Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

2 Sound the alarm in Jerusalem! Let the blast of the warning trumpet be heard upon my holy mountain! Let everyone tremble in fear, for the day of the Lord’s judgment approaches.

² It is a day of darkness and gloom, of black clouds and thick darkness. What a mighty army! It covers the mountains like night! How great, how powerful these “people” are! The likes of them have not been seen before, and never will again throughout the generations of the world!

¹² That is why the Lord says, “Turn to me now, while there is time. Give me all your hearts. Come with fasting, weeping, mourning. ¹³ Let your remorse tear at your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful. He is not easily angered; he is full of kindness and anxious not to punish you.

¹⁴ Who knows? Perhaps even yet he will decide to leave you alone and give you a blessing instead of his terrible curse. Perhaps he will give you so much that you can offer your grain and wine to the Lord as before!

¹⁵ Sound the trumpet in Zion! Call a fast and gather all the people together for a solemn meeting. ¹⁶ Bring everyone—the elders, the children, and even the babies. Call the bridegroom from his quarters and the bride from her privacy.

¹⁷ The priests, the ministers of God, will stand between the people and the altar, weeping; and they will pray, “Spare your people, O our God; don’t let the heathen rule them, for they belong to you. Don’t let them be disgraced by the taunts of the heathen who say, ‘Where is this God of theirs? How weak and helpless he must be!’”

58 Shout with the voice of a trumpet blast; tell my people of their sins! ² Yet they act so pious! They come to the Temple every day and are so delighted to hear the reading of my laws—just as though they would obey them—just as though they don’t despise the commandments of their God! How anxious they are to worship correctly; oh, how they love the Temple services!

³ “We have fasted before you,” they say. “Why aren’t you impressed? Why don’t you see our sacrifices? Why don’t you hear our prayers? We have done much penance, and you don’t even notice it!” I’ll tell you why! Because you are living in evil pleasure even while you are fasting, and you keep right on oppressing your workers. ⁴ Look, what good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarreling? This kind of fasting will never get you anywhere with me. ⁵ Is this what I want—this doing of penance and bowing like reeds in the wind, putting on sackcloth and covering yourselves with ashes? Is this what you call fasting?

⁶ No, the kind of fast I want is that you stop oppressing those who work for you and treat them fairly and give them what they earn. ⁷ I want you to share your food with the hungry and bring right into your own homes those who are helpless, poor, and destitute. Clothe those who are cold, and don’t hide from relatives who need your help.

⁸ If you do these things, God will shed his own glorious light upon you. He will heal you; your godliness will lead you forward, goodness will be a shield before you, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. ⁹ Then, when you call, the Lord will answer. “Yes, I am here,” he will quickly reply. All you need to do is to stop oppressing the weak and stop making false accusations and spreading vicious rumors!

¹⁰ Feed the hungry! Help those in trouble! Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you shall be as bright as day. ¹¹ And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy you with all good things, and keep you healthy too; and you will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring. ¹² Your sons will rebuild the long-deserted ruins of your cities, and you will be known as “The People Who Rebuild Their Walls and Cities.”

51 Written after Nathan the prophet had come to inform David of God’s judgment against him because of his adultery with Bathsheba, and his murder of Uriah, her husband.

O loving and kind God, have mercy. Have pity upon me and take away the awful stain of my transgressions. ² Oh, wash me, cleanse me from this guilt. Let me be pure again. ³ For I admit my shameful deed—it haunts me day and night. ⁴ It is against you and you alone I sinned and did this terrible thing. You saw it all, and your sentence against me is just. ⁵ But I was born a sinner, yes, from the moment my mother conceived me. ⁶ You deserve honesty from the heart; yes, utter sincerity and truthfulness. Oh, give me this wisdom.

⁷ Sprinkle me with the cleansing blood^[a] and I shall be clean again. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. ⁸ And after you have punished me, give me back my joy again. ⁹ Don’t keep looking at my sins—erase them from your sight. ¹⁰ Create in me a new, clean heart, O God, filled with clean thoughts and right desires. ¹¹ Don’t toss me aside, banished forever from your presence. Don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. ¹² Restore to me again the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you. ¹³ Then I will teach your ways to other sinners, and they—guilty like me—will repent and return to you. ^14-15 Don’t sentence me to death. O my God, you alone can rescue me. Then I will sing of your forgiveness,^[b] for my lips will be unsealed—oh, how I will praise you.

¹⁶ You don’t want penance;^[c] if you did, how gladly I would do it! You aren’t interested in offerings burned before you on the altar. ¹⁷ It is a broken spirit you want—remorse and penitence. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not ignore.

²⁰ We are Christ’s ambassadors. God is using us to speak to you: we beg you, as though Christ himself were here pleading with you, receive the love he offers you—be reconciled to God. ²¹ For God took the sinless Christ and poured into him our sins. Then, in exchange, he poured God’s goodness into us!^[a]

6 As God’s partners, we beg you not to toss aside this marvelous message of God’s great kindness. ² For God says, “Your cry came to me at a favorable time, when the doors of welcome were wide open. I helped you on a day when salvation was being offered.” Right now God is ready to welcome you. Today he is ready to save you.

³ We try to live in such a way that no one will ever be offended or kept back from finding the Lord by the way we act, so that no one can find fault with us and blame it on the Lord. ⁴ In fact, in everything we do we try to show that we are true ministers of God.

We patiently endure suffering and hardship and trouble of every kind. ⁵ We have been beaten, put in jail, faced angry mobs, worked to exhaustion, stayed awake through sleepless nights of watching, and gone without food. ⁶ We have proved ourselves to be what we claim by our wholesome lives and by our understanding of the Gospel and by our patience. We have been kind and truly loving and filled with the Holy Spirit. ⁷ We have been truthful, with God’s power helping us in all we do. All of the godly man’s arsenal—weapons of defense, and weapons of attack—have been ours.

⁸ We stand true to the Lord whether others honor us or despise us, whether they criticize us or commend us. We are honest, but they call us liars.

⁹ The world ignores us, but we are known to God; we live close to death, but here we are, still very much alive. We have been injured but kept from death. ¹⁰ Our hearts ache, but at the same time we have the joy of the Lord. We are poor, but we give rich spiritual gifts to others. We own nothing, and yet we enjoy everything.

6 “Take care! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired, for then you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. ² When you give a gift to a beggar, don’t shout about it as the hypocrites do—blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I tell you in all earnestness, they have received all the reward they will ever get. ³ But when you do a kindness to someone, do it secretly—don’t tell your left hand what your right hand is doing. ⁴ And your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you.

⁵ “And now about prayer. When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who pretend piety by praying publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. Truly, that is all the reward they will ever get. ⁶ But when you pray, go away by yourself, all alone, and shut the door behind you and pray to your Father secretly, and your Father, who knows your secrets, will reward you.

¹⁶ “And now about fasting. When you fast, declining your food for a spiritual purpose, don’t do it publicly, as the hypocrites do, who try to look wan and disheveled so people will feel sorry for them. Truly, that is the only reward they will ever get. ¹⁷ But when you fast, put on festive clothing, ¹⁸ so that no one will suspect you are hungry, except your Father who knows every secret. And he will reward you.

¹⁹ “Don’t store up treasures here on earth where they can erode away or may be stolen. ²⁰ Store them in heaven where they will never lose their value and are safe from thieves. ²¹ If your profits are in heaven, your heart will be there too.