Lectionary Commentaries for September 27, 2026
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 21 contains a unique parable that has no Synoptic parallels. The Parable of the Two Sons (21:28–32) is inserted between the passage questioning Jesus’s authority (21:23–27) and the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (21:33–46), which are contiguous in Mark 11:27–12:12. Exploring how this Matthean material is integrated into the Markan framework, therefore, provides a useful point of entry for exegesis.

At first glance, the parable appears simple: The first son initially refuses his father’s command to work in the vineyard but later obeys, whereas the second promptly agrees, yet fails to act. Thus, when Jesus asks, “Which of the two did the will of the father?” the answer is obvious: “The first” (21:31).

The difficulty, however, emerges in Jesus’s subsequent contrast between his immediate hearers (“you”) and “the tax collectors and the prostitutes” (21:31–32). Which group corresponds to which son? This ambiguity may explain why some ancient manuscripts reverse the sons’ order to create smoother parallels.¹ Yet the passage need not be interpreted through the broader biblical motif of the younger son displacing the elder. Instead, both sons function as contrasting responses directed toward a single audience—the “chief priests and the elders of the people” (21:23), whom Jesus addresses as “you” (hymeis).

Immediately before the parable, these authorities confront Jesus in the temple, demanding to know “by what authority” he is “doing these things” (21:23–24). Their challenge and Jesus’s rhetorical counterquestion carry into the following exchange, introduced by Jesus’s question, “What do you think?” (21:28). The parable, therefore, confronts the religious leaders with whether they are truly doing the will of the Father. Through Matthew’s redaction, this question extends into the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, reinforcing the chapter’s overarching concern with authority and leadership.

Where were these high authorities of Israel when Matthew’s Gospel was written? Matthew’s historical audience lived in the aftermath of the Jewish War. They knew that the Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed and the priesthood dismantled. Amid this absence of strong leadership, Jesus’s words to the chief priests and elders would have poignantly reminded Matthew’s audience of how these leaders had recently failed their people. They were the second son in the parable. They could have become the first son, but they never chose that path.

In particular, Matthew’s historical and literary context highlights three areas of leadership failure. The first is material. The leaders’ refusal to work in the vineyard signifies their refusal to bear fruit and thus their failure to feed the hungry. They neglected the poor struggling to survive under Rome’s heavy taxation, and the war only worsened the situation (see also Matthew 17:24–27).² This material dimension appears elsewhere in chapter 21: Jesus curses the fruitless fig tree (21:18–19), and the Parable of the Wicked Tenants in the Vineyard likewise points to the leaders’ unjustifiable failure to produce the fruits of God’s kingdom (21:41, 43) both materially and spiritually.

The second failure stems from entitled elitism. By Matthew 21:23–27, the leaders already knew of Jesus’s cleansing of the temple, where he overturned the money changers’ tables and performed healings (21:12–17). Yet instead of believing in him, they question his authority, treating him as someone lacking their religious and social pedigree. They deliberately refuse to acknowledge the heavenly origin of John’s baptism (21:25, 32; see also 17:12) and fail to accept Jesus as God’s Son who came to serve his people. To them, the popularity and authority of John the Baptist and Jesus appear only as threats to their own status and prestige.

Although the chief priests were appointed by God and the elders were elected by God’s people, they professed allegiance to God in empty words alone while failing to fulfill their divine calling to serve others (20:25–27). Like the second son—whose reply, “Yes, Master” (egō, kyrie), sounds emphatically obedient—their words never translated into action.

Ultimately, these leaders’ failures are rooted in a profound spiritual deficiency. John the Baptist came proclaiming the way of righteousness through the baptism of repentance (3:1–12),³ yet they did not change their minds, thereby rejecting Jesus as the Messiah (21:39, 42). In stark contrast stand the tax collectors and prostitutes, who, though regarded among the most despised and dishonorable in society, believe John, repent, and thus enter God’s kingdom ahead of them. Like the wicked tenants in the following vineyard parable, these authorities are destined to face judgment and “a miserable death” (21:41, 43–44).

