me share in your chosen ones’ prosperity and rejoice in all their joys, and receive the glory you give to them.

⁶ Both we and our fathers have sinned so much.

^19-20 For they preferred a statue of an ox that eats grass to the glorious presence of God himself. ^21-22 Thus they despised their Savior who had done such mighty miracles in Egypt and at the Red Sea. ²³ So the Lord declared he would destroy them. But Moses, his chosen one, stepped into the breach between the people and their God and begged him to turn from his wrath and not destroy them.

¹² And the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me into the mountain, and remain until I give you the laws and commandments I have written on tablets of stone, so that you can teach the people from them.” ¹³ So Moses and Joshua, his assistant, went up into the mountain of God.

¹⁴ He told the elders, “Stay here and wait for us until we come back; if there are any problems while I am gone, consult with Aaron and Hur.”

¹⁵ Then Moses went up the mountain and disappeared into the cloud at the top. ¹⁶ And the glory of the Lord rested upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days; the seventh day he called to Moses from the cloud. ¹⁷ Those at the bottom of the mountain saw the awesome sight: the glory of the Lord on the mountaintop looked like a raging fire. ¹⁸ And Moses disappeared into the cloud-covered mountaintop, and was there for forty days and forty nights.

¹⁸ John’s disciples and the Jewish leaders sometimes fasted, that is, went without food as part of their religion. One day some people came to Jesus and asked why his disciples didn’t do this too.

¹⁹ Jesus replied, “Do friends of the bridegroom refuse to eat at the wedding feast? Should they be sad while he is with them? ²⁰ But some day he will be taken away from them, and then they will mourn. ²¹ Besides, going without food is part of the old way of doing things.^[a] It is like patching an old garment with unshrunk cloth! What happens? The patch pulls away and leaves the hole worse than before. ²² You know better than to put new wine into old wineskins. They would burst. The wine would be spilled out and the wineskins ruined. New wine needs fresh wineskins.”