Lectionary Reflections

When God calls you, listen and follow. This consistent theme in Sunday’s readings begins with Rebekah’s faithful and trusting response to Abraham’s servant.

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons
July 5, 2026 (Pentecost 6A/Proper 9)

First Reading (Track One): Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
When God calls you, listen and follow. This consistent theme in Sunday’s readings begins with Rebekah’s response to Abraham’s servant in this first reading. She reminds us of Abraham’s acceptance of God’s call. Both answered with faithful trust when they heard God’s voice. Abraham uprooted his family and moved to a new land far away. Rebekah left her home and family to marry Abraham’s son, Isaac, whom she has not yet met but who will come to love her. Abraham heard God’s promise that his offspring would become a great and mighty nation. Rebekah, with her own strong faith, heard that her children would become “thousands of myriads.”

First Reading (Track Two): Zechariah 9:9-12
In this brief passage, Zechariah – one of the last of the Hebrew Bible’s dozen so-called minor prophets – celebrates the people’s return from exile and their hope of restoring the Temple. He prophesies that a humble yet powerful king will come to reign in peace and restore the nation’s prosperity. The evangelist we know as Matthew will later imagine Jesus so vividly foretold in these verses. His gospel adopts Zechariah’s wording so precisely that it even retains the poetic repetition of Hebrew verse – “riding on a donkey; on a c**t, the foal of a donkey” – in his startling image of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on two animals.

Psalm (Track One): Psalm 45:11-18
Psalm 45 is a blessing for a wedding. It is a love song addressed to a princess bride of Tyre (an ancient island kingdom and occasional rival to Israel), who has come to Israel to be joined in a royal marriage. This passage celebrates the pomp and joy of her coming wedding. It also highlights the Psalmist’s hope that the bride will be remembered and praised in future generations, a wish that echoes God’s promises of myriad descendants to Abraham and Rebekah.

Alternate Psalm (Track One): Song of Solomon 2:8-13
The Song of Solomon, also known as the Song of Songs, is a lyrical collection of ancient Hebrew love poetry. Curiously, this book and the book of Esther are the only books in the Bible that do not explicitly mention God. Rather, we are invited to find the image of God in the joy of giving and caring love. These verses are understood as a rhapsodic song of springtime, but their metaphorical evocation of love in the midst of an awakening springtime Earth speaks to our hearts even during the heat and sunshine of July.

Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 145:8-15
Like many of the psalms, this hymn of praise is traditionally attributed to the hand of King David. It parallels the reading from Zechariah in its vision of a humble, powerful king who reigns in peace and prosperity. The Psalmist portrays this kingdom of glorious splendor not simply as a reign for here and now, but one that will be known in glory to all people: an everlasting kingdom that will endure through all the ages.

Second Reading: Romans 7:15-25a
In recent readings from Paul’s letter to the Romans, we have heard his assurances that through baptism we metaphorically die to our old lives enslaved to sin, only to be born to a new life freed from sin through the free gift of grace from God. In this passage, though, pointing to himself as a bad example of a “wretched man,” Paul declares that it’s not easy to leave sin behind, even when we want to do the right thing. He tries, but he can’t get rid of the sin that lives within him, he writes. We can’t fight sin on our own without God’s help through Jesus, who frees us from the slavery of sin.

Gospel: Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Jesus seems frustrated, even angry, in the opening verses of Sunday’s Gospel. Preaching to crowds around Capernaum in Galilee, he likens them to children and infants calling out and playing. Perhaps he is feeling irritable because some of the same people who considered the ascetic John’s call for repentance crazy and judgmental are now criticizing Jesus’s joyous embrace of life as evidence that he is a glutton and a drunk. But then, after we skip over five additional angry verses not included in Sunday’s reading, Jesus pauses and thanks God. His words of hope for Israel’s children and infants turn gentle as he invites all who carry heavy burdens to come to him and find rest for their souls.

Pentecost 6A/Proper 9 Illuminations on the Lectionary readings for July 5, 2026 (Pentecost 6A/Proper 9)

Sunday’s Lectionary readings challenge us, jolt our assumptions, and at the end, make us think about how our spirituality works.

Thoughts on Sunday’s Lessons
June 21, 2026 (Pentecost 4A/Proper 7)

First Reading (Track One): Genesis 21:8-21
Sometimes we turn to scripture for reassurance, looking for readings that bring us comfort and joy. Sunday’s readings are different: They challenge us, jolt our assumptions, and at the end, make us think about how our spirituality works. The Track One first reading offers a troubling story about Abraham, the patriarch of the chosen people. Abraham followed God’s commands with exemplary faithfulness, yet here we see him doing something disturbing as he sends his slave, Hagar, and their son, Ishmael, out into the desert to die. Happily, God intervenes, saving Ishmael and promising them a bountiful future parallel to that of Abraham and Sarah’s son, Isaac. Indeed, while Jews and Christians recognize Abraham as our patriarch through Isaac, the world’s Muslims trace their Abrahamic line through Ishmael.

First Reading (Track Two): Jeremiah 20:7-13
In Sunday’s Track Two first reading, we find the prophet Jeremiah angry and upset. God has called him to prophesy to the people that their failure to be righteous and just will bring destruction upon them, but they will not listen. Worse, they laugh and deride him when he shouts about their impending peril. Anger builds up in his bones like a burning fire, and he cannot hold it in. Even his close friends wait for him to stumble. But Jeremiah knows that it is his persecutors who will stumble, for God is with him like a warrior at his side.

Psalm (Track One): Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
Like Hagar with Ishmael in the desert, the Psalmist in this portion of Psalm 86 suffers in misery. He suffers in distress despite his faith and trust in God. Recognizing that God is a God like no other, the God of all nations, who loves us even when we aren’t happy, he cries out his prayer in faith that a good and forgiving God will answer him and make his heart glad.

Psalm (Track Two): Psalm 69: 8-11, (12-17), 18-20
The tone of lamentation in these selections from Psalm 69 rings in harmony with Jeremiah in the first reading. Like Jeremiah, the Psalmist spoke for God only to become the subject of scorn and reproach from his own friends and family. Even drunkards and loiterers at the city gate made up mocking songs about him! The Psalmist begs God to save him from their hatred, to turn to him in compassion and rescue him from his enemies.

Second Reading: Romans 6:1b-11
Everything in our lives changes in baptism: This reassuring theme runs like a thread through Paul’s letter to the Romans. Baptism unites us with Christ so that we share in his death and resurrection, Paul writes. In baptism, we symbolically die to our old life that was enslaved by sin, and through God’s abounding grace, become alive to new life through Jesus.

Gospel: Matthew 10:24-39
We love to imagine Jesus as the Prince of Peace, but now Matthew tells us that Jesus did not come to bring peace but a sword, to set family members against each other, and to call us to leave our families behind when we follow him. These disturbing verses, following Jesus’s stern instructions to the apostles in last Sunday’s Gospel, may reflect the difficult times when the evangelist we know as Matthew was writing his Gospel. The Roman Empire had crushed a Jewish rebellion, leaving Jerusalem shattered and the Temple in ruins. Jewish Christians were breaking away from Rabbinic Judaism amid angry disputes over Jesus’s status as Messiah. Under those circumstances, it would have been not only hard but dangerous to follow Jesus’s Way.

Pentecost 4A/Proper 7 Illuminations on the Lectionary readings for June 21, 2026 (Pentecost 4A/Proper 7) Sunday’s readings challenge us, jolt our assumptions, and at the end, make us think about how our spirituality works.