For Matthew, this failure of Israel’s leaders was catastrophic, as it ultimately led to “the tragic events of 70 CE” (22:1–14; 23:3–36; 27:25).⁴ Reflecting on the recent past, Matthew now notes that when “the chief priests and the Pharisees heard [Jesus’s] parables, they realized that he was speaking about them” (21:45, emphasis added; see also Mark 12:12; Luke 20:19). Thus, Matthew’s critique does not merely apply to past authorities. Matthew’s community now appeals to its contemporaneous Pharisaic groups, from whom the original Mattheans were separated: As new community builders in the postwar setting, the Pharisees rejected the Lord’s cornerstone (21:42), but it is not too late to change their minds (metamelomai), like the first son.

The English translation of the Greek metamelomai does not fully capture its nuance, for metamelomai doesn’t simply mean “on second thought.” It connotes repentance and regret, from which acts of justice and humble service flow. Without repentance, the authority of religious and social leaders is rendered illegitimate. In a wartorn Jewish society marked by vivid memories of leadership failure, Matthew emphasizes the grave responsibility of community leaders: They are urged to undertake the life-giving work of caring for the vulnerable and downtrodden whom God has entrusted to them.

Notes

1. For example, Θ, f ¹³, 700, a majority of Bohairic Coptic manuscripts. See Pierre De Martin De Viviés, “Les deux fils envoyés à la vigne (Mt 21,28-32): Une parabole dans tous ses états,” Revue théologique de Louvain 46 (2015): 84–96.
2. Eunyung Lim, “Entering the Kingdom of Heaven Not Like the Sons of Earthly Kings (Matt 17:24–18:5),” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 83.3 (2021): 425–445.
3. “Righteousness” (or “justice”; Greek, dikaiosynē; Hebrew, tzedakah), which Matthew frequently uses, is a Jewish concept connoting “giving generously to the poor or almsgiving (Deut 14.22; 16.20), and by extension any loving act” (cf. b. B. Bat. 9b; b. Sukk. 49a). Aaron M. Gale, “The Gospel According to Matthew,” in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, ed. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 15.
4. Gale, “The Gospel According to Matthew,” 10.

Ezekiel 18 engages in an ongoing question that is explored throughout the Bible and asked by many people today: Are God’s ways fair? “It’s not fair” is a phrase often associated with children today. Fairness is a pressing concern for children as they grow and develop, learning the ways in which the world and people around them work. Some consider “It’s not fair” to be the cry of the spoiled child who doesn’t get what they want, but many children’s inconvenient observations point to uncomfortable truths about the lack of fairness in our world. Being new to this world, children have not yet become accustomed to the inequities that surround them. 

The people Ezekiel 18 addresses are very much aware that life isn’t fair. The prophet is among the religious and political leaders of Judah who have been sent into exile after the Babylonian Empire conquered their small nation. This was standard policy for Babylon, believing that a conquered nation would be less likely to rise up against its colonizers without its leaders. The former leaders of Judah had gone from being Jerusalem elites to being subsistence farmers, held captive in a small cultural enclave in Babylon. They had witnessed war, death, and destruction, losing everything they cared about in the process. 

The prophet Ezekiel had been one of the religious leaders in the Jerusalem Temple. They believed this was the only acceptable place to worship their one God and that if they worshipped only one God, only in the Jerusalem Temple, in the correct way, as dictated in the book of Deuteronomy, that God would protect them and that Jerusalem could never be conquered because it was God’s holy city. They were the ones who had followed all the rules, but their city had been conquered, their temple destroyed, and they were the ones sent into exile. It’s no wonder they thought this wasn’t fair. 

Ezekiel 18 calls out these exiles for quoting the proverb “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge,” suggesting that the Judean exiles are blaming their fate on previous generations who did not worship God alone, only in the Jerusalem Temple, in the correct way. This cross-generational blame is a disputed topic throughout the Hebrew Bible. A moral act-consequence theology pervades the book of Proverbs, and Exodus 20:5 and 34:7, Numbers 14:18, and Deuteronomy 5:9 state that God punishes up to the third and fourth generation for previous generations’ actions. However, the book of Job acts as a dispute to this. The book of Ezekiel’s contribution to this ongoing theological debate within scripture argues that each generation stands on its own.

Similar to the divine response in the book of Job, Ezekiel 18:25–32 responds to the cry that God’s ways are unfair with a rejoinder: “Is it not your ways that are unfair?” In doing so, God simultaneously asks the exiles to take responsibility for their own actions and reminds them that their own actions are the only thing they can control in this new life they have been thrust into. The actions on which the prophecy focuses are different than the ones the Judean leadership had focused previously. These actions are achievable in exile because they are not about worshipping in the correct way or place. They have lost everything that would have allowed them to do so. 

Instead, God reminds the Judean elites in exile of the ways in which they themselves have been unfair to the poor and needy by collecting interest and taking their collateral (referred to here as a pledge, which often would have been a coat that also served as a bed). The prophecy in Ezekiel 18 communicates that these actions are transgressions against God just as much as idol worship and sexual assault. The elites have been focused on serving God by worshipping in the right way but have neglected those they were supposed to serve in their community.

Christian tradition has often been attributed with the theology that when we serve “the least of these,” we are serving God or Jesus. It is certainly among Christ’s teachings, but it is rooted in his own Jewish context. As a Jewish teacher, Jesus would have been familiar with the Hebrew Bible, including the book of Ezekiel. He was not innovating with this theology but rather continuing the ongoing conversation within scripture. He also continued the conversation about cross-generational punishment, concurring with Ezekiel that those who turn away from such “unfair” practices are forgiven. 

More than a few parents have responded to the complaint “It’s not fair” with the rejoinder “Life’s not fair!” It is certainly true that life is not fair, but God’s parental response to the exiled Judeans who are already painfully aware that life is not fair is a little bit different: “Is it not your ways that are unfair?” So much in life, whether in the Babylonian exile or our contemporary world, is incredibly unfair. The pain of exile and perhaps of childhood and even modern life is not just loss but also lack of control. This prophecy encourages God’s people then and now to turn our attention to what we can control. We cannot understand God’s ways, or why life is so very unfair, but we can make life less unfair by turning our attention to our own ways.

Water is life. This Lakota truth disseminated during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests starting in 2016 highlights that all life depends on clean water. The 2014 water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and more recent water rationing in 2026 due to drought in Puerto Rico, California, and other global hotspots illustrate this same point. With climate change, fresh water continues to diminish worldwide. Water used by fracking and AI data centers compounds the crisis. Scarcity threatens serious health problems, regional conflicts, and even death through dehydration in dire situations. 

Freed from Egyptian enslavement, the Israelites in Exodus 17:1–7 find themselves in such a dire situation. As migrating refugees, they have passed on dry land through the sea and are traveling toward Mount Sinai, where God is carrying them on eagles’ wings to make a covenant with them (Exodus 19:4). They have already dealt with a three-day dry stretch and encountered undrinkable water at Marah, a name referring to the “bitter” water that Moses sweetened and made potable following God’s instructions (Exodus 15:22–23). God has answered the people’s urgent need for food by providing life-sustaining manna, through which they see the glory of the Lord’s presence among them each morning (Exodus 16:7). This bounty in an inhospitable land lets the Israelites know that the Lord is their God (Exodus 16:12).

The Israelites have traveled from the wilderness of Sin—a place name, not to be confused with the English word “sin”—to Rephidim, reaching Horeb (Exodus 17:6). Known as “the mountain of God,” Horeb is the place where God was first revealed to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:1), and it is often used as a synonym for Sinai. The literal meaning of Horeb, “dry place,” reflects the waterless landscape and signals a threat to life. When God earlier put the Israelites to a test, instructing them to do what is right and keep the commandments (Exodus 15:25), they came to a place of abundant water and learned that God is a healer (Exodus 15:25–27). Now in a wasteland, it is the people who put God to the test. They approach Moses with the demand, “Give us water to drink!” (Exodus 17:2).

The narrator prefaces this petition by noting that the people “quarreled” with Moses. The word translated as “quarreled,” underlying the place name “Meribah” (meaning “quarrel,” Exodus 17:7), denotes charging someone for wrongdoing. The issues of responsibility and accountability lie at the heart of this quarrel. The Israelites blame Moses and expect him to resolve the crisis. Moses turns their focus to God and asks why they are “testing” the Lord, corresponding to the place name “Massah” (meaning “test,” Exodus 17:2). 

The people’s complaint then takes the form of a bitter question to Moses in which they weigh their new freedom at the cost of their lives: “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” (Exodus 17:3). In Hebrew, the Israelites speak as an anguished individual, literally, “Why did you bring us up … to kill me and my children and my livestock …?” Extreme thirst (Exodus 17:3) has escalated the situation so that blame and the scramble to hold someone accountable are foremost.

In response to this accusation, Moses cries out to God in fear of a stoning at the hands of “this people” (Exodus 17:4), who have become estranged and turned against him. The honesty and sharpness of the accusations brought by the people and Moses resemble the laments in the book of Psalms, which openly express grief, pain, and betrayal.

God responds to the quarrel with grace and generosity; this is indeed a God who heals and provides. Moses and the people have their connection restored through a collaborative rescue mission involving the elders (Exodus 17:5). Moses’s agency on behalf of God is embodied and reaffirmed in the staff he earlier had used in the signs and wonders before Pharaoh, including the plague of turning the water of the Nile into blood (Exodus 17:5; Exodus 7:17–20). At the climax, God promises to stand personally upon the rock where water will flow for the people to drink (Exodus 17:6). God’s presence at the source of the waters answers the Israelites’ real question, stated at the end of this narrative: “Was the LORD in our midst or not?” (Exodus 17:7). 

The LORD’s presence among the Israelites is revealed through the provision of life-saving water out of the most unlikely source—a barren rock in the parched desert. Centuries later in a different context, the apostle Paul identified God’s saving presence among the people as Christ, “the spiritual rock that followed them” (1 Corinthians 10:4). 

This narrative and others portraying God’s provision of basic necessities in the wilderness—including water (Exodus 15:22-26; Numbers 20:1–13), food (Exodus 16; Numbers 11:4–9), and protection from enemies (Exodus 17:8–16)—are sometimes called “grumbling” stories, blaming the Israelites for their lack of trust. Perhaps if as Christians we would acknowledge doubt as an important aspect of faith, we might be able to identify more fully with the Israelites in their questioning, lamenting, self-advocacy, and discernment. (See for example Matthew 14:22–23, where Peter tests Jesus’s identity as he walks on the sea, only to have his own faith tested.) 

Might the Israelites’ honesty and directness in testing whether or not God is present in moments of need inspire our own discernment about matters critical for human life today? Can an honest expression of the desperation of our circumstances and of our fear lead us to a deeper faith in God’s gracious presence?

Decisions about the preservation and allocation of water resources are a matter of life and death requiring our keenest collective discernment. The surprising narrative in Exodus 17:1–7 alerts us to watch for God, who stood at the source of waters from a rock and who still stands today in the cleansing waters of our baptism and in the precious and vulnerable sources of water that sustain life on our planet.

It never ceases to amaze me how a person’s capacity to review the contours of their life decisions can adjust how they perceive the past, understand the present, or discern how to make good decisions in the future.¹

In this psalm, the writer engages in a poetic reverie punctuated by reflections on the nature of God and recognition of human nature. It is a prayer that starts with trust in God and an abiding hope in the capacity of God to impact one’s life for the better. It ends with an affirmation of God’s essence as good and upright.

Threaded between the beginning and end is a dance of human living in the presence of God. Good decisions are mixed with bad. Trust lines and marks from a lack of trust flow back and forth across the text like a Giacometti drawing. It is sometimes difficult to see which line leads to which conclusion. How does a decision shape a future line that could either be in accordance with the will of God or counter to it? Yet, collectively, they form the image of what has been or what is present.

The psalmist’s prayer entreats God to be a teacher, guide, and instructor who can provide insight about what makes a life worth living. The prayer massages an enduring emotional legacy of guilt and shame for past misdeeds with words of comfort and hope. The exact nature of the guilt or shame is left undefined, and perhaps that aids the hearer or reader in empathizing with the writer. They fill in the story with their own story so that the psalmist’s prayer can become their own.

The psalmist’s poem also sounds like that of one pleading to find a way out of their dire predicament or from what may be occluding their vision of what makes for a good life. What the psalmist was facing isn’t clear, but the emotional experience seems familiar. Those who have experience with the consequences of bad decisions know how they can impact the mind and emotional outlook on everything around them. Those who have looked at the possibilities and implications of difficult situations and decisions know from life experience that bad things can happen if a decision is made incorrectly, and bad things can just happen.,

Those who have experience with driving a car know that car accidents happen. In my experience, they happen when you least expect them. For example, while I was driving our car on a tree-lined country road, a deer sprinted directly across our path. My wife and I discovered quickly that our gentle Mother’s Day ride had developed into something quite different than we had expected. The same could be said for the deer. Sometimes layers of instruction and miles of experience cannot avoid a collision. Bad things can happen.

The writer’s poetry swirls through words like a dust devil, picking up themes and ideas from one place to have them land in another. The desires of a student to learn are commingled with God as teacher who can provide that which is desired and will bring about a fullness of life. The impact of a teacher on one’s life cannot be overstated. People often state that the most influential persons in their life stories are a parent, sibling, or teacher. The writing suggests an awareness of the impact that good teaching can have on one’s life. The psalmist is entreating God to be their teacher so their life journey might be worth living.

“Show me,” “teach me,” and “guide me” are English translations of the Hebrew text. Great teaching has a capacity to do all three. In order to graphically show what it is that teachers want students to learn, contemporary classroom teachers frequently use concept maps in their lesson planning and in their teaching practice.

Concept maps are visually graphic ways to illustrate what they are trying to teach students. They use them in classrooms to help students see the correlation of ideas better. They break down ideas and show students the various pieces of an overall argument so they can better connect them to key concepts and ideas. They visually depict correlations between ideas so the ideas themselves can be grasped better and linked to other ideas so as to create stickiness in the student’s learning process.

The teaching process then ties what is shown to the student so as to arrive at the desired goals of learning. This learning then can provide the foundation for subsequent learning of increasing complexity of concepts and ideas. In addition to the illustration of ideas and the process of instruction, teachers routinely engage in mentoring students toward greater depths of understanding. There is a guiding process that occurs along the way in concert with one’s education that helps cement the pieces of learning together so they become part of the structure of one’s life and decision-making.

The psalmist regards God as the only teacher who can guide him toward that which will bring about a good life. There are theological affirmations threaded throughout the psalm that describe God as a teacher who can be trusted, who has the capacity to stop powers that would undermine one’s life, who can illustrate the ways and paths that lead to a life worth living, and who is good and upright.

Perhaps at its foundation, the psalm is wrestling with a question of formation. What is it that leads to a life worth living? What are the things that would impede a life worth living? How can one be guided toward that which is worthy and away from that which would be less than helpful for living?

Here the writer’s answer seems to be one that sloshes back and forth between what denudes life and what helps a life to flourish. On one side there is treachery without cause, sin, and rebelliousness toward the ways of God, and on the other side there is a cognizance of what God has already provided to the people of God. The Pentateuch has shown what God would regard as good and right for living, and they are rooted in the law of God and the Creator’s designs for the flourishing of life.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for October 1, 2017.

The poetic narrative of Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, and exaltation in Philippians 2:5–11 is among the most famous passages in the letters of Paul. It is often referred to as the Philippian “Christ hymn,” since many interpreters suspect that here, Paul has borrowed or adapted the words of an early Christian liturgical formulation. If so, the passage would offer a rare glimpse into the worship of the earliest Christ groups.

But whether Paul composed these words himself or quoted a text familiar to his addressees, the passage fits seamlessly into the rhetorical flow of his letter. Last week’s text concluded with an acknowledgment of the suffering the Philippian believers were undergoing because of their devotion to Christ—suffering that mirrors Paul’s own experience of imprisonment for the gospel (1:29–30). Now Paul adds to this story another layer: Christ, too, suffered humiliation and even death on account of his faithfulness, only to be raised by God to glory.

For Paul, recounting the story of Jesus’s death and exaltation not only gives believers hope amid their suffering. It also offers a paradigm to follow: Have the same disposition as Christ Jesus, Paul urges, highlighting Christ’s embrace of lowliness and self-emptying obedience. In this way, Paul articulates for embattled believers an ethic of hopeful solidarity that is grounded in the example of Christ (2:3–11) and fueled by a shared experience of Christ’s Spirit (2:1).

Unity as resistance

The key point of Philippians 2:2 is difficult to miss: The same mind. The same love. In full accord—that is, more literally, soulmates (sympsychoi). And then again: Of one mind.

