Lectionary Commentaries for July 6, 2025
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

There is a lot going on in this scene. 

Jesus sends messengers out. Not just a few. Not just the Twelve. He sends out 70, or even 72—sends them out in pairs to all the places he himself will soon go. 

This is an enormous operation. The storyteller seems to imply that these messengers go out, one pair per village. That is a lot of villages. And that is a lot of messengers. The storyteller does not imagine that Jesus is traveling incognito, appearing in a town, creating a scene, and moving on. Jesus in Luke’s story does not say, “I think our work is done here, Peter,” and then ride mysteriously off into the sunset. 

Jesus in Luke’s story sends a mob of messengers ahead of him and tells them, no matter how they are received, to say that the “kingdom of God” (whatever that is, exactly) has come so near. 

Maybe you are sure what “kingdom of God” means. I am not so sure as I once was. 

But before we get to that, notice the insane flurry of activity: 35 teams going village to village, curing the sick, announcing the kingdom. 

But notice that the messengers go out without a purse. No money, not even for parking meters. They go out with no bag. They go out without even shoes. 

Why?

Consider this odd situation carefully before concocting an answer. 

Jesus has just said he is sending the messengers out like lambs in the midst of wolves. And his instructions make them even more vulnerable than they already would have been. 

Why?

Consider carefully.

If Jesus is telling the messengers to pretend to be poor, this scene sounds like yet one more manipulative scheme to fleece the flock. We have all seen enough of such schemes. 

But notice that the instructions create more than just poverty. The messengers arrive in each village with sore feet and no place to stay. They arrive and find themselves radically in need of hospitality. Notice that Jesus expects that someone will take them in. Someone will feed them. Someone will give them the gift of hospitality. Maybe it will be the mayor of the town (if they had mayors!). Maybe it will be a prominent citizen. Maybe it will be someone like the widow who sheltered Elijah, someone who barely had enough for herself. 

In the congregation I served, now a very long time ago, one of the finest cooks around was a member of a family that did not have much in the way of resources. What they had in abundance was hospitality. Our family had been invited to supper at their house. It was meatloaf. It was amazing meatloaf. Nedra could make flavors dance. The preparation was perfect. The gift of the meal was wonderful. 

During supper, someone knocked on the door. It was a young man, someone I did not know. He stood outside on the front steps. I could hear what I thought was someone crying. Arnie brought him into the living room, just off the small dining room. They spoke softly for a while. Arnie went into the bedroom, also just off the dining room. He came back with his Sunday shirt. 

I heard the young man leave. Arnie came back to the table and told Nedra he would need her to mend a shirt.

It turned out that the young man had a job interview the next day and had just ripped a big three-corner tear in his only good white shirt. He needed the job. He had been out of work for a while. Arnie gave him his only white shirt. The next Sunday in church, I noticed that Arnie was wearing a shirt with a three-corner tear that had been expertly mended. Turns out Nedra could also sew. 

The more years I have to remember that evening, the better the food tastes. 

Jesus tells the messengers to go out with no resources. One of them might even have ripped his only good shirt. 

Eat whatever they set before you. Even if they do not cook as well as Nedra cooked. Oh, and heal the sick. 

And in the receiving and giving of gifts, the reign of God comes to human community. 

I used to be pretty sure I knew what the kingdom of God meant. These days, I just remember that meal at Arnie and Nedra’s. Those might be their real names. Or not. It matters more that you (like the mob of messengers) might also have been to a meal like the one at Arnie and Nedra’s. And if you were, it matters. In Jewish faith, the Messiah has the task of turning the world right side up. That’s why healing the sick is so important, such a sign of the reign of God. Healing the sick restores people to their families and to their roles in the community, and that turns the world right side up. That’s why eating together is so important. Sharing meatloaf given as a gift allows us to relax into generosity. 

The young man got the job, by the way.

That is how the reign of God comes so near. 

At the close of the book of Isaiah, God and the prophet(s) choose to use specific anatomical metaphors of a woman giving birth and then nursing her children to give the fullest sense and most immediately relatable image of God’s loving care for the citizens of the New Jerusalem. My wife has given birth to three boys, all unmedicated births, and two at home. 

