Lectionary Commentaries for August 9, 2026
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

May I introduce you to an insistent, even bossy, Jesus? We meet him in the language used to open this text. The instruction Jesus gives the disciples about getting into the boat is neither a suggestion nor an invitation.

The writer of Matthew chooses the word anagkazō. This word means “to compel, to constrain, to force.” The New American Standard Bible translates it plainly: He “compelled” them. The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition softens it to “made,” but the force behind the word is unmistakable. This verb appears only nine times in the entire New Testament, and in every instance it carries the weight of compulsion rather than invitation. Jesus did not give the disciples a choice. He put them in that boat the way a teacher puts a test on your desk. You did not ask for it. You may not be ready for it. But it is here, and you are going to take it.

The test

The announcement of a test is often the catalyst that opens us to a deeper kind of learning. It is the thing that makes us go back to what we skipped, sit with what we avoided, and reckon with what we thought we already understood. Jesus has been teaching these disciples for chapters. They have heard the Sermon on the Mount. They have watched healings. They have just participated in the feeding of more than 5000. They have been in the classroom of faith, and now it is time for the test, in the form of a storm.

Look how Matthew describes it. Verse 24 says the boat was basanizomenon, tormented, by the waves. Our English Bibles may say “battered” or “tossed.” But the Greek is far more violent. Basanizō is the word used elsewhere in Matthew for demonic torment (8:29). This is not rough weather. This is the kind of experience that exhausts every resource you have brought with you. The disciples’ arms are spent. Their strategies have failed. Every skill they have for managing a boat in a storm has been used up. This test has left them defeated and in despair. And this is precisely when Jesus shows up.

What the test reveals

Jesus appears on the water at the fourth watch,¹ between three and six in the morning. In their exhaustion, the disciples don’t recognize him. But Jesus speaks: Tharseite, ego eimi, mē phobeisthe. “Take heart. I AM. Do not be afraid.”

Note the absolute form. Jesus does not say ego eimi followed by a predicate. He does not say “I am the bread” or “I am the way.” He says the bare, unfinished, unqualified I AM, the name that needs no completion because it contains everything. He is the one who walked on the waters at creation (Job 9:8), the one who rules the surging sea (Psalm 89:9), the one who was present before the foundation of the world. The one who can help them finish this test.

But Peter seems intent on testing the one who tests him. “If it is you,” he says, as if to say, “If you really are the I AM, show me how I can not only pass this test but earn extra credit by walking on the water with you.” Everyone reading this already knows the outcome: Peter sinks. And in his sinking, he learns the lesson the test was designed to teach. The lesson is not “Try harder.” The lesson is not “Keep your eyes on Jesus,” as though faith were primarily a matter of improved focus. The lesson is three words: Kyrie, sōson me. “Lord, save me.”

The lesson that lives

I have spent years asking audiences a version of this question: What is the lesson that has most shaped who you are, the one that lives in your body, that changed how you move through the world? I ask them to think of their answer, but not to speak it out loud. And then I ask whether they learned that lesson in a time of ease. No matter the group—seminarians, executives, seasoned pastors, or college students—no more than 5 percent of the room has ever learned a formative lesson when everything was going well. We learn the lessons that live in crucible moments, in the fourth watch, during the test.

This is exactly what Jesus was doing when he compelled the disciples into the boat. He knew that the confession they needed to make, the one that would ground them through everything that was coming, could only be born in the heat of a test, in the belly of a storm.

When Jesus and Peter return to the boat, the wind stops. And the disciples fall down and say something they have never said before in Matthew’s gospel: “Truly, you are the Son of God” (14:33). This phrase appears only once more in Matthew. It is spoken by the centurion at the foot of the cross (27:54). The storm on the sea and the cross on the hill are linked by the same confession, born from the same kind of test.

The disciples did not arrive at this confession through study. They did not arrive at it through lecture, or parable, or even through watching miracles. They arrived at it because Jesus compelled them into a boat, sent them into a storm, let them struggle through the night, and revealed himself as the answer to the test, I AM who saves.

