Lectionary Commentaries for September 6, 2026
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 18:15–20 details the ecclesial stipulations for resolving conflict between two people. Jesus states, “If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone” (18:15). If the sinner does not listen to the offended party, “one or two others” join the discussion “so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses” (18:16). Barring resolution in the presence of these witnesses, the entire assembly (or “church,” ekklesīa) gets involved (18:17). If the guilty congregant continues to refuse correction, Jesus says, “let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector” (18:17).

This scenario echoes legal requirements from the Law of Moses. When Jesus refers to the “evidence of two or three witnesses” (18:17), he recalls the biblical conditions for court proceedings in the book of Deuteronomy. Moses declares, “On the evidence of two or three witnesses the death sentence shall be executed; a person must not be put to death on the evidence of only one witness” (Deuteronomy 17:6). In his demand for multiple witnesses, Jesus follows this Deuteronomistic precedent. Yet whereas Moses requires two or three people to enact capital punishment, Matthew envisions the sinner’s exclusion from the community.

This shift from execution to expulsion is not unique to Matthew’s Gospel. In the Second Temple period, Jewish commentators began to interpret the Torah’s calls for the death penalty as references to excommunication. For instance, whereas Leviticus 20:27 states that a “man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritualist shall be put to death,” the first-century Jewish commentator Philo of Alexandria asserts that “Moses banished … diviners and fortune-tellers and sorcerers and enchanters” (Special Laws 1.60).

Similarly, Paul recommends that a man who is sleeping with his father’s wife in Corinth should be expelled from the church: “You are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 5:5). In this way, Paul tells the Corinthians, you shall “drive out the wicked person from among you” (5:13).

Yet this Pauline phrase comes from a Deuteronomistic context that demands capital punishment: “If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die. … Thus, you shall remove the evil one from Israel” (Deuteronomy 22:22, Septuagint). Paul forgoes the death penalty in favor of an excommunication that will result in the sinner being “removed from among you” (1 Corinthians 5:2). When Matthew refers to a church member being removed after standing before “two or three witnesses” (Matthew 18:17), the evangelist affirms the traditional Jewish interpretation of Mosaic capital punishment in terms of public expulsion.

The Gospel implies excommunication in its reference to the unrepentant sinner being treated “as a gentile and a tax collector” (18:17). Since Jesus’s followers are limited to Jews in Matthew’s narrative, the terminology suggests a status outside the Jesus-believing community. Yet the phrase also alludes to hope for sinners’ restoration, since tax collectors and gentiles are the very groups that Matthew earmarks for evangelization (see also Matthew 9:9–11; 10:3; 11:19; 28:19).¹ Ideally, then, any expulsions from the assembly would be temporary separations pending successful reintegration.

Immediately after mentioning tax collectors and gentiles, Jesus says that “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (18:18). Several options exist for interpreting this statement, of which three are particularly intriguing.

First, since the reference to binding and loosing appears in the context of sin and potential forgiveness (18:5), Matthew 18:18 may refer to the binding and loosing of sins. Since John’s Gospel contains a similar dictum—“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23)—it appears that the fourth evangelist interpreted Matthew’s “binding” and “loosing” as references to forgiving and retaining sins.²

Second, the Matthean logion may allude to the disciples’ ability to expel and readmit church members—a meaning that would fit with the broader context of Matthew 18:15–20 detailed above. The first-century CE Jewish historian Josephus notes that the Pharisees of the first century BCE were “becoming administrators of everything—to banish and recall whom they want, to loose and bind” (Jewish War 1.111).³

Third, binding and loosing could pertain to exorcism and authority over demons. Multiple Second Temple texts use the terms in this way, including when the angel Raphael “bound” the demon Asmodeus and thereby freed Sarah from her demonic affliction (Tobit 8:3). The New Testament echoes this usage in its reference to Satan being “bound” and “loosed” in Revelation 20:2–3, and in Luke’s description of a woman whom “Satan had bound” for 18 years before Jesus “loosed” her from this bond on the Sabbath (Luke 13:16).⁴ However, since the context of Matthew 18:15–20 does not mention the devil or demons, the first two interpretive options may be preferable.

The Matthean passage ends with a declaration of God’s authority over church proceedings and Christ’s ongoing presence with the assembly. Jesus proclaims, “If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:19–20). These concluding remarks remind Gospel readers that while internal disputes are inevitable, fellowship and cohesion will ensure continued divine oversight among believers.