Birth is terrifying and dangerous. There is a lot of pain and, at least in our case, the very real chance of hemorrhaging from too much blood loss. And yet, when the babies latch on and start to nurse at their mother’s breast, it is a great comfort to the child ejected out into the cold world, and can potentially help save the life of the mother by lessening bleeding. Oxytocin—“the love hormone”—flows through the mother’s body, contracting her uterus and flooding her with dreamy enjoyment of her newly birthed child. This is the context of Isaiah 66 that the reader must be able to call to mind. Blood, milk, and liquid delight (oxytocin) are crucial to understanding the passage. 

In order to properly dig into verses 10–14, we must start in verse 7. This is the first in a series of doublets, with “rhyming ideas” as a standard feature of Hebrew poetry. Two impossible happenings around birth are named: 1) A woman gave birth before experiencing labor, and 2) she gave birth to a son without pain (66:7). Then the prophet asks a double question: Who has heard/who has seen this? The rhetorical question is meant to provoke an emphatic “No one!” and perhaps some rueful chuckles from the women who know better. The then-prophet applies the anatomical impossibility to the (re-)birth of the people. 

Again, the prophet asks a double rhetorical question, again assuming an emphatic “No!” “Shall a land be birthed in a day? Shall a nation be delivered in an instant?” No, of course not. It takes time, sometimes decades or centuries, for a sense of peoplehood to coalesce. It takes still longer for independence movements to unite people with their own land. But these are the miracles God intends—and promises, again using a double question. “Shall I open the womb and not deliver … Shall I, the begetter [or, potentially, the midwife] shut the womb?” No, of course not. As soon as Zion began labor, she delivered her children (66:8)!

The birth of a child is such a precarious and emotional moment. The mother has experienced (and will continue to experience, let’s be honest) great pain. Is her bleeding under control? Is the child breathing? Is the child healthy? What do both baby and mama need? At the same time as the fear and pain, it is (can be) an instant of pure joy and celebration! The work of many months has produced new life! Sure, it looks like an alien now, but that baby is going to be super cute in a couple of weeks! 

The text insists that the reader seize the opportunity to celebrate with Jerusalem! Too many thousands of her citizens have been killed by the Babylonians and then have been lost in exile. This is a time to rejoice with Jerusalem at the birth of her new people, just as we mourn(ed) the loss of her denizens previously.

But birth is by no means the end of the story. The baby needs comforting and calories, and the mother needs her baby to reattach! The prophet/poet uses the gritty and beautiful language of expressing colostrum to describe how Jerusalem as mother will satisfy and provide for the returnees from exile. Here, the text speaks of Jerusalem’s “breast of comfort” intentionally, linking this passage at the end of Isaiah to the proliferating descriptions of comfort throughout the book (1:24; 12:1; 22:4; 40:1; 51:3, 12, 19; 52:9; 54:11; 57:6; 61:2; 66:13). 

The language here may initially cause some awkwardness for the preacher or some tittering in the congregation, but the anatomical specificity of the Hebrew must be allowed to shine through. The second half of verse 11 speaks of the returned exiles’ guzzling (the word matzatz is an onomatopoeia meant to evoke the sound of an infant sucking) with delight from Jerusalem’s “glorious bouncing/moving/abundant things.” Some translators will demurely choose “glorious abundance” or some circumlocution, but the New American Standard Bible and New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition rightly render “bountiful breasts” and “glorious bosom,” respectively. The language is meant to be a little crass as it discusses hyper-abundance and delightful fullness. 

God returns the metaphor of nutritious, sustaining liquid to the geopolitical sphere, saying that the wealth of nations and peace will flow through Jerusalem into her residents like rivers and overflowing streams. Then the prophet deploys the apex of mothering metaphor in threefold action: The children of Jerusalem will 1) breastfeed from the peace and wealth that flows to Jerusalem, 2) be carried in the arm and on the hip of a protective Jerusalem, and 3) be bounced on the knees of a Jerusalem enchanted and delighted with her returned children. 

