Author: trob

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A · Isaiah 55:1–5 Ho, everyone who thirsts; come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. — Isaiah 55:1 Frost on the glass of the church hall doors before they opened. My mother’s coat…

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A — 1 Kings 3:5-12 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, "Ask what I should give you" [1 Kings 3:5]. Some eight or ten years ago, when Jane and I were an active part of Trinity Avenue Presbyterian Church here in…

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A — Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 Let both of them grow together until the harvest [Matthew 13:30]. Years ago, during my time at Asbury, a gardener I knew — a woman who had spent decades with her hands in North Carolina soil — told me about a young couple new to…

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year A — Isaiah 55:10-13; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there… [Isaiah 55:10] A sower went out to sow. [Matthew 13:3] He did not first test the soil. He didn’t walk the field in advance, marking which patches…

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost — Zechariah 9:9–12 Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double [Zechariah 9:12]. Most of us have met this text before, though perhaps not within the long season after Pentecost. The ninth chapter of Zechariah supplied the words that the Evangelists…

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….

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…

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…

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…

Trinity Sunday — Matthew 28:16–20 And when they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted [Matthew 28:17]. It is the ending of a Gospel, and Matthew will not let it be tidy. The eleven disciples have traveled to Galilee — to a mountain Jesus designated, though Matthew does not name it. They have made…