Lectionary Commentaries for July 12, 2026
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
from WorkingPreacher.org
Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Jennifer Vija Pietz
First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 55:10-13
Terry Ann Smith
Waiting on God can be especially difficult amid life’s trials and tribulations. Therefore, it is no surprise that words meant to offer comfort and affirm God’s presence are hard to hear and receive when we are caught in the throes of our own personal tsunamis.
Yet, the prophetic voice in Isaiah 55 does just that—brings a word of comfort that rings out as good news—good news to the exiles who may have been questioning whether their God was still with them. This word of comfort begins with an unusual invitation to dine. “Come, you that have no money, buy and eat” (Isaiah 55:1). Come, you whose priorities and values are misplaced. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your earnings for that which does not satisfy?” (55:2a). God issues a universal invitation: Come … no banquet ticket required; your participation is not determined by your economic status; all are welcome to join in the feast of the Lord.
Here in Isaiah, the sovereign God who spoke the world into existence in Genesis 1 is the same God who now speaks of the exiles’ celebratory return to their homeland. Like their ancestors, who once found God’s favor in the days of King David, these descendants—displaced during the Babylonian exile—would also experience God’s mercy and grace. Yet, the people of God could not ignore the call to repentance in Isaiah 55:6–7. “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them.”
Within this call to repentance and offer of renewal and restoration is a clear message: Israel’s salvation is yours if you want it.
God grounds the promise and assurance of restoration in God’s own nature, reminding the exiles (and us) that divine thoughts are not like human thoughts (Isaiah 55:8a), and God’s ways are far beyond human ways (55:9). Unlike humans—whose relationship with the truth is often complicated—God does not lie (Numbers 23:19). The tone of the text is uplifting and celebratory. God is a promise keeper, faithful and true. When God says, “My word shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11), God has a whole universe that gives testimony to the truth of this claim. Just as God watered the earth and made it fruitful, God’s word will bear fruit among these people.
In other words, God does not speak empty, hollow, or vain words, but words filled with purpose—words of life, words that engender hope and the promise of a secure future (Jeremiah 29:11). These are not promises of a life free from struggle, but of a life where God’s presence ensures victory even in the midst of struggle. Yes, God is about to do something in the life of the exiles. The people will go out with joy, and even the mountains will burst out in singing (Isaiah 55:12). The ugliness of the thorns and briers is to be replaced with the beauty of the cypress and myrtle (55:13), all of creation becoming a memorial, a testimony to the goodness and faithfulness of God.
King Cyrus’s decree opened the way for the exiles to return home—God had fulfilled the divine promise. Just as the exiles in Babylon discovered God’s faithfulness, we can trust in God’s word as a beacon of hope during uncertain and troubling times. God’s promise to be with us is fulfilled in the incarnation of God’s Son, Jesus Christ—an enduring witness that God’s word does not return empty. As the Gospel of John declares:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. (John 1:1–4)
Jesus Christ, the Word of God, spoke to the wind and waves, calming both the sea and the frightened disciples traveling upon it. The Word of God spoke, and Lazarus shed his grave clothes and returned to life. The Word of God accomplished the purpose for which God sent him to redeem and restore humanity’s relationship with God.
So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)
Though spoken long ago, these words remain a source of comfort today, for they come from a God whose Word never fails.
Alternate First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 25:19-34
Matthew Schlimm
Isaac and Rebekah go 20 years without a child (Genesis 25:20, 26). Things look as hopeless for them as they did for Abraham and Sarah.
But both Isaac and Rebekah have access to God. Isaac turns to God, praying for a child, and God grants his prayer (25:21). Rebekah wonders why the twins within her “struggle” with (literally, “smash”) each other, and God responds to her directly (25:23).
God tells Rebekah she’ll have twins who will become two groups of people (Genesis 25:23). Esau clearly represents Edom (Genesis 25:30; 36:1, 8, 19, 43; Obadiah 8), while his brother Jacob clearly represents Israel (Genesis 32:28; 35:10; 46:2). It’s obvious that the two will not get along. Even at their birth, Jacob grabs Esau’s heel (25:26), foreshadowing the ways that Jacob will trip Esau so he doesn’t get what he wants. (In Hebrew, the name “Jacob” means “he will take away,” and it sounds like the word for “heel.”)
