Lectionary Commentaries for October 26, 2025
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Parable and prayer interlace in this passage, much as in last week’s lectionary. So also do the concerns about the shape of God’s reign and what faithfulness looks like as we lean into the advent of the transformation of a world still haunted by death and its forces. Moreover, Luke here provides a sharp comparison in the parable’s protagonists as well as their prayers.

But first, the exegetically vital interpretive frame. So often, the Gospel writers provide us a hermeneutical key for Jesus’ parables. That is, when Jesus tells these little but powerful stories, he typically does so within a particular context that should shape how we proclaim the parables.

In this case, Jesus “told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt” (verse 9). Before turning to the parable, the preacher may want to dwell here a bit. To whom is Luke’s Jesus referring? The temptation is to map the description in verse 9 entirely to the Pharisee in the parable. But notice that the “some” in verse 9 are not named. They cannot be isolated to any one group of people. The Pharisee is but an illustration, as is the tax collector.

Who counts as “righteous” in Luke’s narrative? Righteousness is a trait worth emulating quite often for Luke. Elizabeth and Zechariah are righteous (1:6). So also Simeon (2:25) and the council member Joseph, who provides a tomb for the crucified Jesus (23:50). Jesus himself is called righteous by the centurion (23:47, typically translated as “innocent”). Moreover, Jesus promises blessing when we feed those who “cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (14:14). 

At the same time, the righteous sometimes fall short of the adjective in striking ways. In 5:32, Jesus opts “to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.” In the famous parables of chapter 15, it is the repentant sinner who is worthy of celebration, not the “ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (15:7). And in 20:20, the same Greek adjective describes the “spies who pretended to be honest” so that Jesus might be caught in his words.

Such are the tensions Luke navigates when describing the righteous. The righteous are both imitable and an object lesson in going awry. Perhaps, then, it is two other actions and attitudes that separate the folks being addressed by this parable. First is self-trust. The second is the contempt of others. Both are linked. To trust yourself in this way is to believe that being right supersedes curiosity about others, love for those who move through the world in a different way than you do. After all, to see your neighbor in contempt presupposes their fundamental error and your righteousness. 

As resentment, grievance, and contempt invade our political and social lives, this is a parable worth pondering afresh, and it is one worth reading widely, not narrowly. In the end, this is not a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector so much as a story about the deeply human drive to be right above all else, and the way such a drive leads us to look at our neighbor askance, causing us to lose who we are called to be in the process.

Thus, the parable here is illustrative, not precisely descriptive. It does not dwell on the character of Pharisees or tax collectors writ large. These two characters instead represent the surprise of the parable. After all, the Pharisee names a number of characteristics we should all value: He prays. He does not steal or cause unrest or commit adultery or become a cog in imperial rule. He fasts. He tithes. These are all behaviors Luke’s Jesus would celebrate. 

The comparison he makes is where he goes astray: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people … even like this tax collector” betrays that this imagined Pharisee’s righteousness rests on trust in himself rather than interdependence with others. His righteousness is a possession, solely to be clasped.

The contrast is sharp. The tax collector sets himself apart. His head is bowed. He pleads for mercy rather than trading in contempt. He calls himself a sinner rather than setting himself apart from others. For all we know, this tax collector is exactly right. What if, in the narrative world of the parable, he is the worst of the tax collectors, preying upon his neighbors and enriching himself while others suffer in fear of Rome’s might? When he goes home justified (verse 14), it is not perhaps because he has done well but because he recognizes the depth of his errors, the pain he has caused others, the wayward path he has trod.

This is the surprise of the parable. We are supposed to initially see the Pharisee as the hero and the tax collector as the villain, only to be puzzled by Jesus’ flipping of the script. Our preaching may then grant an opportunity to scramble our assumptions about righteousness. Whom do we expect to live in ways we should want to emulate? What if their purported righteousness is actually a flaw? Whom do we gaze at with contempt? What if their sinfulness is the ground of God’s extravagant mercy?

In the end, the parable probably imagines that we would be better off in a world where more of us prayed, fasted, tithed. And yet, when such actions engender contempt, resentment, and grievance about those who cannot or will not be righteous in the same way, then we have our way. We have misunderstood the shape of salvation. We have even come to hold contempt for God.

These two pieces of scripture from Jeremiah are pieces of communal lament. From a structural perspective, laments generally—though not always—include some approximation of an address, a complaint or reason for the lament, a petition that asks for a desired outcome, and a statement of hope and trust. More than this, lament includes naming of struggles and injustice, often a cathartic if vulnerable way to speak in front of God and one another. 

