Lectionary.pro

A note on the calendar coincidence: November 1 is All Saints’ Day, which falls on a Sunday this year. Congregations observing All Saints with its own propers will use those readings. This guide covers Proper 26, the ordinary Year A readings for the Sunday, which the lectionary continues to track regardless of festival overlays. If your congregation is observing All Saints and you need materials for that observance, those can be found in our tentative new service (launching officially for Advent — we hope) at this link: Pericope Pro.The Gospel opens Matthew 23 — Jesus’s long and difficult address about the scribes and Pharisees. Our passage is the setup, closing before the Seven Woes begin. Jesus grants the scribes and Pharisees their teaching authority but exposes the gap between what they teach and what they do. They love honor, titles, best seats, and the burdens they lay on others. Jesus closes with the characteristic reversal: the greatest will be the servant; those who exalt themselves will be humbled.Track One brings us Israel crossing the Jordan under Joshua’s leadership. Track Two brings us Micah’s furious judgment against false prophets, rulers who hate good, and priests who teach for a price — the direct prophetic line Jesus is standing in when he confronts the scribes and Pharisees. The Epistle gives us Paul’s continued recollection of his ministry among the Thessalonians, where the gospel was received not as a human word but as the word of God.For preachers continuing a series: last week Jesus bound the two great commandments as inseparable, and the Pharisees dared ask no more questions. This week Jesus turns from them to the crowds and his disciples, and tells them exactly what was wrong with the religious leadership they had been watching. The Matthew arc is now very close to the end of the public teaching. The next scenes will be the full Seven Woes, the Olivet Discourse, and the beginning of the passion narrative.The ReadingsJoshua 3:7–17First Reading (Track One) — Crossing the JordanSummaryGod tells Joshua: today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses. The priests are instructed to carry the ark of the covenant into the Jordan. When the soles of their feet touch the waters, the waters will stop flowing. The priests obey. The waters pile up in a heap. Israel crosses on dry ground. The priests stand with the ark in the middle of the Jordan until the whole nation has passed over. The passage is a deliberate echo of the parting of the Red Sea — a new generation, a new crossing, a new entry into what God has promised.Key Ideas for Preaching* God’s word to Joshua is that his exaltation is for the sake of the people — “so that they may know that I will be with you.” The authority is not for Joshua’s benefit. It is for the people’s assurance that God is still with them. Where in your congregation might leadership have been imagined as a reward for the leader rather than as an assurance for the community?* The priests stand in the middle of the Jordan with the ark while the whole nation passes over. That is a specific pastoral image — the leaders hold the position of difficulty until everyone else has crossed safely. What might your sermon do with a picture of leadership that stays in the hard place until the people have been brought through?* The crossing is deliberately an echo of the Red Sea. The new generation receives its own version of the old deliverance. God’s past faithfulness becomes the ground of God’s present faithfulness. Where in your congregation might people be helped by hearing that what God did before is what God does now, in a new form, for a new generation?Significant Cautions* The conquest narratives that follow this passage are deeply difficult — texts that describe the destruction of Canaanite peoples with divine sanction. Preachers who preach the Jordan crossing without any awareness of what comes next hand the congregation a sanitized version of the story. You do not have to resolve the conquest problem in this sermon, but at least do not pretend it is not there.* “I will exalt you in the sight of all Israel” has sometimes been used by religious leaders to claim personal honor. The passage is explicit that the exaltation is for the people’s confidence, not the leader’s. Do not let it drift the other way.Psalm 107:1–7, 33–37The Psalm (Track One) — Give Thanks to the LordSummary“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” The psalm celebrates God’s rescuing of the redeemed from various troubles. The selected verses focus on wanderers in desert wastes who found no city, who were hungry and thirsty and whose soul fainted, and whom God led by a straight way to a city to live in. The second selection speaks of God’s power to turn rivers into desert and desert into pools of water — and to turn the hungry into a settled community.Key Ideas for Preaching* “His steadfast love endures forever” is the psalm’s refrain. Every rescue the psalm describes comes back to this one constant. What might your sermon do with the specific practice of returning again and again to the fixed point of God’s steadfast love when the particulars of our lives keep shifting?* The psalm pays close attention to specific kinds of trouble — wandering, hunger, thirst, fainting, exile. God’s rescue is not generic. It meets the specific need. Where in your congregation might people be helped by hearing that God’s help is not vague but specific to the trouble they are actually in?Significant Cautions* The psalm’s pattern of distress leading to rescue has sometimes been preached in a way that implies every faithful cry will be answered as the psalm describes. Many people cry and are not rescued in this life. Keep the psalm’s hope without making it a formula.Micah 3:5–12First Reading (Track Two) — Zion Shall Be Plowed as a FieldSummaryMicah’s judgment against the leaders of Israel. The prophets cry “Peace” when they have something to eat, and declare “war” against those who put nothing in their mouths. The sun will go down upon the prophets. The rulers of the house of Jacob abhor justice and pervert all equity. They build Zion with blood. The heads of Jerusalem give judgment for a bribe, the priests teach for a price, the prophets divine for money. And yet they all lean on the Lord, saying “Is not the Lord in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us.” Therefore, Micah thunders, because of you, Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins; and the mountain of the house a wooded height.Key Ideas for Preaching* Micah is a prophet standing within Israel, speaking Israel’s hard truth to Israel’s own leadership. Jesus in today’s Gospel is doing exactly the same thing. The two prophetic voices stand in one line. Where might your sermon help a congregation see that prophetic critique has always come from within the tradition, not from outside it?