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Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
As summer weather draws so many of us outside to dance with a whole host of sky, water, and plant relatives, the Revised Common Lectionary journeys with Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew as he shares stories and works wonders rooted in his relationship with the natural world. Join Rev. Liz Kearny, Rev. Anne Dunlap, and Dr. Sharon Fennema of the Liberating Lineages Collective as they offer a "teaser" of themes and context for the Gospel of Matthew texts from July 12 - August 16, to help us explore what Jesus' land-based parables and miracles have to teach us about building an alternative world of abundance and care in the midst of the daily realities of living under empire. Transcript available here: https://bit.ly/TWARepisodes
This guide covers the readings appointed in the Revised Common Lectionary for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8), Year A, falling on June 28, 2026.This Sunday closes the four-week arc of Jesus' sending discourse in Matthew 10. The shape of that arc is worth holding in view as you prepare. Four weeks ago, Jesus called Matthew the tax collector from his table. Three weeks ago, he sent the twelve out with empty hands. Two weeks ago, he warned them about the cost of being sent. This week, the discourse closes with three short verses about welcome — a cup of cold water, a household opening its door, a small kindness that Jesus says is received as if it were given to him. After the heaviness of last week, the gentleness of this closing is itself part of the message: found, sent, warned, now received.The Old Testament tracks pull in very different directions. Track One brings us Genesis 22 — the binding of Isaac — paired with Psalm 13's repeated cry of “how long.” This is one of the hardest texts in all of Scripture, and the guide says so plainly. Some preachers will choose to preach it, and the guide tries to help them do so with care. Some will choose not to, and that is a legitimate decision; the cautions section makes the case that the choice should be made with information rather than avoidance. Track Two brings us Jeremiah's confrontation with the false prophet Hananiah, paired with Psalm 89's exuberant praise. The Epistle continues in Romans 6, where Paul presses the practical implications of having been freed in baptism.The ReadingsGenesis 22:1–14First Reading (Track One) — The Binding of IsaacSummaryThis is one of the most difficult passages in all of Scripture. Without warning, the narrator tells us that God is going to test Abraham, and then God asks him to do something unspeakable — to take his beloved son Isaac, the long-awaited child of the promise, and offer him as a burnt offering. Abraham rises early the next morning, says nothing to anyone, and sets out with two servants and the boy. On the third day, he leaves the servants behind. He places the wood on Isaac's back. Isaac, walking beside him, finally speaks the question that shatters the silence of the scene: “Father, the fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham answers, “God himself will provide.” At the place of sacrifice, Abraham builds an altar, binds his son, places him on the wood, and reaches out his hand for the knife. At the last possible moment, an angel calls his name. Do not lay a hand on the boy. Abraham looks up and sees a ram caught in a thicket. He calls the place “The Lord will provide.”Key Ideas for Preaching* Three times in this chapter, Abraham answers with the same word — “Here I am.” Once to God, once to Isaac, once to the angel who stops him. The same single-hearted availability that gets Abraham into this terrible scene is also what lets him hear the voice that stops him. What might it mean for your congregation that the posture of being fully present to God includes the readiness to be interrupted?* The line “God will provide” is spoken by Abraham before the ram appears. He does not say it after the rescue, looking back; he says it on the way up the mountain, before he knows how. What might it look like for your people to speak the provision before they can see it — not as denial of the situation, but as honest trust in the character of God?* The ram was caught in the thicket the whole time. The provision was already there. Abraham had to keep climbing to find it. Where in your congregation has the help they are pleading for actually been present all along, waiting to be seen rather than waiting to be made?* The story ends with a name: “The Lord will provide.” Generations of pilgrims will later climb that mountain remembering not the test but the providing. What might it mean for your congregation to name the places in their own lives the same way — not by what almost happened, but by what God did?* Some preachers will choose not to preach this text, and that is a legitimate decision. The text is genuinely painful, and the work of holding it carefully is real. If you do preach it, what would it look like to let your people feel the horror of the scene rather than rushing past it toward a moral?Significant Cautions* This text has been used to argue that faith requires the suspension of ordinary ethics — that whatever God commands, however terrible, must be obeyed without question. That is a dangerous reading, especially in a world where people have committed real violence claiming divine instruction. The story actually ends the practice of child sacrifice in its ancient context; it does not bless it.* The text has often been read as a kind of preview of God's giving up his own Son on the cross. There are echoes worth noticing, but pressed too hard, this reading turns God into someone who almost kills children. That has done real damage in a hospital room or beside a grave. Handle the connection gently if you make it at all.* “God tested Abraham” can land cruelly on people whose suffering has been described to them as a test. The text does not offer a general theology of suffering as divine examination. Be careful not to extend the scene into a blanket explanation for any congregation member's grief.* Sarah is entirely absent from this chapter. Some Jewish tradition has heard her cry in the silence, and her death in the very next chapter has been linked to this scene. Be honest about her absence rather than papering over it.* The story has been used to bless the harm of family members in the name of religious obedience. Be especially careful that nothing in your sermon could be heard that way — particularly in light of the kinds of misuses we noted last week in Matthew 10.Psalm 13The Psalm (Track One) — How Long?SummaryThis is one of the shortest psalms in the Bible — six verses — and one of the most concentrated. It opens with the question “how long” asked four times in two verses: how long will God forget? how long will God hide? how long must the psalmist bear pain? how long will the enemy be exalted? Then a brief, urgent prayer for God to look and answer. And then, unexpectedly, a turn. “But I trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” The lament does not erase itself, but it ends in trust.Key Ideas for Preaching* “How long” appears four times in two verses. There is no embarrassment about the repetition. Where in your congregation are people quietly afraid that their “how long” prayer has gone on too long, and what would it free in them to hear that the Bible knows that prayer by heart?