Lectionary Commentaries for November 1, 2026
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
from WorkingPreacher.org
Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 23:1-12
Carolyn J. Sharp
First Reading
Commentary on Micah 3:5-12
Laurel Koepf
The biblical prophets were not the only prophets in the ancient world. Many people prophesied in ancient Israel and Judah, as well as in neighboring nations. People had to discern who was a true prophet and who was a false prophet. Today, we have the words of the prophet Micah preserved in the Bible because his followers preserved them and passed them on to future generations. The best way to tell whether someone is a true prophet, of course, is in hindsight, when their prophecies turn out to have been true or not.
In Micah 3, the prophet is prophesying against false prophets who have been giving false hope to the people of Judah by telling them what they want to hear instead of the harsh reality of the historical moment. Prophets such as these would have been rewarded in the short term with wealth and popularity, whereas the biblical text shares examples of prophets bringing bad news and being rejected.
In Jeremiah 38, the military leadership considers Jeremiah’s prophecies bad for morale, so they throw him in a muddy pit to starve to death! The false prophets Micah describes have been taking bribes. Under the threat of warfare that surrounds the small nation of Judah, they prophesy positive outcomes for those who bribe them and negative outcomes for those who don’t. In exchange, they themselves are well fed for now, but they have been affirming the leaders in dangerous choices and unjust actions that will leave God’s people unfed and unprotected.
This text comes from the eighth century BCE, when Assyrian domination threatened the entire Afro-Asiatic world (see Wil Gafney for more on this term). Before this ancient superpower’s attack, Israel and Judah were divided and had become two nations. Israel, in the north, had seceded from Judah, in the south, after the death of Solomon. Israel was relatively successful for a small nation-state and attempted to resist the Assyrian army, only to be destroyed. Some refugees had managed to flee to Judah.
Micah speaks to a time when the Judean leadership faced the decision of whether to fight back or submit to the Assyrian Empire. His words regarding false prophets reflect on the dangers of bribery and offering false optimism instead of hard truths.
It is not only the prophets who have been taking bribes. Micah’s tough-love prophecy for the Jerusalem elites includes the rulers’ judgments, the priests’ teaching, and prophets’ misconstruing of God’s message. These corrupt leaders had been serving those who could afford to pay them rather than those in need.
Micah is Judean, but he speaks to the capital city of Jerusalem as an outsider. The first verse of the book introduces him as Micah of Moresheth, a rural town southwest of the city. The people of Moresheth and most of Judah would have been subsistence farmers living in extended families where everyone from the age of three worked all day every day just to survive. They were not in a walled city like Jerusalem, making them all the more exposed to Assyrian attacks. Micah lived among those who could not afford to bribe anyone to act in their interest, but they would be the first to suffer the consequences of the decisions their leaders made because of those bribes.
The Jerusalem elites have been using their position to enrich themselves rather than to act in the best interest of the people they serve. This goes from small-scale judgments made in favor of the one who pays the ruler rather than the one who is in the right, to major policy decisions in a time of war. They rest on theologies of Judah, Jerusalem, and the Davidic monarchy as God’s chosen nation, city, and king, respectively, and therefore, God will protect them militarily.
They do not want to hear Micah remind them that these theologies rest not just on worshiping God alone, in the right way, in the Jerusalem temple, but also on acting as the agents of God’s justice (Psalm 72). Being a chosen city, leader, people, or nation does not exempt them from acting justly. Rather, it holds them to a higher standard. By taking bribes, they have failed to behave as the chosen leaders of God’s holy city are required to act so as to retain God’s blessing, but they do not want to hear it.
The consequences Micah foresees are poetically fitting. The prophets who take bribes will no longer receive divine messages, and the city that ignores the needs of the rural people will be flattened like a plowed field. Both will become as helpless as those they refused to help, preferring their own self-interest. Both consequences will also serve the people better than the corrupt leadership has done. Without false prophets, God’s message of justice will be apparent, and what was a city of elites will provide additional arable land.
Micah 3:5–12 follows a chapter in which the people to whom Micah is prophesying tell him, “Do not preach … one should not preach of such things; disgrace will not overtake us!” (2:6). He does it anyway. I imagine every preacher who reads this commentary has had at least one similar interaction with a congregant, if not an entire committee. Sometimes people do not want to hear what we have to say.
Micah and the unnamed prophets of Jerusalem had the option to take a bribe to preach something comfortable for the powerful or to preach God’s justice to God’s people. It can be difficult to hold leaders and communities accountable. This text suggests that you are in good company.
Alternate First Reading
Commentary on Joshua 3:7-17
J.P. Kang
Joshua 3 highlights the leadership transition from Moses, the peerless mediator of Exodus and Deuteronomy, to his successor Joshua (verse 7). It affirms the presence of “the living God” (verse 10; see also Deuteronomy 5:26) with the Israelites in the ark of the covenant (Joshua 3:3, 11; see also Deuteronomy 10:8; 31:9, 25). And those crossing through the Jordan on dry ground experience something similar to what their ancestors experienced at the Red Sea (Exodus 14). The story has many resonant connections to other scenes in scripture, the recognition of which is part of the reward of reading the Bible as a conversation of many voices.
The book of Joshua is represented in the Revised Common Lectionary by three fairly short texts:
- the crossing of the Jordan (Joshua 3:7–17, Year A),
- the Passover in Gilgal (Joshua 5:9–12, Year C), and
- the covenant at Shechem (Joshua 24:14–18 and –25, Years B and A, respectively).
Not represented are the numerous violent episodes featuring wholesale destruction of inhabitants of the land by the “edge (literally ‘mouth’) of the sword” (Joshua 6, 8, 10, 11), as well as stories of apportionment of the land that can reinforce the impression that might makes right (spoiler: it doesn’t, and never has). Thus it may be helpful framing when preaching the Joshua 3 narrative to note that it is prelude to (problematic) stories of conquest and (incomplete) fulfillment of divine promises of land, as those stories may never or rarely be heard preached by a congregation that largely hears Revised Common Lectionary pericopes.
Since 1943, when German scholar Martin Noth published his study The Deuteronomistic History (the title of the English translation published in 1981), readers have been responding to his theory that Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are a unified composition motivated and shaped primarily by theological perspectives found in the book of Deuteronomy. Thus, the peoples and their leaders were ultimately judged by how faithfully (or not) they worshipped the Lord, the God of Israel.
The Assyrian defeat in 722 BCE of the northern kingdom of Israel and the Babylonian defeat in 587 BCE of the southern kingdom of Judah were understood as divine punishments for breach of the Deuteronomic covenant (2 Kings 17:7–20). Joshua, following Deuteronomy (which ends with Moses’s death in chapter 34), represents the next chapter of the story of the people of God and their leaders, a story which is filled with many setbacks but whose outcome is defined ultimately not by human failures but by divine faithfulness.
The ark of the covenant provides an opportunity to explore the range of answers the Bible gives to the question of how God is present with God’s people, which include:
- the ark (and tabernacle, see Exodus 25–40), which represents the transportable and mobile (if vulnerable; see 1 Samuel 4–6 for the ark’s sojourn in Philistine territory) presence of God;
- Deuteronomy’s repeated expression “the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name” (12:11)—transparently pointing to Jerusalem—and the assurance that God is so near whenever we call upon that special name (4:7);
- Isaiah’s inaugural vision (chapter 6) which contemplates an awesome and holy divine king seated on a throne in the temple (verse 5);
- Ezekiel’s visions of the divine glory (kavod) that departs east (chapter 11) and returns from that same direction (chapter 43), which reminded the exiles that God was not bound to the temple;
- the Gospel of John’s prologue, which speaks of the divine Logos that “became flesh and lived among us” (1:14); and
- Acts’ depiction of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (chapter 2).
God’s presence thus takes many forms and expressions in the Bible. How is God most characteristically present with the community to which you are proclaiming the word? In what ways does (or should) faithfulness to people (or a Person) take precedence over faithfulness to places?
An archetype can refer to an original motif that repeats and “rhymes.” The Bible contains numerous sets of texts that appear to be in an archetype-type relationship. Call narratives are one type: Compare Moses’s call in Exodus 3 with Isaiah 6, Jeremiah 1, and Luke 5:1–11. Hannah’s song (1 Samuel 2:1–10) appears to be an archetype for Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55). The crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus 14 is the archetype for the crossing of the Jordan in Joshua 3. Psalm 114:3–6 makes the comparison between these two scenes explicit, paralleling the greater event of the crossing of the sea with mountains and the lesser crossing of the river with hills.
One can fruitfully compare these moments of deliverance as an invitation to faithful imagination: Where else have we experienced “crossing over” moments in our lives that extend this archetypical moment of divine providence into the present? How does baptism as a type of passing through waters proclaim the mystery and meaning of membership in Christ’s body? Jesus is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). How does the Eucharist as a type of the Passover meal proclaim the mystery and meaning of Jesus’s death for us (1 Corinthians 11:26)?
Psalm
Commentary on Psalm 43
Kelly J. Murphy
Hermann Gunkel, famous for his work on the Psalms, once noted, “The individual complaint songs form the basic material of the psalter.”1
Elsewhere he stated, “The order in many of these psalms is a characteristic one; first, the wailing, almost desperate lament and the passionate prayer; then, suddenly, the certainty of deliverance in a jubilant tone.”2
Unsurprisingly, if we open a commentary on the Psalms, we’ll likely find some formulation of the following “order” we should expect to encounter in the individual lament psalms: First, the psalmist invokes God; second, the psalmist states their complaint; third, the psalmist petitions God to do something in response; fourth, the speaker states their trust in God’s ability to carry out the speaker’s request; fifth, the psalm ends with praise for and/or of God.
Yet, what certitude or sureness do we find at the end of Psalm 43? There the speaker exclaims, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God” (verse 5). These final words only point forward to a time when the psalmist hopes to praise God again. There is no certainty.
The careful reader of the Psalter will notice that they have already encountered the words that end Psalm 43 not once but twice before, both times in the immediately preceding psalm (42:5–6a, 11). The repeated lines are not the only similarity between Psalm 42 and Psalm 43.
Both ask, “Why must I walk about mournfully because of the oppression of the enemy?” (42:9; 43:2), and both lament the psalmist’s distance from God (“My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” [42:2]; “For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you cast me off?” [43:2]). Moreover, the speaker of Psalm 42 and the speaker of Psalm 43 each desire to come before God once again (42:4; 43:3-4).
These connections, combined with the fact that Psalm 43 lacks a superscription, have led many scholars to suggest that the two psalms should be read as one, an idea further supported by several ancient manuscript traditions that combine them.
Read together, there is yet another time when we see the speaker’s soul “cast down”: “My soul is cast down within me; therefore, I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar” (Psalm 42:6). While this line perhaps tells us the reason for lamentation (“from the land of the Jordan”: the psalmist is far from Jerusalem and God’s temple, where they previously took part in pilgrimage [Psalm 42:4]), the psalmist nevertheless also remembers God from afar.
Here we might invoke Desmond Tutu, who once said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Even far from God, even taunted by enemies, even in the darkness of a moment when the soul feels disquiet, the psalmist remembers and hopes for God.
Next, “deep calls to deep (tehom-el-tehom qore) at the thunder of your cataracts, all your waves and your billows have gone over me” (Psalm 42:7). The Hebrew tehom, “deep,” often signifies chaos. So “darkness covered the face of the deep” when God began to create out of the primeval chaos waters (Genesis 1:2), and later the fountains of the deep burst forth to flood the earth, reversing God’s previous creation (Genesis 7:11).
If the psalmist here is recounting an experience with God, it is one that draws on a Hebrew word often associated with chaos and, perhaps, darkness. Remember Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the great fish, where he recounts how “the waters closed in over me; the deep (tehom) surrounded me” (Jonah 2:5).
Yet, even from here the psalm returns to hope and light: “By day the LORD commands his steadfast love” (Psalm 42:8). In fact, even at night, in the darkness, God’s “song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life” (42:8).
The psalm continues to waver between hope and despair, light and darkness, petitioning God to act (“Vindicate me!” [43:1]) but also asking, “Why must I walk about mournfully because of the oppression of the enemy?” (42:2). There is positive anticipation—“O send out your light and your truth, let them lead me. … Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy” (43:4)—and yet also a return to the psalmist’s troubled state—“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?” (Psalm 43:5).
The individual lament may be “the basic material of the psalter,” but Psalms 42–43 prompt us to remember that these psalms take many forms and follow many orders. The ending “hope in God” does not require the psalmist—or any of us—to ignore the reality of darkness. Yet these final words point forward, even if there is not yet certainty or jubilation. Such an ending in a lament psalm captures how life can rapidly and repeatedly move from the despair of a “cast down” soul to hope, from the darkness of the deep to light, again and again.3
Notes
- Hermann Gunkel, Introduction to the Psalms: The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel, completed by Joachim Begrich, trans. James D. Nogalski (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998), 122 n. 2. Emphasis in original.
- Hermann Gunkel, The Psalms: A Form Critical Introduction, trans. Thomas M. Horner (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 20.
- This commentary was previously published on this website for November 5, 2017.
Second Reading
Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Todd Still
Paul founded the Thessalonian church in the late 40s CE. Not long thereafter, Paul and his fellow missioners were forced to leave the city (1 Thessalonians 2:16–17; see also Acts 17:5–10a). Try though he did, Paul was unable to return to Thessalonica to discover how the congregation, which was composed of those who “had turned to God from idols” (1 Thessalonians 1:9), was faring in their newfound faith (see especially 1 Thessalonians 2:17–18).
Given that the Thessalonians’ conversion was occasioned by opposition from their kith and kin (1 Thessalonians 1:6; 2:14; 3:3–5), Paul was particularly concerned that they persist in the faith. Indeed, he “was afraid that the tempter [might have] tempted [them] and that [the apostles’] labor had been in vain” (1 Thessalonians 3:5).
Thus, when Paul could “bear it no longer,” he dispatched Timothy to check on the well-being of the fledgling fellowship amid their trials and affliction (1 Thessalonians 3:1–2). Fearing the worst, Paul was overjoyed to learn from Timothy upon his return to him that the assembly was standing firm in the faith and was longing to see Paul again (1 Thessalonians 3:6–10). As it happened, it was Timothy’s return to Paul, seemingly in Corinth, that occasioned the letter now known to us as 1 Thessalonians, which is one of the earliest surviving letters of Paul—if not the earliest—and one of the oldest New Testament documents—if not the oldest.
Interpretation: The text in focus
The second reading selected for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost is drawn from a passage where Paul is reflecting upon his ministry among the Thessalonians. Time and again throughout 1 Thessalonians, Paul reminds the church of his mission, motivation, and message while he was with them (see, for example, 1:5; 2:1–2, 5, 11; 3:4; 4:2). This is particularly true in 1 Thessalonians 2:1–12, which any number of interpreters of the letter, including me, regard to be a Pauline apology (or defense) of his apostolic ministry with special reference to Thessalonica.1
Having reminded the Thessalonians of the circumstances surrounding the missioners’ coming (2:1–2) and the nature of their appeal (2:3–6), Paul likens the apostles to infants and nursing mothers—or perhaps wet nurses (2:7). Furthermore, he assures the Thessalonians of his and his coworkers’ deep affection for them. They not only shared the gospel with them, but they also shared themselves (literally their “souls”), for their converts had become beloved to them (2:8).
As Paul continues to reflect upon his founding visit to Thessalonica in 2:9, he urges his “brothers (and sisters)”—in other words, fellow believers—to recall the apostles’ “labor and toil” among them.2 Paul reminds them that he and his fellow missioners worked “night and day” (we might say “day and night” or “day after day”) so that they might not burden the Thessalonians as they proclaimed to them the gospel of God.
