Not Even Your Brothers, Jesus?--Mar. 7, 2015

[From March 26, 2011 archive]

If not even your brothers believed in you,

how can we, dear Jesus?  If we believed,

could we justify the way we neglect the

cause of the orphan, rights of the needy?

We have become great and rich, sleek  

and fat--become caged birds that dwell

in houses of treachery--and we wonder,

what would it mean, to believe in you?

Though we cannot justify a belief in you,

in a parched land our souls thirst for you;

we stretch out our hands for your mercy.

Our justification must come through you.

Lectionary Readings

Ps. 43; 149; 31; 143

Jer. 5:20-31

Rom 3:19-31

John 7:1-13

Selected Verses

Ps. 143:6

I stretch out my hands to you;
          my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.                   

                                                                        Selah

Jer. 5:27-28

Like a cage full of birds,
            their houses are full of treachery;
therefore they have become great and rich, 

            they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no limits in deeds of wickedness;
            they do not judge with justice
the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper,
            and they do not defend the rights of the needy. 

Rom 3:26

…it was to prove at the present time that [God] himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

John 7:5

(For not even [Jesus'] brothers believed in him.)