So when the test lands on your desk, and it will, remember who put it there. The insistent, even bossy, Jesus who compelled the disciples into the boat is the same Jesus who shows up at the fourth watch, when every resource is spent, and the only answer left is three words long.

The storm is the test. The test is the teacher. And the lesson learned in the belly of a storm is the lesson that lives and holds you through the next test, and the next. It is the lesson that drops you to your knees and fills your heart with a post-test confession: Truly, you are the Son of God.

Notes

1. The fourth watch is a recurring site of divine encounter in scripture. It was during the fourth watch that God moved through the sea and delivered Israel from Pharaoh’s army (Exodus 14:24). It was in the predawn hours that Jesus rose to pray alone (Mark 1:35), and it was before daylight that the stone was already rolled away (Matthew 28:1).  Some preachers may want to pursue what happens in the darkest moment of the night.

Elijah has had a good run, literally and figuratively.¹

He has decimated Queen Jezebel’s religious community by personally executing her 400 prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18:40. That he neither executed nor challenged her 450 prophets of Asherah (see verse 19ff) points to a broader acceptance of the Asherah tradition.

While the prophets uniformly condemn the worship of Baal, many are silent on the worship of Asherah, regarded as complementary to and not as competitive with the God of Israel. Isaiah only has two references to her, while Jeremiah and Micah have just one reference each. (Compare that to Jeremiah’s 10 references against Baal worship.) Hosea and Zephaniah both mention Baal worship, but not Asherah worship. The prophets who do not condemn the worship of Asherah at all include Ezekiel (who condemns the worship of other deities in the temple), Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

As a result of Elijah’s actions—to mix metaphors—Jezebel has demanded Elijah’s head on a platter. Elijah has fled to where he imagines he will be beyond Jezebel’s grasp. He is safe for the moment, but he is anything but secure. God has provided him divine comfort and companionship along his journey, and actual, edible food and potable water with supernatural benefits (1 Kings 19:5–8). Elijah is sustained by his meal(s) for an unimaginably long time. (“Forty days and forty nights” is a euphemism for “a really long time.” It is no more a mathematical formula than is “a month of Sundays.”)

Passing through Beer-Sheba, as the crow flies the Kishon wadi (the site of the execution) is some 300 miles northwest of the mountain range that is home to the “mountain of God,” called Sinai in some traditions and Horeb in this story. Traveling 20 miles or so a day (or night) and avoiding anyone who might have turned him in, the trek would have taken weeks—two at breakneck speed, likely more at his pace. Elijah’s pace would also have been affected by whether he was mounted for all or part of the journey; the text suggests but does not specify that he was not. No mount is mentioned.

Sometime after Elijah falls asleep, God speaks to him, questioning him. What is he doing here? God is not always omniscient in the Bible; that is a later theological claim. (God asks Adam, in Genesis 2, where he is and who told him he was naked and had he been eating the forbidden fruit. In other places God knows what is in the human heart—see Genesis 6:5; 1 Kings 8:39; Psalm 44:21, et cetera.)

As Elijah catches God up on recent events from his perspective, it is not immediately clear whether God’s questions are informational or rhetorical. What Elijah does not say is that he is hiding from Jezebel or that he has come to seek God’s help and protection.

God responds to Elijah’s self-assessment with self-revelation. First, God displays historic and traditional signs of God’s presence: a windstorm, an earthquake, and fire (from heaven?). But God was not present among the usual suspects. Then there is a qol dammah daqah, a sound (or voice) of a fine silence. And that is where Elijah encounters God.

While Elijah encountered God-in-silence on a revered mountain, it strikes me that the setting was not necessary for the encounter. That was where Elijah was at the time. The divine appearance was not dependent on an indigenous feature, such as the bush that burned and was not consumed. Perhaps Elijah could have encountered God-in-silence at any point along his journey, or even without taking a single step.

