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The intent of Pilgrim Processing is to provide commentary on the Daily Lectionary from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The format for the comment is Old Testament Lesson first, Gospel, and Epistle with a portion of one of the Psalms for the day as a prayer at the end.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

18 October 2015


If the exiles in Babylon thought they would return soon, that the Lord would quickly deliver them from Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah’s letter disabused them of that notion.  We use the promises of verse 11 as our hope in trial but the original audience would not have seen these as personally hopeful.  They were going to be here in Babylon for seventy years, nearly all this group would never see Jerusalem again, they would be like the generation who perished in the wilderness and never entered the Promised Land.  Jeremiah says, settle in, it’s going to be a while, live life as you would if you were here.  Apparently, the prophets and diviners among the exiles were giving a different message and Jeremiah is quick to put down the hopes they may have engendered.  The promises of verse 11 are contingent on their turning back to Him in truth and when they do, the Lord will glorious restore them to the Land.  If you were in their shoes, knowing that you were going to spend the rest of your life in “exile”, whatever that may mean in your life, would you still hold onto the promises as dearly in hope?  You should, even if they are never realized in your life.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus sends out the disciples as an “advance team” to the places Jesus is about to go.  They are to proclaim the coming of the kingdom in both word and powerful deeds to prepare the place for His coming.  This would have been a familiar thing at the time, for heralds would have gone ahead of the king to the places he was preparing to visit to get the people and the place ready to receive their king with fanfare and gladness.  The seventy-two go about the mission and then come back overjoyed and, it appears, quite surprised at what has happened through them. Jesus says that they aren’t to get attached to the works, these aren’t the truly important thing.  The thing to rejoice over is the reality that they have eternal life, “that your names are written in heaven.”  These things will pass away, the things eternal are the things of real significance.


Lydia is a person of peace, the kind of person Jesus spoke of in our Gospel reading.  Paul got a vision and a word from a “man of Macedonia” but when they went to Philippi they found no men, no synagogue, only a place of prayer by the river, a place of women not men. The requirement for the establishment of a synagogue was that there be ten faithful men in the place else it was thought to be subject to judgment as Sodom and Gomorrah where that number of faithful men could not be found.  God has faithful people, people of peace, prepared all over the world, but who will go to them as Paul did?  We are to live as exiles here, prepared to go wherever He sends us to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom.  As the people settled in Babylon, men like Daniel and his friends became witnesses to the kings and his “magicians”, the descendants of whom we know as the wise men who visited Jesus after His birth.  It is important that we always be proclaiming the Gospel lest we miss an opportunity to see it take root.

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