12 July A.D. 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Year A Readings<\/strong> Collect<\/strong> Homily<\/strong> A heightened awareness of what is just and what is unjust defines the lives of all the women in the genealogy of Jesus, and this same heightened awareness remains the calling of God’s people. At the heart of Paul’s teaching to the Church at Rome, he stresses that there is a difference between a human life lived in the Spirit of the Resurrection, and a life lived in service to our own desires. Let’s listen again to the Apostle’s teaching:<\/p>\n\n\n …those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. […] If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.<\/p>\n Now eve though I know that we all prefer stories to ideas, let’s get three bullet points clear about what it means for the Spirit of the Resurrection to dwell in us.<\/p>\n Should we review those again? Ok, one more time…[repeat the above points]<\/em><\/p>\n So for us to “set the mind on the Spirit” means that we allow a heightened awareness of God’s justice to preoccupy our minds. That sounds like a lot, but in the day to day reality of our lives, it’s really not that complicated. We simply have to look outside ourselves and notice the people around us and, however it lies within our power, to acknowledge how they are in need.<\/p>\n Participating in the justice of God – which is to say, loving our neighbors as ourselves – is going to look very different for each of us; and sometimes it’ll be joyful and sometimes it’ll be sad. But to allow the Spirit of Divine Justice to shape our affections and actions will bring life to us and to the world around us, and that experience of giving and receiving life will teach us the meaning of peace.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ok, time for a story…<\/p>\n January 1st<\/sup>\u2026 what do you do on January 1st<\/sup>? [wait for answers from congregation] <\/em>Okay\u2026 sleep in\u2026 make a resolution. Well, January 1st<\/sup>, 2012 was a Sunday, and I was on deck at West End United Methodist Church in Nashville to be the scripture reader and a communion server. The only problem was that my then first wife Elizabeth and I had had a knockdown drag out fight the day before and I felt terrible. I didn\u2019t know how I was going to go lead in church.<\/p>\n And then as I was getting ready for church, putting my clothes on in the wee hours of the morning, Elizabeth looked up over the bed clothes and said, \u201cI\u2019m not going on this crusade with you.\u201d And what she meant, halfway through my first year at seminary was, \u201cI don\u2019t want to be a pastor\u2019s wife, and our marriage is over.\u201d<\/p>\n So, I went to church and then in the bulletin, there was a leaflet, and our senior pastor Michael Williams said to the church, \u201cI want you to take the pencil in the pew rack and I want you to take the leaflet in the bulletin, and I want you to write down the thing that you\u2019re most heartbroken about or that you regret the most, and I want you to put it in the offering plate as it goes by.\u201d And they collected all these leaflets and there was this big pile of leaflets.<\/p>\n And out in front of the communion table there was this big stone bowl. Kind of like a baptistry. And they put all of the leaflets in the bowl. And then after communion, they burned them. Right there in church. They lit them on fire.<\/p>\n What I wrote on my leaflet was \u201cmy marriage is over and I am forsworn.\u201d You know what it means to be forsworn? It\u2019s an old word, and a good one. It means you\u2019ve made a promise and you\u2019re not going to keep it. How can I be called to ministry if my word isn\u2019t any good?<\/p>\n I cried. And as the choir, that sat in the loft up behind the chancel, filed out during the recessional hymn, I couldn\u2019t move. I sat there. And the guy who had sat next to me, all these many years in choir practice and singing in church services, Leon\u2026 realized that I needed help. And he sat with me.<\/p>\n The choir filed out. The congregation went out. And we just sat there until finally I said \u201chow can I be called to ministry if my word has no value?\u201d And he said, \u201cI don\u2019t know, but you are called to ministry.\u201d His wife Jewel poked her head into this little side door, a little shortcut into the choir loft down in the front of the chancel. She poked her head in, and Jewel had \u201csouthern\u201d hair. It was a glorious man of golden hair. So you saw the hair coming first. She poked her head into the choir loft, and Leon said \u201cwe\u2019re going to be a while.\u201d Jewel looked at me, you know\u2026 blubbering away. And she said, \u201cokay, I\u2019ll go wait in the car,\u201d clearly meaning \u201ctake as long as you need.