After his epiphany, God asks Elijah the same question that God asked him before. Now it is clear that this is a rhetorical question. Elijah gives essentially the same answer. His experience with God has not changed him. I think this is an important observation for contemporary readers and hearers of the scriptures who would like to imagine ourselves in the sacred stories. I know that I have thought how different my own faith story would have been had I been able to see, hear, and experience what my spiritual ancestors saw, heard, and experienced.

The story of Elijah says: Not so fast. Elijah saw, heard, and experienced God in fantastic ways. The power of God flowed through him to work miracles that were unequaled by anyone before him. Yet Elijah was essentially unchanged by this incredible encounter with God. And so God fired him, or at least announced his retirement. It is hard to know how Elijah heard the command in verse 16 to anoint another prophet to take his place. It may have been quite troubling because the monarchs whom God was firing/retiring/replacing, Ben-Hadad of Aram and Ahab of Israel (who are not named in the text), were to be killed. There was no other retirement plan for kings.

God’s last words to Elijah are that God does not need Elijah; God has untold thousands-upon-thousands (7000 is a figurative number) of faithful servants on whom God can depend. What is missing from the assigned lesson is Elijah’s response. He accepts his assignment from God, knowing that his time as God’s prophet is drawing to an end, but not knowing what that end will be.

Elijah faithfully calls Elisha, whom God has designated as his successor, in the verses following the lesson. Hazael will assassinate Ben-Hadad in 2 Kings 8:15 and succeed him; it is not clear if Elijah (or Elisha) ever actually anointed him. And Elisha will complete Elijah’s work and anoint Jehu in 2 Kings 9. (Ahab dies in battle; 1 Kings 22:20ff.) And along the way, God reveals a spectacular retirement plan for Elijah in 2 Kings 2:11, toward which Elijah journeys faithfully, not knowing the outcome.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for August 7, 2011.

The text begins with Jacob, but quickly moves to focus on Joseph by the end of verse 2. Joseph, age 17, is tending flocks as a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah when he tattles against those half-brothers to their father Jacob. Nothing in the text specifies the content of the bad report; Jewish midrash fills in the gap by explaining that Joseph told his father his brothers ate limbs torn from living animals (Bereshit Rabbah 84:7).

While the text is silent on what Joseph reported, it is very clear about Jacob’s preference for Joseph. The Jewish Publication Society translation says that he “loved Joseph best,” which leaves some love for the rest of his children, but the Hebrew more literally reads, “Israel loved Joseph better than all of his sons.” The explanation for this is also clear, and yet not completely accurate: “because he was the son of his old age.” Jacob’s youngest son is Benjamin, but Jacob’s preferred wife, Rachel, died after giving birth to Benjamin, so perhaps Jacob’s feelings toward Benjamin were more complicated than those toward Joseph. 

Not only does Jacob love Joseph more than the others, but he gives him a special garment. The Hebrew words are kĕtōnet passim and only occur here and in 2 Samuel 13:8 to describe the clothing worn by Tamar, “a virgin daughter of the king.” The “coat of many colors” comes from the Septuagint translation of Genesis 37:3 as chitōna poikilon, either an “embroidered” or “variegated” garment. Another possibility is that this is a long robe reaching to the feet, with sleeves reaching to the wrists. 

However it is translated, the garment would set Joseph apart from his siblings: In that era when dye was not easy to procure, any colorful garment would be rare and extremely valuable, and clothing that was embroidered or had long sleeves would be impractical for agricultural work like tending flocks. 

Verse 4 contrasts Jacob’s love of Joseph and the brothers’ hate, which is so strong that “they could not speak peaceably to him.” If their feelings contrast with those of their father, they are also a consequence of Jacob’s demonstrated preferentialism and favoritism.

The lectionary selection leaves out Joseph’s dreams and his reports of the dreams in verses 5–11. When Joseph tells his brothers about his two dreams that symbolize them bowing down to him, their hatred increases and intensifies: “They hated him even more” (Genesis 37:5, 9). The brothers will reference Joseph’s dreams in verses 19–20. 

Verse 12 begins with the brothers going to graze the flock at Shechem, a place with terrible associations, as it was the location where their sister Dinah had been raped and where Simeon and Levi killed every male in revenge (Genesis 34). Jacob sends Joseph to his brothers there.

