Lectionary Commentaries for October 25, 2026
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

A legal expert from among the Pharisees asks Jesus which commandment is the greatest (verse 36). The question is a test, but it is not a hard one. Jesus’s answer—love God with everything you have, and love your neighbor as yourself—would have found immediate recognition from everyone within earshot. Rabbi Akiva, whose teaching is preserved in the Sifra (Kedoshim 2:4.12), called the Levitical command to love your neighbor the great principle of Torah. Hillel, a generation before Jesus, had said the same thing to a gentile who asked for the whole Torah summarized: That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow—this is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a). 

So Jesus is not introducing a new idea. He is stating what everyone already knows. And that is precisely the problem.

The Pharisees know the answer. Jesus knows they know. The crowd knows. There is no debate about the content of the commandment. The failure has never been informational. The failure is always somewhere between the knowing and the doing, in the space where we understand perfectly what love requires and find ourselves, quietly and repeatedly, unable to deliver it.

What is missing

Thomas Aquinas defined love as velle bonum alicui—to will the good of the other. Not to feel warmly toward the other. Not to tolerate the other. To actively, structurally, sacrificially orient your will toward the flourishing of another person. It is a definition that cuts through every sentimental misreading of the commandment. Love is not a feeling that comes and goes. It is a choice, made again and again, in the direction of someone else’s good.

But Aquinas understood something else as well. The will cannot orient itself toward the other if the self is still crowding the center. You cannot will the good of someone you have quietly decided is beneath you. You cannot love, in the Thomistic sense, without first making interior room for the other person to matter as much as you do. That interior making-room has a name. It is called humility.

This is what the commandment assumes and what we persistently skip. We try to go directly to love without first passing through humility, and we wonder why the commandment doesn’t hold. We agree with it on Sunday and violate it by Tuesday, not because we are hypocrites, but because we have not done the interior work. Humility is not a spiritual nicety that lives alongside love. It is the structural foundation without which love, in the full Thomistic sense, cannot be built.

The half of the text nobody preaches

Here is where most sermons stop. But Jesus is not finished. He turns the tables and asks the Pharisees a question of his own: Whose son is the Messiah (verse 42)? They answer correctly: The Son of David. Then Jesus presses: How is it that David himself, in Psalm 110, calls the Messiah “Lord”? If the Messiah is David’s descendant, why does David subordinate himself to the one who comes after him? The Pharisees go silent. They have no answer.

But look at what Jesus has just done. He has not changed the subject. He has illustrated it. David, the king, the giant-slayer, the man from whose line the Messiah would come, looked at his own descendant and said: “My Lord.” He bent the knee to someone he could have claimed superiority over. He oriented his will toward the greatness of another rather than protecting his own precedence.

David demonstrated the humility that makes love possible. And the Pharisees, who know the commandment perfectly, cannot answer the question because the question is asking them to do the same thing David did: to subordinate themselves to someone they did not expect to be above them.

They cannot do it. Not because they don’t know the commandment. Because they haven’t done the prior work of humility.

What the preacher might ask

The congregation sitting before you this Sunday already knows they are supposed to love their neighbor. The question worth asking in your best pastoral voice is whether they have examined what makes it so hard. Not the difficulty of the action, but the difficulty of the posture that must precede it.

Who are the neighbors they find it structurally difficult to will the good of, not because they dislike them, but because something in their formation has suggested that those neighbors count for a little less? Where has pride, so subtle it doesn’t feel like pride, quietly made the commandment impossible to keep?

The Pharisees were proud people. And their institutional, interpretive, and positional pride made it impossible for them to bend the knee to the one before them, even when they knew the answer he was seeking.

Jesus gave them the commandment. Then he gave them the example. Love God. Love your neighbor. And remember that you cannot do either without first doing what David did: humbling yourself before the Lord, who is greater than your own lineage, your own tradition, your own very correct answers. Humility is the prerequisite for love to flourish. This is the homework assigned for the preacher, the congregation, and all who follow Jesus.  

The central concern in Leviticus 19 is how a holy God can dwell in the midst of the Israelites. 

The gospel reading for today (Matthew 22:34–40) quotes a verse from Leviticus 19, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In Matthew, the context for the quoted phrase is a discussion between the Pharisees and Jesus about the greatest commandment. The Pharisees approach Jesus to “test” him (Matthew 22:34). One of the Pharisees, an expert in Mosaic law, inquires of Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 

The details in Matthew’s gospel point toward the purpose of the question. The inquiry is an opportunity to assess Jesus’s interpretive skills. The Pharisees, seeing Jesus’s popularity, wonder whether he can understand and teach the law of Moses well. 