Favoritism
To make matters worse, Isaac and Rebekah display favoritism with their sons, Isaac loving Esau and Rebekah loving Jacob (Genesis 25:28). As we’ll quickly see, favoritism doesn’t just poison family dynamics. It ends in disaster, both with this generation (see 27:1–45) and with the next (see 37:1–36).
Exploiting the hungry
Early readers of this text would have identified with Jacob, who is renamed Israel in Genesis 32. Remarkably, Genesis doesn’t present a sanitized portrait of Jacob. There’s no rosy retrospection. Genesis looks unflinchingly at the founding Israelite. And it says that he, like all humans, has serious flaws.
In chapter 27, Genesis describes how Jacob used deception to thwart his dying and blind father’s plans, all the while robbing his brother of something priceless.
Here, Esau returns from an unsuccessful hunting trip (Genesis 25:29). The text says that “he was famished” (25:29). When wealthy people today say things like, “I’m starving,” they clearly exaggerate. Hunger in biblical times, however, wasn’t something to joke about. It was life-threatening and could force people to take dangerous journeys to places where food could be found (for example, Genesis 12:10–20). Esau is clearly malnourished and probably dehydrated. He even says he’s “about to die” (25:32).
In response, Jacob does not follow in the footsteps of others in Genesis who display amazing hospitality. He’s quite different from:
- his grandparents Abraham and Sarah, who prepared a lavish feast for three strangers (18:1–8),
- his relative Lot who provided shelter and food for two of these same strangers (19:1–3),
- his mother Rebekah and uncle Laban who showed great hospitality to Abraham’s servant (24:16–25, 31–33).
The Bible insists those who are hungry deserve to eat. Proverbs 25:21 commands listeners to feed even their enemies.
Jacob has food that he’s already made (Genesis 25:29). It’s even the same color as Esau (25:30)! But Jacob refuses to feed his starving brother unless Esau first gives up his birthright (25:31).
A birthright, sometimes called “the right of primogeniture,” means all the privileges of being the oldest son. It includes privileges and leadership roles. Most concretely, it entails not just an inheritance but one twice the size of that given to any other son (according to Deuteronomy 21:17 and Middle Assyrian Laws). Most of us would never dream of asking our siblings for their inheritance when they are well—much less when they face desperate need.
Esau has no good options. He is, as already stated, near death. He knows that his inheritance will do him no good after he dies (Genesis 25:32). In his vulnerable state, he does what he needs to do to survive.
The passage ends by saying, “Esau despised his birthright.” Some interpret these words to mean that Esau thought little of his birthright all along and foolishly sold what he never should have relinquished. The biblical text, however, portrays him sympathetically. He is not, as Julie Galambush observes, “a fairy-tale ogre, and he does nothing to deserve Jacob’s abuse.”1 The passage’s ending about Esau despising his birthright likely means that after he had to give it up, Esau hated even thinking about it.
Connecting with people’s lives
This story points to three important ideas today.
The first is the need for lavish hospitality. Jacob fails to show it, and he ends up suffering as a result. After he again exploits Esau in Genesis 27, he’s forced away from home and all that’s familiar. He’s forced to suffer under the hand of Laban, who is as exploitative as he is. When he’s eventually forced back home, his whole body fills with fear as Esau approaches him with 400 men (32:6–11). Genesis makes it clear: Just because we have the opportunity to gain an upper hand does not mean we should take it.
The second is the need for honesty about our ancestors. The people of Israel could have looked back at Jacob with selective memory, seeing him as a saint who never did anything wrong. Instead, they were honest about his faults. They had the courage to remember even the horrible things he did. Their ability to fully remember the past can inspire us today, particularly when some try to silence truthful accounts of the past. None of our ancestors were perfect. We do not need to pretend otherwise. Rather, we need to face the past unflinchingly both to prevent a recurrence of past atrocities and—just as important—to understand current realities.
