Lectionary Commentaries for February 1, 2026
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Challenges abound for interpreters of this opening section of the Sermon on the Mount. 

How does the sermon function, and for whom? Does it set out entry standards for encountering God’s empire, or does it set out practices for committed Jesus-followers? Does it establish impossible standards that force people to cry out for divine mercy, or does it provide an interim ethic ahead of Jesus’ return but which, with the passing of time, is no longer relevant? In other words, what is the interaction between grace and works, the indicative and the imperative? Does the sermon reveal God’s will, persuade compliance, construct identity, train for discernment, empower followers?  

How to decide among these options?

As obvious as it sounds, the Sermon on the Mount occurs within Matthew’s Gospel. The sermon is not a free-standing unit. Chapters 5–7 follow chapters 1–4, particularly 4:17–25 in which Jesus begins his public ministry.

Having been commissioned to manifest God’s saving presence (1:21–23), Jesus affirms his identity and allegiance as God’s Son, or agent, through his baptism and his testing by the devil (3:17; 4:1–11). Jesus then begins his public activity at 4:17. His proclamation, “Repent, the empire of the heavens has come near,” expresses his commission from 1:21–23. To manifest God’s saving presence is to manifest the empire, or rule, of God. 

What does the empire, or rule, of God accomplish when it comes near as Jesus proclaims in 4:17? Verses 18–22, the calling of the first four disciples, provide a first answer. It claims human lives and allegiances. It redirects commitments and actions. It constitutes a new identity and community. 

A second answer follows in verse 23a. This activity of teaching and preaching is mentioned briefly here. Jesus proclaims the good news of God’s empire, though just what content is in view is not yet developed. It will be in the sermon.

A third answer follows in verses 23b–25. Jesus heals sick folks. The Roman Empire benefited the ruling elites in multiple ways but imposed pervasive poverty, food insecurity, high stress, and widespread diseases of deficiency and contagion on the majority poor. Jesus repairs people damaged by the inequities and oppressive structures of Roman societal injustice. 

Now Matthew’s Jesus sits on a mountain to teach his disciples (5:1), as well as the crowds drawn by Jesus’ healings (7:28–29). 

This sequence clarifies the sermon’s functions. It addresses this audience with visions, elaborations, illustrations, and examples about life in the empire of God. This is the central motif of the sermon (5:3, 10, 19–20; 6:10, 33; 7:21). It constructs the identity of disciples in relation to God’s empire. It reveals perspectives and practices that faithfully express the divine empire. In the context of Rome’s empire, it empowers such living with plural language that emphasizes communal support and motivates with eschatological accountability. 

The sermon’s opening section sets out nine beatitudes (5:3–12). Interpreters face another decision: whether to read the beatitudes as character ethics setting out qualities of individual piety (be humble, et cetera), to read in terms of human emotions (“happy are…”), or to read them as ways in which God acts in the imperial world to favor not the privileged powerful but the oppressed poor, deprived of but struggling for justice. 

The beatitudes employ plural language, not singular, individualistic language. The context of verses 4:18–25 indicates Jesus’ concern with and participation in society. And the content of the beatitudes concerns societal visions, structures, and practices. 

Accordingly, the first four beatitudes (5:3–6) name oppressive situations in which God’s empire is at work to reverse the damage imposed by imperial policies, structures, and practices. This transformative work is underway in the actions of Jesus and his followers but is yet to be completed, as the second clauses indicate.

The first beatitude, for example, blesses “the poor in spirit.” The language designates not characteristics of being humble and patient, but people who are materially poor and whose spirits are crushed by economic injustice, deprivation of resources, and few options.

Population mapping of the Roman Empire indicates high percentages of folks who knew varying levels of poverty. Perhaps as many as 70–80 percent of the population lived near, at, or below subsistence levels. They struggled for material resources, experienced food insecurity, faced diseases of deprivation and contagion, knew economic deprivations and pressures, lived in urban overcrowding, encountered natural disasters and occupational accidents, observed status differentials (especially those who were enslaved), experienced considerable stress, and knew violence in household and societal contexts. 

The corrosive effect of poverty and stress on mental and somatic health is well documented. This beatitude does not romanticize poverty. Rather, it recognizes poverty’s corrosive and crushing impact on human lives even as it also declares that God’s empire or rule is at work with the socioeconomic poor in their struggle for justice by transforming the imperial world.    