But Joseph does not find them in Shechem; instead, “a man” finds Joseph wandering in the fields and asks him what he is seeking (Genesis 37:15). When Joseph says he is seeking his brothers, the anonymous man tells him he heard them say they were going to Dothan. Dothan has much less notoriety than Shechem; according to 2 Kings 6:13, it is where the king of Aram finds Elisha the prophet. The distance from Hebron, where Joseph began his journey, to Shechem is roughly 40 miles, and it is another 15 miles from Shechem to Dothan, where Joseph finally finds his brothers.

Jacob had instructed Joseph to “see if it is well with your brothers and the flock” (Genesis 37:14), but as the brothers saw Joseph come near, “they conspired to kill him” (verse 18). Other translations have “they plotted to kill him” (New International Version, New American Standard Bible); the Hebrew word nakal suggests deceit. It will not be well with Joseph. 

The specific plot is to throw Joseph into a nearby pit and tell their father that a wild animal devoured him. But Reuben intervenes, suggesting they not kill him but simply keep the plan with the pit. The text adds Reuben’s reason: so he might rescue Joseph and deliver him back to their father (Genesis 37:22). Many link Reuben’s motivations with the brief notice in Genesis 35:22 that Reuben had slept with Bilhah and Jacob heard of it, supposing that Reuben wants to get back into favor with his father after that inappropriate act.

Verse 23 includes delayed information that Joseph was wearing the extravagant garment,  evidence of his father’s favoritism, on his long journey to find his brothers. Those brothers stripped Joseph of this garment when they threw him into the pit, in what must have been a symbolic act. 

According to verse 25, they sat down to eat while their brother was in the pit, an act that also may be symbolic, or a metaphor to consider: When are we eating our food while others are suffering, “in a pit,” nearby? 

They then look up and see a caravan of Ishmaelites en route to Egypt; the connection with Ishmael is another reminder of the sibling rivalry throughout the stories in Genesis. Camels in the caravan are carrying “gum, balm, and resin,” expensive items for import. Perhaps seeing the potential for wealth and monetary gain, Judah asks his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh” (Genesis 17:26-27). That latter point ought to prevent selling someone into slavery.

Who exactly sold Joseph into slavery is debatable, because of the names and wording in verse 28, which introduces “Midianite traders,” but then uses third-person plural verbs to say “they drew and they lifted up Joseph from the pit and they sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites.” The “they” could refer to the Midianites, interlopers who spoiled Judah’s plot to profit by selling Joseph into slavery. 

Curiously, the last verse of the chapter explains that the Midianites had sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar (Genesis 37:36), which leads some interpreters to explain this through source and redaction criticism, where one source refers to the Ishmaelites, another refers to the Midianites, and both sources get somewhat clumsily edited together in the final form of the chapter. Another option, offered by the Jewish medieval exegete Rashi, is that the brothers are the subject of the plural verbs in verse 28, who sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites, who then sold him to the Midianites, who in turn sold him to the Egyptians. 

This is only the start of Joseph’s story, and the themes of family drama and divine dreams will unfold and resolve through the end of Genesis.  

Reflecting on Psalm 85:8–13, without the first seven verses of the psalm, is akin to a liturgy that omits the call and prayer of confession, moving instead straight to the assurance of pardon.¹

The words of verses 8–13 are applicable alone, yet are designed as part of a whole. The psalm is a communal prayer for help and can be divided into three sections or stanzas, verses 1–3, 4–7, and 8–13.

Psalm 85 begins with a reminder of God’s forgiving acts in the past, followed by pleas by the people for God’s forgiveness in the present, ending with a section expressing hope for restored relationship between the people and God.

Verses 1–3 function as the call to confession, reminding the people and God of God’s past saving acts. God’s active grace is clear in the verbs used: “favor,” “return,” “lift,” and “cover.” These acts are God’s alone, given to an undeserving people (verse 3). The people have angered God repeatedly, and in response, God has relented and turned back all anger.