In response, Jesus quotes from two texts. Jesus emphasizes that the command to love one’s neighbor (Leviticus 19:18), along with the command to love God with one’s whole heart, soul, and mind (Deuteronomy 6:5), together serve as the foundation for the entirety of Scripture. He concludes his answer thus: “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:40). This is a striking answer. He does not answer the question of priority directly. Rather, Jesus instead cites two texts that offer an elegant summary of legal tradition’s central theological claim. Jesus summarizes the legal tradition as wholehearted love for God and wholehearted love for others.

Returning to examine Leviticus 19 offers context for Jesus’s use of the quotation about love for others. In so doing, we notice a surprising detail. The text does not focus first on commands at all. Rather, it points our attention first to divine character. In the opening verse, the chapter is introduced as one long divine speech. The first-person address begins with an instruction that Moses address the whole congregation of the Israelites and say, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). 

This command, and similar language, informs how we read the entire collection of laws in Leviticus 17–26. Often referred to as the Holiness Code, these chapters emphasize that human ethics are grounded in a statement about God. Specifically, it argues that God’s holiness serves as the beginning point for all communal expectations. 

Chapter 19 is shaped by the repeated use of the phrases “I am the LORD,” and “I am the LORD your God.” God’s proper divine name is repeated 16 different times and serves as a central refrain throughout the text. There is a kind of cadence to Leviticus 19 as a pattern emerges. A command is given. God states his name. 

In today’s lectionary reading (verses 1–2; 15–18), this is precisely what we find. Verses 15–16 issue prohibitions against unjust judgments, showing partiality, slandering, and standing idly by when a neighbor’s blood is at stake. These statutes conclude with the phrase “I am the LORD.” Verses 17–18 resume the language of command: not hating anyone of your kin, reproving one’s neighbor, not taking vengeance or bearing a grudge, and loving one’s neighbor as yourself. The commands again conclude with the statement of God’s identity: “I am the LORD.”

The alternation between statements of God’s name and divine commands governing communal responsibilities is important. Narratively, the book of Leviticus is situated just after the establishment of the tabernacle at the end of Exodus. This narrative context and the theological framework within which the laws are given suggest a central problem at the heart of the text. How are God’s people to live in a way that is hospitable to the holiness of God? Leviticus 19:2 has suggested a first attempt to answer this question: “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” Human behavior is modeled on divine character. 

What, then, constitutes holy living in the view of Leviticus 19? The chapter details a wide range of legal expectations. Legal topics include sacrificial practices, protections for the resident aliens and the vulnerable; issuing fair judgments, not eating the blood of animals, proper sexual relationships, just business practices, and honoring parents, among others. Some of these commands fall under the auspices of care for the neighbor, such as not stealing and not rendering an unjust judgment. Several others, however, have a less obvious connection. These include a prohibition against breeding animals of different kinds and not wearing a garment made of two different materials. 

The broad range of legal material might cause one to wonder what ties all these varied laws together. But the diversity of topics covered is precisely the point. Holy living is a comprehensive way of life. It touches on every aspect of the community’s experience: food and eating practices, liturgy and worship, familial relationships, civic life, agricultural and business practices. Commands are aimed at a way of living that makes possible God’s presence among the people. 

Leviticus 19, then, is not an arbitrary set of laws but an elegant theological text. It begins with a statement of the divine name and character. And it calls for a way of human living that is imitative of God’s own character. Grounded in knowledge of God’s name and character, the community is to love one another in a way that leads to the flourishing of all. It is this tradition that Jesus invokes in Matthew. He reminds us that the covenantal way of life invites us into divine life, and so into relationship with one another. 

The book of Deuteronomy is a collection of the longest orations in the Bible: almost entirely quotations of Moses’s and the Lord’s speech (1–31) and Moses’s poems to Israel (32–33). Our passage (34:1–12) concludes the book with narrative, corresponding to the opening five verses of narrative (1:1–5), a pair of bookends to the oral and rhetorical content of the book. Were one to stage a performance of the book, the narrator would have very brief and sporadic parts compared to the long soliloquies of the divine and human speakers.

To preach on this narrative, then, is to focus on the light frame tracing the edges of a large and complex oral portrait concerning the relationship of God and people as mediated by Moses. How does this frame impact our understanding of the covenantal drama?

Deuteronomy refers to itself as torah (1:5; 4:8; 17:18, 19; 27:3, et cetera), which is often translated “law” but is better rendered as “instruction” or even “polity.”¹ The fact that Jesus quoted and alluded frequently to Deuteronomy hints at its vital importance for understanding what he proclaims about God’s kingdom (or polity). For example, when Jesus teaches the supreme importance of the love of God, he alludes to the confession in Deuteronomy 6:4–5. Love, both in Deuteronomy and in Jesus’s appropriation of it, is defined as loyalty and fidelity to one’s covenant partner or neighbor (7:9, 13; 10:12, 15, 19; 11:1; 13:3; 30:6).