The third beatitude continues this emphasis on both human misery and divine activity. The beatitude’s blessing on the meek derives from Psalm 37, where four times, the meek are promised that they will inherit the land (verses 11, 22, 29, 34). The psalm defines the meek not as the humble or wimps but as the literal powerless and poor who lack the life-giving resource of land. The wealthy powerful have plotted against them (verse 12), used violence (verse 14, 32), and oppressed them (verse 35). God promises to remove the wicked (verse 9–10, 13, 15, 17, 20, 28b) and to give the land to the meek (verses 11, 22, 29, 34).

These first four beatitudes declare divine favor on situations and practices of exploitation. They promise divine reversals in both the present and the future. 

The next five beatitudes (Matthew 5:7–12) name human actions that express God’s transforming and challenging work for a just world. They identify distinctive practices—doing mercy, being pure in heart, making peace, being persecuted and reviled—that further God’s justice. These actions mark the identity of the community of Jesus’ followers that variously coopts, challenges, and redefines dominant cultural commitments.

The prophet Micah places the mountains, the hills, and the foundations of the earth as witnesses to a cosmic trial between God and Israel. Nature is not a silent backdrop but an active participant in the moral drama of divine complaint and human failure. Creation itself bears witness to the covenantal rupture—a theme that holds renewed significance in an era of climate crisis and environmental degradation. In the courtroom scene, the prophet summons Israel to hear God’s lawsuit: “Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice” (verse 1).

The choice of setting is revealing. In this cosmic court, the mountains and foundations of the earth, which have endured since creation, serve as witnesses to Israel’s repeated acts of injustice. Theologically, Micah places moral accountability in the context of creation itself, suggesting that injustice against others reverberates through the natural world. When divine complaint and human wrongdoing are set within creation, the earth becomes a participant in moral testimony.

Memory as resistance

God’s opening statement (verses 3–5) appeals not to punishment but to memory: “O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!” (verse 3). God reminds Israel of divine acts of deliverance—rescue from Egypt; leadership through Moses, Aaron, and Miriam; and protection against the schemes of Balak and Balaam. These acts are not distant history; they are collective memories meant to form moral consciousness. Divine memory here functions as resistance to historical amnesia, which allows cycles of oppression to persist.

Frederick Douglass once declared, “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.”¹ The prophet’s summons to remember aligns with this conviction. To remember is to resist the social and political forces that benefit from forgetting. Micah calls the community to remember not for nostalgia’s sake but to reanimate a collective identity grounded in liberation history.

The hope of justice

The rhetorical question in verse 6—“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?”—transitions the text from divine speech to human response. Here, the people seek the means to satisfy divine expectation. The exaggerated offerings—burnt offerings, thousands of rams, rivers of oil, even the firstborn—expose the futility of attempting to buy divine favor through sacrifice. Micah’s prophetic irony unmasks the absurdity of a transactional faith that confuses ritual performance with moral integrity.

God’s requirements are neither mysterious nor inaccessible. The prophet’s triadic summary in verse 8—“to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”—distills the covenantal ethic into embodied moral action. Justice (mishpat), kindness (hesed), and humility (hatzneaʿ) together outline a relational faith grounded in equity and compassion. In Micah’s vision, right worship cannot be severed from right relationship; piety divorced from justice is idolatry.

Justice as liberation

The prophet’s charge transcends ritual reform; it calls for social transformation. Justice is not an abstract virtue but an embodied practice that liberates the oppressed. To do justice means to confront systems that exploit and marginalize. To love kindness is to nurture solidarity that restores community. And to walk humbly with God is to recognize the divine presence among those rendered voiceless.

In a 1989 speech, César Chávez invoked this same divine mandate to address the injustices faced by immigrant farmworkers—from low wages to deadly working conditions:

Our cause goes on in hundreds of distant places. It multiplies among thousands and then millions of caring people who heed through a multitude of simple deeds the commandment set out in the book of the Prophet Micah, in the Old Testament: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”²

From Micah to Chávez, this call to justice can still be heard in today’s streets, where people urge governing leaders to free systems of justice from corporate greed. This form of justice—the one rooted in the exodus freedom story—is not composed of military investments, detention facilities, and prisons, but of love in action, a love that liberates rather than enslaves.

Notes

1. Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” speech delivered in Rochester, NY,, July 5, 1852, in The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, vol. 2, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: International Publishers, 1950), 188.
2. Richard J. Jensen and John C. Hammerback, eds., The Words of César Chávez (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003), 150.