* The turn at the end of the psalm is not a resolution. The problem has not gone away. What has shifted is who the psalmist is remembering. How might this teach your people what to do when their situation has not changed but their grip on God needs steadying?* Read alongside Genesis 22, the psalm gives voice to what Abraham, and perhaps Isaac, and perhaps Sarah could not say out loud. How might pairing the two texts honor the unspoken cry inside the more famous story?Significant Cautions* “I will rejoice in your salvation” can be turned into a command to feel better. The psalmist arrives at that line; he does not start there. Be careful not to use this psalm to shame those who are still living in the “how long” verses.Jeremiah 28:5–9First Reading (Track Two) — The Test of a ProphetSummaryThis is part of a longer scene. Jeremiah has been prophesying that the Babylonian exile will be long — a generation or more. Hananiah, another prophet, has been promising the opposite: that the exile will be brief and that God is about to break the yoke of Babylon quickly. The selected verses give Jeremiah's reply. He says, in effect: I would love for your prophecy to be true. May God do what you say. But the prophets who came before us prophesied war and disaster and pestilence; the prophet who promises peace is recognized as a true prophet only when the peace actually arrives. The test of a true word from God is whether it bears out in time.Key Ideas for Preaching* Jeremiah does not dismiss Hananiah out of hand. He says, in effect, “amen — may the Lord do as you have prophesied.” Then he names the harder truth. What does it look like for your congregation to take seriously the appeal of every comforting message, including the ones that turn out to be false?* Jeremiah's test of a true prophet is whether the word comes to pass. That is a slow test. It does not yield quick certainty. Where in your congregation has the desire for fast answers led people toward voices that sound encouraging but do not bear out?* The bigger backdrop is that the people of God are being asked to live faithfully through a long, hard time — not to expect a quick rescue. What might it mean for your congregation to hear that some of the most pressing questions of faith are about how to live well inside a hard season, not how to escape it?Significant Cautions* This text has been used to demand that anyone with a hopeful word be dismissed as a false prophet. Jeremiah does not say that. He says that some hopeful words turn out to be false. He does not say all of them are.* Be careful with the implication that suffering and hardship are always the more spiritually credible message. That framing has its own pastoral dangers, especially in contexts where genuine deliverance is in fact what God is bringing.Psalm 89:1–4, 15–18The Psalm (Track Two) — Of Your Steadfast Love I Will SingSummaryA hymn celebrating God's steadfast love and faithfulness. The opening verses promise to sing God's praise forever, and remember God's covenant with David — the promise to establish his line. The second set of verses turns to the people: happy are those who know the festal shout, who walk in the light of God's face. Their strength is from God; their joy is in God's name. The lectionary selects only the praise sections of a longer psalm that, by its end, becomes a sustained complaint about whether God has kept the very promises being celebrated here.Key Ideas for Preaching* “I will sing of your steadfast love forever.” The opening commitment is to a long song, not a passing feeling. What does it look like for your congregation's praise to be the kind of thing they intend to keep singing for a long time, regardless of how a given week has gone?* “Happy are the people who know the festal shout.” That suggests there is a kind of joy that has to be learned — practiced, taught, shouted out loud. Where might your people need permission to practice praise rather than wait for it to arrive on its own?* Paired with Jeremiah's hard-eyed realism, this psalm reminds us that honest realism about difficulty and unembarrassed praise are not opposites. Both belong. How might your sermon hold these two together?Significant Cautions* The lectionary's selection omits the long complaint that closes Psalm 89. If you preach the praise alone, be honest with your congregation that this is one voice within a longer, more complicated prayer — not the whole of the psalm.Romans 6:12–23The Epistle — Wages and GiftSummaryPaul picks up where last week left off. The argument has been that baptism unites us with Christ in his death and frees us from the rule of sin. Now Paul presses the practical implications. Do not let sin reign in your bodies. Do not present yourselves to sin as instruments of wrongdoing; present yourselves to God as people alive from the dead. Then he reaches for a metaphor that lands uncomfortably on modern ears: you were once slaves of sin, now you are slaves of righteousness. Paul acknowledges that the metaphor is limited — “I am speaking in human terms,” he says, “because of your natural limitations.” The passage closes with one of his most famous lines: the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.Key Ideas for Preaching* Paul assumes that we are always under some kind of authority — and that the question is not whether we will serve something, but what we will serve. Where in your congregation might it be freeing to hear that the choice is not between independence and submission, but between two very different kinds of belonging?* The “wages of sin is death” line has often been preached as a scare tactic. But Paul sets it next to a contrast: the free gift of God is eternal life. Wages are earned. Gifts are not. What might it shift in your people to hear that what God offers is fundamentally not a paycheck?* Paul says he is speaking in human terms “because of your natural limitations.” He admits openly that the metaphor he is using is imperfect. What does it look like to preach with the same kind of humility — using the words available while admitting that they cannot quite contain what is being said?Significant Cautions* Paul's slavery language is rough. It was uncomfortable in its own century, and it is much more so now, in a world where actual chattel slavery has shaped enormous suffering. Be honest that the metaphor has its limits and has been misused.* “The wages of sin is death” has been wielded as a threat. The structure of the verse actually points the other way — the news, the good news, is the free gift on the other side of the comma.