When Moses begins speaking in Deuteronomy, he is on a plateau in the land of Moab (1:5). At the other end of the book, chapter 34 picks up the narrative thread with “Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the LORD showed him the whole land …” The Lord gives Moses a raptor’s-eye view of regions north and west and then south (verses 1b–3). The way Moses is shown this panorama resonates with the first words the Lord spoke to the Israelites at Sinai: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Exodus 19:4). Being shown a greater vision can support the trust necessary in a relationship.

The omniscient narrator then provides a brief death notice in verse 5: “Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the LORD’s command.” The phrase “LORD’s command” translates the Hebrew phrase “the mouth of the LORD,” which is also found earlier in the book, near the end of Deuteronomy 8:3: “[The LORD your God] humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” The divine word governs human life from beginning to end, both sustaining and releasing it.

The obituary is filled out by details that eulogize Moses as an incomparable leader:

• The Lord buries Moses “in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day” (verse 6);
• Moses dies, physically undiminished, at 120 years (verse 7; compare Joshua’s death at 110 years in Joshua 24:29);
• there had never again been “a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face” (verse 10; see also Exodus 33:11; Numbers 12:8); and
• Moses “was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the LORD sent him to perform in the land of Egypt” (verse 11).

Now consider how Jesus appears as a new Moses to a new people of God:

• delivering them from sin (Matthew 9:10–13);
• performing signs and wonders (Acts 2:22);
• preaching the reign of God (Mark 1:15); and
• mediating a new covenant (Luke 22:20; Hebrews 9:15).

As Moses is a human figure without peer in the Old Testament, so also is the Lord without divine peer, claiming through an exilic poet: “I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god” (Isaiah 45:5). The hymn found in Philippians 2 confesses by way of equation that “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (verse 11b). Christ’s identity with and as the God of Israel is thus a confession of Christ’s incomparability.

Connecting Moses and Jesus, John summarizes the gifts of God: “The law [Greek nomos for Hebrew torah] indeed was given through Moses; grace [Greek charis for Hebrew hesed] and truth [Greek alētheia for Hebrew ’emet] came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). About the value of Mosaic torah, Paul concludes, “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12). These statements give us additional perspective on the enduring importance of Moses’s legacy through Deuteronomy.

Considering this closing encomium for Moses, we may reflect on how the quality of incomparability or uniqueness inspires our devotion and discipleship to the Lord, who appeared in flesh as Jesus of Nazareth. We may contemplate in grief the deaths of such peerless figures and wonder at the enduring life that results from their words and actions. And perhaps the death and burial of Moses by the Lord and his entrance into rest (see also Exodus 33:14) prefigures the sacrament of baptism. For baptism is death and burial through symbolic drowning (Romans 6:4) by which we enter the body of the Lord, “all Israel” (Deuteronomy 34:12; see also Romans 11:26). In the new life of resurrection, Paul assures us that we, too, will see “face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12b).

Notes

1. After the Jewish historian Josephus, who claimed torah as the politeia of ancient Israel for a Greco-Roman audience in, for example, Antiquities 3.213.

Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm that serves as the preface to the Psalter, sharing literary and theological relationship with the Torah.¹

Torah—the first five books of the Hebrew Bible—is traditionally translated as the “law” but may be more accurately read as “instruction” or “guidance.” Torah is God’s guidance for God’s creation about how best to live both individually and communally. So it is fitting that the Psalms—this collection of praise—begin with some guidance about the possibilities of life. The author offers two ways, most often understood as the “good way” and the “wicked way.”

The good way

Psalm 1 begins with happiness. But this concept of happiness is commonly misunderstood in contemporary contexts. Our understandings of happiness are often warm, fuzzy, and without complication. In contrast, in Hebrew, “happy” is ‘ashre, which derives from the verb ‘shr, meaning “to go straight” or “to advance.”² Such an understanding of the emotion evoked by the psalmist suggests that following the instruction of God allows the individual to move forward, to develop, to grow in life.  The “good way” is not devoid of problems, anxieties, or heartache. However, this way in relationship with God grants us the freedom to evolve as human beings.