Psalm 15 presents a picture of holiness, a way of life that is in keeping with God’s own nature.¹ The psalm comprises a two-part question (verse 1) followed by an extended answer (verses 2–5a) and a concluding blessing (verse 5b). It suggests that the righteous person is driven by an overriding concern for the well-being of the neighbor. Personal holiness requires a commitment to the wholeness of the community. God responds to this commitment with an unshakable promise (verse 5b).

A question of access to God (verse 1)

Psalm 15 exhibits antiphony. It presents the interaction of two or more voices through a formula of call and response. Such antiphony is found at several points throughout the book of Psalms (for example, Psalms 24, 91) and is a clear indicator that a psalm originated in a liturgical context.

Even today, liturgies are full of antiphony. Antiphonal words and music can be found in the services of many Christian traditions. Antiphony abounds in calls to worship, prayers of confession, prayers of thanksgiving, the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving. In fact, we have antiphony every time “all God’s people say … Amen!”

“Altar calls” are yet another form of antiphony. The preacher summons the community to “get right with God,” and individuals respond, both with the act of coming down the aisle and with words—a profession, a commitment to a new way of life. Psalm 15 is roughly analogous to an “altar call.” It was part of an ancient entrance liturgy, an antiphonal question-and-answer that accompanied the approach to a holy place. The psalm describes what it takes to get right with God, to come to the altar—a place of sacrifice and devotion where the divine presence can be experienced in a profound way.

The psalm begins with a question about who can approach the holy place: “O LORD, who can abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill?” (verse 1; see also Psalm 24:3). In the psalm’s earliest liturgical context, God’s “tent” and “holy hill” refer to the temple in Jerusalem, the place where God’s presence was palpable.

The Old Testament reflects many, sometimes contradictory ways of understanding what was required to be in God’s presence. Just like today, there were differing ways of answering fundamental questions of access, inclusion, and belonging. What did it mean to “get right with God”? Who could be in God’s holy places? How long could one be there? How exactly can a human be in contact with the holiness of God? How close can one get? There are many answers to these questions throughout the Old Testament, not just one.² For its part, Psalm 15 focuses its answer on what we today would call ethics. Its answer is clear. Getting right with God means getting right with the community.

The characteristics of a holy life (verses 2–5a)

The description of the righteous in verses 2–5a was once part of a liturgy for entrance into the temple. Yet this ancient altar call has an enduring rhetorical effect. A remarkable feature of its poetic form is its alternating list of “dos” (verses 2, 4) and “don’ts” (verses 3, 5), as well as its balance of three positive statements (verse 2) followed by three negative statements (verse 3) characterizing the righteous.

Despite its complex structure, the answer (verses 2–5a) to the opening query (verse 1) is simple. Those who can come to God’s altars are those whose words and actions are pure; they “walk blamelessly” (hôlēk tāmim, verse 2). The very common Hebrew verb “walk” (hālak) has an idiomatic sense in this context, meaning all of one’s actions or behaviors, one’s way of life.  When the psalmist refers to the way one walks, it is not so much a description of how one gets from one place to another, but the totality of how one lives.

There are those who walk in the right ways (see, for example, Psalm 1:1–3; 26:1, 3, 11; 37:14; 84:11), and others whose “walk” reflects their unrighteousness (see, for example, Psalm 68:21; 82:5; 89:30). This Hebrew idiom is so pervasive that the entire legal tradition within rabbinic Judaism is known as Halakhah, literally “the way one walks,” or, as Lawrence H. Shiffman describes it, “the life of Torah, encompassing all areas of human life, including civil, criminal, political, religious, moral, ritual, and familial issues.”³

Psalm 15:2 describes those who walk “blamelessly” (tāmim). The Hebrew tāmim here suggests wholeness, completeness, being fully integrated. This is a picture of people who live with integrity, those who “do what is right and speak truth from their heart” (verse 2). Their internal orientation matches what one sees on the outside and hears in their words.

These people are known for what they avoid doing as much as for what they do. They avoid “slander” (verse 3), speaking falsehoods that are meant to bring harm to others. In fact, they never do anything that would hurt or disgrace those who are near them: they “do no evil to their friends [rēʿā], nor take up reproach against their neighbors [qārōb].” The Hebrew words in verse 3 for “friends” and “neighbors” are general terms that simply describe those who share the same proximity. The one who can come close to God is the one who does no harm to those who are close by.