* “Slaves to righteousness” should not be flattened into a demand for moralism. Paul's freedom is freedom from a set of destructive authorities, not freedom into a list of rules.Matthew 10:40–42The Gospel — A Cup of Cold WaterSummaryThis is the close of the long sending discourse, and after the difficult sayings of last week, the tone here is unexpectedly gentle. Jesus speaks of welcome — how those who welcome the disciples welcome him, and how those who welcome him welcome the One who sent him. Then he names the smallest possible kindness: even a cup of cold water given to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple will not lose its reward. The whole sending speech, which began with sober instructions and warnings, closes here on what almost sounds like a warm afterthought — but an afterthought that turns out to carry real weight.Key Ideas for Preaching* The discourse closes not with grandeur but with the smallest possible act of hospitality — a cup of cold water. Where in your congregation has the imagination for “real” ministry crowded out the small kindnesses that Jesus actually names here?* Jesus says that welcoming a disciple is welcoming him. That goes both directions. It promises something to your people when they are welcomed — they carry Christ with them. And it asks something of your people when they are the welcomers. How might this two-way welcome shape your congregation's sense of both being received and receiving?* This is the fourth and final Sunday of the Matthew 10 arc. Three weeks ago, the disciples were sent with empty hands. Two weeks ago, they were warned that the road would be hard. Today, the discourse closes with the promise that the smallest welcome is not lost. How might your sermon let your people feel the shape of the whole arc — and the unexpected tenderness of its close?Significant Cautions* “These little ones” is a tender phrase, but it has sometimes been preached condescendingly, as if the speaker were the welcomer and someone else were the recipient. In this passage, the disciples are the little ones. Be careful which direction your sermon casts the metaphor.* The “reward” language is easy to flatten into transactional thinking — do this small thing and earn that big thing. Jesus is not running a points system. He is saying that nothing offered in his name goes unnoticed.* The cup of cold water has sometimes been used to bless the substitution of small charity for real engagement with the systems that produce thirst in the first place. Both the small act and the larger work matter. Do not let one be used to excuse the absence of the other.Thematic ConnectionsAfter three Sundays of increasingly difficult Gospel readings, the lectionary closes the Matthew 10 arc with three short, gentle verses about welcome. The four-week shape is worth holding together: found, sent, warned, received. The disciples who were called from their tables, then sent out with empty hands, then warned about the cost, are now placed inside a network of hospitality — disciples who carry Christ with them, and households who welcome them as Christ.The Old Testament tracks pull in very different directions, and the preacher's choice matters. Track One brings Genesis 22 alongside the brief Gospel — the agonizing test of Abraham paired with the small kindness of a cup of cold water. The contrast is severe, and the preacher has real work to do to make that pairing serve a congregation rather than overwhelm it. Psalm 13's repeated “how long” gives voice to the silence inside Abraham's obedience.Track Two brings Jeremiah's confrontation with false prophecy — the hard-eyed test of whether a word from God actually bears out — and pairs it with Psalm 89's exuberant praise. The combination invites a congregation to hold honest realism and unembarrassed worship together.Romans is on both tracks and continues to develop the question of what kind of life baptism actually launches. The wages-and-gift contrast at the close of the reading offers a clean line for a sermon on either track.The Gospel itself is short enough that it may not seem to carry an entire sermon, but its closing image — a cup of cold water — is worth a sermon in its own right. After the heaviness of last week, the smallness of this week's instruction is itself the good news. The disciples Jesus has been preparing are not asked to do impossible things; they are asked to receive and to give the smallest kindnesses faithfully — and to trust that those kindnesses are received as if they were given to him. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lectionarypro.substack.com/subscribe
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Welcome to Madang.Madang is the outdoor living room of the world. Here, we invite you to sit and tune into unreserved, remarkable conversations with renowned authors, leaders, public figures, and scholars on religion, culture, and everything in between.This is the 61st episode of Madang Podcast hosted by Baptist News Global featuring Rev. Dr. Rachel Kessler, who is an Episcopal priest serving as campus chaplain at her alma mater, Kenyon College, and rector of Harcourt Parish in Gambier, OH. An “exvangelical” and progressive Christian influencer, she is known on social media as “The Nerdy Priest.” She earned her PhD in Old English literature from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and she teaches part-time in the Kenyon English department. She is the author of Nerd Faith: 60 Second Sprints of Spiritual Guidance for the Occasionally Uncool.On this episode of Madang Podcast hosted by Baptist News Global, Kessler and I talk about her new book, Nerd Faith: 60 Second Sprints of Spiritual Guidance for the Occasionally Uncool. We discuss God, faith, TikTok, Lord of the Rings, deconstructing, and so much more.I am grateful to the many sponsors of this Madang Podcast episode.1.Church PublishingMadang podcast is grateful to Church Publishing for sponsoring this episode. Please order your copy of Nerd Faith: 60 Second Sprints of Spiritual Guidance for the Occasionally Uncool. Please visit www.churchpublishing.org to find all the latest books and resources. Church Publishing Incorporated (CPI) is a leading global, multi-market publisher of a wide variety of books and resources, serving millions of readers. 2. Upper RoomHey Madang listeners, what if your daily devotional connected you to a larger story of God's work in the world?The Upper Room Disciplines is a unique 365-day devotional that follows the Revised Common Lectionary, the three-year cycle of scripture readings used by many churches around the world. Each day's devotion pairs the lectionary scripture with a meditation from one of 53 diverse Christian thought leaders — voices like Willie James Jennings, Joerg Rieger, Chanequa Walker-Barnes, and ME! — writers who bring the texts alive with theological depth and pastoral heart.Whether you're a pastor, a small group leader, or simply someone seeking a deeper rhythm of prayer and reflection, Disciplines offers daily scripture, thoughtful meditations, and prayers to help you encounter God's presence throughout the year.Join thousands of readers who rely on Disciplines as a trusted companion for study, worship, and spiritual growth.Preorder your copy of The Upper Room Disciplines 2027 today and save 20% with promo code MADANG at Store.UpperRoom.org/MADANG.