Further, the author suggests that the imperative for God’s faithful is to “delight in the instruction … and meditate [on it] day and night.” Historically, Christians have read this command as God’s requirement for blind obedience and acquiescence to God’s word. However, here, rather than “meditate,” the Hebrew word hgh can be translated as “to groan, utter, speak, or plot.”³

The spiritual practice outlined by Psalm 1 has commonly been read as a kind of silent, solitary practice of meditation. However, for this to be true of the author’s context, it would presume that the author’s audience had someone else tending to their basic needs for survival. Such readings create a classism around the text and around God. Very few people in the ancient world—or today—have the luxury of sitting in solitude with Torah all day.

However, reading hgh as “plotting, moaning, and speaking” suggests that rather than passive reception of God’s word, our call is to act meaningfully and intentionally toward God’s guidance. In this context, our relationship with torah, or instruction, should be to read, question, discuss, and engage the text in ways that impact our daily living. Meditation then becomes active participation in the world in ways that demonstrate God’s presence in the world.

The result of such nuanced reading of God’s instruction should be a reality in which we are not so easily moved and not devoid of spiritual life. Here, the author describes fruit-bearing trees with deep roots that have a constant water source. Ancient Israel was a largely agrarian society that understood prosperity in terms of agricultural production and weather.

Water is commonly understood as a biblical metaphor. In various texts (Psalm 32, 69, Lamentations 3), water is understood as a source of trouble visited upon human beings. In Exodus 14, water is a barrier to freedom that is removed by God for the Hebrews coming out of Egypt, before consuming God’s enemies—the army of Pharaoh. In Proverbs 18 and 20, water symbolizes depth and purpose for humanity. Here, water is a constant source of nourishment for the tree, which symbolizes humanity and life. It is important to note that the water never consumes or moves the tree, but instead enables the tree to establish roots and bear fruit.

The wicked way

In contrast to the stability established in Psalm 1:1–3, here the psalmist compares the wicked to chaff. Chaff is the unusable material separated from wheat during the threshing process. Again, the author uses the agricultural context of ancient Israel to establish a metaphor. Threshing floors were spaces often on the periphery of a community where farmers would create a circular space in which to gather recently harvested grain. Here they would beat the grain against the ground with a winnowing fork, and the light chaff would be carried away by the wind while the grain would fall to the ground and remain on the threshing floor. Thus, metaphorically, threshing floors often mark a point of transition for biblical characters who encounter them. They are spaces where people are separated from the chaff of their life.

In this text, the author establishes the wicked as those who are without substance or weightiness. They are the people from whom the primary “good group” should be separated. The author’s language is somewhat ambiguous about who constitutes the wicked. Wickedness is not defined in direct correlation with goodness. Thus, we should be careful to not define the wicked as those who have different theologies, opinions, or lifestyles than others.

Instead, the wicked “will not stand in the judgment … nor … in the congregation of the righteous” (verse 5). We might connect the depiction of the wicked in verse 5 with the author’s description in verse 1 of those who “sit in the seat of scoffers.”  Unlike the righteous who are advancing, the wicked are stagnant. They are the ones with no opinion, no belief, nothing for which they are willing to live, grow, evolve, or fight. The wicked are those who live outside of community and/or accountability. Wickedness here may be equated to stagnation.

Conclusion

The Psalms include a variety of forms to encapsulate the range of human experiences and emotions. The wisdom from which this body of work begins should not focus on establishing an invisible enemy so much as it should remind us of our capacity to be skeptics who scoff at the desire for meaning in life. The author offers an alternative path that propels us down a path of discovery alongside God.

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for September 8, 2019.
2. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1907), 80.
3. Brown-Driver-Briggs, 211.

Most scholars, myself included, believe that 1 Thessalonians is Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy’s first writing to any ecclesial community (with Paul being the lead author). This letter was probably written between 49 and 51 CE, about 20 years after Jesus’s death and resurrection. As Paul’s first letter, it shows he is still navigating language to describe his understanding of the Messiah Jesus. Thus, between verses 2, 8, and 9 of chapter 2, Paul uses the phrase euangellion tou theou—“the gospel of God”—three times. Most of us preach the gospel of Jesus and have never thought about “the gospel of God.”

In the classroom, I highlight the phrase “the gospel of God” to begin a discussion on the scholarly question of whether Paul’s writings are more theocentric or Christocentric. However, in the context of 1 Thessalonians, another dilemma that demands Paul’s attention is the issue of the emergence of a goddess-centric concept.

The Thessalonian community of Jesus-followers probably arose out of a combination of Greco-Roman artisans and “pagans” who were former God-fearers. There were people who honored the God of Israel while still holding onto their pagan gods. However, they came to believe in Jesus through Paul’s preaching and wrestled with giving up their gods.¹ Many were probably experiencing some sort of persecution, which Paul discusses in 1:6; 3:3; and 3:7. However, the question is whether all of the Thessalonians were turning away from their gods (or goddesses) as they were following Jesus.