Lament also offers a framework for people to intercede for their neighbors. This is particularly true of communal laments like those in the assigned pericope. Naming a shared experience requires us to see one another, as does lament on behalf of those whose experiences are different from our own. Lament can be an aspect of resisting apathy and helplessness and a part of turning toward action on behalf of neighbors. Lament is far more than complaining and is an integral part of prayer.

The occasion for lament in this pericope is drought (Jeremiah 14:1–6), but the laments are broad enough to accommodate many different situations. Although the two sections of communal lament included in the pericope for Ordinary 30C are separated by intervening verses, they have the feel of being related. Read as a single whole, an outline might look something like this:

The missing verses in the middle include a warning to Jeremiah not to intercede for the people (verses 11–12), a statement of divine judgment on false prophets (verses 13–16), and a divine lament (verses 17–18). The Lord’s judgment, whether on false prophets or on the people as a whole, is not disinterested or mechanistic but rather drives the Lord to cry divine tears.

The two laments mirror one another, with the intervening divine response reminding us that the laments seek a response and are situational. Despite the seemingly firm statement in verse 10 that the Lord would not accept them but would remember their iniquity, the people return to their lament, questioning whether the Lord has completely rejected Judah. It is a remarkable feat of persistence to continue in the face of what feels like divine rejection, though there is precedence for this persistence in the Hebrew Bible. Abraham bargains for the city of Sodom. Moses intercedes for mercy after the golden calf incident in the wilderness. 

Likewise, the people of Judah continue to call out to their God in hopeful lament, calling on God to respond not with judgment but with mercy. This persistence is centered on the faithful confession that mercy and steadfast commitment are core to the Lord’s character. As the people lament their situation, including their own sinfulness, they call on God to act in accordance with God’s own character. A sermon focusing on lament and God’s faithfulness could be particularly helpful on a day when the community is not necessarily gathered for the purpose of lament and, in that way, could serve as a foundation for days when lament is the clearest faithful response to tragedy.

Images of God

These laments utilize several uncommon images for God. Imagery for God in laments often focuses on what people feel about God in a certain situation, rather than on confessional claims about God for all times and places. Even so, these images warrant exploration and curiosity. In these laments, the people experience God as a sojourner and an incapable warrior. A preacher could fruitfully explore one or more of these images in a sermon.

Sojourner

In verse 8, the people ask why their God should be “like a sojourner in the land, like a traveler turning aside for lodging.” Within the context of the lament, this signals that the people feel abandoned, a feeling augmented by the tradition that the temple in Jerusalem was the Lord’s earthly home. 

Sojourners were travelers dependent on hospitality for food, shelter, and protection from danger. Sometimes sojourners stayed just a night; sometimes they stayed much longer—even a lifetime. All required hospitality: food, lodging, and, for those staying longer, a means for ongoing survival and community participation. Deuteronomy commands love for sojourners, alongside other vulnerable groups of people like widows and orphans, and includes them in some forms of ritual and daily life (5:14; 10:19; 24:14–21; 27:19). 

What would it mean for the people to love the Lord as they do the sojourner? What would it mean for the people to invite God into their midst and for the Lord to accept hospitality? And what would this look like in our own communities and in the broader world?

Incapable warrior

The Lord as a warrior fighting on behalf of the Lord’s people in order to save them from their enemies is a common image in the Hebrew Bible. Thus, when an enemy like Babylon made incursions into Judah, even threatening and eventually conquering its capital city, the Lord was deemed either unable or unwilling to save. Thus, in verse 9, the lamenters ask the Lord, “Why should you be like … a mighty warrior who cannot save [or “give help,” per New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]?” This expresses the experience of the people and also serves as a type of motivation, suggesting that enemies might view the Lord as weak or incapable—and what kind of God would want that? (See also Psalms 79 and 115.)

Hope of Israel

All of this is bookended with hope. In verse 8, lamenters address the Lord as the “hope of Israel” (see also Jeremiah 17:13), and verse 22 ends with the sentiment that the people’s hope is in the Lord, who is more powerful than an idol. Whatever the people feel like God is—sojourner, incapable warrior—they continue to raise their lament to the One they trust to enter the situation and have the power to act. 

