Scripture lessons for September 1st

Supper at the House of Simon the Pharisee
(Ceramic dish, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC)

Jeremiah 2:4-13  Jeremiah addressed a spiritual crisis in Israel in the late 7th century BC.  After a long period of apostasy, the covenanted people had had very little contact with God.  Successful living in a productive new homeland had corrupted them. Worship of false gods had alienated them. Even the priests and the interpreters of the law had little knowledge of how to relate to God. Prophets were more familiar with Baal, the Canaanite fertility god. The rulers had done nothing but transgress. The nation had lost its moral compass and sense of commitment because it had exchanged its covenant relationship with God for a deity symbolized by idols.

Psalm 81:1, 10-16 (UMH 803)   This psalm begins in a joyful celebration which may have belonged in a festival liturgy celebrating the Israelites' deliverance from Egypt. It may also have been used at the thanksgiving Feast of Tabernacles. The latter part, however, sounds more like a prophetic oracle similar to Jeremiah's complaint that Israel had forsaken its religious roots in the worship of God.

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16    For Christians, ethical behavior is always rooted in faith. The dietary rules omitted from this reading make obvious reference to the strict Levitical Code, ostensibly given to Moses during the Israelites' forty years in the wilderness. The community to which this "Letter" was written may well have been predominantly Jewish struggling with the freedom of their new faith is Jesus of Nazareth, the true Messiah. 

Luke 14:1, 7-14 Jesus had been invited to the home of a leading Pharisee for the sabbath meal. He turned out to be an unwelcome guest. First, he nearly broke up the party by healing a man afflicted with dropsy (edema, excessive retention of fluids). To add to that offence, he gave the other guests a scolding that certainly must have shamed some if not all of them. Then he turned on his host to give him a further lecture about whom he ought to have invited to dinner.