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
This guide covers the readings appointed in the Revised Common Lectionary for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7), Year A, falling on June 21, 2026. We are well into the green season now — the long, ordinary stretch of Sundays during which the church listens, week by week, to the long witness of Scripture.This Sunday's readings are not gentle. The Gospel continues last week's account of Jesus sending out the Twelve, but where last week was the calling, this week names the cost. Jesus tells the disciples three times not to be afraid, then warns them that the message will divide families, that they will be hated, and that those who try to hold on to their lives will lose them. The Old Testament tracks each offer their own difficult companion. Track One follows Hagar and her son into the wilderness after they are cast out at Sarah's demand — one of the most painful scenes in Genesis. Track Two gives us Jeremiah's famous lament, in which the prophet accuses God of having tricked him into a vocation that has cost him everything. The Epistle, from Romans 6, sets the baptized at the heart of this difficulty: we have died with Christ, and so what could ordinarily destroy us no longer has the final word.This is a Sunday that asks the preacher for both courage and tenderness. The Gospel in particular has been used in some of the most damaging ways in the church's history — to justify family estrangement, to coerce loyalty, to bless suffering that people did not choose. The guide names those misuses plainly in the cautions, because the texts will preach better when their misuses are named than when those misuses are left to lurk.The ReadingsGenesis 21:8–21First Reading (Track One) — Hagar and Ishmael in the WildernessSummaryThe day Isaac is weaned, Abraham throws a great feast. Sarah looks across the celebration and sees Ishmael — the son Hagar bore to Abraham years earlier — and something hardens in her. She tells Abraham to send Hagar and the boy away, so that Ishmael will not inherit alongside Isaac. The text says the matter is very distressing to Abraham, but God tells him to do as Sarah says, with the promise that God will also make a nation of Ishmael. The next morning Abraham sends Hagar out with bread, a skin of water, and the boy. The water runs out in the wilderness. Hagar puts the child under a bush so she will not have to watch him die, and she lifts up her voice and weeps. God hears the boy's voice. An angel speaks to Hagar — do not be afraid, God has heard him where he is. God opens her eyes, and she sees a well that was there all along. The boy grows up in the wilderness and becomes the ancestor of a great nation.Key Ideas for Preaching* The text says God heard the voice of the boy — and the name Ishmael means “God hears.” The story is its own argument: there is no one whose voice God does not hear, including the ones the official story has cast out. Where does your congregation tend to assume that some voices reach God and others do not, and how might Ishmael's name interrupt that assumption?* Hagar does not see the well until God opens her eyes. The water was already there. What might it mean for your people that the help they have been pleading for may already be present, waiting to be seen rather than waiting to be made?* God's promise expands rather than narrows. Isaac receives the promise, and Ishmael will also become a great nation. The text refuses to make this an either/or. Where in your congregation has the assumption taken hold that God's blessing is a finite resource — that someone else's portion must come out of ours?* The story sits uncomfortably with us, and it should. There is real cruelty here, and real grief. What might it look like to preach this scene without rushing toward a moral, letting your people sit with the painful complexity of a family text that does not resolve neatly?Significant Cautions* Hagar's story has been used in the church to claim that one religious people has displaced another — most painfully in claims that Christianity has replaced Judaism, or that the Arab descendants of Ishmael are outside God's care. The text itself refuses this reading. God's blessing extends to both lines.* Sarah's demand and Abraham's quick compliance are easy to moralize — to make Sarah a villain or Abraham a coward. The text is more honest than that. They are real, flawed people inside a real, flawed family system, and the story does not ask us to pick sides among them.* The line that God told Abraham to listen to Sarah has sometimes been used in troubling ways. Read in context, it is God's particular guidance about this particular moment — not a general endorsement of any voice that arrives within a family.* This is a Genesis story that Muslims also hold as sacred — Ishmael is the ancestor of the Arab peoples, and the well in this text is foundational to Islam. Be particularly careful with any language that would imply Christians have an exclusive claim on the material.Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert by Christoffer Wilhelm EckersbergPsalm 86:1–10, 16–17The Psalm (Track One) — Incline Your Ear, O LordSummaryThis is a psalm of supplication from someone in deep need. “Incline your ear, O Lord,” it begins; “I am poor and needy.” The psalmist names God's character — good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love — and pleads for an answer. The middle of the psalm widens the view: God is unique among all the gods of the nations, the maker of all peoples, the one to whom every people will one day come. The selected verses close with another plea: turn to me, give me strength, save me, show me a sign of your favor.Key Ideas for Preaching* The psalmist names himself “poor and needy” — and names it to God, not hides it. What does it look like for your congregation to bring their actual need to God without first trying to dress it up?* The psalm holds together a private cry and a cosmic vision. In the same breath the psalmist asks God to listen to him and reminds himself that all the nations will one day come and bow down. How might your sermon hold those two together — the intimate and the vast — without flattening either?* The plea is grounded in who God is, not in who the psalmist is. God is good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love. Where in your congregation has prayer started to feel like throwing words into a void, and how might naming who God is steady that?Significant Cautions* The psalmist asks God to act so that “those who hate me may be put to shame.” That is honest prayer, but it can also become a weapon. Be careful about preaching this verse in a way that licenses contempt for those we disagree with.