In our focus passage, Paul’s use of maternal metaphors has confused scholars for a number of years. This imagery plays a key role in understanding goddess-centric language.² In his conversation with the Thessalonians, Paul argues that he is also the infant receiving from the Thessalonians whatever they are willing to give to the ministry. Further, in the next thought, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy are the singular wet nurse who nourishes the Thessalonians as well. The entirety of this metaphor relates to goddess theology brilliantly.

Paul’s use of nēpioi in combination with proclaiming himself, Silvanus, and Timothy—three men—as one singular nursing mother (trophos) symbolizes the Thessalonian women’s devotion to goddesses Eileithyia, Artemis, and Hera. Scholar Florence Morgan Gillman³ argues that Paul had to contend with his female converts who still held to their goddess devotion since they were important for childbearing women.

Further, Monya Stubbs notes in her commentary that scholars estimate that about 30 percent of infants died in their first year of life in the first century.⁴ Most likely, Paul had to co-opt the language of the goddess in order to circumscribe the highly patriarchal ideas of God the Father and Jesus the Son being central to the gospel. However, the material realities of living in the first century probably outweighed Paul’s rhetoric. Considering the fragility of infant life, the care provided by a nurse was essential to its existence.

Additionally, mothers who were already devoted to goddesses probably hedged their bets on a combination of goddess worship and worship of Jesus as the Christ. Gillman argues for the possibility that women carried representative amulets of the kourotrophic (female figurines pictured with infant) goddesses, such as the one cited and linked below.⁵

While not trying to make a one-to-one correspondence, I do want to compare Paul’s maternal metaphor as goddess-centric to some contemporary pastors’ views of “heresy” in the Black church. One example is the recent viral video of Reformed Baptist pastor Joel Webbon, who claimed that Black Christians should abandon Black churches for white churches in order to hear the “true gospel” and be “truly saved.” Webbon believes that the Black church is evil because of its particular cultural practices of extemporaneous worship, prayer, and ecstatic expressions of Spirit. What Webbon does not consider are the ways that white churches’ supremacy and moral superiority are equally heretical.

It seems to me that Paul could be acting similarly. What is wrong with women followers of goddesses syncretizing that worship with worship of Jesus? Women followers of Eileithyia, Artemis, and Hera are the ones with the traumatic experiences of childbirth and death. Similarly, Black mothers die in childbirth at higher rates than other mothers in society. Additionally, Black Christians experience microaggressions, racism, and death as a result of white supremacy in both church and society. These are factors that Webbon would not address. Shouldn’t Black Christians be able to invoke the memory of our ancestors who experienced similar issues even as we ask Jesus to walk with us through our trials and tribulations?

While not a one-to-one correspondence, I think it is important to recognize and take seriously that many people practice their Christianity in a variety of ways. Just as the women followers in Thessaloniki may have synthesized goddess worship with Jesus worship, Black Christians synthesize elements of Christianity with African traditional religion as well. These ideas should not be considered heretical but cultural amalgamations that occur when cultures come together.

Notes

1. Erin M. Heim, Nijay K. Gupta, and Scot McKnight, “Topics Related to Pauline Studies,” in The State of Pauline Studies (Baker Academic, 2024).
2. Space does not allow me to discuss the intricacies of the manuscripts, textual issues, and translations regarding the Greek words pioi and nēpioi in 1 Thessalonians 2:7. I would just note that I follow Jeffery Weima, who argues that a proper translation of 1 Thessalonians 2:7–8 should be the following: “Though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ, rather we were infants among you. Like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children, so deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” Jeffrey A. D. Weima, “‘But We Became Infants Among You’: The Case for Nepioi in 1 Thessalonians 2:7,” New Testament Studies 46, no. 4 (2000): 547.
3. Florence Morgan Gillman, “Paul, His Nurse Metaphor (1 Thessalonians 2:7), and the Thessalonian Women Who Turned Against Their Idols,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 84, no. 2 (2022), 279–294. https://doi.org/10.1353/cbq.2022.0047.
4. See Monya Stubbs, “1 Thessalonians,” in The Women’s Bible Commentary: Revised and Expanded Edition. ed. Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe, and Jacqueline E. Lapsley (SPCK, 2014), https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/merceru/detail.action?docID=1717457.
5. This photo shows Artemis as a nursing mother: “File: Artemis Kourotrophos, terracotta, 430-400 BC,” Wikimedia Commons, accessed August 29, 2026, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artemis_Kourotrophos,_terracotta,_430-400_BC,_AM_Brauron,_Bram31.jpg.