This is what God desires. Just as a human mother feeds, protects, carries, and plays with her child, so God longs to do with God’s children. Here now, we have the theme of movement from affliction to comfort, which has characterized the scroll of Isaiah from beginning to end. 

And just as the rest of the prophecies of the scroll of Isaiah have been polyvalent, so is this image of God and Jerusalem sharing the mothering of a newly (re-)born people. Isaiah and his prophet wife had a child, named Immanuel, whose birth was a portent of delivery from the allied Arameans and Israelites. And at the same time, Christians hear in Isaiah 7 prophecies of the birth of Jesus. In Isaiah 66, God promises the celebrations of birth and the protection and care of a devoted mother to the returnees from Babylonian exile. 

And—not “but”—verse 14 extends the scope of the good news to a future date, when God will cause hearts to rejoice as faithful servants are affectionately embraced and those committed to destruction will feel God’s displeasure. Jerusalem is pictured as a mother in this chapter, but the true protecting, providing, and defending mother is God, who rescues children and provides for them in the past, present, and future.       

In 2 Kings 5:1–14, the biblical writers recount the story of a military leader’s encounter with the prophet Elisha. This story is part of the larger arc of the ancient Israelites’ narrative history. After the death of King Solomon and the establishment of the northern and southern kingdoms (1 Kings 12:1–16:34), Elijah emerges as the preeminent prophet of Israel. In 2 Kings 2, Elijah transfers his prophetic mantle to Elisha, who performs miracles for a widow, raises a Shunamite’s son from the dead, and miraculously cleanses some stew during a famine (2 Kings 4) before he encounters Naaman in the fifth chapter of 2 Kings. 

Reading beyond the action of our focal text, Elisha goes on to perform more miracles, and finally, the narrative arc telescopes in on the final stages of the division of the united kingdom (Israel and Judah), which eventuates in the Babylonian exile, beginning in 2 Kings 8:16. Because the story is part of the section of the Bible that includes the accounts of the prophets Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17:1–2 Kings 8:15), it is easy to understand this passage as being about Elisha.  

Elisha figures prominently in 2 Kings 5; however, this is really a story about Naaman because he is the only character who experiences a change in the narrative. Neither the king of Aram, nor his wife, nor her servant girl experiences a change in their physical state or their perspective: The king and his wife do not travel or experience any change in their body, and the servant girl seems to have believed in the power of the Israelite prophet all along. 

The king of Israel is momentarily flustered, but he is not moved to action. Elisha speaks but never moves. It seems the prophet does not leave his quarters to encounter his visitor or to perform the miracle. And Naaman’s servants simply encourage him to do what is asked of him: to go wash in the Jordan seven times (2 Kings 5:10). Only Naaman relocates and is transformed. At the beginning of the story, Naaman has a skin disease, so he travels to Samaria and eventually immerses himself in the Jordan River. The story resolves with the restoration of Naaman’s skin.   

Wisdom: The unusual suspect

Naaman’s restoration is a miracle story that almost did not happen. The king of Aram’s military leader has a skin disease, and an Israelite servant girl, who was undoubtedly conscripted into service after an Aramean triumph over the Israelites, suggests to the military leader’s wife that a specific Israelite prophet can cure the condition (2 Κings 5:2–3). With the foreign servant girl’s lack of status and standing in the Aramean community, it was unlikely anyone connected to the king would listen to her. Yet, but for the wisdom of the servant girl, Naaman’s miracle would not have happened. The king of Aram does send Naaman to Samaria for his healing, with a letter of introduction. 

The letter, however, miscommunicates the purpose of Naaman’s journey. Instead of explaining that Naaman has come to Samaria seeking a solution from the prophet, the Aramean king penned, “… that you [the king] may cure him of his leprosy” (2 Kings 5:6). Upon reading the letter, the king of Israel is angered by the suggestion that he has the power to kill and resurrect. The king receives the letter as a signal that the king of Aram seeks to quarrel with him. At the end of verse 7, Naaman’s resolution is uncertain because the Israelite king (as the literal gatekeeper of the area) could refuse Naaman access to his region and, by extension, to the prophet. 