* The specific indictment is that the prophets, rulers, and priests are all for sale — they cry peace to those who pay them, judge for bribes, teach for a price, divine for money. The corruption Micah names is specifically the monetization of religious authority. Where in your congregation might this ancient indictment land uncomfortably in a contemporary religious landscape that also knows what happens when ministry is tied to money?* The leaders who are being judged are described as leaning on the Lord and saying “No disaster shall come upon us.” Their very confidence in God’s presence has become part of their corruption — a shield against hearing the prophetic word. What might your sermon do with a picture of religious confidence that has quietly become religious complacency?Significant Cautions* Micah’s judgment is harsh — Zion plowed as a field, Jerusalem a heap of ruins. These images have historically been used by Christian preachers to describe actual later destructions of Jerusalem as divine punishment of Jewish people. That reading is a distortion. Micah is calling his own people to return, not predicting their rejection.* “Prophets cry peace when they have something to eat” has been used in modern discourse to dismiss any preacher who disagrees with the critic. The specific target is leaders whose message bends to who is paying them, not leaders whose message happens not to please the preacher of the day.Psalm 43The Psalm (Track Two) — Send Out Your Light and Your TruthSummaryA short psalm of lament and hope. “Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people.” The psalmist asks why God has cast him off, why he must walk about mournfully because of the oppression of the enemy. He pleads: “O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill.” The psalm closes with the refrain also found in Psalm 42: “Why are you cast down, O my soul… Hope in God; for I shall again praise him.”Key Ideas for Preaching* “Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me.” The psalmist asks not for rescue first but for guidance — for God’s light and truth to be the two things that lead him forward. What might it look like to preach a prayer that asks for the right companions on the road rather than for the removal of the road?* “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” The psalmist addresses his own soul directly, as if his soul were a conversation partner. That practice of talking to one’s own soul has a long devotional history. Where in your congregation might people be helped by learning this specific spiritual practice — of addressing their own interior condition in prayer rather than being passively ruled by it?Significant Cautions* “Defend my cause against an ungodly people” has been used to recruit God for the preacher’s own enemies. The psalm is a prayer of a person in genuine distress, not a template for turning God into a weapon against those we dislike.1 Thessalonians 2:9–13The Epi

Jed Clampett, head of the fictional clan, The Beverly Hillbillies (sorry if you’re too young for the reference — or too old?) was quoted as saying, “Welll, doggies!” when faced with an unusually challenging or inspiring event. You’ll have to decide which of those the texts for this week are!The Gospel contains what may be the most famous passage in all the Gospels — the great commandment. A lawyer asks Jesus which commandment is the greatest, and Jesus answers by linking two scattered commandments from the Hebrew Bible into one inseparable teaching: love God with everything, love neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these.The passage includes a second scene often skipped by preachers — Jesus’s own counter-question about the Messiah being David’s son. The combined effect: by the end of the passage, no one dares ask Jesus any more questions. The temple controversies are over. Matthew’s next move will be the woes and the apocalyptic discourse.Track One brings us Moses on Mount Nebo, seeing the promised land but not entering it. Track Two brings us the direct source of Jesus’s second commandment: Leviticus 19 and its call to love the neighbor. The Epistle gives us Paul’s tender description of his ministry among the Thessalonians — “like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.”For preachers continuing a series: last week Jesus turned the Caesar question into a deeper question about whose image we bear. This week he turns the “which commandment” question into a synthesis that will shape the ethics of two thousand years of Christian life. The Matthew arc is now closing out the public ministry. Next week brings All Saints.The ReadingsDeuteronomy 34:1–12First Reading (Track One) — The Death of MosesSummaryMoses climbs Mount Nebo. God shows him the whole promised land — from Gilead to Dan to the sea, from the Plain to Zoar. “This is the land I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over.” Moses dies there in Moab. God buries him in a valley; no one knows his grave to this day. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, but his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated. Israel wept for Moses in Moab thirty days. The passage closes with one of the great tributes in Scripture: “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.”Key Ideas for Preaching* Moses sees the land but does not enter it. That is a devastating pastoral image. Where in your congregation might people be living with their own version of this — having worked and prayed and waited for something they will not get to enter themselves? What might your sermon do to honor that experience without pretending it is not loss?* The passage says God buried Moses. Not Joshua. Not the people. God. The great prophet is laid to rest by the hand of the one he served. What might your sermon do with a picture of death held in the specific tenderness of God’s own hand?* “The LORD knew him face to face.” That is the final word on Moses. Not his miracles. Not his leadership. Not his legacy. Knowledge. Mutual recognition. Where might your sermon help a congregation see that the deepest measure of a life is not what we accomplished but who knew us?Significant Cautions* “He did not enter the land” has sometimes been preached as Moses’s punishment for his earlier impatience. The passage does not say this. Preach what the text says, not what the broader narrative implies.* “Never since has there arisen a prophet like Moses” is a text often cited to say every subsequent leader was lesser. The passage is honoring one specific prophet; it is not demeaning the others who would follow.Psalm 90:1–6, 13–17The Psalm (Track One) — Teach Us to Count Our DaysSummaryAttributed to Moses. “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” Our days are swept away like a dream, like grass that flourishes in the morning and withers by evening. “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” The psalm closes with a prayer for God to satisfy us in the morning with steadfast love, and to prosper the work of our hands.Key Ideas for Preaching* “Teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” Not count hours. Not count accomplishments. Count days. That specific accounting leads not to anxiety but to wisdom. Where in your congregation might people be measuring the wrong things, and how might this psalm invite them into a different reckoning?* “Prosper the work of our hands” is the prayer that closes the psalm. The psalmist asks God not to prosper our status, our success, or our reputation, but the work of our hands. What might it look like to preach this specific prayer in a culture that is often more interested in reputation than in hands?Significant Cautions* “Our days are seventy, or by strength eighty” has been used to produce anxiety about aging. Keep the psalm’s larger frame: God has been our dwelling place.Leviticus 19:1–2, 15–18First Reading (Track Two) — Love Your Neighbor as YourselfSummaryFrom the holiness code. “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” The selected verses then move to very practical commands. Do not render judgment with partiality. Do not slander your neighbor. Do not profit by your neighbor’s blood. Do not hate your kin in your heart. Reprove your neighbor rather than letting resentment fester. Do not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your own people. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.” This is the direct source Jesus quotes in today’s Gospel.Key Ideas for Preaching* “Love your neighbor as yourself” is not an isolated gentle maxim. It sits in the middle of a list of very concrete commandments about not slandering, not holding grudges, not showing partiality in court. Love of neighbor, in Leviticus, is a specific set of practices, not an abstract feeling. What might your sermon do to recover the concreteness of this famous verse?* “Reprove your neighbor” is in this same passage, right next to “love your neighbor.” Reproof — honest, caring correction — is itself an act of love in this text. Where in your congregation might love and honest truth-telling have been imagined as opposites, when Leviticus imagines them as the same thing?* “I am the LORD” closes the passage. The reason you love your neighbor is not sentimentality or civic virtue. It is because God is God, and God is holy, and you belong to this God. What might it look like to preach a love of neighbor grounded not in moral feeling but in divine command?Significant Cautions* “Love your neighbor as yourself” has sometimes been preached in ways that presuppose we already love ourselves. For many people, that assumption does not hold. Handle with pastoral care.* The holiness code includes many commandments that preachers across the centuries have selectively applied. Be honest about this. Do not pull out the loving-your-neighbor verse while hiding the rest of the chapter.Psalm 1The Psalm (Track Two) — Trees Planted by WaterSummaryThe classic two-ways psalm. The happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked but delight in the law of the LORD. They are like trees planted by streams of water, yielding fruit in season. The wicked are like chaff that the wind drives away. “The LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”Key Ideas for Preaching* The righteous are “like trees planted by streams of water.” Not like oak trees that grew up through sheer determination. Planted. Someone put them where the water is. What might your sermon do with a picture of the faithful life that includes being planted — having been placed by God in the place where you can bear fruit?* “Yielding its fruit in its season” names something many of us resist: fruit comes in seasons. There are years without visible fruit. The psalm does not panic about those years. What might it look like to preach a faith that trusts the seasonal rhythm of fruitfulness rather than demanding fruit every month?Significant Cautions* “The way of the wicked will perish” has been used to generate confidence about who is in and who is out. The psalm is not giving us a diagnostic tool for sorting others.1 Thessalonians 2:1–8The Epistle — Like a Nurse Tenderly CaringSummaryPaul recalls his ministry among the Thessalonians. He had been through suffering and mistreatment in Philippi before coming to them. His coming was not in vain. He speaks “not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts.” He was not a flatterer. He was not greedy. He did not seek human praise. He did not demand importance as an apostle. Instead, “we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.” He was willing to share not only the gospel but his own self with them, because they had become very dear to him.Key Ideas for Preaching* The image is startling: an apostle “like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.” Paul uses maternal imagery to describe his ministry. What might your sermon do with a picture of pastoral leadership that is less about authority and more about tender care?