Although Paul had the right as an apostle to make his living from the gospel (see 2:7; see also 1 Corinthians 9), he willingly relinquished this right. By plying his tentmaking (or leatherworking) trade amid his ministry in the city, Paul was not only able to “pay his own way,” but also to serve as an example for the Thessalonians to “work with [their] hands … so that [they] might be dependent upon no one” (1 Thessalonians 4:11–12; see also 2 Thessalonians 3:8–9).3
In addition to calling upon their collective memory, Paul calls upon the Thessalonians, and even upon God (see also 2:5), to testify regarding the missioners’ “pure, upright, and blameless” conduct while in the city. In contrast to charlatans, blowhards, and scam artists, who were pervasive then even as they are now, Paul and his coworkers were marked by veracity and integrity (2:10).
Additionally, employing yet another familial metaphor, Paul describes the apostles’ ministry among the Thessalonians as akin to a father caring for each of his children. As their father in the faith (see also 1 Corinthians 4:15; Philemon 10), Paul, along with his coworkers, was actively engaged in urging, encouraging, and pleading with the converts to walk worthy of a God who calls them into his own kingdom and glory.4
Although 2:13 is better read with 2:14–16, the lectionary conjoins this expression of thanksgiving with the preceding verses (see also 1:2; 3:9; 5:17). Regardless, Paul reports in this verse that he continuously expresses thanks to God that the Thessalonians received the word of the gospel not ultimately as a human word, but as what it truly is—the living and active word of God that is at work in and among the Thessalonian believers.
Reflections: The text proclaimed
A preacher can go any number of directions with 1 Thessalonians 2:9–13. One promising avenue to explore would be the familial metaphors that pervade and surround the text (note, also, where Paul likens the apostles to orphans in 2:17).
One might also attend to one or more of the following themes that emerge from these verses:
- Pastoral care
- Pastoral conduct
- The gospel/word and work of God
- Walking worthy of God
As you labor and toil with this text, I pray that you will have ample reason to give God thanks for the gospel you have been entrusted to proclaim and for the people to whom you are privileged to proclaim it.
Notes
- See, for example, Todd D. Still, Conflict in Thessalonica: A Pauline Church and Its Neighbours (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).
- Pauline interpreters regularly and rightly note the concentration of “fictive kinship language” in 1 Thessalonians. Instructively, Paul employs the term adelphos (“brother”) 19 times in the letter. It is noteworthy that adelphos occurs with a greater degree of frequency (12.8 times per 1,000 words) in 1 Thessalonians than in any other Pauline letter. (Philemon is a close second with 11.87 hits per 1,000 words.)
- On the pivotal role Paul’s handcraft played in his apostolic ministry, see Todd D. Still, “Did Paul Loathe Manual Labor? Revisiting the Work of Ronald F. Hock on the Apostle’s Tentmaking and Social Class,” Journal of Biblical Literature 125 (2006): 781–796.
- Although the term basileia (“kingdom”) recurs in the Synoptic Gospels (121 times), it is seldom found in Paul (14 times in the 13 letters that bear Paul’s name) and only occurs here (2:12) in 1 Thessalonians.
Jesus teaches the crowds and his disciples not only by means of beatitudes that illumine the heart of the First Gospel’s theology (Matthew 5:1–12), but by woes that strike at the core of self-aggrandizing religiosity (23:13–36). Believers are to bear the fruits of repentance (3:8). Such fruits include compassionate deeds that constitute resistance to the violent ways of empire and commitment to holy practices that demonstrate faithfulness to the values of the kingdom of heaven. Here, Jesus honors the “seat of Moses,” the venerable position from which the scribes and Pharisees offer Torah teaching about lifeways that honor God, securing the ethos and cultural boundaries of the godly community.