Why did God let this happen? This is the question that drives the book of Joel.¹

Natural disaster and ordinary time

As I write this in 2019, the Midwest has endured a record-setting streak of tornadoes and floods. Headlines daily alert us that earth is groaning under the burden of this invasive species called humans, with headlines such as “We are in trouble” after global carbon emissions reached record-setting highs in 2018.² Panic is creeping into the hearts of even the most confident earthlings. Natural (and human-made) disasters disrupt our ordinary time and lead us to ask questions of God and God’s power. Why is God letting this happen? We need prophets like Joel in our time to address the cries of creation.

The specific plague in Joel’s context is the result of a violent invasion of locusts. It may be hard for us to envision just how devastating a locust plague was and is. Joel describes the invasion in the first chapter: An entire life and livelihood is laid waste by these creatures. The terrain appears to have been attacked by a scorching fire. Picture the aftermath of 2018 fires in Paradise, California.³ Or the devastation after a tornado tore through Linwood, Kansas, this summer, turning mature trees into piles of toothpicks and flattening homes.⁴

Entire lives and livelihoods lost. Joel stands with his people in the wreckage before the promises described in our pericope can be imagined and proclaimed:

Be dismayed, you farmers,
wail, you vinedressers,
over the wheat and the barley;
for the crops of the field are ruined …
surely, joy withers away among the people. (Joel 1:11; 12b)

This is the reality for so many as a result of climate change and natural disaster. Before we move to the promise of restoration (our pericope for today), we, like Joel, must name the devastation and call for repentance.

Suggestion to the preacher: Pull the camera back

Consider wandering away from our passage to set the whole scene. I don’t see this as an issue when you encounter a minor prophet like Joel (and again next week in Habakkuk). These texts do not make their way into our lectionary often. And when Joel is referenced, it is often through the mouth of Peter and through the lens of Pentecost or Ash Wednesday rather than preached in its own right into the suffering we endure in ordinary time. We also have placed human beings at the center of the reading, when Joel paints a picture of the deep and God-breathed connection of people to land and animals.

For example, before our passage begins, two other audiences are addressed and claimed in the promise of a better tomorrow: soil and animals.

Do not fear, O soil;
be glad and rejoice,
for the LORD has done great things!

Do not fear, you animals of the field,
for the pastures of the wilderness are green;
the tree bears fruit,
the fig tree and vine give their full yield. (Joel 2:21–22)

As we live in these uncertain times with signs of warning calling from the earth, perhaps we should shift this pericope, expand it beyond the anthropocentric, and place it back into context. For with Joel, joy results from creation’s harmony. Joy is a field that is green, a tree bearing fruit. Joy is animals of the field fed and full. And yes, people fed and people prophesying. But all things in relation, and all embedded in God’s creation.

The day of the Lord

The concept of “the day of the Lord” comes from prophets describing Yahweh’s judgment on Israel and Judah in the near future because of the people’s failure to follow Yahweh’s commandments. In this way, destruction is ultimately brought about by us. Theodicy is addressed and answered: We are suffering because we have been disobedient.

Again, the parallel to our current climate crisis is ripe for exploration, preachers. We have brought destruction on ourselves because we have failed to honor the soil, sky, and land as just stewards of God’s creation. Who will then gather the young and old and bid the congregation to purify themselves (2:16)? How can we rouse God on behalf of God’s land and people (2:18–19)?

Out of the trauma, Joel and other prophets dream of a better world. Prophets dream, with Yahweh, of a prosperous future for a traumatized people unable to see beyond the devastation. This world Joel imagines is one in which rain falls as it should, harvests are plentiful, human and bovine bellies are full, and God’s Spirit pours out on all people.

What world will you imagine for your congregation?

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for October 27, 2019.
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/12/05/we-are-trouble-global-carbon-emissions-reached-new-record-high/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f9e580f14217
3. https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/Camp-Fire-Paradise-in-recovery-six-months-later-13815152.php
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/29/large-extremely-dangerous-tornado-rips-through-kansas-causing-multiple-injuries-catastrophic-damages/?utm_term=.8f8fa29c512a

The Songs of Zion celebrate God’s presence with the community in Zion, the Jerusalem temple, the central place of worship for the community.¹ This divine presence in the sacred temple brings life to the community. These psalms are part of ancient Israel’s praise of the God who is present with them and enlivens them. Psalm 84 looks forward to arriving at the temple and to rejoicing in God’s presence in that sacred place. 