* “We were willing to share not only the gospel but our own selves.” The gospel and the self are both offered. Not just the content; the person. Where in your congregation might ministry have been reduced to delivering content, when Paul’s picture includes offering the one who does the delivering?* Paul lists three specific things he refused to do: flatter, seek praise, demand importance. Those three refusals describe a pastoral posture. What might it look like to name them explicitly as practices for anyone in your congregation who leads anything?Significant Cautions* The maternal image Paul uses has sometimes been dismissed as a soft metaphor. Resist. Paul deliberately chooses this image, and it does important theological work.* “Share your own self” has been misused to pressure pastors into unhealthy ov

Some days, it’s better late than never! Just a reminder that your humble Bubbas are also working pastors and that — as you know so well — a few extra hospital visits and a funeral or two can really work on your schedule as planned. Let’s press on!The Gospel is one of the most quoted and most misused passages in all of Scripture. The Pharisees try to trap Jesus with a question about taxes to Caesar, and Jesus responds with a line — “give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, and to God what is God’s” — that has been pressed into service for just about every imaginable political arrangement in Christian history. Preachers who want to actually honor what Jesus said will need to resist the easy readings.Photo by Peter Barrett Bryan on UnsplashTrack One brings us Moses in dialogue with God after the golden calf — the audacious request to see God’s glory, and the tender compromise of God’s hand in the cleft of the rock. Track Two brings us one of the most startling passages in Isaiah: God addresses Cyrus the Persian emperor — a foreign, non-believing ruler — as “my anointed.” The Epistle gives us Paul’s warm opening to the Thessalonians, naming their faith, love, and hope — and their turning from idols.For preachers continuing a series: last week the wedding banquet raised questions about accepting the garment with the invitation. This week the famous Caesar passage raises questions about the deeper allegiance that governs every other allegiance. The Matthew arc keeps pressing toward Jerusalem and Holy Week.The ReadingsExodus 33:12–23First Reading (Track One) — Show Me Your GlorySummaryAfter the golden calf, Moses is in dialogue with God. He asks for assurance of God’s presence: “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here.” God answers: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Then Moses makes an audacious request: “Show me your glory.” God answers that God’s goodness will pass before him, but God’s face cannot be seen — “no one shall see me and live.” God places Moses in the cleft of a rock and covers him with God’s hand as God passes by. Moses sees God’s back. The face remains hidden.Key Ideas for Preaching* Moses’s request — “show me your glory” — is one of the boldest prayers in the Bible. He is not asking for anything God has promised. He is asking for more. And God does not scold him. Where in your congregation might people be helped by hearing that it is faithful to ask God for more than has been given, as long as we trust what God chooses to give?* God’s response is intimate: “I will make all my goodness pass before you.” God will not show glory in abstract power, but in goodness. What might your sermon do with a picture of God’s glory that looks, in the end, more like goodness than like force?* The image of God’s hand covering Moses in the cleft is remarkable. God protects Moses from what Moses asked to see. God’s care includes limiting what we can bear. Where in your congregation might people be exhausted from wanting to see more than they can hold, and how might God’s covering hand be the gift they need?Significant Cautions* “No one shall see me and live” has been used to make God sound distant and unknowable. The passage actually describes a God remarkably close to Moses — just more mystery than any one person can hold.* The “back of God” imagery has been overread theologically. Keep its narrative strangeness; do not systematize it.Psalm 99The Psalm (Track One) — The Lord Is KingSummaryA psalm celebrating God as king. “The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble!” The psalm names Moses, Aaron, and Samuel as those who called on God’s name and received answer. God forgave them while also punishing their wrongdoings. The call to “extol the Lord our God” closes the psalm.Key Ideas for Preaching* The psalm names Moses, Aaron, and Samuel — imperfect leaders, all three. God “answered them” and “forgave them” and also held them accountable. What might your sermon do with a picture of God’s relationship with leaders that includes real forgiveness and real accountability in the same sentence?