Because Jesus holds the rabbinic vocation in such high esteem, he launches caustic invective against those dishonorable leaders who have failed to live up to their worthy juridical and pedagogical obligations. It would be a disastrous mistake to frame this conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees as setting the Christian emphasis on grace over against the Jewish focus on halakhic observance, a distorted polarity that would have been all but incomprehensible to Matthew and his Jewish Christian community. Rather, here and elsewhere in the First Gospel, Jesus focuses the attention of his hearers on the fidelity and honor due to their Father in heaven.
The “burdens” of Torah learning are not onerous for adherents of Judaism, who celebrate the perfection, clarity, and sweetness of Torah stipulations, essential for the shaping of communal life in the sight of God (Psalm 19:7–10). Treasuring God’s word in meditation and daily practices of halakhic obedience can strengthen the soul, giving hope to all who trust in the Holy One (Psalm 119:11, 28, 43, 81, and throughout). Torah-grounded fidelity is a powerful source of spiritual delight and ethical formation.
Jesus has come not to abolish but to fulfill what the Torah and the Prophets envision for God’s people. As Matthias Konradt observes, “Jesus fulfills the Torah and the Prophets by displaying the ‘fullness’ of what is commanded and realizing it in his life.”1 The preeminence of the Torah is unassailable; it was, and remains, a precious gift of the One who made the cosmos, the temporal arc of history, and every creature that has ever drawn breath. Jesus insists, “Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:17–19).
But the officiousness with which religious leaders tout their expertise is a different matter. Ulrich Luz remarks in rabbinic tradition “a great deal of sensitivity to the dangers” described in 23:5–6, evident in the “widespread warning not to make a ‘crown’ of the Torah and to misuse it to enhance one’s own reputation.”2 On that score, arrogant leaders in many spiritual traditions, including Christianity, would feel the sting of Jesus’s polemic.
Jesus’s emancipatory pedagogy lifts up a fresh way to understand the authority of wisdom. All who seek the truth are taught by one instructor, the Messiah. Honorifics and other markers of status favored in educational contexts from antiquity to the present are meaningless, because teachers and learners alike are siblings, peers in the quest for understanding. Brendan Byrne muses, “Scarcely any injunction of the Lord has been so ignored as this ruling out of titles and, by extension, accoutrements of dress and ceremonial.”3
Matthew is clear: Rather than jockeying for position and privilege in social hierarchies, the faithful should seek a deeper understanding of God’s purposes from the Savior in whose radiant light “many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (19:30; 20:16). The power of Christian love is expressed not in domination or prestige but in serving others, for “the greatest among you will be your servant” (diakonos, 23:11; see also 20:26).
“Come to me,” Jesus sings, “all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me. … For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (11:28–30). As has been recognized at least since the time of Thomas Aquinas, echoes of the invitation of divine Wisdom (Sirach 51:26, 29) are audible in those words of Jesus.4 The “yoke” of the Messiah’s teaching lifts the burden of sin from those who repent and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8).
The practice of humility as a defining feature of imitatio Christi will yield spiritual transformation beyond anything the believer might imagine, for, as several New Testament texts teach, those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted (Matthew 18:4; 23:12; James 4:10; 1 Peter 5:6).
With Matthew 23, preachers have a golden opportunity to portray discipleship as offering the joy of lifelong learning at the feet of our Savior. In Scripture study, contemplative prayer, reception of the Eucharist, ministry with those in conditions of precarity (Matthew 25:34–40), and other spiritual practices, believers can strive to know Christ and his boundless love more deeply.
The theme of the Messiah as instructor could ground a preaching series, a Bible study, a retreat, or a program of community service. What does Jesus teach through the sacraments and other elements of Christian liturgical life? What lessons do we learn from the numerous healing stories in Matthew, Jesus’s healing power being central to the Christology of the First Gospel? How might the curricula presented in Jesus’s responses to temptations in the wilderness (4:1–11) and in the Beatitudes (5:1–12) train believers for the kingdom of heaven? What does our Messiah teach in the parables, those gems of paradox through which we ponder the “secrets of the kingdom of heaven” (13:11) and learn to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven has come near (3:2; 4:17; 10:7)? For those who study the wisdom of Christ, rich learning awaits.
Notes