The characterization of the righteous ones continues with a description of their disposition and perceptions. They can tell the difference between good and bad (verse 5), and they align their loyalties with those who recognize God’s authority. The righteous ones acknowledge God’s law and are wary of those who are a law unto themselves, those who acknowledge no authority over their own desires. Because the righteous know that their words matter, they keep their promises. They do so even when it is difficult or costly.

The last characteristic of the righteous has to do with economics. To “take a bribe against the innocent” (verse 5) meant profiting from a lie to the detriment of someone wrongly accused. Likewise, in the context of ancient Israel, “to lend money at interest” meant that one was making a profit off the poverty of others (see Leviticus 25:35–38). In short, those who enter God’s presence do not exploit the difficulties of their neighbors for their own advantage.

God’s unshakable commitment to the righteous (verse 5b)

At the end of Psalm 15, we have heard an answer to the opening questions “Who may abide …? Who may dwell?” The answer resounds clearly: the people whose words, actions, and dispositions are oriented toward building up the community, not tearing it down. The people who dedicate themselves to the stability of the neighbors will be stable themselves. They “shall never be moved [yimmôṭ]” (verse 5b).

Since the psalm begins with the idea of abiding and dwelling, one might interpret the final benediction to mean that the righteous ones will never depart the abode of God. God’s home becomes their home. They will never move. While this reading is possible, it is more probable that “not being moved” here (mwṭ in the niphal stem) has a different sense, meaning one has stability and certainty of divine protection. This security keeps one upright amidst difficult circumstances, a scenario that is described in many psalms (for example, Psalms 16:8; 21:7; 30:6; 62:2; 112:6).

By contrast, when someone or something is “moved” (mwṭ) in the Psalms, it is a sign of trouble, chaos, even social and moral disarray (for example, Psalms 13:4; 46:2, 6; 60:2). Yet Psalm 15 claims that the righteous ones can approach God’s presence and stand firm.

Connections for the church

For communities reading Psalm 15 today, it can be difficult to discuss drawing distinctions about who can have access to God. It is important to remember that the Old Testament presents different views about access to divine presence and blessing.

The challenge of a text like Psalm 15 is that many of us will quickly associate ourselves with the righteous, the holy ones, before attending to the terms of the holiness the text describes. We can use this text to reinforce group identities in unhelpful and unreflective ways. It can be all too easy for us to identify who is in and who is out, who is good and who is bad, who are the righteous and who are the wicked. We often mischaracterize difference as wickedness and similarity as righteousness. Readers must be aware of this dynamic when approaching the clear moral terms expressed in Psalm 15.

Yet for careful readers, there is a great benefit to meditating on this text, with its extreme clarity and specificity about what holiness looks like. This ancient altar call invites us to get right with God, to examine ourselves, to reconsider our actions, our motivations, our essential orientation to those around us. It forces us to acknowledge that there is no division between right beliefs and right actions. God upholds us as we uphold others. We support those around us even when it is costly—especially when it is costly. Whatever the cost, we shall not be moved.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for September 1, 2024.
2. Many studies trace these issues across the Hebrew Bible. See, for example, Eyal Regev, “Priestly Dynamic Holiness and Deuteronomic Static Holiness,” VT 51 (2001): 243–261; Paul Jensen, Graded Holiness: A Key to the Priestly Conception of the World, JSOTSup 106 (Sheffield: 1992); Christian Frevel and Christophe Nihan, eds., Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean World and Ancient Judaism (Leiden: 2013).
3. Lawrence H. Shiffman, “Halakhah: Second Temple and Hellenistic Judaism,” EBR 11:2.

After his greeting and thanksgiving (1 Corinthians 1:1–9), Paul addresses the divisions in the Corinthian congregation and reminds them he did not come to baptize but to preach the good news, focusing on the cross, not “eloquent wisdom” (verses 10–17). This message about the cross proves central for understanding God (verses 18–25) as well as God’s choice of the Corinthian believers (verses 26–31).

Understanding God (1 Corinthians 1:18–25)

The message about the cross divides humanity into two groups. On the one hand, those who regard the cross as moronic and absurd are perishing, headed for destruction. Those who are being saved, on the other hand, find the message “the power of God” (verse 18; see also Romans 1:16). 

God is the one who acts through the word of the cross, as Paul makes clear by quoting Isaiah 29:14. God upends the values of this present age, destroying “the wisdom of the wise” and paying no attention to their shrewdness, treating it with disdain (1 Corinthians 1:19). God will destroy the very thing that from the viewpoint of this present age is most valued—human wisdom and eloquence.

Paul next asks four rhetorical questions. The first three create a staccato repetition that calls out the wise, the scholar, and the “debater of this age”—terms that may either refer to different groups or provide three descriptions of one group. In either case, these people, shaped by the perspective of the present age, seek to know God through human wisdom and eloquent speech. But as Paul’s fourth question makes clear, God overturns such presumption, making “foolish the wisdom of the world” (verse 20).

Paul is adamant: Trying to understand God by means of human wisdom does not work. God chooses a different method to rescue humanity: the preaching of the message of the cross (verse 21). This proclamation appears foolish to all who seek other paths for knowing God. Many of Paul’s fellow Jews expect signs or miracles to reveal God acting to bring an end to the present age, while the Greeks (gentiles) want to know God through human wisdom.

For both groups, the message of “Christ crucified” (verse 22) proves offensive and nonsensical. Many Jews expect that the Messiah will be a conquering hero delivering God’s people from Roman oppression, not an accursed criminal who hung on a tree (Deuteronomy 21:23; Galatians 3:13). The situation is little better for the Greeks: A shamefully executed man does not fit their idea of the ideal hero or their vision of gods who epitomize strength and beauty. The message of the cross portrays weakness and folly to both groups. From their perspective, it is crazy talk.

But to those God has called, this crucified Messiah is “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthian 1:24). This calling provides a new perspective from which to view the world, one that evaluates existence from the perspective of God’s new age. From this viewpoint, the display of miracles or the sophisticated talk of the educated matters not at all: Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom. God turns upside down the systems of human value, for the foolish things of God are in fact wiser than any human wisdom, and the weak things of God overpower any human strength (verse 25).

Understanding the Corinthians’ call

Having argued that this message about the cross inverts the values of this present age, Paul provides support for his claim, both in the lives of the Corinthian Christians (1:26–31) and in his own practice of ministry among them (2:1–5). 

Paul’s first proof that God has turned things upside down is the choice of the Corinthians themselves. By human standards, a few of the Corinthian believers were wise or powerful or of noble birth, but most were not. Neither their natural abilities nor their social status marked them for distinction. Yet God, who chooses the weak, the lowly, and the despised in the world’s eyes, selected them. God chose the things that are nothing in the world’s eyes to render worthless the things the world values (1 Corinthians 1:26–28).

The result is that no one can boast or brag in God’s presence (verse 29). Rather than human presumption establishing worth or value, all depends upon God’s initiative. God brings these believers into union with Christ. God calls them to be saints (verse 2) in “the partnership of his Son, Jesus Christ” (verse 9). God’s call is fundamental, more important than any societal recognition or human ability or strength they might have. Their worth and value depend on God. 

Because of God’s action, they are now in Christ, who has become God’s wisdom for them. In Christ, they find “righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30): Christ puts right their covenant relationship with God (Romans 3:21–22), makes them holy (1 Corinthians 1:2), and ransoms them from slavery (Romans 3:24; 8:23). Through Christ, God’s grace abounds for salvation, as these gifts come through their union with him.

As a result of these gifts, Paul concludes, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31). This quotation echoes both Jeremiah 9:24 and an addition to the Song of Hannah at the end of 1 Samuel 2:10 in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. 

The Corinthians should only “boast in the Lord” because God’s gifts exclude the arrogance and pride in human accomplishment that lie at the base of the Corinthians’ problems. There is no room for an attitude of self-promotion or presumption because these believers have nothing that they have not received, and so nothing of which to boast (1 Corinthians 4:7) except the grace, steadfast love, and righteousness of the One who has called them and given them all things (verses 3:21–23). 

Paul’s message to the Corinthians remains central for our proclamation today. The allure of elite education, family connections, and cultural power persists. Those who possess those credentials may still become arrogant and proud. Those who do not may still feel worthless. But true value does not lie in the judgment of this present age but in the gracious gift of God, who in the cross overturns human wisdom with a foolishness wiser than our wisdom and a weakness stronger than our strength. To that end, week in and week out, we keep preaching Christ crucified, God’s wisdom and God’s power (verses 23–24).