\u201d<\/p>\n Well, needless to say, Jewel and Leon Raider became two of my very best friends, and when Jewel died of cancer about 12 years later, I went to Nashville and I stood next to Leon in that receiving line. Now, Jewel had been a principal in the public school system, and then after she retired, she was a consultant for principals, so she never really did retire. Everyone knew her and everyone loved her. And the line for the visitation went on and on and on, and I stood there with Leon. And I stayed, and I stood there, and I stayed and I stayed and I stayed.<\/p>\n And he said to me at one point when there was a break in the line and I was getting him a bottle of water, \u201cI can\u2019t understand how to live, now that she\u2019s gone.\u201d And I said, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t know either, but you are alive.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know how I can be called to ministry if my word doesn\u2019t mean anything \u2013 well, I don\u2019t either, but you are called to ministry. I don\u2019t know how to live with my wife gone \u2013 I don\u2019t know either, but you\u2019re alive. You see, the love of neighbor is just what you feel called to do on any given day, in a moment with other people. But it pays dividends, not just the help we give or the joy we share. But the way it changes us from within. The way it plants the seed of the gospel deep within our hearts.<\/p>\n Being faithful to each other as an outward demonstration of having set our minds on the Spirit of the Resurrection gave us life in the midst of death, and continues to this day to give us peace as we continue to share with one another the grief of what has been lost. Through no merit of our own, Leon and I continue to receive the fruit of God’s life-giving word, as the love of Christ takes deeper and deeper root in our lives.<\/p>\n Some think the notion of a God who cares about justice is a lot of foolishness, given the state of the world. In them, the sparks of life and peace never take flame, and they live in the despair of a heartbreaking cynicism. That’s the seed sown on the path.<\/p>\n Some like the idea of God’s justice and get on fire for Jesus for a time, but unless the idea leads to a passionate love affair with the Savior, the fire will fizzle out when the storms of life arrive. That’s the seed sown on rocky ground.<\/p>\n Some hear about God’s justice, but they have become addicted to the desires of their own mind, and they self-medicate their grief and suffering with the instant gratification of all that leisure and wealth can provide. That’s the seed sown among the thorns.<\/p>\n Finally, there are those who trust in the justice of God through the imitation of Christ’s self-emptying love. These find a peace that passes understanding in the midst of life’s grief, violence, and uncertainty. And that peace increases in power as they mature in their faith. That’s the seed sown on fertile soil.<\/p>\n The human heart is meant to be the garden of God’s peace, and the kinds of fruit that grow in there are the fruit of God’s justice: these are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Think of someone in your life who has these fruits in abundance. Who do you know that is patient and gentle? Who do you know that is faithful and measured in what they do and say? Who do you know that is joyful and kind? Who do you know that is loving and good? If need be, walk with them: that’s the person who can help you pick the rocks and weeds out of the garden of your life.<\/p>\n And while you do your work, sing along with the Psalmist:<\/p>\n Your word is a lantern to my feet Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 12 July A.D. 2026 Year A ReadingsGenesis 25:19-34, Psalm 119:105-112, Romans 8:1-11+ Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 CollectO Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. HomilyBack when we first started our study of Matthew’s Gospel on Wednesday evening, we took a long thorough look at the genealogy of Jesus. The curious nuance in this list of ancestors is that Matthew chooses to include five women, whose stories all point to the realization that what makes a person a member of the covenant people has less to do with their bloodline and more to do with the way they live in the world. Those who by their actions show that the Lord is on their heart and mind are included in the covenant people, even though Tamar and Rahab are Canaanites, Ruth – a Moabite, Bathsheba – a Hittite, and Mary – a young woman found to be pregnant out of wedlock. There are some parts of the scripture that say that all of these five women should have been ostracized or executed. Instead, because their sense of justice orients them toward the love of others, they become great-grandmothers of Jesus, the Messiah, the Anointed One of God. A heightened awareness of what is just and what is unjust defines the lives of all the women in the genealogy of Jesus, and this same heightened awareness remains the calling of God’s people. At the heart of Paul’s teaching to the Church at Rome, he stresses that there is a difference between a human life lived in the Spirit of the Resurrection, and a life lived in service to our own