Monday 8 November 2021 DAILY LECTIONARY

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Monday 8 November 2021
DAILY LECTIONARY

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Nehemiah 9:1-25

Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were
assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with dust on their
heads.* Then those of Israelite descent separated themselves from all
foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of
their ancestors. They stood up in their place and read from the book
of the law of the Lord their God for a fourth part of the day, and for
another fourth they made confession and worshipped the Lord their God.
Then Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and
Chenani stood on the stairs of the Levites and cried out with a loud
voice to the Lord their God. Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani,
Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said,
‘Stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to
everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all
blessing and praise.’

 And Ezra said:* ‘You are the Lord, you alone; you have made
heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all
that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. To all of them you
give life, and the host of heaven worships you. You are the Lord, the
God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and
gave him the name Abraham; and you found his heart faithful before
you, and made with him a covenant to give to his descendants the land
of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the
Jebusite, and the Girgashite; and you have fulfilled your promise, for
you are righteous.

 ‘And you saw the distress of our ancestors in Egypt and heard
their cry at the Red Sea.* You performed signs and wonders against
Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land, for you
knew that they acted insolently against our ancestors. You made a name
for yourself, which remains to this day. And you divided the sea
before them, so that they passed through the sea on dry land, but you
threw their pursuers into the depths, like a stone into mighty waters.
Moreover, you led them by day with a pillar of cloud, and by night
with a pillar of fire, to give them light on the way in which they
should go. You came down also upon Mount Sinai, and spoke with them
from heaven, and gave them right ordinances and true laws, good
statutes and commandments, and you made known your holy sabbath to
them and gave them commandments and statutes and a law through your
servant Moses. For their hunger you gave them bread from heaven, and
for their thirst you brought water for them out of the rock, and you
told them to go in to possess the land that you swore to give them.

 ‘But they and our ancestors acted presumptuously and stiffened
their necks and did not obey your commandments; they refused to obey,
and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them; but
they stiffened their necks and determined to return to their slavery
in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and you did not forsake
them. Even when they had cast an image of a calf for themselves and
said, “This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt”, and had
committed great blasphemies, you in your great mercies did not forsake
them in the wilderness; the pillar of cloud that led them in the way
did not leave them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night that gave
them light on the way by which they should go. You gave your good
spirit to instruct them, and did not withhold your manna from their
mouths, and gave them water for their thirst. For forty years you
sustained them in the wilderness so that they lacked nothing; their
clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell. And you gave
them kingdoms and peoples, and allotted to them every corner,* so they
took possession of the land of King Sihon of Heshbon and the land of
King Og of Bashan. You multiplied their descendants like the stars of
heaven, and brought them into the land that you had told their
ancestors to enter and possess. So the descendants went in and
possessed the land, and you subdued before them the inhabitants of the
land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hands, with their kings
and the peoples of the land, to do with them as they pleased. And they
captured fortress cities and a rich land, and took possession of
houses filled with all sorts of goods, hewn cisterns, vineyards, olive
orchards, and fruit trees in abundance; so they ate, and were filled
and became fat, and delighted in your great goodness.
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Revelation 18:1-8

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great
authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendour. He called
out with a mighty voice,
‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
   It has become a dwelling-place of demons,
a haunt of every foul spirit,
   a haunt of every foul bird,
   a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.* 
For all the nations have drunk*
   of the wine of the wrath of her fornication,
and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,
   and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power* of
her luxury.’

 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,
‘Come out of her, my people,
   so that you do not take part in her sins,
and so that you do not share in her plagues; 
for her sins are heaped high as heaven,
   and God has remembered her iniquities. 
Render to her as she herself has rendered,
   and repay her double for her deeds;
   mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed. 
As she glorified herself and lived luxuriously,
   so give her a like measure of torment and grief.
Since in her heart she says,
   “I rule as a queen;
I am no widow,
   and I will never see grief”, 
therefore her plagues will come in a single day—
   pestilence and mourning and famine—
and she will be burned with fire;
   for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.’
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Matthew 15:1-20
 
Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said,
‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they
do not wash their hands before they eat.’ He answered them, ‘And
why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your
tradition? For God said,* “Honour your father and your mother,”
and, “Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.”
But you say that whoever tells father or mother, “Whatever support
you might have had from me is given to God”,* then that person need
not honour the father.* So, for the sake of your tradition, you make
void the word* of God. You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about
you when he said: 
“This people honours me with their lips,
   but their hearts are far from me; 
in vain do they worship me,
   teaching human precepts as doctrines.” ’
 Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and
understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person,
but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’ Then the
disciples approached and said to him, ‘Do you know that the
Pharisees took offence when they heard what you said?’ He answered,
‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be
uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind.* And if
one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.’ But
Peter said to him, ‘Explain this parable to us.’ Then he said,
‘Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that
whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the
sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and
this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions,
murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These
are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not
defile.’
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Morning Psalms: Psalm 80

Psalm 80

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel,
   you who lead Joseph like a flock!
You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth 
   before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh.
Stir up your might,
   and come to save us! 

Restore us, O God;
   let your face shine, that we may be saved. 

O Lord God of hosts,
   how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers? 
You have fed them with the bread of tears,
   and given them tears to drink in full measure. 
You make us the scorn* of our neighbours;
   our enemies laugh among themselves. 

Restore us, O God of hosts;
   let your face shine, that we may be saved. 

You brought a vine out of Egypt;
   you drove out the nations and planted it. 
You cleared the ground for it;
   it took deep root and filled the land. 
The mountains were covered with its shade,
   the mighty cedars with its branches; 
it sent out its branches to the sea,
   and its shoots to the River. 
Why then have you broken down its walls,
   so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? 
The boar from the forest ravages it,
   and all that move in the field feed on it. 

Turn again, O God of hosts;
   look down from heaven, and see;
have regard for this vine, 
   the stock that your right hand planted.* 
They have burned it with fire, they have cut it down;*
   may they perish at the rebuke of your countenance. 
But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand,
   the one whom you made strong for yourself. 
Then we will never turn back from you;
   give us life, and we will call on your name. 

Restore us, O Lord God of hosts;
   let your face shine, that we may be saved.
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Evening Psalms: Psalm 77

Psalm 77

I cry aloud to God,
   aloud to God, that he may hear me. 
In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
   in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;
   my soul refuses to be comforted. 
I think of God, and I moan;
   I meditate, and my spirit faints.
          Selah 

You keep my eyelids from closing;
   I am so troubled that I cannot speak. 
I consider the days of old,
   and remember the years of long ago. 
I commune* with my heart in the night;
   I meditate and search my spirit:* 
‘Will the Lord spurn for ever,
   and never again be favourable? 
Has his steadfast love ceased for ever?
   Are his promises at an end for all time? 
Has God forgotten to be gracious?
   Has he in anger shut up his compassion?’
          Selah 
And I say, ‘It is my grief
   that the right hand of the Most High has changed.’ 

I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord;
   I will remember your wonders of old. 
I will meditate on all your work,
   and muse on your mighty deeds. 
Your way, O God, is holy.
   What god is so great as our God? 
You are the God who works wonders;
   you have displayed your might among the peoples. 
With your strong arm you redeemed your people,
   the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.
          Selah 

When the waters saw you, O God,
   when the waters saw you, they were afraid;
   the very deep trembled. 
The clouds poured out water;
   the skies thundered;
   your arrows flashed on every side. 
The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind;
   your lightnings lit up the world;
   the earth trembled and shook. 
Your way was through the sea,
   your path, through the mighty waters;
   yet your footprints were unseen. 
You led your people like a flock
   by the hand of Moses and Aaron.
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