Lectionary Commentaries for October 25, 2026
Reformation Sunday
from WorkingPreacher.org
Gospel
Commentary on John 8:31-36
Zina Jacque
First Reading
Commentary on Jeremiah 31:31-34
Rebecca Hancock
Jeremiah 31 is an imaginative text that casts its gaze toward a hopeful future. Specifically, the chapter is concerned with what shape hope might take after the destruction of Jerusalem and the conquest of Judah.
The four short verses we encounter in the lectionary reading offer a way to begin imagining hope: “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (31:31). In highly evocative language, the prophet proclaims a future covenant that will be different from the covenant of the past.
For the prophet’s audience, a promise of a positive future would likely have seemed hard to believe. The worst, it seemed, had already happened. Sacred institutions, including the Temple, had been destroyed. Many people had endured exile to Babylon. The political structures of the Davidic kingdom had collapsed. In short, the season for hope seemed to have passed.
Viewed through the lens of covenantal failure, the crisis of conquest and exile necessitated new theological paradigms. Many people in Judah had believed that the Jerusalem Temple, God’s earthly home, would protect them from foreign conquest. In earlier sections of the book of Jeremiah, the prophet critiques this view, warning instead about the consequences of failing to live faithfully in accordance with the covenant (see for example, Jeremiah 7). Later, after the fall of Judah has happened, the prophet offers a surprising message to those in exile. He encourages the people to build homes and to plant, to get married and have children (Jeremiah 29). The people are to settle in Babylon. The consequences of covenantal failure, the prophet proclaimed, would not end quickly.
The four verses considered here take on a very different tone from the first half of the book. These verses are a part of Jeremiah’s “Book of Consolation,” a group of several chapters that focus on future restoration after the period of exile. The language throughout is striking, offering a set of juxtapositions between anticipation of a positive future and the harsh reality that people are facing. Taking into full account the covenantal failures of the people and the consequences that come with them, the prophet does not idealize or minimize the people’s past failure to uphold the covenant. Nor does he ignore the suffering they currently experience. Hope is both imaginative and sober.
In verse 32, we are told that the new covenant will be unlike the prior covenant. In content and scope, the covenant has not changed. Both are the result of divine initiative. The Lord describes the first covenant made between God and the people as “the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt” (verse 32). The language is tender. God is described as a shepherd who gently led the people. The covenant God made with the people at Sinai offered freedom from service to Egypt for service of God.
Likewise, the new covenant will also be entirely by God’s initiative. In verse 33, we see that divine action takes center stage, with God as the one who makes the covenant, puts the laws within the people, writes the law on their hearts, and becomes their God.
We might wonder, then: What distinguishes the first covenant from the new one about which the prophet speaks?
The prior covenant is described as “the covenant that they broke, though I [God] was their husband” (verse 32). Using a marital metaphor to describe the failed covenant, it reminds the people that the obligation between God and the people was meant to be characterized by love and fidelity. This makes the language of “new covenant” even more surprising. If the first covenant was such a colossal failure, why would God promise a new covenant?
The anticipated new covenant offers failsafe measures, ensuring its durability. The hope that this prophecy imagines is a covenant that will last. The text creatively describes the way that direct knowledge of God might make such covenantal fidelity possible. God will write upon their hearts, not on tablets.
Thus, the distinguishing factor about this covenant is the manner of God’s self-revelation. It is not simply that the location of the law has changed from tablets to hearts. Rather, the covenant’s “newness” is in the way that the people come to know God. The law will be directly given so that the whole faith community will know God. There will no longer be a need for teaching one another about God because God will already be known, “from the least of them to the greatest” (verse 34). The antidote to human propensity for covenantal infidelity is knowledge of God.
Jeremiah 31:31–34 is not a how-to manual. It does not offer advice on how to handle Sunday school curriculum, adult education opportunities, or other ways of teaching the faith. It does not offer a concrete set of solutions for how to better align the community with divine expectations. Rather, the text offers an imaginative way to think about how God’s gracious character can overcome human limitations. It provides a theological statement about the divine character, which is fundamentally relational. God mysteriously chooses to enter into mutual commitment with God’s people, despite the fact that the human participants are habitually forgetful and flawed. This is the content of hope for the people of God.
Psalm
Commentary on Psalm 46
Joel LeMon
Psalm 46 is a song of trust in Yahweh.1
Its three major sections (verses 1–3, 4–7, 8–11) describe Yahweh’s defense of the people against cosmic and geopolitical threats. In the face of these dangers, the community reiterates its fundamental claim: Yahweh is with us (verses 1, 7, 11).
“Though the earth should change”
The first section of the psalm (verses 1–3) testifies to the people’s confidence in Yahweh in the midst of cosmic turmoil. Verses 2–3 depict creation in utter disarray: earthquakes, storms, floods, even a tsunami.
Ancient peoples understood all of these natural phenomena as forces of chaos. As such, they convey an anxiety that the world is slipping out of control.
The roaring sea is one of the stock motifs for chaos throughout the Psalter. Elsewhere, we read of God founding the world amid or on top of this watery chaos (see Psalm 24:1–2; 104:5–9). In the first verses of this psalm, the churning water threatens to overwhelm the order that God established at creation.
However, in the city of God, where peace and order reign, the waters run in well-marked channels, nourishing the city (verses 4–5). Yahweh tames the watery chaos.
The psalm evokes another element of nature, the sun, to describe the order that God brings to the city (46:5b). The constant, unyielding movement of the sun across the sky provides the perfect picture of order.
Thus, throughout the ancient Near East, sun gods were understood to be gods of order and righteousness. That tradition lies in the background of this psalm, which contends: As sure as the sun rises at dawn, so certain is God’s rule.
The roaring nations
Two types of threats seem to challenge God’s rule: cosmic disorder, epitomized by the roaring waters (verses 2–3), and political ones, those nations who seek to destroy God’s people (verses 6–7).
These forces are simply different manifestations of the chaos God has already conquered at creation and continues to keep at bay. As such, the psalmist uses similar vocabulary to describe the threats.
As the waters roar (Hebrew hmh, verse 3), so “the nations are in an uproar (hmh)” (verse 6), and as the mountains totter (mwt, verse 2), so “the kingdoms totter” (mwt, verse 6) when they encounter the voice of God. Through all this tumult, the holy city will not totter (mwt, verse 5), for Yahweh is in her midst.
The reign of Yahweh
In the final section of the psalm (verses 8–11), the faithful community exalts Yahweh and declares God’s dominion. Yahweh exercises power to such an extent that Yahweh obliterates war itself and unbuilds the technology of combat (verse 9).
Following the community’s testimony of Yahweh’s universal disarmament program, the psalm introduces the very voice of God with the command “Be still, and know” (verse 10). The audience for God’s words is open and includes both the faithful and the forces of chaos that threaten them. As such, God’s command reminds us of Christ’s words to the raging sea (Mark 4:39).
The psalm ends with the refrain that also appeared in verse 7: “Yahweh of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.” This refrain echoes verse 1 in describing God’s strength and ability to afford protection. While verse 1 highlights God’s protecting presence, the refrain in verses 7 and 11 places the accent on God’s identity.
Two titles appear in the refrains. The first, “Yahweh of hosts,” signifies Yahweh’s control of the heavenly armies and refers to God as the supremely powerful deity (see also 1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 6:2; Isaiah 37:16). The second, “the God of Jacob,” recalls Yahweh’s history with a particular people.
Thus, the psalm asserts that the God of the patriarchs and matriarchs is none other than the God who commands the hosts of heaven. The people have had a long history with this God—a history that reminds them that God is trustworthy.
The true source of our trust
The particular name of the “city of God” (verses 4–5) does not appear in this psalm, lest the readers confuse the source of the protection with an easily identifiable location. To tie Yahweh’s protective power to a specific locale risks the vanity of trusting in human power.
This psalm exhorts its earliest audience not to base its confidence on high, thick walls and expert archers manning the balustrades. It is only God’s presence that promotes security.
Today we can hear the psalm’s message clearly, but many find it difficult to believe. We much prefer to trust in that which we can see: a strong military and a robust economy, or full savings accounts and solid resumes. But these “defenses” ultimately prove unreliable.
God is the only sure defense. When Psalm 46 is used on Christ the King Sunday, the final Sunday of the liturgical year, the church reminds itself once again of God’s ultimate power over all. Our salvation comes not through military, economic, or physical strength, but through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Indeed, this psalm has been an anthem of the faithful throughout Christian history. In the turmoil of the Reformation, which we commemorate today, Martin Luther turned to Psalm 46 for courage and comfort. His robust melody and stirring lyrics became the definitive hymn of the Reformed tradition, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” (Ein’ feste Burg, ca. 1529).
Today, when faced with difficult situations, all Christians—both Protestants and Catholics—do well to remember the central message of the psalm. We are inclined to place our trust in our own resources or in the world’s mighty institutions. Yet these cannot remedy our fear, for they are unable to match the power of God.