desires. Let’s listen again to the Apostle’s teaching: …those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. […] If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. Now eve though I know that we all prefer stories to ideas, let’s get three bullet points clear about what it means for the Spirit of the Resurrection to dwell in us. Jesus was unjustly accused, unjustly put on trial, unjustly tortured, and finally executed without cause. The death of Jesus is a gross miscarriage of justice. The resurrection is the vindication of Jesus by the justice of God, just as Tamar, and Rahab, and Ruth, and Bathsheba, and Mary are vindicated in their innocence and righteousness. Should we review those again? Ok, one more time…[repeat the above points] So for us to “set the mind on the Spirit” means that we allow a heightened awareness of God’s justice to preoccupy our minds. That sounds like a lot, but in the day to day reality of our lives, it’s really not that complicated. We simply have to look outside ourselves and notice the people around us and, however it lies within our power, to acknowledge how they are in need. Participating in the justice of God – which is to say, loving our neighbors as ourselves – is going to look very different for each of us; and sometimes it’ll be joyful and sometimes it’ll be sad. But to allow the Spirit of Divine Justice to shape our affections and actions will bring life to us and to the world around us, and that experience of giving and receiving life will teach us the meaning of peace.\u00a0 Ok, time for a story… January 1st\u2026 what do you do on January 1st? [wait for answers from congregation] Okay\u2026 sleep in\u2026 make a resolution. Well, January 1st, 2012 was a Sunday, and I was on deck at West End United Methodist Church in Nashville to be the scripture reader and a communion server. The only problem was that my then first wife Elizabeth and I had had a knockdown drag out fight the day before and I felt terrible. I didn\u2019t know how I was going to go lead in church. And then as I was getting ready for church, putting my clothes on in the wee hours of the morning, Elizabeth looked up over the bed clothes and said, \u201cI\u2019m not going on this crusade with you.\u201d And what she meant, halfway through my first year at seminary was, \u201cI don\u2019t want to be a pastor\u2019s wife, and our marriage is over.\u201d So, I went to church and then in the bulletin, there was a leaflet, and our senior pastor Michael Williams said to the church, \u201cI want you to take the pencil in the pew rack and I want you to take the leaflet in the bulletin, and I want you to write down the thing that you\u2019re most heartbroken about or that you regret the most, and I want you to put it in the offering plate as it goes by.\u201d And they collected all these leaflets and there was this big pile of leaflets. And out in front of the communion table there was this big stone bowl. Kind of like a baptistry. And they put all of the leaflets in the bowl. And then after communion, they burned them. Right there in church. They lit them on fire. What I wrote on my leaflet was \u201cmy marriage is over and I am forsworn.\u201d You know what it means to be forsworn? It\u2019s an old word, and a good one. It means you\u2019ve made a promise and you\u2019re not going to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[376,114],"class_list":["post-3098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermons","tag-gods-justice","tag-holy-spirit"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/farmer-sowing-seeds-smaller.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3098"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3102,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3098\/revisions\/3102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Genesis 25:19-34, Psalm 119:105-112, Romans 8:1-11
+ Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23<\/p>\n\n\n\n
O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back when we first started our study of Matthew’s Gospel on Wednesday evening, we took a long thorough look at the genealogy of Jesus. The curious nuance in this list of ancestors is that Matthew chooses to include five women, whose stories all point to the realization that what makes a person a member of the covenant people has less to do with their bloodline and more to do with the way they live in the world. Those who by their actions show that the Lord is on their heart and mind are included in the covenant people, even though Tamar and Rahab are Canaanites, Ruth – a Moabite, Bathsheba – a Hittite, and Mary – a young woman found to be pregnant out of wedlock. There are some parts of the scripture that say that all of these five women should have been ostracized or executed. Instead, because their sense of justice orients them toward the love of others, they become great-grandmothers of Jesus, the Messiah, the Anointed One of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
and a light upon my path.<\/p>\n