There are a number of musical settings of the psalm, and they focus often on the anticipation of worship reflected in the opening verses. Perhaps the psalm reflects the tradition of pilgrimages to the temple and to festivals there and arriving at the temple or the anticipation of beginning the pilgrimage to the temple. Readers and hearers of the psalm can imagine the joy of standing at the gates of Jerusalem, having arrived at the holy city, and seeing the temple and rejoicing in its beauty and importance.  

This psalm comes from the time of the Davidic kingdom and reflects the importance of Jerusalem as the community’s central city. The beginning of the psalm (verses 1–4) and the end of the psalm (verses 10–12) look forward to coming to the temple and the life-giving worship there. Verses 5–7 remember the pilgrimage to the sanctuary. Verses 8–9 pray for the anointed Davidic king. The lectionary psalm is listed as verses 1–7, so that will be the focus of this commentary.  

Ancient Israel rejoiced in the divine presence with the community, and the focus of that tabernacling presence was in the temple. Psalm 84 opens with an exclamation of the beauty of that sacred place. The singer yearns to be in that beautiful and life-giving place and so sings for joy. It is a joyous moment; perhaps the pilgrims come into the first view of Jerusalem or the temple. The “soul” indicates the whole person who longs for and even faints in anticipation of worship in the temple, “the courts of the LORD.” The “heart” and “flesh” again suggest the whole person. The heart in ancient Hebrew is the seat of the intellect and will. 

Verse 3 uses the image of the sparrow and swallow as small birds who find a “home” as a place to nest in the Lord’s altars. Even such small birds have a place in the care of the one named Lord of hosts, King, God. YHWH provides safety and shelter in this sacred place. To be present in the sanctuary and sing praise there to the Creator brings joy. Verse 4 articulates a beatitude for the pilgrims who live and sing in the sanctuary. They will find the blessing and joy of worship and safety in Zion. The singer of this psalm anticipates that hope with great yearning and faith.  

Verses 5–7 also take the form of a beatitude, hoping for joy to come upon those who find strength in the divine presence on their pilgrimage to Zion. Beatitudes are part of wisdom in ancient Israel and observe life, life related to temple worship in Psalm 84. The pilgrimage to Zion and worship in the temple include singing praises to YHWH in the context of fullness and completeness coming from the encounter with the divine.

Verses 6–7 are about the pilgrimage to Zion. As the pilgrims move toward the sacred place of the divine presence, they see renewal from refreshing rains and move “from strength to strength.” The journey may be difficult and lengthy, but the hope of encountering the presence of YHWH in the temple brings anticipation and expectation. Verse 10 reflects this hope with the affirmation that one day in the temple far exceeds the hope for a thousand days elsewhere. The briefest encounter with the divine presence proffers great hopes for the pilgrims. The divine presence brings joy that no other experience can offer.  

Two particular notes at the beginning of Psalm 84 are noteworthy. The first is the title used for YHWH in verse 1: “LORD of hosts.” The title is used four times in the psalm (verses 1, 3, 8, and 12). The literal translation would be “YHWH of armies,” with the armies or hosts being the heavenly hosts of angels or heavenly hosts of sun, moon, and stars or the hosts of Israel’s armies. The title suggests that YHWH is the great and victorious God who is present in power in Zion.

It is also noteworthy that the superscription of Psalm 84 identifies the psalm as “of the Korahites.” The first collection of Korahite psalms comes in Book II of the Psalter (Psalms 42–49). A second grouping of psalms of the Korahites comes in Book III (Psalms 84–85 and 87–88). These psalms come after the conclusion of the Psalms of Asaph and the Elohistic Psalter in Psalm 83. Korah was the leader of a group of psalmists/collectors of psalms. Psalm 84 brings to mind the first psalm in the first Korahite collection, Psalms 42–43, originally one psalm. Images of looking forward to worship in the sanctuary and hoping to encounter the divine presence are central to both psalms that begin Korahite collections.  

The festival worship celebrated in Psalm 84 centers in the Jerusalem temple. YHWH is present with the community anchored in Zion, and pilgrims on the way to worship in Zion look forward to encountering the divine presence in the temple (Psalms 27:4; 42:2). Psalm 84 also anticipates such a worship event. It is that presence that makes the place and the event so significant, so hearers/readers of the text today can understand why the pilgrims yearn for this festive worship. Wholeness of life is found in encounter with YHWH, made real in the worship in the sanctuary.