The third is how we think about our enemies. It’s easy to portray them as horrible people who always do what’s wrong. But we can instead look at them sympathetically and wonder what we have done to cause divisions. Early audiences of this text would have had every reason to hate the Edomites, who cheered the Babylonians’ destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE (Psalm 137:7; Ezekiel 25:12; Obadiah 11–14; 1 Esdras 4:45). Genesis could have fueled the flames of that hatred. Instead, it suggests that Esau—who represents the Edomites—wasn’t always to blame. We and our ancestors have sins we need to confess and turn away from.
Notes
- Julie Galambush, Reading Genesis (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2018), 95.
Psalm
Commentary on Psalm 65:[1-8] 9-13
Walter C. Bouzard
Although the central section of this psalm is composed of hymnic praise of God, the psalm as a whole suggests that the prayer exemplifies what Walter Brueggemann categorized as psalms of reorientation.1
Psalms of reorientation are prayers uttered after the disarray and disorientation of life slip into the past. Like the ancient psalmist, we recognize and give thanks to God for the rescue for which we had longed and prayed.2 God has answered the psalmist’s prayers, and the psalmist is prepared to perform the vows he had vowed in his distress (verses 1–2), including, perhaps, the vow of an animal offering (compare verse 3 and Leviticus 4 and 5).
Nevertheless, for a psalm that ends with shouts and songs (verse 13), its opening reference to quiet tarrying is odd. English translations vary, but a rather literal rendition might read: “For you a still silence, [and] praise, O God in Zion; for you a payment of a vow” (author’s translation). The word translated “still silence” (dumiyyah) also appears in Psalm 62, which is a prayer of trust in God in the face of persecution. There the psalmist declares, “For God alone my soul waits in silence” (verse 1), and with an imperative verbal form: “Only wait silently for God, O my soul” (verse 5, author’s translation).
An insight of both of these psalms is that silent, expectant waiting for God to act often is a part of our life with God. In a culture such as ours, namely one characterized by frantic noise and busyness and by the din of machines and the glare of large and small screens, the preacher could do worse than to prepare him- or herself to preach with some intentional still silence, listening for God.
The psalmist’s backward glance into his past is, nevertheless, a brief one. However long his silence, after verse 3, the poem turns to praise that culminates with a jubilant declaration that the meadows and valleys shout and sing for joy.
The psalmist first expresses happiness that God chooses to bring people into God’s presence, found specifically in the courts of God’s house, the temple (verse 4). The text makes it crystal clear that the approach to God’s presence is a function of God’s choice and of God bringing the worshiper close (“you choose,” “you bring near”).
As always, this side of Eden, proximity to God is by the grace and choice of God and not our own efforts. Unfortunately, the New Revised Standard Version’s indicative “We shall be satisfied with the goodness…” does not reflect the fact that satisfaction is also hoped for and ever dependent upon God’s gracious decision. Indeed, the NRSV disguises the text’s cohortative construction of verse 4b. So with the psalmist we pray, “Let us be sated fully by the goodness of your house, your holy temple” (author’s translation).
Beginning with verse 5, the psalmist focuses his praise of God on the role of God in the creation. Water images abound since God’s salvation and deliverance include divine control of chaos, depicted by otherwise unchecked billows.
A reminder of ancient Israel’s conception of the cosmos aids the interpretation of the balance of this psalm.
Hebrews of antiquity thought the sky was a solid, translucent dome erected by God to hold out the waters of chaos (Genesis 1:6–8; Job 37:18; Psalm 148:4). The dome was held up at the extreme ends of the flat earth by mountains (Psalm 104:1–4; Job 26:10), a conceptualization that explains the present psalmist’s praise of God’s establishing the mountains (verse 6a), “girding [them] with might” (verse 6b, author’s translation).3
The dome had windows or floodgates that God opened to make it rain or snow (Genesis 7:11; 8:2; Psalm 78:23). The surface of the dome was populated by luminaries—the moon and stars by night, the sun by day—that moved across the face of the dome to provide the appropriate light for nighttime or daytime (Genesis 1:17–18). Psalm 65 suggests that the dome had entranceways (motsa’ey) through which entered the daytime and night (verse 8).