Notes

1. For tax collectors and gentiles as “people requiring evangelization” in Matthew’s narrative world, see Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., The Jewish Annotated New Testament, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 44.
2. See James W. Barker, John’s Use of Matthew (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 37–38.
3. See Barker, John’s Use, 46.
4. See Richard H. Hiers, “‘Binding’ and ‘Loosing’: The Matthean Authorizations,” Journal of Biblical Literature 104 (1985): 233–250.

The prophecies in the book of Ezekiel address Judeans in exile. When the Babylonian Empire conquered Judah, they took the political and religious leaders, including Ezekiel himself, into exile in Babylon. Recent archaeological discoveries reflect that the Judean exiles lived together in a small ethnic enclave, doing manual labor. They had lost their homes, their land, their status, their loved ones, and their temple. The former elites were now subsistence farmers in a strange land.

These Judean exiles persisted in their faith; this required that they make a theological shift. Israelite and Judean religion differed from the practices of the surrounding cultures: They believed they should worship only one God. The Babylonians, like most of the surrounding cultures, believed there were many gods and goddesses, each of whom had a designated role. Some were in charge of rain or fertility; others represented and fought for individual nations. 

The Babylonians would have believed that their conquest of the Judeans meant that the Babylonian god had defeated the God of Judah because the former was more powerful. They would have expected Judeans, like other conquered nations, to stop worshiping a conquered god who had failed them and begin worshiping the Babylonian pantheon. Instead, the Judean exiles discerned that their one God had not been defeated but had allowed them to be defeated because they as a community had done something wrong. 

The prophecies in this section of the book of Ezekiel wrestle with how the community in exile can continue to worship their God and where they can find hope for restoration of their nation. Their experience of the trauma of warfare, defeat, exile, and loss is palpable throughout the book. Historically, we know that the Babylonian Empire was an ancient superpower that was rapidly conquering the ancient Afro-Asiatic world (see Wil Gafney for more on this term). A tiny nation like Judah could never have prevented its own military defeat against such an adversary. 

Survivors of trauma, however, often find the shame they feel from acknowledging this lack of control impossible to live with. They seek someone to blame—often themselves. This comes through in their theological response to the experience of exile. They survive by recognizing what they can and cannot control. The Judean exiles cannot control the Babylonian Empire or the living conditions in which they find themselves. What they can control is their own response to it. Ezekiel 33 begins a new section of the book that suggests they respond by becoming a better community.

Ezekiel 33 is a call to the prophet to act as a “sentinel.” The biblical prophets share an excellent use of compelling metaphors to convey their message. In this case, the prophet experiences a call to sound a warning when he foresees danger, as would a sentinel blowing a trumpet. Exiled survivors of warfare would have had a visceral memory of such an experience. The warning in this metaphor is not of a coming army but instead of the community’s wrongdoing. The use of this particular metaphor alludes to the exilic theology that the community’s wrongdoing is the reason they experienced military destruction. 

As God’s sentinel, the prophet is responsible for sounding the warning about destructive community norms. When he sees the community’s iniquity, he needs to speak out against it, whether the community listens to him or not. Knowing the response previous prophets have received, he cannot expect his message to be met with universal popularity or even acceptance. He is responsible for sharing uncomfortable truths anyway. He is not, however, responsible for others’ response to it. Just as the exiles cannot control the fact that they got exiled, God’s sentinel can only control his own courage to speak out. God will not hold him responsible for what he cannot control. 

From our perspective today, it is worth noting that the call to repentance is communal, not individual. Individualism is deeply embedded in our culture and pervades many modern theologies regarding our individual behavior and relationship with the Divine. This is something of a modern innovation, however; the book of Ezekiel comes from a culture of communal labor and responsibility in which interdependence was the norm. 

This community-oriented perspective is subtle in our English translations of Ezekiel 33 because formal English only has one word for the second-person “you,” whether it is singular or plural. The original Hebrew of Ezekiel, however, uses the singular “you” when God is speaking of the prophet but the plural “you” (or “y’all”) when speaking of “the wicked” and their ways, calling them to a collective “turn” from wickedness so they might re-turn to their land.

Our familiarity with ideas of individual wickedness and repentance can make it difficult to even imagine what collective wickedness and repentance would look like. Like Abraham in Genesis 18, it seems unlikely to us that everyone is behaving wickedly, or that everyone would respond to a call to repentance. 

Yet, the book of Ezekiel is not concerned with individual behavior, but with the kind of pervasive wickedness that is implicit in a culture’s way of being and behaving toward God and one another. It is pervasive not in that a certain percentage of individuals participate in it but in that it is the assumed normal. As the chapter continues and connects to later chapters, it becomes clear that Ezekiel is not concerned with repentance from individual sin, but from structural sin.