So, Paul wants the Philippian believers to be united. But unity is easier to talk about than it is to achieve. Just look at Paul’s letters. Paul and the groups of believers to whom he wrote faced theological disputes (Galatians 1:6–7; Romans 14:1–12), competing allegiances to rival leaders (1 Corinthians 1:11–12; 2 Corinthians 11:4–6), financial mistrust (2 Corinthians 12:14–18), and the inevitable complications of living in close quarters—rivalry, irritation, hard feelings, and people who, for one reason or another, just find it difficult to get along.

Across his letters, Paul’s strategy for maintaining unity is to invite believers to fix their attention not on their own well-being but on the well-being of others. In Galatians, Paul articulates the point through a paradoxical metaphor of mutual enslavement as an expression of freedom in Christ: “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another” (Galatians 5:13). Here in Philippians, he commends a set of dispositions modeled on Christ’s self-emptying and self-lowering journey from the “form of God” (2:6) to the “form of a slave” (2:7).

The path to unity, Paul suggests, is for members of the community to set aside selfish ambition and self-interest and instead set their hearts on what is best for others.

Paul’s vision of harmony through mutual service and care offers a refreshing alternative to modern discourses of self-care and boundary-maintenance, which assign to each individual a moral imperative to prioritize and protect the self.

Yet there are also dangers to this approach.¹ Heavy-handed rhetoric of unity sometimes masks harmful imbalances of power. In such situations, telling the vulnerable not to be concerned with their own needs can simply perpetuate abuse. In the long term, conflict and dissent are essential to any healthy community. Disagreement is how the corporate body fights off the infection of structural or habitual injustice.

But Paul is not offering a universal strategy for maintaining healthy communities. He is not thinking about the long term. For Paul, the day of Christ looms near (1:10; 2:15), and in the meantime, the Philippian believers live under siege. The point is not just that they all should get along. Rather, in the face of opposition, he wants them to maintain a united front, “standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel and in no way frightened by those opposing” them (1:27–28).

The people, united, will never be defeated. This by itself is not a sufficient ethic for a healthy community, but it can help mobilize a group facing a shared struggle.

Lowliness as power

Paul has not been executed like Christ was—at least not yet. But he is in chains (Philippians 1:7). From what we know of ancient prisons, he was likely held in a dark underground chamber—quite literally under the feet of his captors.² From this position, he invites the Philippians to join him on his downward trajectory.

The key term that unites Paul’s instructions in verses 1–5 with the Christ hymn in verses 6–11 is usually translated “humility.” “In humility [tapeinophrosunē] regard others as better than yourselves” (2:3), Paul advises, just as Christ “humbled [etapeinōsen] himself” on the cross (2:8). This familiar translation does not quite catch the force of Paul’s language. Like the English term “humility,” tapein– words in Greek suggest lowliness. But this is not simply a matter of avoiding arrogance or boastfulness. The term rather describes those with little power or status. Indeed, when Christ “lowered himself” on the cross, he embraced lowliness in a very concrete sense: powerlessness, humiliation, the lowest possible social position.

Startlingly, Paul finds in Christ’s act of self-lowering a disposition to emulate: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Jesus Christ” (2:5). Here we find another key term in Philippians, the verb phroneō. Often translated “mind,” the word signals a mental disposition or orientation—not just a set of ideas, but a way of looking at life.

In verse 3, Paul merges these two key terms, urging the believers to embrace “humility” (tapeinophrosunē)—that is, a lowly disposition. Paul may have coined this compound word himself; it never appears in earlier Greek literature.³ Tellingly, when writers shortly after Paul’s time use the term, it is an insult, not a virtue, a way of calling someone weak and pathetic—a bottom-feeder.⁴

So Paul is not just asking the Philippian believers to be humble. He is inviting them to approach life the way Christ did, looking downward, not upward—and in this way to encounter, like Christ did, the resurrecting power of God.

Notes

1. See Joseph A. Marchal, Hierarchy, Unity, and Imitation: A Feminist Rhetorical Analysis of Power Dynamics in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (Society of Biblical Literature, 2006).
2. Matthew D. C. Larsen and Mark Letteney, Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (University of California Press, 2025), 82–84, 143–144.
3. Eve-Marie Becker, Paul on Humility (Baylor University Press, 2020), 24.
4. Epictetus, Diatr. 1.9.10; 3.24.56; Josephus, War 4.9.2 §491; cf. Plutarch, Alex fort. 4 (336e); Tranq. an. 17 (475e).