Only because Elisha learns of the king’s response does he send word to the palace, encouraging the king to direct Naaman to him. Again, Naaman’s miracle almost did not happen.

Then, Naaman almost blocks the miraculous blessing himself. When he is not greeted by the prophet but by the prophet’s messenger, Naaman is offended. Perhaps as a commander of the king’s army, who would appreciate deference and protocol, Naaman feels insulted by the prophet’s deployment of a proxy to give the miracle-working instructions. Naaman is so angry that he turns away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!” (2 Kings 5:11). 

Naaman wants an audience with the prophet and expects more fanfare than simple instructions to bathe in a common river. Offended, he almost misses his miracle. Were it not for his nameless servants, who encourage him to follow the prophet’s directions, Naaman would indeed have missed his blessing because it came packaged in a way that did not meet his expectations (2 Kings 5:13–14).  

As modern-day believers, we should pay close attention to what happens in 2 Kings 5. This story reminds us that wisdom may present as an unusual suspect. Indeed, the wisdom in 2 Kings 5 comes from individuals who are not central to the narrative or authoritative in the community. On the contrary, the individuals trusted to make wise decisions for the community do not display wisdom. The king of Aram miscommunicates his request, and the king of Israel responds in ways that almost foreclose on Naaman’s ability to access the prophet. The servants are the wise individuals in this narrative. The servant girl wisely suggests a visit to the Israelite prophet, and the servants of Naaman wisely encourage him to follow the prophet’s instructions. 

How often do we almost miss our miracle because we do not trust the package it comes in? How often have we not received the recommendation of someone we thought could not possibly know what they were talking about? How many times have others blocked our blessings because their emotions got in the way? How often do we discount how God may have worked in our lives? Not all miracles come with fanfare. At some point, like Naaman, we have to be obedient to the nonsensical for our conditions to change. We may have to inconvenience ourselves. We may even need to rely upon those we conscript to join us on our journey.   

This is a psalm about God’s awesome deeds for the people of God.¹

Overhearing the psalm is the universe, which the congregation assumes will join the chorus of God’s awesomeness once they recognize the actions of the Lord for Israel and for all creation.

Israel’s chosenness

Specifically, this psalm sings of how God kept Israel secure and gave Israel a new land. For this reason, it is right to give Yahweh thanks and praise. Exodus is recalled: “God turned sea [yam] into dry land; the river [nahar] they crossed on foot” (verse 6).

Yam and Nahar are the names of the personalized cosmic powers whom the Canaanite god Baal overthrows in the ancient myth of Baal’s ascent to kingship over nature.² According to the psalmist, these events are revelation of Yahweh’s rule over all nations, not just Israel. Wouldn’t you want to be in cahoots with this God?

American chosenness? A word of caution

Locating this text in the United States civic calendar on the Sunday closest to Independence Day creates a tricky situation for the preacher. Substituting Israel’s story for the story of European Protestant exodus from persecution to freedom is a pretty easy move. “Just as God parted the Red Sea to free Israel, so too did God offer safe passage across the Atlantic for the founding fathers. Just as Israel was destined to take over Canaan, so too the Pilgrims were destined to take the New World from its indigenous peoples.” Yikes. Can of worms opened.

Should you choose to preach from this psalm today, here is my suggestion: In order to avoid preaching a white supremacy sermon dressed up as a manifest destiny sermon, you may want to ignore the suggested pericope from the Revised Common Lectionary, which ends at verse 9. Instead, muddy the waters a bit by moving the reading through verse 12.

Praise for deliverance and discipline

For one, the general hymn of praise embedded in this psalm runs through verse 12.³ While the selection of verses 1–9 is pure, uncomplicated praise, the three omitted verses that go along with the general hymn are complicated. The tone shifts from “thunderous unanimous praise” to “sober reflection on the fact that the touch of the hand of God … is not discovered merely in portent and protection.”⁴ Discipline can also teach us (as a congregation, as a nation, as humanity) about God.

Why are verses 10–12 left out of the pericope? Perhaps due to the difficult implicit theology of the text as it claims that the trials of a wayward people—as lions caught in a net or trammel (not easy preaching material); or as people riding over God’s people (slightly easier to preach)—were set up by God in judgment and for the refinement of God’s people. What happens if your congregant reads past verse 9 and dives into this section on their own? What happens when we don’t discuss the need for discipline in our growth as Christians?

The point of these verses may also be to say to nations looking over their shoulders at Israel’s hard times: This does not contradict God’s power over all nations and creation. We were refined by these afflictions, and God brought us through to a spacious place and so into new life.

Remembering to renew

Any nation that hopes to stand in the congregation of the world and embody the awesomeness of God in any sort of evangelical or “city on a hill” kind of way must get back to the roots of God’s will for humanity (and the preacher must be clear about the gospel):

• to be a nation that loves justice, mercy, and walking humbly with God;
• to be a nation that cares for immigrants, widows, and orphans;
• to be a nation that practices Sabbath and jubilee, so that people and land may be restored into producing more good fruit.

As a citizen of the United States of America, I lament that we have not yet arrived to that good and spacious land where all can breathe and glorify their Creator. I lament, too, the tragic origin story of this nation and the ways Christ was weaponized to enforce a New World. So as a preacher, I suggest you exhort the congregation to live into God’s awesomeness, proclaiming the redemption story of this nation and world as far from complete. But offer steps seriously imaginable enough to keep the congregation from remaining in a comfortable paralysis.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for July 7, 2019.
2. James L. Mays, “Psalms,” in Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994), 222.
3. At verse 13 the psalm shifts to an individual’s personal testimony of thanksgiving to God.
4. Edwin McNeill Poteat, “Exposition Psalms 42–89,” in The Interpreter’s Bible in Twelve Volumes (Nashville: Abingdon, 1955), 346.

The text for this Sunday contains two distinct parts that both engage a community in deep dissent and dissonance with the prevailing propaganda of peace and prosperity through imperial world rule. At the close of the parenetic section, Galatians 5:1–6:10, Paul in 6:7–10 delivers a message of hope and faithful perseverance that is deeply personal and pastoral at once. The following six verses are the final statement of the letter, written with Paul’s “own hand.” In visibly “large letters” (6:11), he passionately reiterates his main point and discloses some of the backstory (6:11–16). What is this whole debate about circumcising the male Galatians actually about? We will start here.

A community under pressure (6:11–13)

How can one find the courage and persistence not to cave in to the demands of the established order? Its local advocates and agents are everywhere and suggest “reasonable accommodation.” If you are Abraham’s children and heirs (Galatians 3:29), they say, and if you want to worship his One God alone, why not get circumcised the proper Jewish way and be exempt from emperor worship, as all Jews are? Right now, your newly practiced abstention from worshiping “God Caesar” and the civic gods looks dangerously close to political sedition.¹ Why draw unnecessary attention by sporting a most puzzling Jew-Gentile identity that transgresses all normative codes of civic conduct, all orderly (binary) distinctions?

The situation in Galatia is tense. Repercussions are looming. There are people willing to enforce circumcision (anagkazousin, 6:12; New Revised Standard Version: compel) to bring the Jesus-following Galatians back to their right minds. For why should they, Paul’s ubiquitous but never-named “opponents” ask, pay the price for this “unlicensed” opting-out of emperor religion by non-Jews that will most likely fall back on the Jewish or even the whole civic community?  They don’t want to be persecuted for the cross of the Messiah/Christ, Paul matter-of-factly states (6:12). Their motives are much more pragmatic than based on pure love of Torah/Law. All that matters for them is an acceptable public appearance, a good showing in the (circumcised) flesh to boast about (6:12–13) and contain the conflict.