* “I am devoted to you” can be heard as the psalmist claiming exceptional faithfulness. Read in the context of the whole psalm, it is relationship language, not a boast about merit.Jeremiah 20:7–13First Reading (Track Two) — A Fire Shut Up in My BonesSummaryJeremiah turns to God in something close to anger. You have tricked me, he accuses; you have overpowered me. He has become a laughingstock. Everyone mocks him; his message of judgment has cost him friends and reputation. He has tried to keep silent — but the word of God, he says, is like a fire shut up in his bones, and he cannot hold it in. Even his closest acquaintances are watching for him to stumble. And then, in the middle of the lament, the tone turns. He remembers that God is on his side, that the Lord is with him like a dread warrior. He calls on the assembly to sing to the Lord. The lament does not erase itself, but it ends — for now — in praise.Key Ideas for Preaching* Jeremiah accuses God of trickery and gets away with it. The text does not punish him for the accusation; it preserves it as Scripture. What might it mean for your congregation to hear that even rage toward God can be a faithful prayer?* The word inside Jeremiah is “like a fire shut up in my bones.” He cannot keep it in even when keeping it in would be easier. Where in your congregation is there a truth that needs to come out, and what is it costing your people to hold it in?* The lament ends in praise — not because the problem has been solved, but because Jeremiah remembers who is with him. What does it look like for your people to praise from inside a difficulty that has not yet resolved?Significant Cautions* Jeremiah's lament can be used to suggest that faithful people quickly arrive at peace and praise after suffering. The turn is real in this passage, but it is not automatic, and the rest of Jeremiah's life is not exactly peaceful. Do not rush a lament toward resolution.* “There is something like a burning fire in my bones” has sometimes been used to pressure people into evangelism, as if a faithful Christian must always feel compelled to proclaim. Jeremiah's compulsion is the experience of a particular prophet under particular circumstances, not a universal test of faithfulness.Psalm 69:7–10, (11–15), 16–18The Psalm (Track Two) — A Stranger to My KindredSummaryA lament from someone who has been alienated by their devotion to God. It is for your sake, the psalmist says, that I have borne reproach — I have become a stranger to my kindred. Zeal for God's house has consumed him. He is mocked in the streets; even drunkards make him the subject of their songs. The psalm pleads with God to draw near, to answer, to redeem him from the muck. The selected verses close with an urgent appeal: do not hide your face from me; come near and redeem me.Key Ideas for Preaching* The psalmist's faithfulness has cost him relationships — even with his own family. This pairs powerfully with the Gospel's hard language about division. What does your congregation know about the real cost of taking faith seriously, and how might this psalm give them words for it?* The image of being stuck in the mire, where there is no foothold, is one of the most physical pictures in the psalms. It is not abstract theology; it is what real trouble feels like in the body. How might your sermon let the body of the psalm meet the bodies of your people?* The psalmist does not pretend to be patient. “Do not hide your face from me” is urgent, almost demanding. What might it free in your people to hear that urgent prayer is faithful prayer?Significant Cautions* The psalm has been used to claim a kind of spiritual martyrdom for ordinary discomfort — to dramatize mild inconvenience as suffering for the gospel. The cost the psalmist describes is real. Be careful applying his words to a much smaller scale.* Some verses near these (not included in the reading) contain sharp curses against the psalmist's enemies. The lectionary leaves them out for a reason. If you reach for them, handle them with care.Romans 6:1b–11The Epistle — Buried with Him by BaptismSummaryPaul has just argued in Romans 5 that grace abounds where sin abounds. He hears the objection coming: shall we then sin all the more, so that grace can abound all the more? Absolutely not, he says. And the picture he gives in answer is baptism. To be baptized into Christ is to be baptized into his death — buried with him so that we might also walk into a new kind of life. The old self has been crucified with him. The pull of the old life no longer has the final word. Christ, having been raised, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. And so, Paul says, we are to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.Key Ideas for Preaching* Paul defines baptism not as a religious rite added on top of a person's life but as a death and a resurrection. The old self has been crucified. The new life is something already begun. How might it shift your congregation's sense of baptism — their own, and any they are about to celebrate — to hear it described in these terms?* “Death no longer has dominion over him” — and so, by extension, over us. This is the same Romans 6 that ties directly to today's Gospel, where Jesus tells the disciples not to fear those who can kill the body. The two readings are saying the same thing in different keys. What changes in your people when the deepest threats lose their final authority?* Paul tells us to “consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.” That is not a description of how it feels; it is a posture, a reckoning, a choosing to remember what is true even when experience suggests otherwise. Where in your congregation might this practice of remembering provide more steadiness than trying to feel a particular way?Significant Cautions* “Dead to sin” has sometimes been read as the claim that Christians no longer struggle. Paul is not saying that — he goes on in chapter 7 to describe at length the ongoing struggle. He is describing an orientation, not a finished condition. Say so plainly.* The language of being “crucified with Christ” can be used to romanticize suffering, or to suggest that hardship is the proof of faith. Paul's image is about baptismal identity, not a measuring stick for who is suffering enough.* “Walking in newness of life” can be flattened into self-improvement language. Paul's vision is much larger — a whole new sphere of life in which the powers that used to determine us no longer have the final say.Matthew 10:24–39The Gospel — Do Not Be AfraidSummaryThe sending discourse continues, and Jesus turns to the cost. He warns the disciples that they will be treated as he is treated — if people call the master of the house Beelzebul, his household should expect worse. Three times he tells them not to be afraid. Do not fear those who can kill only the body; fear instead the one who has authority over both body and soul. Do not be afraid: even the sparrows are not forgotten, and you are worth more than many sparrows. Acknowledge me before others, Jesus says, and I will acknowledge you before my Father. And then the hardest verses: do not think I came to bring peace; I came to bring a sword. Loyalty to me will cause division — even within families. Whoever loves family more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up the cross is not worthy of me. Those who try to hold on to their life will lose it. Those who lose their life for my sake will find it.Key Ideas for Preaching* The phrase “do not be afraid” appears three times in this passage. It is the constant beneath everything else. The hard language about division and loss is held inside that frame. What would it look like for your sermon to make the “do not fear” as loud as the difficult verses around it?