When, therefore, this psalmist speaks of God as “the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas” (verse 5b) and of God’s having established the mountains (verse 6), he has in view divine mastery and management of the world. That authority is characterized by God’s control of chaotic waters (see Genesis 1; Psalms 89:10; 93:3–4; 104:5–9; Job 38:11). Whether roaring seas or tumultuous peoples, none are a match for God’s power (verse 7).
More than controlling the chaos, however, God subordinates it and employs it for God’s own good intentions. God converts the waters of chaos to an instrument of shalom, producing grain to feed God’s people (verses 8, 13). Freshly plowed soil, with its sharply furrowed edges, is softened by gentle rain and readied for growth (verse 10).
It is unclear if the wagon tracks of verse 11 refer to the earth’s furrows in verse 10 or to an image of God’s chariot cutting through the clouds (see Psalms 18:10-12; 68:4; 104:3), releasing rich, fructifying rain. In any case, the image means to convey luxuriant abundance. The wagon tracks overflow with “richness” (dsn). The word means “fatness” or “fat ashes,” but more broadly, it signals rich satisfaction and fullness that comes with the presence of God (see Psalms 63:6; 36:9).
The psalm concludes with a summons that the meadows and valleys, covered with abundance in the form of flocks and grain, might shout and sing for joy. As shouting and singing were characteristic of ancient Israel’s worship,4 the image intends to help us understand that the very creation worships God.
Several themes emerge as possible directions for preaching. The motion of the psalm from quiet, expectant waiting to a summons for the creation itself to join the choir of praise suggests that the journey from expectation to exaltation is just that—a journey. Many of us, perhaps most of us, find ourselves somewhere in the middle of the journey. We recognize that God in Christ has answered our prayers.
In our baptisms we have been claimed by God and brought into the richness of God’s presence. Indeed, we have been incorporated into the body of Christ. And yet, for many of us, perhaps most of us, chaotic powers still affect us. Whether the chaos is a still unstable economy, a newly unstable marriage, grief, illness, loneliness, or a sense that our lives are adrift in a formless chaotic sea, our God remains master of the tumult.
Or better, we can confidently claim that this God has joined us in our tumult. If we find ourselves awash, we know that God in Christ has likewise suffered as we do. Christ experienced loss and being lost to the extent that we have and more, yet he comes to us with the firm intention to stay with us until we arrive at that valley where even we, the flock of his pasture, will shout and sing with joy.
Notes
- Commentary previously published on this website for July 13, 2014.
- On psalms of reorientations, see Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 123–167. Brueggemann regards Psalm 65 as a thanksgiving song of the community, though he notes that “there is something of a mismatch between the subject of verses 1–5a and the doxology that follows” (136).
- Reading this unique niphal masculine singular participle with an active voice rather than the usual passive or reflexive. The niphal does allow an active sense for some verbs (e.g., nchm, “repent”). Moreover, the verb ‘zr does appear as a reflexive (hithpael) in Psalm 93:1 and Isaiah 8:9 and 9:8. Thus, participles of both stitches refer to God’s action upon the mountains:
mkyn hrym bkchw
n’ar [hrym] bgbwrh - See Psalms 71:23; 81:1; Isaiah 12:6; 24:14; 42:11; 44:23; 54:1; Zephaniah 3:14.
Second Reading
Commentary on Romans 8:1-11
Carolyn B. Helsel
This is the fourth Sunday of a potential four-week sermon series on sin, based on the lectionary readings from Romans.
Paul is writing to the church at Rome, composed of Jews and gentiles, and he is trying to lay out what the Christian life entails.
Traditionally, there has been much made about the word “flesh” in this text and others where Paul seems to equate our physical desires and longings with sin. This has contributed to the false belief that Christianity is anti-body.