* “The Lord is king” is a political claim as much as a religious one. In context, saying God is king meant other claimants to kingship were secondary. Where might this psalm press against our tendency to treat religious claims as merely private?Significant Cautions* Do not use this psalm to prop up Christian nationalism. “The Lord is king” is precisely the claim that relativizes every other kingdom, not the one that sanctifies one of them.Isaiah 45:1–7First Reading (Track Two) — Cyrus, My AnointedSummaryA startling passage. God addresses Cyrus — the Persian emperor who will shortly conquer Babylon and allow the exiled Jews to return home — as “my anointed.” That is a Hebrew word usually translated “messiah.” God is applying it to a foreign, non-believing emperor. God calls Cyrus by name even though “you do not know me.” God is using Cyrus to accomplish God’s purposes — so that all peoples may know that there is no god but the Lord. The passage ends with one of the most theologically challenging verses in the Hebrew Bible: “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things.”Key Ideas for Preaching* “My anointed” applied to Cyrus is stunning. The prophet is naming a non-Jewish, non-believing emperor as God’s chosen instrument. Where in your congregation might people be helped by hearing that God works through people who do not know God, and that God’s purposes are not limited to the people who identify as God’s?* “I call you by name, though you do not know me.” That line has pastoral depth. There are people in your pews whom God knows by name even if they are not sure they know God. Where might this verse speak to the quietly uncertain in your congregation?* “I form light and create darkness.” That is the hardest verse in the passage, and preachers often skip it. The prophet is not making a philosophical argument about theodicy; he is insisting on God’s sovereignty over everything that happens, in a way our neat theology struggles to hold. What might it look like to preach a verse like this without domesticating it?Significant Cautions* Do not use the “God used Cyrus” image to bless any contemporary political figure as “God’s anointed.” Cyrus is named prophetically for a specific liberation of a specific people from exile. The imitators who have claimed this title for themselves have always been false.* The “I create woe” verse should not be preached as if God is the author of evil. The verse is naming God’s sovereignty over outcomes, not God’s moral endorsement of them.Psalm 96:1–9, (10–13)The Psalm (Track Two) — Sing to the Lord a New SongSummaryA psalm of praise. “O sing to the Lord a new song.” The psalm declares God’s glory among the nations, calling all peoples to ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. The optional verses declare God’s coming to judge the earth with righteousness and the peoples with truth. The whole earth is called to tremble before God.Key Ideas for Preaching* “Sing to the Lord a new song” assumes we have been singing old songs long enough. The new song is specific — it praises God’s reign and names God’s works among the nations. Where in your congregation might the songs be growing stale, and how might this psalm invite freshness without discarding what has been held?* The psalm invites “all the earth” and “all the peoples” to join. Praise, in this psalm, is not provincial. It is as wide as the globe. What might it mean to preach a worship that sees itself as part of a global and even cosmic song?Significant Cautions* “Judge the earth with righteousness” has been used to generate fear rather than hope. In context, God’s judgment is the correction of injustice — good news to those who have been suffering under it.1 Thessalonians 1:1–10The Epistle — Faith, Love, and HopeSummaryThe opening of Paul’s letter — one of his earliest, possibly the earliest book of the New Testament. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy write to a young church. “We give thanks to God always for all of you… remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul remembers how they received the word in persecution, with joy. They became an example to believers across Macedonia and Achaia. “The word of the Lord has sounded forth from you… in every place your faith in God has become known.” They turned from idols to serve a living and true God, waiting for his Son from heaven.Key Ideas for Preaching* Paul’s famous triad — faith, love, hope — is here in one of its earliest forms, bundled with real verbs. “Work of faith. Labor of love. Steadfastness of hope.” These are not abstract virtues; they are things being done. What might your sermon do with a Christian spirituality that lives primarily in verbs rather than nouns?* The Thessalonians’ faith is becoming known elsewhere. Paul does not have to tell people about them; others are already talking. There is a specific kind of witness that happens when a congregation’s life becomes something strangers can see. Where in your congregation might faithfulness be more visible than you realize?* “You turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God.” That line pairs beautifully with today’s Gospel. The Thessalonians had been worshipers of Caesar’s gods; they had turned. The parable about Caesar’s coin is about the same turning. What might your sermon do to make this connection concrete for a congregation that has its own idols to turn from?Significant Cautions* “Waiting for his Son from heaven” has been used to encourage disengagement from the world. Paul describes active waiting, not passive escape.Matthew 22:15–22The Gospel — Render unto CaesarSummaryThe Pharisees plot to entrap Jesus. They send their disciples, with members of the political faction called the Herodians, to ask him a loaded question. They begin with flattery: “Teacher, we kno