A conquered people in exile has very little control over their lives. Ezekiel 33 offers them something they can control: their own community culture. The prophet can act as sentinel, calling out what he has observed, but he cannot control how people respond to his message. The community cannot control the Babylonian culture or their captivity in it, but they can effect change in their own community’s culture, in the assumed normal, in “the way we do things.” We cannot control one another’s actions, but we can accept mutual responsibility for the community we create together through word and deed.

Of the many hundreds—possibly thousands—of sermons I have heard preached in my life, I cannot recall a single sermon ever preached on the regulations for Passover observance. When Christian communities engage this text in worship, it is usually in order to lay the groundwork for discussing Jesus as the “Passover lamb” (1 Corinthians 5:7)—which is, of course, an important idea to study. Still, while the echoes of the Passover in the death of Jesus can be a fruitful topic for proclamation, Exodus 12 also makes meaning as a primary preaching text.

That is particularly true in the context of the semicontinuous Old Testament lectionary, since the passage is not thematically paired with the New Testament lessons, as it would be in the complementary lectionary. In this commentary I will highlight a few ways in which Exodus 12 might speak to Christian communities beyond the analogy of Jesus as the Passover lamb.

Exodus 12 prompts us to reflect on the ways we mark time as a community.

The Pentateuch—particularly the Priestly authorial voice responsible for this passage—is deeply concerned with questions of time. Sabbath practice, for example, is a core topic not only in the legal texts of Exodus, but also in Genesis 1, where God’s resting on the seventh day provides the rationale for Sabbath-keeping. The Priestly creation story of Genesis 1 presents God’s creative work as well ordered, scheduled, and rhythmic.

Similarly, Exodus 12 seeks to establish a schedule and a rationale for the Passover. The text begins, “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you” (Exodus 12:2). The keeping of festivals and the marking of the seasons bloom from the memory of God’s saving work delivering the Israelites from Egypt.¹ Inasmuch as the exodus narrative is concerned with questions of identity—Pharaoh’s, Moses’s, God’s—the Passover regulations underscore the identity of the people of Israel as those who have been freed by God to serve God in a covenantal relationship. Israel’s identity as God’s liberated people frames the community’s timekeeping.

In any given Christian church, we operate by multiple calendars: The liturgical year begins in Advent, our programming might follow a September-to-May school calendar, the fiscal year might begin July 1, and the secular calendar starts on January 1. But what is the theological underpinning of our timekeeping? If Easter is the foundational story for Christians, how might our practices throughout the year—and our organization of the year itself—better reflect rootedness in the resurrection account?

Exodus 12 alerts us to the ways ritual and story intersect.

The Passover instructions given in Exodus 12:1–14 are presented both as the directions for the first Passover event and as the establishment of a “perpetual ordinance” (verse 14). But as anthropologists of religion have long observed, a ritual practice or tradition is usually something that is done first and explained later. That is likely true in this case as well, with the Passover being “probably originally a rite of spring, practiced by shepherds.”²

The festival of Unleavened Bread was also likely a freestanding festival that was eventually combined with the Passover observance (as in Exodus 12 and Deuteronomy 16:1–8).³ The Passover as prescribed in Exodus 12 provides comprehensive instructions and a narrative foundation for practices that had already been underway. It’s an important reminder that religious practices change over time, even today: Old traditions meet new events to remember and new cultural pressures to negotiate.

Through specific instructions—for example, “This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly” (Exodus 12:10)—rituals forge connections between our bodies and the stories that animate our hearts. While American Christianity today often conceptualizes religion as intellectual assent—Do you “believe” the Bible? Do you “accept” Jesus?—it is the practice of religion that cements our commitments. Preachers might take the opportunity this week to help their listeners consider how they live their faith in their bodies: through worship, through service, through living daily life in ways that respect others’ bodies as well as their own.

Exodus 12 can encourage us to make interfaith connections.

The Lenten season sometimes inspires Christian communities to hold a Passover seder, to help congregants better understand the Passover setting of Jesus’s last supper. While usually well-meaning, these seders—particularly if conducted outside of partnerships with Jewish congregations—are often misguided, given that the seders practiced in Judaism today contain many elements that were not present during Jesus’s lifetime. Studying and/or preaching on Exodus 12—particularly outside of Lent—can help Christians comprehend the Passover on its own terms, better appreciating how the festival held meaning for its ancient practitioners, as well as how it still makes meaning for Jewish communities today.