The psalm guides us to faith and encourages us to claim: “A mighty fortress is our God.”
Notes
- Commentary previously published on this website for November 21, 2010. Very lightly edited here for use on Reformation Sunday.
Second Reading
Commentary on Romans 3:19-28
Angela N. Parker
Many Protestants across the globe celebrate Reformation Sunday to commemorate Martin Luther’s objections to the sale of indulgences as his foundational argument that salvation is a free gift from God. Luther also argued that salvation is by faith alone and that the Bible is the ultimate authority for Christian faith and practice. As I engage Romans 3:21–26 specifically, I want to highlight how expanding Luther’s idea of faith expands the idea that justification is received through faith in Christ alone but that the believer also participates in Jesus’s faith. Participatory faith must be a hallmark of every believer’s faith walk.
If I had to translate Romans 3:21–26, the following would be my translation:
21 But now apart from the law, the justice of God has been revealed/manifested (Antiochus Epiphanes) and is being witnessed (marturoumene) by the law and the prophets, 22 the justice of God (has been revealed/manifested) by Messiah Jesus-Faith onto all those believing ones. For there is no distinction. 23 For all transgressed and lack the glory of God, 24 having been made just freely by God’s (his) gift of grace through the buying back (apolutrosis) of the grace in Messiah Jesus 25 whom God publicly displayed as conciliation (hilasterion) through faith in his blood as a demonstration of God’s (his) justice because of God’s (his) deliberate dismissal of past transgressions 26 in the clemency of God before the demonstration of God’s (his) justice in the present time so that God Godself is just and God may make just the one (born) out of Jesus-Faith.
As I read Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, I believe that Paul thinks about Jesus as a conciliatory figure who solves disputes between humanity and God but also between humanity and humanity. Paul’s language of “buying back” (apolutrosis) and “public display” (proetheto) demonstrates that idea. For example, in Galatians 3:1, Paul states that Jesus was publicly displayed before the Galatian people’s eyes.
Paul repeats similar language here by writing that God publicly displayed Jesus as hilasterion, a word which I translate as “conciliation” instead of “sacrifice of atonement” as in most translations. The abstract idea of Jesus’s blood buying back humanity from the captivity of the sin system in a penal substitutionary method is too limiting.1 Jesus buys us back out of a system that is both enslaving and incarcerating. Such language also describes the Roman Empire. The empire was noted for separating various people groups through forced migrations and hierarchies.
Thus, readers have to take the context of Romans seriously. Paul was writing to a group of people who were living with ethnoracial tensions among themselves. Jewish Jesus-followers were returning to the Roman church, while the Roman Jesus-followers were used to organizing the church without Jewish Jesus-followers being there. Paul was advising them to welcome each other just as Christ welcomed them. (See Romans 14.)
And here is the connection to participating in Jesus’s faith, which is so important in our contemporary context. In the context of the American imperial system, we witness ICE agents disappearing people off of the streets. In the context of the American imperial system, we witness murderers being set free when they kill unarmed 13-year-old Black boys. In the context of the American imperial system, we witness one-year-old babies being gunned down by police officers when parents are wrongfully accused of stealing diapers in Mississippi. What does it mean to return to these types of scenes in the sinful American system and attempt to liberate people from the depths, fears, and anxieties of a system that does not care whether the most oppressed lives or dies?
While contemporary Jesus-followers may not be able to “buy back” oppressed people out of these situations, we can attempt to redeem future victims out of a system that is wholly unjust. I would argue that Jesus’s public display is an example of how we participate in his faith by welcoming those who are oppressed in our midst. Our work of faith is to publicly display the justice of God. Particularly, as “Christians” who serve in governmental positions that hold up and establish the American sinful systems would argue against us, we who stand with the marginalized of society display “Jesus-Faith” in our walk of harmony and unity. Further, we can publicly display to the world the justice of God even as other “Christians” attempt to entrap and arrest us as we do this work.
I still believe we, as followers of Jesus, are justified by faith. Nonetheless, I would argue that expanding Luther’s idea means that we have to take seriously what participating in the faith of Jesus looks like in our current day and time. How can we continue to be the hands and feet of Jesus for our neighbors today?
Notes
- A particularly helpful article is Jarvis Williams’s “Violent Atonement in Romans: The Foundation of Paul’s Soteriology,” in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 53, no. 3 (2010): 579. While I do not agree with Williams’s argument, he does a fine job of laying out the players and the argumentation from various angles. In my work, I attempt to bring James Cone and Delores Williams forward by arguing in more detail the imperial nature of Paul’s language while also noting connections between martyrdom and lynching. Further, I am taking seriously our current political climate and how it relates to Paul’s imperial climate.
Have you ever had a wound so painful that you could not let anyone near it? The mere thought of an antiseptic wash, or a tender hand, would have caused you to pull away, fiercely guarding what was already compromised. And because you could not allow anyone to clean, close, or cover it, the wound was subject to infection and worse. But still, you protected it at all costs.
As we enter the scene in John 8, we find Jesus engaged in a conversation with a community of people who bear deep, open, invisible wounds. His desire to tend to and dress those injuries causes the very people he seeks to help to pull away and hide their wounds. But Jesus still speaks to them. Why? Because they are his followers. They are the ones who have chosen to hear him, believe him, and follow him.
As he shares his word with them, he says something so simple that it should land with grace and not like a live grenade. “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” That is all he says, but it is as if he has purposefully poured salt into their already tender and untended wounds.
To these sons and daughters of Abraham, Jesus’s use of the word “freedom” implies captivity, and captivity is their invisible wound. These are the inheritors of the memories of enslavement. These are carriers of the wounds from centuries of Egyptian bondage, decades of dislocation in Assyria, and an almost 1,000-mile forced march to the rivers of Babylon, where oppression denied them the life they knew. And Babylon was not the last city that exacted their tears. Now Rome rides their backs and taxes their pockets, defiantly, daily. Every time they walk past a Roman soldier, every time they hold a coin bearing the image of Caesar, every time they negotiate their lives inside an occupied land, the wound throbs and the pain intensifies.
So when Jesus’s words seem to suggest they are not free, something in them cannot bear it. They cannot hear it as an invitation. They hear it as a painful memory that catapults them back in time, and they cannot bear to make that trek, not one more time. Their reflexive response is immediate. They pull back their wound. They defend themselves and rewrite their history. We are Abraham’s descendants. We have never been slaves of anyone. Friends, that is their wound talking.
And here is the heartbreak: If these followers of Jesus could have listened more deeply, if they had let him near their wounds, healing would have begun. They would no longer have to pull away to protect their wounds or revise their history to hide their wounds. They would have been able to come close and be healed by his words so that they might return to their place in the family and be set free (verse 32, 35–36). But they do not. If you read on to the end of John 8, you will find that the sons and daughters of Abraham continue to argue. Continue to defend their wounds. Continue to stand unhealed.
Remind you of anyone? Remind you of anything happening today? We live in a world where the wounds of our leaders and movements are evident and untended. We see the unintended consequences of unhealed people leading by rewriting history, spreading disinformation, and leading others to ignore their injuries as well. Like our ancient brothers and sisters, we watch as these people with hurting souls demand to be seen as the very thing they are not: honest, free, unimpeachable.
They cannot let anyone near the wound because to acknowledge the wound is to acknowledge the need for confession and repentance, for antiseptics and bandages, for cleaning out what is still infected. In their economy, these actions suggest weakness; they will protect against looking weak at all costs.
But here is what Jesus knows and what the text makes plain: The wound that is never tended does not simply stay a wound. It threatens the whole body, just like sin. And sin, Jesus says, enslaves. This is not a metaphor. This is what happens when the wound is not addressed and sin is allowed to abound. Everyone who sins is a slave to sin (verse 34). The denial that sin enslaves becomes the cage. The revised history becomes the prison. The insistence on a freedom you do not actually possess is itself the evidence that you do not possess it.
So how does the preacher bring a word of good news out of this place of woundedness? It all begins with the conditional, subordinating conjunction: “if.” Jesus begins his conversation in this text with the word “if.” If the Jews who had believed in him will “hold” to his word, then they are his disciples. The good news of this text is that like them, we have a choice. As individuals, and as a nation, we have a choice. We can acknowledge our wounds, our enslavements, our sins, and offer them up to the balm of the gospel. Or we can stand in our woundedness, waiting for the worst to come.
The ancient audience chose the latter path. The question is, What will we choose? As a nation, will we elect leaders who have the courage to acknowledge wounds and seek true healing? As individuals, will we dare to do the same? There is a choice, and that affords agency. We have a choice, and that is good news. Now, my preacher friend, invite your congregation to observe our ancient brothers and sisters. Invite your listeners to learn from them, and then ask them to consider whether they will hide their wounds or open them to the light of the gospel. It is a good and gracious gift that we, indeed, have a choice.