Resistance fatigue and the seed of hope (6:7–10)

Living against the grain of the dominant order and its ironclad hierarchical binaries (see 3:23–29 and 5:13–26) apparently is taking its toll. Symptoms of resistance fatigue and a sense of futility seem to be setting in among the Galatian Jesus-followers, who are getting weary to the point of giving up (6:9). Paul finds words of encouragement that are not lofty and dogmatic, but perplexingly down-to-earth. Entering the world of farming, he taps into deep sources of wisdom shared across cultures since ancient times, especially among native communities.

Seeds and soils teach the most vital life-lessons that need to be remembered for our and God’s sake: Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow (6:7). Germination can take a long time, though. It stays invisible and thus disputable. It is not on us to “fabricate” the growth or to see immediate results, for the earth and the seeds on their own and in their own time (kairō idiō, 6:9; New Revised Standard Version: at harvest time; see also Mark 4:27–28) set free the power of growth and fruit-bearing.

Our part is just to put the right seed into the right ground, namely to do what is right (6:9) and to work for the good of all (6:10), especially the family of faith as the new trans-binary community of Abraham’s children from different nations and birthplaces (3:29).

Spirit as matrix of indestructible life

It is remarkable that Paul refers to the “dark matter” of earth and soil here as a metaphor for the Spirit, the matrix of life that grants growth to the new creation. The innate life-giving and restorative powers of the natural world as God’s (rather than the emperor’s) creation are sources of hope. Tiny seeds and crumbs of fertile topsoil with billions of invisible microorganisms at work in them can teach us faith as trust in the prevailing power of transformation and life-giving. Love, joy, and peace (5:22) are the seeds of life, enduring life (zoe aionion, 6:8; New Revised Standard Version: eternal life) that is not terminated by corruption and extinction.

Once again: Flesh

The Flesh, on the other hand, is the ravenous impulse of selfishness, and competition is feeding into the dominant order of violence, hatred, and other-contempt, heading into self-destruction (see also 5:15). This includes the binary order that, for example, keeps Jews and other nations subdued by Rome categorically apart, sprouting perpetual distrust and enmities between self and other, us and them (see also 5:13–26). Sowing to your own flesh (6:8) by ignoring the needs of others, or by declaring their difference the limit of our shared humanity, means cultivating the Flesh as the metaphorical soil that brings forth a harvest of death and decay (6:8).

Again, we have to distinguish between Flesh (uppercase) as destructive binary principle (6:8b) and the flesh (lowercase) of the body (6:8a). The latter may undergo, for example, circumcision that, in this particular case for Paul, does not affirm legitimate difference but deadly division. Both meanings of F/flesh are present in one single sentence here, but failing to tell them apart may produce the fallacious impression that Paul sees the human body per se as source of eternal corruption and damnation.

Kairos and time to plant an apple tree

Two times our text uses the Greek term kairos, which stays hidden in the New Revised Standard Version translation as “harvest time” in 6:9 and “opportunity” in 5:10. Yet kairos is the special time within ordinary time when eternity redefines our mundane reality. For Paul it matters that we already now live in this kairos time that is inseminated by the Spirit and the new creation (6:9, 15), moving toward the harvest of eternal life (6:9). This is not a life above or apart from the earth in a faraway realm of otherworldliness, but the faithful trust and experience, if often fleeting, that another world is possible and already taking root while we are still trying to spread its seeds.

The old world order (kosmos; 6:14) is crucified to me, Paul declares, and I am crucified to it, including its decay-infested fantasies of peace through warfare and superiority, and of prosperity through domination and exploitation. The binary polarizations of either circumcision or foreskin and all they stand for (see also 3:28) are invalidated by the new creation and its different measuring rod (kanon, 6:15; New Revised Standard Version: rule) that means peace and mercy for all (6:16). Paul refuses to walk any longer in the marching columns (stoicheo; 6:16) of the binary order/Flesh. In Martin Luther’s words, Paul makes a pledge to plant an apple tree (or seed) right now—not despite but because of what we know: that the world in its old shape will have to end.

Notes

1. For the political and civic implications of the circumcision demand in Galatia, see Brigitte Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 222–227.