We like to think of God as always loving and forgiving, and that is the case. However, there are real consequences to our actions that hurt the humans we love and God. It is a sobering thought to think of God’s “fury” and “fierce anger” against us. It is easier to imagine God’s wrath poured on the heads of our enemies. The actions of the people in the past and the actions of the people at present have angered God, and the only way back is for God to relent and forgive. Without God, there is no future for this people.

The second section, verses 4–7, is a cry to God for restoration now. The sinful acts of the people are not named specifically, allowing for use of this psalm in many times and places. Yet, the sins are clearly present as the people ask God if God will be angry forever (verse 5). The people clearly stand in need of God’s grace and ask if God will show God’s steadfast love (hesed) and give the people (again) salvation. Indeed, the whole section is bracketed by “salvation,” calling on “the God of our salvation” in verse 4 and ending the stanza with “Give us your salvation” as its last imperative plea.

Many scholars see this psalm in light of the exile and this as a prayer for restoration after the exile was over. This is a possible context, but certainly not the only situation to which this prayer can apply. The pleas in this stanza are universal, and as we all know, from Genesis 3 forward, the story is a long one of sin and redemption. Over and over, the people found ways to turn from God either out of fear, lack of faith, greed, or in a search for other gods. These verses are then not about one event, but they reflect all of the times that God has restored “the fortunes” of Jacob. “Fortunes” (New Revised Standard Version, New International Version) is best understood not in terms of monetary gain, but as a restoration of the community to full communion with God. Tate suggests a meaning of “well-being” instead of “fortunes” (Psalms 51–100, 364).

A new voice enters at verse 8. The voice could be a prophet or a worship leader. Ultimately, it is not the person speaking the words that matter, but the message being delivered. The imperative form of the last section gives way here to the cohortative, meaning a wish for the future. The wish is a view of the world ordered by God’s kingdom. The last line of this verse is a source of debate, and the New Revised Standard Version reads the Septuagint here as “to those who turn to him with their hearts.” Most scholars, however, read the Masoretic Text: “But do not let them return to stupidity” (or “folly”; New International Version).

A warning within a wish for the future is not uncommon (Psalm 95:8–10). The warning serves as a reminder that the people and God have been in this place before, and the people will probably put them there again. The response to God’s great forgiveness should be more than words; it involves a change in behavior. It involves remembering the warning.

The remainder of the psalm gives us a glimpse of God’s kingdom. The foundations of that kingdom—hesed and faithfulness—meet, and righteousness and shalom kiss. The vision is one of a long-awaited reunion as God again sets the world right. It is a powerful way to declare an end to the impasse between God and the people. The images continue, and this restoration involves the whole creation, reuniting heaven and earth (verse 11), and God will give what is “good,” also understood as what is beneficial, pleasant, and for the welfare of all. The land responds with its own gift of bounty in response to God. All of this is in preparation for God’s arrival in verse 13.

The image is of a world transformed by God’s forgiveness. What if, for just one Sunday, we could see and believe the power of God’s forgiveness? Could we imagine the world as it should be when God sets it back in place? What if as we hear the words of assurance, the heavens open and we see the glory of God? Would we listen to the warning and change our world?

Since I began participating in the weekly liturgy, the assurance of pardon has always been the most sacred to me. All worship rituals are weighty and important, but to speak God’s forgiveness to the people is a powerful priestly function. Like me, the ones who spoke these words in the temple were mere humans, and the pronouncement was as much for them as it was for the people.

To announce God’s grace and restoration is to call a new beginning into the world. Psalm 85 celebrates God’s grace and offers all of us a glimpse of God’s kingdom.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for July 15, 2012.

This passage from Romans 10 invites the preacher to proclaim the “word of faith,” which is the good news of God’s victory in Christ. In fact, here Paul issues an urgent summons to do so. However, in order to proclaim the word of faith it is helpful to notice what Paul says in this passage about the relationship between faith, the law, righteousness, and salvation.

Paul actually has very little to say about the law or about the righteousness that comes from the law. Instead, verse 5 points forward to Paul’s main point, which is about the righteousness of Christ. In 10:4, Paul has declared that Christ is the telos (the end or goal) of the law, and in 10:6 Paul reinterprets the text from Deuteronomy 30:12–14 so that Christ himself is the subject of the text. With Christ as its true subject, Paul thus reasons that the law itself bears witness to the event of Christ’s righteousness demonstrated in the power of Christ’s death and resurrection (Romans 1:3–4).

Preaching the power of God

Paul locates the righteousness from faith in the power of God rather than in a human agent (see also Romans 1:16–17). For Paul, God is powerful. That may sound like a trite statement, but it is worth pointing out because many in Paul’s audience would have been accustomed to thinking of gods in much less cosmic terms. For example, gentile households would have had an altar where they worshipped their family/ancestral gods in their home. These domestic (and domesticated) gods stand in stark contrast to Paul’s God, the God of Israel, whose glory fills the earth (Isaiah 6:3) and whose power raises the dead (Romans 6:4).

In a culture filled with gods who were weak and ineffectual, Paul proclaims a powerful God whose righteousness is powerful for salvation (Romans 1:16–17). We ought not to imagine that contemporary audiences are any more comfortable with God’s power; indeed contemporary preachers sometimes shy away from speaking about God’s power and present a more domesticated and palatable version of God than the one we encounter in Paul’s letter. Of God’s power, Annie Dillard writes:

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.¹

The preacher ought to take seriously God’s power to make all things right, because this is the heart of the good news for Paul. God’s power is the source of our liberation, and the liberation of all of creation.

The good news of God’s reign

When Paul speaks of the righteousness from faith in this passage, we ought to understand that as a faith that recognizes and trusts in God’s power for salvation. Salvation, which for Paul is God’s victory in Christ over the power of sin and death, is wrought through God’s deliverance in Christ. The coming of righteousness and salvation is an act of God. No human agent can ascend to bring Christ down, and no human has raised Christ from the dead. In Christ, God, who has the power to bring life from the dead, has brought salvation near (“in your mouth and in your heart”; verse 8).

God’s victory over sin and death, God’s power, and God’s Lordship in Christ necessitate an urgent need to proclaim the good news of God’s power and righteousness. We might think of Paul’s proclamation of victory as a declaration of emancipation, since Paul often uses the language of slavery to describe humanity’s captivity to sin (for example, Romans 6:6). Paul’s call to preach the good news here is therefore best understood not as an individual summons to a decision of faith, but as a proclamation to the captives bringing news of their liberation.

Juneteenth (June 19^th), which commemorates the date in 1865 when the news of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation reached the enslaved persons of Texas, provides us with an approximate analogy for Paul’s message of freedom in Romans 10:5–15.

The Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all enslaved people in the Confederate States still in rebellion  “are, and henceforth shall be free,” took effect on January 1, 1863. However, news of the proclamation took a further two years to reach the enslaved population of Texas, which was still under Confederate control. Slaveholders in Texas and others loyal to the Confederacy ignored the proclamation, and even actively hid and suppressed the news of it in order to maintain control of the population of enslaved people there. Though emancipation had been declared over two years earlier, it took the arrival of the Union army in 1865 to enforce the liberation of enslaved people in Texas.

This is an imperfect analogy for Romans 10:5–15, but Paul’s letter also assumes that the proclamation of the freedom secured by the power of God is good news for all people who have been held captive by sin and death.

At the close of our passage, the good news Paul calls the preacher to proclaim is the good news of God’s eschatological reign (10:14–15). Here Paul quotes from Isaiah 52, where the messenger announces peace and salvation, proclaiming that God reigns from Zion (Isaiah 52:7). Paul’s equation of Isaiah’s reign of God with the Lordship of Christ ought to be understood as an affirmation of God’s power and of Christ’s divinity. For Paul, the proclamation of the good news of God’s reign is a summons to trust in the Lordship of Christ (10:9–13), who is powerful to save everyone who calls upon him. God’s righteous rule and reign was good news in Paul’s day, and it remains good news in our contemporary context.

Notes

1. Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2016), 22.