Reading Paul’s words in Romans 8:1–11, it can sound like Paul is distinguishing between the body and the mind, critical of when the mind aligns itself with the body rather than the Spirit. But it is important to think of the word “flesh” in broader terms.
Paul was Jewish, so it is helpful to understand what “flesh” meant within first-century Judaism. Looking to the Jewish Annotated New Testament, we can learn that the Hebrew word for “flesh” is basar, which can refer not just to the body, but also “to all of humankind (Isaiah 66:16); the weaker side of human nature (Ezekiel 35:26); weakness (Isaiah 31:3); and food (Daniel 7:5).”1
Thinking of flesh in these broader terms can help us clarify for our listeners that Paul and the Christian gospel are not against the body—and, in fact, that honoring our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19–20) means we should not devalue our physical bodies.
Instead, listeners can identify ways this word “flesh” can refer more broadly to the ways our own wills are weakened around certain impulses, topics, and issues.
For instance, and as in other weeks when talking about sin, it is important to draw attention away from a simple view of sin as individual, instead helping listeners see how “flesh” can refer to our weakness as a society to commit to doing what needs to be done to address inequality and to offer greater support for those who need a social safety net: the elderly, persons with disabilities, the single-parent family, the orphan, the refugee, the unhoused, the hungry.
According to Paul, we who are “in the flesh”—that is, part of a weakened will within humanity to do the right thing—are not living lives that please God (verse 8).
And yet, Paul is also reminding us that we are in the Spirit, and that “there is no condemnation” (verse 1) for us who are in Christ. So we cannot simply preach that we are sinful beings, deserving of God’s wrath. Paul says this in Romans 5:8: “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”
There is this dichotomy: Sin separates us from God and one another, and yet we are not condemned because we are in Christ, and the Spirit of God dwells in us.
Then why talk about sin at all?
It is in the knowledge of God’s great love for us, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, that Christians can look inward and outward, noticing the many ways we still fall short and do not have the will to make the changes we know can improve the lives of those around us.
It is in understanding the wonderful love of Jesus that our gratitude moves us to act.
It is a strange paradox: We need to talk about sin because it continues to dog us, but we only respond to that sin not out of a sense of guilt or shame but out of gratitude because of what God has done for us in Christ.
And while this passage is not about our forgiveness of others, talking about sin should also include how the sin of the world includes how we have been sinned against. Sin is not just about our relationship with God, but also with one another. When we have been sinned against by someone else, it can drag us down and make us feel as though our “body is dead because of sin” (8:10).
Maybe there is someone in your congregation who is bearing the burden—perhaps even felt literally like heaviness—of having suffered abuse as a child or in their marriage. Being sinned against in one’s own body can make a person feel separated from one’s body—which is another reason why preachers need to correct for the harmful image Christianity has given off about the body being “bad.”
Joni Sancken, vice president and professor of preaching at Vancouver Theological Seminary, writes about trauma-informed preaching and ways to help churches process trauma in her books Words That Heal: Preaching Hope to Wounded Souls (2019) and All Our Griefs to Bear: Responding with Resilience After Collective Trauma (2021).
Sancken defines trauma as
circumstances in which one’s own life or the life of a loved one is under threat, where one loses a loved one suddenly, or when the ability to process the experience is exceeded by the magnitude of the experience itself. Symptoms related to experiences of trauma—digestive changes, bouts of crying, difficulty remembering things and making decisions, elevated blood pressure, and changes in attention span—are the body’s way of processing the trauma and dispelling energy created by the flight-fight-freeze response.2
Attending to our bodies in response to trauma and the impact of sin on our broken world is a key component of recognizing the life that still lives in them. Preaching about the impact of “sin” on our “flesh” can be an important way to remind listeners of the hope we have in Christ, for “if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you,” (Romans 8:11).
Notes
- Note for Romans 8:3, The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Second Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 301.
- Joni S. Sancken, All Our Griefs to Bear: Responding with Resilience After Collective Trauma, (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2022), pages 18-19.