These events of pilgrimage and festival worship are community events rather than private events. The pilgrimages and festivals can give focus and hope to the community; in these events, the life God has created and blessed becomes a reality for the pilgrims. Psalm 84 expresses the yearning for these worship events. The singer of Psalm 84 has reflected on the preparation for this life-giving worship experience and the yearning for this festival worship.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for October 23, 2022.

The late comedian Mitch Hedberg joked about the difference between truth and the stories we tell: “I like when they say a movie was inspired by a true story, because that’s weird. It means the story is not a true story, it was just inspired by a true story.”¹

But Hedberg misses part of the richness of that “inspired” cliché, because part of the force of using the phrase depends on the ambiguity it expresses: It doesn’t mean “not a true story,” but “mixes elements of truth with bits that may not be true.” At any given point, one may be watching a recreation of events that undoubtedly happened, or watching a scene that provides illuminating context without hewing to verifiable events. “Inspired by a true story” doesn’t exclude the truth, but acknowledges that telling the truth can be a tricky business, with some claims and inferences that may be less certain than others (and, of course, some that may be entirely fictitious).

That ambiguity characterizes the literary world 2 Timothy inhabits. If we grant that Saint Paul himself wrote it letter by letter, we should also grant that he includes a lot of material for which he’s the only witness, which other people might dispute. We don’t, for instance, hear Alexander the Coppersmith’s side of the conflict (4:14, omitted from the lectionary). But if we say, “Naw, Paul didn’t write that,” we have to admit that much of the letter contains material that could easily have come from Paul with no threat to critical historical judgment.

All of that applies especially if we think of 2 Timothy in the context of the popular literary genre of a testament, the parting words of a notable (historical or legendary) figure. We have testaments ascribed to Job, to the 12 sons of Jacob, to Solomon, and to many other characters from the Bible; this epistle, with its retrospective summation of Paul’s ministry, with ethical exhortation (typical of “testaments,” but also very characteristic of Paul), and with its anticipation of the imminent death of the figure, represents Paul’s parting advice to Timothy. The impression is even stronger if one reads verses 9–15 that the lectionary omits.

So, in this reading inspired by the true story of Paul’s career as an apostle, the epistle flags the points that he wants to leave with Timothy as the hallmark of his ministry.

First, he depicts the life of discipleship in terms of a conflict, “the good fight,” with the juxtaposition of the repeated “fighting” words (we might try to recapture the Greek word order by reading it as “the good fight fought I,” archaic as that would sound in English) intensifying the sense that Paul sees that only one clash matters. While some read the phrase as a deliberate play on the possibly ambiguous construction “fought the good fight”/”fought well in the fight,” the pattern of the next two clauses tips the balance toward “fought the fight,” to match “finished the race” and “kept the faith.”

Second, with another athletic metaphor, he has run to the finish line—he does not boast about coming in first, but simply asserts that he has not fallen and stopped trying short of the goal. While Paul’s letters do not hesitate (well, they do hesitate, but they go ahead anyway) to specify Paul’s outstanding accomplishments, this letter is content with having finished at all. God, presumably, gave him a particular distance to run, and at this writing he has fulfilled his mission.

And third, shifting away from tropes of physical exertion, he has maintained the faith. As before, Paul might have bragged about spreading the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome (or even Spain), but here he makes no claim greater than that he “kept the faith.” Recent scholarship has developed a strong case for reading words for “faith” as invoking the Greco-Roman virtue of fidelity, trustworthiness, and trust-keeping; in this light, the letter may be proposing that at the end of a long, arduous life of serving Christ, Paul had sustained his reliance on God and had not defaulted on God’s trust in him.

All three of these lapidary phrases point to a way of life that any Christian can follow—not a tick list of goals one might have fallen short of, or on the basis of which one might presume to earn salvation.

The unquestioned Pauline letters can project the image of just the sort of superapostle Paul himself opposed in Corinth: speaking in tongues more than all of us, enduring more suffering than we could, founding congregations through all Achaia and Asia Minor, and with such wisdom that he could understand better than anybody else the deep things of God. But in this testament scene from 2 Timothy (inspired by a true story), Paul reminds Timothy, and us, that the Lord, the righteous judge, will bestow the crown of righteousness not only on high-achieving apostles, but on all those who resist evil, finish their course, and keep a trusting relationship with God—who long for his presence.

Notes

1. Mitch Hedberg, ‘Tea Ski,” Do You Believe in Gosh? (Comedy Central Records: 2008).