This blog provides a meditation on the Episcopal daily readings along with a headline from world news
Wild Boar helps ‘roo escape zoo in Germany 
Psalm 101
A Sovereign’s Pledge of Integrity and Justice
Of David. A Psalm.
1 I will sing of loyalty and of justice; to you, O Lord, I will sing.
2 I will study the way that is blameless. When shall I attain it?
I will walk with integrity of heart within my house;
3 I will not set before my eyes anything that is base.
I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me.
4 Perverseness of heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil.
5 One who secretly slanders a neighbour I will destroy.
a haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not tolerate.
6 I will look with favour on the faithful in the land, so that they may live with me;
whoever walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me.
7 No one who practises deceit shall remain in my house;
no one who utters lies shall continue in my presence.
8 Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land,
cutting off all evildoers from the city of the Lord.
The Moderator of the Church of Scotland presents the new Queen with a bible, “The Royal Law”
The psalmist writes this song for a new king or perhaps for an ideal king. In it are set out the principles which should guide the rule of God’s people. It could be seen as expressing the rules of household management of God’s house. (See my article on this topic under Bible Blog OIKOS). These rules apply because the king’s house (his dynasty) is also God’s house. He must rule in God’s way. The king’s capacity to rule the land comes from the INTEGRITY of his own family life and the life of his court. This integrity is guarded by his determination not to give house room to anything “base.” The base luxury of many of Israel’s kings was notorious: idolatries of sexual possession, material wealth and foreign idols had been common. The true king will banish all these from his house.
Possibly one of our besetting moral confusions is to imagine we can remain just people while indulging our personal idolatries or permitting ourselves base pleasures. To think otherwise is to invite derision for being puritan. I have a life-long tatste for base pleasures (as well as wholesome pleasures) but I do not kid myself that their indulgence, against which I’ve always struggled, has no effect on my capacity to serve my neighbour. The psalm is right: personal and public moralities are inextricably linked: the good tree bears good fruit.
John 4:1-26
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
4Now when Jesus* learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’—2 although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized—3he left Judea and started back to Galilee.4But he had to go through Samaria.5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’.8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)9The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)*10Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’15The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’
16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’17The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”;18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’19The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet.20Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you* say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’21Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’25The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’26Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,*the one who is speaking to you.’
by Veronese
This story is told with the stories of the patriarchs of Israel much in mind-especially the narratives of “meetings at the well” in which the potential bridegroom or his meesenger, encounters the woman who is to be the bride. Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes, of whom the Samartitans were once part, is also a presence in the story. John has spoke of Jesus as the bridegroom of Israel, the Messiah, and now Jesus takes the role of the bridegroom in wooing this woman who represents a heretical form of Judaism (the five rejected husbands are the five books of the Torah). The well is deep because it contains the age-old traditions of Israel, but Jesus tells the woman that the old tradition cannot truly meet her need for living water. The teaching of Jesus, which leads the hearer to contact with God’s life, is compared to the fresh, bubbling water of a spring. The woman tries to sideline the discussion into the divisive issue of where the holy God is to be worshipped, but Jesus will have none of it. God is to be worshipped in “spirit” that is, in recognition of God’s freedom from all human religion; and in “truth” that is, in UN-concealment, in the utter nakedness of human faith. This is the message that the Messiah brings.
The story, like others in John emphasises the need to clear away the religious and cutural clutter which prevents us meeting the one God. It is radical in its assertion that these diversions cannot lead us home. But the one who brings this message to us does so in love: he is the bridegroom of God’s people.
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