Sunday Music: Bach Cantata BWV 87
It is the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost. Today’s Bach cantata is “Bisher habt ihr nichts gebeten in meinem Namen” (Until now you have asked for nothing in My name):
Today’s Gospel reading is Matthew 21:23-32:
The Authority of Jesus Questioned
Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”
Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism — where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?”
They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin’ — we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.”
So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”
Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.
The Parable of the Two Sons
“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’
“‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.
“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.
The text of today’s piece is available here. It contains these words:
Forgive, o Father, our guilt
and yet have patience with us,
when we pray in devotion
and say: Lord, to Your commands,
(ah, speak no longer in parables,)
help us much more by intervening!
Happy listening! Soli Deo gloria.
Our church is working through the Book of Mark, and today’s lesson was Chapter 14. It was all well and good until we ran across verses 51 and 52, and it was like, what the heck was that (NIV):
What was Mark thinking, putting that in there, right after Gethsemane. Even the commentaries struggle with it.
Paul Montagu (39c87e) — 9/27/2020 @ 9:59 pm