As with all Jesus’s parables, multiple layers of meaning can be discerned in the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13. Indeed, part of the power of parables is their ability to continually surprise, challenge, and inspire various audiences by conveying a message through vivid analogies. Even so, Jesus’s parables are not intended to be entirely open-ended, as evidenced by Jesus himself interpreting the Parable of the Sower for his disciples (Matthew 13:18–23). Preachers, therefore, do well to account for how the literary and ancient cultural contexts of a parable shape their meaning potential while also being attentive to how the parable addresses their own audiences in particular ways.
Matthew’s version of the Parable of the Sower (see also Mark 4:1–20; Luke 8:4–15) is the first in a series of parables in chapter 13 that convey mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to Jesus’s disciples. By this point in Matthew’s Gospel, there is a growing distinction between the disciples, who have embraced Jesus and his ministry, and those who challenge or reject Jesus. In fact, Jesus’s Parables Discourse in Matthew 13 is framed by the Pharisees conspiring to destroy him (for example, 12:14) and the people of his hometown rejecting him (13:54–58).
Seen in this context, the Parable of the Sower is Jesus’s commentary on the opposition to his ministry. Jesus is the sower (13:3) who sows the “seed” that is the proclamation of the kingdom (verse 19). Although Matthew commonly describes this kingdom as the “kingdom of heaven,” rather than the “kingdom of God” used in Mark and Luke, both phrases refer to the eschatological reign of God that Jesus proclaims and partially enacts by healing the sick, liberating the oppressed, and ministering to the rejected.
Although Jesus’s proclamation of the coming reign of God’s mercy and justice is good news, it does not take root with everyone who hears it. This is reflected in the parable by the various types of inhospitable ground upon which some of the “seeds” of Jesus’s ministry fall. Indeed, it is striking that most of the parable describes the circumstances in which the seeds are lost rather than the one in which they flourish.
First, the evil one steals the seeds that fall on the path (verses 4, 19). Then we learn that seeds that fall on rocky ground represent those who hear the word of the kingdom but quickly fall away from it when faced with opposition (verses 5–6, 20–21). Next, we hear of the “thorns” of worldly concerns strangling the word so that it has no yield (verses 7, 22). Jesus draws us into a bleak picture that reflects the reality of much of his ministry experience.
Against this backdrop, the conclusion of the parable comes as a welcome surprise. Although threats to the seeds of the kingdom abound, some of the seeds do land in good soil and produce abundant fruit (verses 8, 23). While we cannot be sure just how impressive a yield of a hundred, sixty, or thirtyfold was to Jesus’s ancient audience, the fact that anything at all grows in these mostly adverse conditions is amazing. The parable, therefore, ends with a hopeful promise: Despite significant obstacles, God will bring about God’s kingdom. And it will be good.
The parable implies that God’s reign takes root and spreads through those who hear the word, understand it, and thereby spread the seeds of the kingdom (verses 8, 23). Jesus’s disciples are the ones who have received his word and have grasped it, unlike many in the crowds and perhaps even some of Jesus’s own family (12:46–50). Although Jesus initially tells this parable to the crowds (13:1–9), he only gives the interpretation to his disciples because they have “been given” knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven (verses 11, 18–23).
The text does not explicitly state who gave them this knowledge, but we can reasonably conclude that this was God’s doing. Just as God alone ultimately brings about the kingdom of heaven, so too does the capacity to receive the kingdom depend on divine agency. Jesus does not tell his disciples that they are able to understand his teachings because they are smarter or more competent than others. Instead, he simply tells them that they are blessed with this gift of understanding (verses 16–17). Good soil does not make itself good. But when a seed is planted in good soil, it grows and bears fruit.
In this regard, Matthew 13:10–17 can be seen as descriptive of the reality that Jesus’s ministry—and the ongoing preaching of the kingdom—creates a divided response. For reasons humans cannot fully comprehend, not everyone who hears will believe—at least in the short term. And those who do believe are not to become arrogant about what they have received as a gift.
Several aspects of this parable could meaningfully address contemporary audiences: