Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
8 Listen! I hear the voice of my lover!
Look! He is coming!
He moves quickly across the mountains.
He runs across the hills.
9 My lover is like a gazelle or a young male deer.
Look! There he is!
He is standing behind our wall.
He is looking through the window.
He wants to see into the room.
10 My lover said this to me:
‘My beautiful friend, I love you.
Get up now and come with me.
11 Look! The winter time has finished.
The heavy rains have stopped.
12 Flowers are appearing everywhere.
It is now the season to sing happy songs.
We can hear the voices of doves around us.
13 New fruit is growing on the fig trees.
There are flowers on the vines,
and their sweet smell is in the air.
I love you, my beautiful friend.
Please get up now and come with me!’
This is a special song that the sons of Korah wrote for the music leader. Sing it to the music that they call ‘Lilies.’
A love song[a]
45 This beautiful song makes my heart very happy.
I will sing this special poem to the king.
My voice is ready to sing it very well,
as well as a clever writer can write with a pen.
2 You are the most handsome man that there is.
You speak kind words in a beautiful way.
And so God will continue to bless you for ever.
6 God, you will continue to rule as king
always and for ever.
Your authority as king will bring justice to your people.
7 You love people to do what is right,
and you hate anything that is evil.
So God, your God, has chosen you
to be greater than all your people.
He has put special olive oil on you,
to make you happy.
8 All your clothes have the beautiful smell
of myrrh, aloes and cassia.
You hear the music of stringed instruments
that comes from beautiful palaces.
That makes you happy.
9 The daughters of kings are among your visitors.
Your royal bride stands at your right hand.
She is wearing gold from Ophir.
17 Remember that every good gift comes to us from God. He only does what will help us. He is our Father in heaven. He made everything in the sky that gives us light. Those things do not give us the same light all the time. They change, but God does not change. 18 He chose to make us his children. He used his true message to do that. Because of that, we are like the first special gift that belongs to him from among everything that he has made.
Listen and do what God wants
19 Understand this, my Christian friends: We must all be careful to listen. We should not be too quick to speak. We should not get angry quickly. 20 God wants us to do what is right. But when someone is angry, they do not do those right things. 21 So stop doing disgusting things. Stay away from the wicked things that are all around you. God has put his message deep inside you, and it can save you. So be careful to accept that message.
22 But be careful to do what God says in his message. Do not only listen to it. Do not make that mistake! 23 You must obey God's message. Do not be like a man who quickly looks at his face in a mirror. 24 That man looks at himself, but then he goes away. He immediately forgets what he is really like. 25 So do not just listen to God's message and then forget it. It is a completely good message that makes people free. Look at it carefully and keep it in your mind. Do what it tells you to do. God will bless anyone who lives in that way.
26 Maybe some of you think that you are serving God well. But if you also say bad things about people, you do not serve God well at all. You are doing something bad even when you think you are doing good things. 27 If you want to serve God in a completely good way, do things like this: Help children who have no parents and women who are widows. Help them in their troubles. If you serve God our Father like that, he will be pleased with you. Do not let the bad people in this world make you bad too.
Jesus speaks to Pharisees and to some teachers of God's Law
7 A group of Pharisees and some teachers of God's Law came from Jerusalem to talk with Jesus. 2 They had been watching Jesus' disciples. Some of the disciples did not wash their hands before they ate a meal. That is to say, they did not wash them in the right way. 3 (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat food until they have washed their hands carefully. They do this because of what their leaders taught them. 4 When they come from the market place, they always wash themselves carefully. Unless they do this, they do not eat anything. Their leaders also gave them rules about how they should wash cups, pots and metal bowls.)
5 The Pharisees and the teachers of God's Law said to Jesus, ‘Your disciples do not obey the things that our leaders taught many years ago. Your disciples have not washed their hands in the right way. They are eating their food with unclean hands. That is not right.’
6 Jesus said to them, ‘You are hypocrites! What God's prophet Isaiah wrote about you long ago is true:
God says, “These people say good things about me,
but they do not really want to obey me.
7 They say that I am great.
But what they say has no purpose.
They teach their own rules, which I did not give to them.” ’[a]
8 Jesus then said, ‘You have stopped obeying God. Instead you obey the ideas that men teach.’
14 Jesus asked the crowd of people to come to him again. He said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, so that you can understand these things. 15 People do not become unclean because of things that go into their bodies from outside. They become unclean because of the things that come out from their minds.
21 Evil thoughts come out from people's minds. As a result they do wrong things. They have sex in wrong ways. They rob people. They murder people. 22 They have sex with another man's wife. They are greedy. They are cruel to other people. They deceive people. They live like wild animals. They are jealous of other people. They say bad things about other people. They are proud and foolish.
23 All these wrong things begin inside people's minds and then they come out. That is what makes them unclean.’
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