And the hits just keep on coming!The Gospel for this week is another difficult parable in Matthew’s temple sequence. The parable of the wedding banquet includes a king who destroys those who refuse the invitation, an indiscriminate welcome of “both good and bad,” and a jarring ending about a guest thrown out for not wearing a wedding robe. Preachers who approach it honestly will have to handle its difficulties rather than smoothing them over.Track One brings us the golden calf — one of the most emotionally honest passages in the Pentateuch. The people grow impatient, Aaron caves, and Moses becomes the great intercessor. Track Two brings us Isaiah’s eschatological feast on the mountain — God’s victory over death and the wiping away of all tears. The Epistle gives us Paul’s famous call to rejoice and the peace that surpasses understanding.A small liturgical pleasure worth naming: Psalm 23 on Proper 23. The number is coincidence, but the pairing of the psalm’s table-in-the-presence-of-enemies with the Gospel’s wedding banquet is worth preaching toward.For preachers continuing a series: last week the wicked tenants exposed those who forgot they were tenants. This week the wedding banquet raises questions about who accepts the invitation and how they respond when they do. The Matthew arc keeps challenging the shape of our response.The ReadingsExodus 32:1–14First Reading (Track One) — The Golden Calf and Moses’s IntercessionSummaryMoses has been on the mountain forty days. The people grow impatient and come to Aaron: “Make us gods who will go before us.” Aaron takes their gold earrings and casts an image — a golden calf. He builds an altar and declares, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord!” The people offer sacrifices and feast. God tells Moses, “Go down at once! Your people have acted perversely.” God threatens to consume them and start again with Moses. But Moses intercedes — not for himself but for the people. He appeals to God’s reputation, to God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The text records a striking turn: “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”Key Ideas for Preaching* The people’s impatience is the trigger. Moses had been gone forty days, and they could not stand the waiting. The golden calf is what we make when we cannot bear to wait for the real God any longer. Where in your congregation might people be making golden calves of various kinds because waiting has become unbearable?* Aaron’s role is uncomfortable. He does not refuse. He does not even hesitate publicly. He collects the gold. He shapes the image. He builds the altar. He declares a festival. And he is not punished for it in this passage. What might your sermon do with a picture of institutional leadership that caved to pressure — not with villainy, but with convenience?* Moses becomes an intercessor. God has just said “your people” to disown them; Moses throws the phrase back and says “your people, whom you brought out of Egypt.” He stands in the gap. He argues with God. He appeals to God’s own promises. Where in your congregation might people be helped by hearing that genuine intercession is not polite agreement with God but an argument on behalf of someone God is angry with?* “The Lord changed his mind.” That is a striking theological statement. Not that God is capricious, but that God is in genuine relationship. The intercession matters. What might it look like to preach a God who actually responds to the prayer of a persistent intercessor?Significant Cautions* “God changed his mind” has been used in theological controversies about divine immutability. Do not fight those debates from the pulpit. Preach the narrative; let the theology take care of itself.* Aaron’s lack of punishment here can be preached in a way that excuses institutional complicity. Do not. His failure is real; the passage simply does not resolve it here.* The golden calf has been reduced to a metaphor for “idolatry” generally. Keep the specific context — impatience with waiting — rather than letting it dissolve into generic preaching about idols.Psalm 106:1–6, 19–23The Psalm (Track One) — Standing in the BreachSummaryA recital of Israel’s history of sin and God’s mercy. The selected verses praise God’s goodness, confess that “we have sinned like our ancestors,” reference the golden calf incident at Horeb — “they exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass” — and name Moses’s role as intercessor, “standing in the breach before him, to turn his wrath away from destroying them.”Key Ideas for Preaching* The psalm’s refrain of identification — “we have sinned like our ancestors” — refuses the easy move of distancing ourselves from those who failed before us. Where in your congregation has distance from historical sin been imagined as moral progress, when the psalm imagines solidarity?* “Standing in the breach” names Moses’s intercession with a specific architectural image — a human body in the gap where the wall has fallen. What might your sermon do with a picture of intercession as literal body-in-the-gap work rather than polite prayer at a distance?Significant Cautions* “Like our ancestors” has been used to minimize distinct historical responsibilities. The psalm names solidarity, not equivalence.Isaiah 25:1–9First Reading (Track Two) — The Feast on the MountainSummaryA hymn celebrating God’s eschatological victory. The strong city of enemies lies in ruins. On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. God will destroy the shroud cast over all peoples, the sheet spread over all nations. God will swallow up death forever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces. “This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”Key Ideas for Preaching* The feast is for all peoples. Not for the deserving. Not for the religious. All peoples. On God’s mountain. What might it look like to preach an eschatology that is as wide as Isaiah’s vision — a feast where every nation sits down together?* “He will swallow up death forever.” That is one of the most audacious lines in Scripture. The prophet names what God will do to death itself. Where in your congregation are people who need to hear that death — not merely their sins, but death — is what God promises to end?* “This is the Lord for whom we have waited.” The passage names waiting as the posture of faith — not passive waiting, but expectant waiting for a specific feast. What might your sermon do to help a congregation feel the specific thing they are waiting for?Significant Cautions* “Swallow up death” has been used to minimize the grief of those currently mourning. The promise is future and does not erase present pain.* “All peoples” has been used to flatten particularity. The feast is for all peoples as peoples — not for one global, generic humanity.Psalm 23The Psalm (Track Two) — You Prepare a TableSummaryThe most beloved psalm. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Green pastures, still waters, right paths. Through the valley of the shadow of death, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” The table prepared in the presence of enemies. The cup overflowing. “Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”Key Ideas for Preaching* “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” The psalm’s table is not safe. The enemies are still there. God’s provision happens in the middle of what is still difficult. Where in your congregation have people been assuming God’s blessing requires the end of their troubles, when the psalm imagines blessing in the middle of them?* “You are with me.” That is the center of the psalm. The shepherd’s presence, not the shepherd’s protection from all difficulty, is what the psalmist celebrates. What might your sermon do with the distinction between a God who removes difficulty and a God who is with us in it?Significant Cautions* Psalm 23 has been used so often at funerals that its weight at other times can be lost. Preaching it on Proper 23 (notice the number) is a chance to let it carry fresh freight.Philippians 4:1–9The Epistle — Rejoice; the Peace of GodSummaryPaul begins by naming two women in the Philippian church — Euodia and Syntyche — who have been disagreeing. He asks them to be of the same mind in the Lord, and he asks the community to help them. Then he moves into some of the most quoted lines in his letters. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything; by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, think about whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise.Key Ideas for Preaching* The passage opens with specific names — Euodia and Syntyche — who are not getting along. Paul does not pretend community life is seamless. He names the conflict and asks the congregation to help. Interestingly, given the conclusion he offers in vv. 8-9, then two names mean “sweet or pleasing aroma” and “fortunate”. Hmmm…. What might your sermon do with a picture of Christian community that includes real conflict, named by name, held by the whole community?* “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.” That is not peace we achieve. It is peace that comes to us, that guards hearts and minds, that defies explanation. Where in your congregation have people been exhausted by trying to produce their own peace, when Paul describes a peace that comes as gift?* “Think about these things.” Paul names what should occupy our mental attention — true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise.

Hold on to your pulpits this week, preachers! The Gospel is one of the hardest parables in Matthew — and one with the most difficult history in Christian preaching. The parable of the wicked tenants has been used, throughout Christian history, to justify the church’s replacement of Israel and to fuel centuries of anti-Jewish violence, from medieval pogroms through Nazi propaganda. Preachers must handle it with unusual care.Track One brings us the Ten Commandments at Sinai. Track Two brings us Isaiah’s song of the vineyard — the direct source material for the Gospel parable. The Epistle gives us Paul’s autobiographical turn: whatever gains I had, I count as loss for Christ.For preachers continuing a series: last week’s parable of the two sons exposed the yes that did not go. This week’s parable of the wicked tenants exposes what happens when tenants forget they are tenants. The Matthew arc keeps sharpening toward the passion.The ReadingsExodus 20:1–4, 7–9, 12–20First Reading (Track One) — The Ten CommandmentsSummaryGod speaks to Moses at Sinai. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Then the commandments: no other gods. No idols. No misusing God’s name. Remember the sabbath and rest. Honor your father and mother. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not covet what belongs to your neighbor. When the people see the thunder, the lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they tremble and stand at a distance. They tell Moses: “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” Moses reassures them: God has come to test you, so that the fear of God may be with you and keep you from sinning.Key Ideas for Preaching* The commandments begin with a verb about God, not a demand of the people. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out.” Deliverance comes first; then the shape of life among the delivered. What might your sermon do with the specific order — grace before command — that most preachers know but many congregations have never actually heard?* The commandments protect people. Do not murder protects human life. Do not steal protects property. Do not bear false witness protects reputation and truth. Do not covet protects the heart from unrest. These are not arbitrary rules; they are the shape of a community where life can flourish. Where in your congregation have the commandments been imagined as arbitrary restrictions when they are actually protections?* “You speak to us, but do not let God speak to us” — the people’s request captures a real spiritual pattern. We often prefer mediated religion to direct encounter. What might it look like to preach a God who is willing to be heard directly, and to name the tender fear that keeps us at a distance?Significant Cautions* Do not preach the commandments as if the whole ethical life of the church can be reduced to ten rules. Jesus himself will summarize them in two.* The lectionary omits verses 5–6 (the “jealous God” verses). Preachers should know what has been omitted and decide honestly whether to preach the whole passage or just the assigned selection.* The commandments have often been misused as a checklist for civic religion. Handle their communal, covenantal context carefully.Psalm 19The Psalm (Track One) — The Heavens Are TellingSummary“The heavens are telling the glory of God.” The psalm begins with creation’s silent praise — day pours out speech to day — and moves to the law: perfect, reviving the soul; sure, making wise the simple. The psalm closes with a prayer against hidden faults and presumption, and the famous closing petition: let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you.Key Ideas for Preaching* The psalm links creation and law in the same song. The heavens declare God’s glory; God’s word revives the soul. Both are revelation. Where has your congregation imagined creation and Scripture as competing sources of knowing God, when the psalm holds them together?