Moreover, the September date for this lectionary passage could be an opportunity to pursue interfaith connections without the sometimes-fraught context of the Lenten season. Perhaps Exodus 12 will inspire your communities to reach out to Jewish neighbors for new opportunities for mutual support and understanding.

Notes

1. Even though in current practice the fall holiday of Rosh Hashanah is the primary Jewish New Year, Jewish tradition still recognizes four “new year” milestones annually. See, for example, Michelle Alperin, “How Many Jewish New Years?,” My Jewish Learning, accessed June 29, 2026, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/how-many-jewish-new-years/, and Michelle Alperin, “How Rosh Hashanah Became New Year’s Day,” My Jewish Learning, accessed June 29, 2026, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/how-rosh-hashanah-became-new-years-day/.
2. John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 114.
3. Vestiges of that standalone status can be detected in the way the festival of Unleavened Bread is named in many places throughout Scripture alongside of the Passover festival, rather than being subsumed into it. See, for example, Leviticus 23:5–6; Matthew 26:17; Mark 14:1, 12.

Across the street from the university where my wife attended graduate school was a church whose sign included that famous quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: “If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will get you there.”¹

In our attempts to reflect homiletically upon Psalm 119, we might do well to understand this lengthy psalm as a remedy, a balm of sorts, for the kind of meandering life that chases everything, and yet is satiated by nothing.

In this, the longest psalm (176 verses), eight different terms are employed in reference to God’s tora, and with the exception of only a handful of verses, every verse in the psalm contains the term tora or one of the related synonyms. But we should be clear: This is not a paean to tora; it is an invitation to life. Access to the kind of life intended by God is found by “walking in the tora of the LORD” (verse 1b) and seeking God with one’s “whole heart” (verse 2b). The language from the two opening lines of Psalm 119 echoes throughout the remainder of the psalm, and such language appears in the he stanza (verses 33–40) of this acrostic psalm.

In approaching this psalm homiletically, we might do well to focus our attention on this notion of an invitation. What are the images employed in this invitation that merit careful reflection?

Delighting in the way

The terms “way” (verse 33) and “path” (verse 35) appear in this stanza, invoking the complexity of ideas associated with the “pathway” metaphor. Within the book of Psalms, the “pathway” should not be understood as something akin to a precursor to finding the tora of Yahweh; for example, one does not walk the pathway in order to arrive at the tora of Yahweh. Rather, the pathway “fundamentally illustrates tora observance.”²

This idea is picked up in verses 33 and 35: “the way of your statutes” and “the path of your commandments.” The statutes and commandments of Yahweh prove to be the well-worn places where we are meant to walk in faithfulness with this God. There is no sense of obligatory dread with this psalmist. In fact, to the contrary, walking in these well-worn places proves to be the source of pure “delight” (verse 35b). Even more, the pathway of God and the pathway with God become the source of life (verses 37b, 40b).

Resisting distraction in the way

At the very center of this stanza (verses 36b, 37a), the psalmist petitions God to remove those things most distracting, those things that might take one off the pathway of God and with God. In verse 36, the psalmist implores Yahweh to turn his heart away from “unjust gain.” He confesses that the mark of true life is not wealth, especially wealth gained on the backs of others, but instead, a heart that is turned to God. In verse 37a, the psalmist implores God literally “to cause [his] eyes to pass over the worthless things” so that he might experience true life (verse 37b).

The mention of these distractions is central to the pathway imagery that dominates these verses. To walk in the pathway of God is not some form of naive escapism that allows us to sidestep the distracting and disillusioning things of this world. To the contrary, this stanza reminds us that the pathway with God winds itself through such challenging terrain.

Equally important, this stanza is a reminder that we ourselves are incapable of holding at bay those distracting and disillusioning things—that is the work of God alone. And so our bold prayer to walk with God must be matched with our humble confession that we need God’s work in our lives; we need God’s work of turning our “hearts” and “eyes” away from the distractions around us so that they might focus entirely upon God’s life-giving path.

Longing for the way

The first seven verses in this stanza each begin with an imperative, but the string of imperatives comes to an end with verse 40. The line begins with the particle hinneh, “behold.” Although this particle has a variety of functions in Hebrew, sometimes it introduces a summative comment on the preceding verses. The psalmist declares, “Hinneh, I have longed for your precepts.”

The entire stanza is expressed in that one idea, “longing”—a longing for God, a longing for life absent of worthless things, a longing for a renewed life along the pathway of God. The pleas offered up by the psalmist in the seven preceding verses are the result of a deep longing, a longing that started in the past and gnaws at him still.