* Jesus uses sparrows — the cheapest birds at the market — to make a point about God's attention. Not one of them falls without God noticing; and you are worth more. How might this small, almost throwaway image be exactly the picture your congregation needs of a God whose attention reaches the least-counted parts of their lives?* The “sword” Jesus brings is not his intention but his effect. He is naming a social reality: following him will not be welcome everywhere, even in some families. He is preparing his disciples for that, not endorsing the division. How might your sermon help your people tell the difference between division that follows costly faithfulness and division that follows from cruelty or stubbornness?* “Take up the cross” was, in the first century, the specific image of a condemned prisoner carrying the crossbeam of their execution. It was a death-march image, not a metaphor for ordinary hardship. What is your congregation actually being asked to die to for the sake of Jesus, and how can you name it without trivializing the image?* “Those who lose their life for my sake will find it” is one of the central paradoxes of the Gospels. It is not a license for self-destruction; it is the strange truth that the life that tries to protect itself shrinks, and the life that is given for something larger grows. Where in your people's lives is a small, protected life keeping them from a larger, given one?Significant Cautions* “Do not fear those who kill the body” has sometimes been used to pressure people toward martyrdom or to invalidate ordinary fear. Jesus is not condemning fear; he is steadying people facing genuine threat. Don't use this verse to shame the afraid.* The verse about fearing the one who can destroy both body and soul is genuinely difficult, and many faithful readers have understood the subject of that verse differently. Be cautious about turning it into a casual threat. The weight of the passage is not on the warning; it is on the comfort that immediately follows.* “I came not to bring peace but a sword” has been used in some of the most damaging ways imaginable — to justify religious violence, to bless the cutting off of LGBTQ+ family members, and to license abusive religious leaders demanding total loyalty. Be especially clear: Jesus is naming a social effect, not endorsing harm to anyone.* “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” has been weaponized by spiritually abusive systems to demand that members cut off family. The wider witness of Scripture — including Jesus' own care for his mother from the cross, and the command to honor parents — flatly contradicts that use.* “Take up the cross” should not be applied to suffering that people did not freely choose — illness, abuse, poverty, grief. Such suffering is not their cross to bear, and calling it that has been used to silence people who needed to be heard.* “Lose your life to find it” should never be used to validate self-harm, the staying in dangerous situations, or the spending of oneself in service of leaders or institutions that demand it. Jesus is talking about the freedom of the gospel, not about self-destruction.Thematic ConnectionsBoth tracks open onto the same difficult Gospel, and both offer it different company.Track One brings Hagar's wilderness story. A woman and her son have been cast out — by the official story, by the family that should have held them. The water runs out. The mother cannot bear to watch the child die. And God hears. The story does not solve what Sarah has done; it does not undo the cruelty. But it insists that no voice is unheard, no person is forgotten, and that the help God provides may already be present, waiting to be seen. Paired with the Gospel's “do not fear” and the sparrow image, the message is the same in two keys: God's attention reaches the ones the world has overlooked.Track Two brings Jeremiah's lament and Psalm 69's cry of alienation. Both texts give voice to the cost of faithfulness — the rejection, the social isolation, the impossibility of keeping silent. Read alongside the Gospel, they put words in the mouths of disciples for whom following has cost something. The whole day, on this track, gives a congregation permission to be honest about how hard faithfulness has been, and a promise that the honesty is itself a form of prayer.Romans 6 anchors both tracks in baptismal identity. Whatever the world's hostility can do, the worst of it has already lost its dominion. Christ has gone down into death and come back out the other side, and the baptized have gone with him.The Gospel is the natural preaching center either way, and it asks particular courage from the preacher. These texts have been weaponized; the cautions in this guide are not theoretical. But the heart of the passage is the threefold “do not be afraid” and the small, almost tossed-off promise about the sparrows. A sermon that lets those quieter verses set the temperature, while taking the harder verses seriously and naming their misuses plainly, will land more honestly than one that either avoids the difficulty or leans into it as something to admire.For preachers following the recent series: this is the third Sunday in the Matthew 10 arc. Two weeks ago, Jesus called Matthew from his table. Last week, he sent the twelve out with empty hands and the compassion of the Lord of the harvest. This week, he is honest with them about what the sending will cost. The shape is now complete: found, sent, warned. Next week, the lectionary begins to move into the parables of the kingdom. This is a public episode. 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Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Hoo, boy… it's great to be back in the saddle at my computer and in front of the microphone! I greatly enjoyed a short break to visit my family in New York, and I appreciate you all sticking with it while the audio has taken a break. I hope the printed materials continued to be helpful. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *This guide covers the readings appointed in the Revised Common Lectionary for the Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6), Year A, falling on June 14, 2026. The great festivals of Easter and Pentecost are behind us, and the church now settles into what has been variously called Ordinary Time, the Season after Pentecost, or simply the long stretch of green Sundays that runs all the way to Advent. The lectionary now walks through stories and letters in a more sustained way — not building toward a particular feast but simply listening, week by week, to the long witness of Scripture.This Sunday offers two parallel Old Testament tracks. Track One (semi-continuous) follows the great stories of Israel in order, picking up this week with Abraham and Sarah and the visitors at Mamre. Track Two (complementary) chooses an Old Testament text that lines up thematically with the Gospel — this week, the giving of the covenant at Sinai, where God names Israel a kingdom of priests. Either track will preach. Most congregations pick a track at the beginning of the season and stay with it; this guide treats both fully and lets the preacher choose.The Epistle and Gospel are the same for both tracks: Romans 5 on hope formed in suffering, and Matthew's account of Jesus sending out the Twelve. One quiet continuity is worth noticing as you prepare. Matthew the tax collector, called from his table just last week, appears in today's Gospel in the list of the twelve apostles being sent out. The lectionary is showing us how quickly being found becomes being sent.Matthew the tax collector, called from his table just last week, appears in today's Gospel in the list of the twelve apostles being sent out. The lectionary is showing us how quickly being found becomes being sent.The ReadingsGenesis 18:1–15, (21:1–7)First Reading (Track One) — Sarah LaughsSummaryThree travelers arrive at Abraham's tent in the heat of the day, and Abraham — without yet knowing who they are — hurries to offer extravagant hospitality. Over the meal, one of them announces that Sarah will have a son within the year. Sarah is listening from inside the tent and laughs to herself, silently, as she thinks, at the idea that two old people could still have a child. The visitor knows. He calls out the laugh and asks the question on which the whole story turns: is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Sarah, frightened, denies laughing. He simply says: Oh yes, you did. The optional ending of the reading carries the story forward — the promise comes true, Sarah gives birth, and they name the child Isaac, which means “he laughs.” The laughter that began in skepticism comes back as joy.Key Ideas for Preaching1. Abraham welcomes strangers and ends up hosting God. He does not know who they are when he runs to greet them — he simply treats them like honored guests. What does it look like for your congregation to extend that kind of hospitality to people whose importance they have not yet discovered?2. Sarah's laughter is honest. After twenty-five years of waiting on a promise that never came, she is not pretending anymore. What does it look like to give your people permission to bring their honest doubt to God without dressing it up as faith?3. The question at the heart of the story — is anything too wonderful for the Lord? — is not about whether God can do tricks. It is about whether we still credit God with the capacity to surprise us. Where has your congregation quietly written something off as impossible — about themselves, about each other, about the world — that this text suggests they should hold more loosely?4. If you include the verses from chapter 21, Isaac's name carries the whole arc: “he laughs.” The laughter that began in disbelief comes back as the laughter of joy. What would it mean for your people to trust that God can turn the laughter of skepticism into the laughter of celebration — and that both kinds of laughter can be holy?Significant Cautions• Sarah's laughter is sometimes preached as a failure of faith, with Sarah cast as a cautionary example. The text is gentler than that. She is honest, and God is honest back. Be careful not to turn the scene into a morality lesson about doubt.• The three visitors have been used in some traditions as a kind of preview of the Trinity. The text itself does not make that claim, and forcing it on the passage tends to distract from what is actually happening. Better to let the strangeness of the scene be what it is.• The promise of a child in old age can land hard on people who have prayed for a child and not received one. Be careful not to suggest that those who do not get the miracle are short on faith.Psalm 116:1–2, 12–19The Psalm (Track One) — What Shall I Return to the Lord?SummaryThis is a psalm of thanksgiving from someone who has been heard. The opening lines tell us why the psalmist loves God: because God listened. The middle section asks the question every grateful person eventually asks — what can I possibly give back? The answer turns out not to be a material payment at all. It is to lift the cup of salvation, to call on God's name, to keep the vows made in the day of trouble — and to do all of this publicly, in the presence of all God's people.Key Ideas for Preaching1. The psalmist's love for God begins with being heard. That is a much smaller and more reachable claim than it sounds. What might it do for your congregation to hear that the path to loving God can begin with something as simple as the conviction that God is paying attention?2. The question “what shall I return to the Lord?” is asked by someone overflowing with gratitude, not by someone calculating a debt. Where in your congregation has gratitude turned into obligation rather than response, and how might this psalm soften that?3. The thanksgiving is offered in the presence of all God's people — public, witnessed, communal, not a private feeling kept to oneself. What would it look like to give your people room to name out loud where God has met them?Significant Cautions• “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones” can sound to a grieving person as if their loved one's death is being called a treasure. The line means that God watches over the lives and deaths of God's people with care — not that death itself is a good thing. Handle it tenderly.• “I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice” can be heard painfully by someone whose prayers have not been answered the way they wanted. Make room in the sermon for them as well.Exodus 19:2–8aFirst Reading (Track Two) — A Kingdom of PriestsSummaryThe Israelites have just come out of Egypt and are camped at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses climbs the mountain, and God speaks to him with a word for the people. God begins by reminding them of what they have already seen — how God carried them out of slavery on eagles' wings — and then names what they are about to become: if they keep the covenant, they will be God's treasured possession out of all the peoples of the earth, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. Moses brings the message back, and the people answer in a single voice: everything the Lord has said, we will do.Key Ideas for Preaching1. God's word to Israel begins with what God has already done. The covenant is offered to people God has already rescued, not to people who have earned it. Where does your congregation still imagine that their relationship with God starts with their performance rather than with God's prior love?2. A kingdom of priests is a people whose whole life points others toward God. This is not a job for clergy or for a few specially gifted members — it is the identity of the whole community. What does it look like for your people to take seriously that their ordinary lives are meant to be priestly?3. The people's “we will do” comes very quickly. They will, of course, fail to keep it almost immediately. What does it mean to preach this scene knowing both that the commitment is sincere and that it will not hold — and that God enters the covenant anyway?Significant Cautions• “Treasured possession” has been used to claim that one group has been chosen over and against others — including, in tragic stretches of Christian history, to argue that the church has replaced Israel as the chosen people. That is a misreading. Be careful with the language of being chosen so that it does not slide into superiority.