Month: September 2026

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A – Isaiah 5:1-7 What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? —Isaiah 5:4 The alternate OT reading for this Sunday begins as a love song. Someone who is loved has a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He made special plans. He prepared the soil and cleared away the stones. He planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in the middle of it and hewed out a winepress before there was a single grape to press, all the sort of actions of someone who is sure of a harvest. Everything was in its…

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A – Psalm 25:1-10 Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation [Psalm 25:4-5]. Abby was a chocolate brown toy poodle, and for more than seventeen years, she was Jane’s and mine. Abby walked the way most dogs walk — sometimes out ahead of me, at other times beside me, nose down, working out whatever a poodle’s nose works out. Yet every so often, without a specific sign or warning, she would stop, turn, and take the leash itself into her mouth. She did so…

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A – Jonah 3:10-4:11 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry [Jonah 4:1]. Jonah’s story is among the most familiar in the Old Testament—or at least we remember its most memorable scene. There is a storm, a man thrown overboard, and an enormous fish. Many of us remember a whale, though the text clearly says fish. After three days, the fish vomits Jonah onto dry land. A man who seemed certain to drown has been rescued. It makes a satisfying ending. And yet, the story doesn’t end here. The fish has become so dominant in many of our memories that we…

High Shoals, NC 1922 Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A – Exodus 14:19-31 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. – Exodus 14:21-22 Since I was seven, I had walked the same three-quarter mile, loom room to porch, porch to church, counting my body among the mill’s machines — useful, plain, expected to run until it didn’t. Thirty-two years old,…

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A — Romans 13:8–14 Owe no one anything, except to love one another. — Romans 13:8 Those of us who follow the Revised Common Lectionary sometimes forget how much work went into it. Its predecessor, the Common Lectionary, was published in 1983, three years before I entered Duke Divinity School. Many of us used that lectionary during my years at Duke. After two complete three-year cycles of testing and extensive feedback from participating churches, the Revised Common Lectionary was published in 1992—three years after my graduation. Selecting its readings was no easy assignment. The Bible is much too large to be read in its entirety…