* “Clear me from hidden faults” — the psalmist prays not for the sins he can see but for the ones he cannot. What might your sermon do with a spiritual practice that includes asking God to name what we are not yet aware of?Significant Cautions* “The heavens declare the glory of God” has been misused in the culture wars around science. The psalm is not a scientific claim; it is doxology.Isaiah 5:1–7First Reading (Track Two) — The Song of the VineyardSummaryThe prophet sings a love song about his beloved’s vineyard. God did everything for the vineyard — dug it, cleared it of stones, planted choice vines, built a watchtower, hewed a wine vat. And expected grapes. But the vineyard yielded wild grapes. So God will remove its hedge, break down its wall, make it a waste. The song ends with the interpretation: “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!”Key Ideas for Preaching* The prophet’s judgment on Israel is Israel’s own prophet speaking within Israel’s tradition. This is not an outside voice condemning God’s people. This is Isaiah’s love for his people speaking hard truth. What might it look like to preach a prophetic word that comes from love rather than distance?* The wordplay in Hebrew is untranslatable but worth naming. God expected mishpat (justice) but saw mispach (bloodshed); God expected tsedaqah (righteousness) but heard tse’aqah (a cry). Justice and bloodshed sound alike. Righteousness and outcry sound alike. Only one letter apart. What might your sermon do with the closeness of what God wanted and what God got?* Isaiah 5 is the direct source for today’s Gospel parable of the tenants. Jesus is not inventing a new critique; he is quoting Israel’s own prophet. Where in your congregation might people be helped by hearing that Jesus’s hardest words about religious leadership are drawn from Israel’s own tradition of self-critique?Significant Cautions* This passage should not be read as evidence that God has rejected Israel. Isaiah’s critique is a call to return, not a decree of replacement.* “He expected justice but saw bloodshed” has been quoted in ways that reduce injustice to individual sin. Isaiah is naming systemic failure of leadership, not simply personal wrongdoing.Psalm 80:7–15The Psalm (Track Two) — The Vine You Brought Out of EgyptSummaryAnother vineyard psalm. God brought a vine out of Egypt, drove out the nations, and planted it. It sent out its branches to the sea, its shoots to the river. But now its walls are broken down and passersby pluck its fruit. “Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted.”Key Ideas for Preaching* The psalm imagines God as the planter and Israel as the tended vine. It is a picture of intimate care — God’s own right hand doing the planting. What might your sermon do with a picture of God’s investment in the people that is this personal?* “Turn again, O God” is a psalm of return — not the people’s return to God, but a prayer that God will turn back toward them. What might it look like to preach a faith that includes asking God to notice again, when God’s face seems turned away?Significant Cautions* This psalm’s laments have sometimes been used to shame communities into thinking their difficulties are always God’s judgment. Not all suffering is discipline.Philippians 3:4b–14The Epistle — I Count It All as LossSummaryPaul lists his credentials. Circumcised on the eighth day. Of the people of Israel. Tribe of Benjamin. Hebrew of Hebrews. A Pharisee. A persecutor of the church — by which he means he was zealous. Blameless under the law. Then the turn: whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. He counts everything as rubbish compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. He wants to know Christ, the power of his resurrection, the sharing of his sufferings. Not that he has already obtained this or reached the goal, but he presses on to make it his own, because Christ Jesus has made him his own. Forgetting what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead, he presses on toward the goal.Key Ideas for Preaching* Paul’s list of credentials is not fabrication. He really did have every advantage of Jewish religious life in the first century. He is not saying his credentials were worthless in themselves. He is saying that compared to knowing Christ, they are loss. Where in your congregation has this passage been read as if Paul were dismissing Jewish life? Preach it more honestly.* Paul’s word for what he considers his gains to be is stronger than “rubbish.” In Greek it means excrement — the kind of language you would not read from the pulpit lightly. Paul is being deliberately shocking. What is your sermon doing to hold the shock of this passage rather than sanitizing it?* “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal” — Paul refuses spiritual complacency. He has been at this for years, and still he presses on. What might it look like to preach a mature Christian life that includes this specific refusal of arrival?Significant Cautions* Paul is not rejecting Jewish life. He is naming his own reordering of priorities. Do not preach this passage as if Judaism were the enemy Paul overcame; that reading has caused enormous harm.* “Forgetting what lies behind” has been misused to shame people who need to process their past. Paul is talking about not resting on his own credentials, not about pretending painful history did not happen.Matthew 21:33–46The Gospel — The Wicked TenantsSummaryJesus tells another parable in the temple. A landowner plants a vineyard, puts a fence around it, digs a wine press, builds a watchtower, and leases it to tenants before going away. When harvest time comes, he