Perhaps the psalm ends where we should begin—with a fervent longing for the pathway of God.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for September 6, 2020.
2. William P. Brown, Seeing the Psalms: A Theology of Metaphor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 34.

The apocalyptic Paul shows up clearly in these verses. That is, we see evidence that Paul expected Jesus to return soon, perhaps in his own lifetime, to gather up all things in heaven and on earth to return to God the creator so that God may be all in all, everything to everyone (1 Corinthians 15:28). 

In his early letters, Paul deals with both expectations and questions about the return of Christ. For example, in 1 Thessalonians, Paul addresses the concerns the early believers in Thessalonica had for their loved ones who died in the Lord (in the faith) before Christ returned. Will those loved ones be lost forever? No, Paul reassures them. Those who die in the faith before Christ returns will be raised up first at the sound of the trumpet (1 Thessalonians 4:16).

The hinge verse in this passage is verse 11: “Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.”

Preceding verse 11, verses 8–10 are a summary of the Ten Commandments that both begins and ends with the call to love one another, for this is the fulfillment of the law. Following verse 11 is the admonition to lay aside every form of living that does not honor God, that does not honor the law of love. To put on the Lord Jesus Christ is to live as close to the heart of God as is earthly possible.

Again, verse 11 reads, “You know what time it is.” Now is the time to get your spiritual affairs in order and get into right relationship with God by putting on Christ, putting on love, such that it becomes your very being.

Echoes of Galatians, an earlier letter from Paul, can be heard in these verses. In Galatians, Paul confirms that in the law of love, there is freedom from the law of Moses. But freedom from the law of Moses is not freedom to do whatever one wants, no matter the cost to anyone else. Freedom from the law of Moses is freedom from evaluating every action throughout the day, freedom from a focus on the details of life, freedom from the myopic vision of every jot and tittle of rule of life. The freedom found in the law of love is precisely to see the other, to care for the other, to love the neighbor rather than being obsessed with one’s own maintenance of the rules.  Fulfill the law of love, and believers have fulfilled the law of Moses.

Put on the law of love; put on Christ

In the event we are not clear about what the law of love looks like, even after the gifts for ministry and the disposition of love as described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and alluded to in Romans 12, Paul spells out for us what is singularly inappropriate with regard to the law of love as we prepare for the return of Christ: Avoid reveling, which is excessive partying and wild behavior; avoid drunkenness, debauchery, and licentiousness, which may be taken as reckless indulgence in immoral behavior; avoid quarreling and jealousy. As to these behaviors, “you did not so learn Christ!” we hear in a later letter (Ephesians 4:20 Revised Standard Version). 

Wake up! The day is near. Lay aside the life and works of darkness, and put on the armor of light; put on Christ. Ephesians 6:11–17 will describe the armor of God: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes that will enable believers to go and proclaim the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. Put on truth, righteousness (God’s justice), go-shoes to proclaim the gospel, faith, the protection of salvation, and take up the word of God. This is what it means to put on Christ.

Preaching angles

What does this mean for our preaching ministry?

1. There is a zeal found in youth, a zeal found in early believers, a zeal in the training of the young athlete and intellectual curiosity of those who have discovered learning. Such zeal tends to fade with age, maturity, and experience. Many find they cannot keep up the drive, the intense focus, the long days and training sessions, the hard charging of the early endeavor. In Romans 12:10, Paul exhorts us not to lag in zeal, which is evidence enough that our tendency is to lose drive, especially if an expected outcome does not manifest in our timeline. 

What is the antidote to lagging in zeal? Put on Christ. Put on the things of love. We do not need to run at the pace of a 28-year-old champion marathoner, or study with the lack of sleep of a young scholar, or have the sustaining power of the one who could work the fields for 14 hours instead of 10. Put on Christ. Put on the law of love.  Live in truth, deal with the neighbor with the righteousness of God, love the other even when the feeling is not there because love is a behavior even more than a feeling.

1. Live as though in the light, no matter the stages of day, twilight, dark, or dawn. Live as though the lights are on. Putting on Christ, putting on the whole armor of God is not just for when we leave the house. Putting on the law of love is not public behavior and attitude alone. Wear Christ at home, in familial relationship, in prayer life, in the quiet and small personal choices that impact the world at large, such as where we give our money, from whom we purchase goods, the privacy of the voting booth. 
2. Contrast cultural, political, or self-interested concepts of freedom with gospel freedom. Gospel freedom considers the well-being of the other, knowing one’s own security in the love and mercy of God.