Month: June 2026

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A — Jeremiah 28:5–9 Amen! May the LORD do so; may the LORD fulfill the words that you have prophesied. — Jeremiah 28:6 The word “Amen” has a long history in church. We know what it feels like when it arrives—from the pew, from the pulpit, from the room itself. It is a word of recognition, of solidarity. Something true has been spoken, and the room says so together. In one of this week’s Old Testament texts, Jeremiah says it too, at the opening of his response to the prophet Hananiah. “Amen. May the LORD do so.” But something different is happening in that Temple…

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A — Jeremiah 20:7-13 O LORD, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed. — Jeremiah 20:7 In our OT lesson for this Sunday, Jeremiah does not begin with a prayer. He begins with an accusation. The Hebrew verb translated “enticed” is not a gentle word. Elsewhere in Scripture it carries the sense of seduction, of one party working a deception on another who has let his guard down. Jeremiah is not so much disappointed in God; rather, he feels overmatched by Him — captured by a calling he did not fully choose and cannot now escape.…

Copyright 2026. Thomas A. Robinson, all rights reserved. Ruth 2–4 — The wealthy Bethlehem landowner who redeems Ruth the Moabitess and takes her as his wife. Did you see her before your foreman told you, this woman gleaning at the edges of your field, moving with a quiet dignity that poverty could not diminish, could not touch? What did your workers make of your instructions— leave extra grain, let her drink from your jars, speak no harsh word to this foreign woman working your fields under an unfamiliar sun? Was it her beauty that first caught your eye, or something fiercer—the way she bent and rose, hour after hour, faithful…

Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year A — Romans 4:13–25 Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations” [Romans 4:18]. There is a temptation, when reading Romans 4, to make it a meditation on the heroism of Abraham’s faith — on what it looks like to believe hard enough, long enough, in the face of sufficient discouragement. At first blush, Paul seems to invite that reading. He lingers over the obstacles: the body that is as good as dead, the barren womb, the absurdity of descendants as numerous as the stars. And Abraham, we are told, did not weaken. He grew strong. He gave glory…