• The image of being carried on eagles' wings is beautiful but can be turned into the promise that God always rescues the faithful from hardship. The Exodus story itself does not promise that. Hold the image tenderly for people whose deliverance is still long in coming.Psalm 100The Psalm (Track Two) — The Sheep of His PastureSummaryThe whole psalm is one sustained call to worship — seven imperatives stacked into five short verses. The reason runs through every line: God made us, we belong to God, God is good, God's steadfast love endures forever. It is among the shortest and best-loved psalms in the Bible, often used to open worship.Key Ideas for Preaching1. The psalm is almost all imperatives — commands to worship. Worship here is not a feeling the worshiper has to manufacture; it is something the people are invited to do, and the doing tends to come first. Where might your congregation be waiting to feel ready to worship rather than simply showing up to do it?2. The reason for worship in the psalm is not the worshiper's circumstances but God's character — that God made us, that we belong to God, that God's love endures. What would change if your congregation grounded its praise in who God is rather than in how the week has gone?3. This psalm pairs naturally with the Exodus reading. The people God is forming into a kingdom of priests are the same people the psalm calls to enter God's gates with thanksgiving. The identity and the practice belong together. What might it look like for your congregation to feel both at once?Significant Cautions• The command to “make a joyful noise” has sometimes been turned into the requirement that worship always be exuberant and loud. Joy in worship comes in many keys — including quiet ones. Be careful not to make joyful noise the same as loud noise.• A psalm of pure praise can leave out people who are grieving or hurting, who cannot easily summon gladness. The psalm is one voice in a larger book that also makes ample room for lament. Not every Sunday is Psalm 100 weather, and saying so honestly can be a kindness.Romans 5:1–8The Epistle — Hope That Does Not DisappointSummaryPaul opens this chapter with one of his great summary statements: now that we have been put right with God by trust, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ. From there he describes the strange logic of Christian hope. We can even hold our heads up in suffering, he says, because suffering forms endurance, endurance forms character, and character forms hope — a hope that does not let us down, because God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Then he gives the ground for it all: Christ did not wait for us to deserve him. He died for us while we were still weak, still sinners, with no claim on him at all.Key Ideas for Preaching1. The chain Paul builds — suffering, endurance, character, hope — describes what suffering can do, not what it always does. Paul is not telling sufferers that their pain is a tool God is using on them; he is telling people who are already enduring something hard that the road they are walking has been walked before, and it leads somewhere. Where does your congregation need to hear that distinction made plainly?2. The hope Paul describes is not optimism. Optimism depends on circumstances; this hope is poured in from outside — the love of God by the Spirit. How might it help your people to be told that they do not have to manufacture their own hope?3. Christ died for us, Paul says, while we were still sinners — before any of us had cleaned ourselves up to qualify. Where does your congregation still secretly believe that God will love them more once they have improved, and what would change if they let that go?Significant Cautions• “Suffering produces endurance” has been used to silence people whose suffering is real and unjust — to tell them they should be grateful for what their pain is doing to them. That is a cruel misuse. Paul is not blessing suffering; he is comforting people in it. Say so plainly.• “Justified by faith” can be flattened into the idea that what saves us is the strength of our own believing — as if faith were a new thing to achieve. The weight here is on the trustworthiness of God, not the size of our trust. Keep the emphasis where Paul puts it.• Paul's contrast between sinners and the righteous has sometimes been used to draw lines around who counts as truly bad and who counts as basically good. The whole point of the passage is that none of us was on the right side of that line, and Christ came anyway.Matthew 9:35–10:8, (9–23)The Gospel — The Compassion and the SendingSummaryJesus has been moving through the towns of Galilee, teaching and healing, and when he looks at the crowds something gives way in him. They are exhausted, he says — harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. From that compassion comes the saying about a plentiful harvest and too few laborers, and then the response: Jesus summons twelve of his disciples, names them one by one, gives them authority, and sends them out. The instructions are striking. Stay with Israel for now. Take nothing — no money, no extra clothing, no traveling kit. Whatever you have received, give freely. In the verses that follow, the warning grows sober: you will be sent like sheep among wolves, you will be hated, you will need to endure. The mission is real, and so is the cost, and Jesus hides neither. Talk about some straight talk!Key Ideas for Preaching1. The mission begins in Jesus' compassion. Before there is a strategy or a sending, there is a look at the crowds and the sense that they are sheep without a shepherd. What does it look like for your congregation's own sense of mission to begin in compassion rather than in obligation or ambition?2. Among the twelve named and sent is Matthew the tax collector — the very man called from his table in last week's Gospel. The lectionary is showing us how quickly being found becomes being sent. Where in your congregation are people waiting to feel qualified before they are willing to be sent, and what would change if they took Matthew's story seriously about themselves?3. The travel instructions are notable for everything they leave out. No money, no bag, no extra clothes. The mission is meant to be carried out in a posture of vulnerability and dependence on those who receive them. What does it look like for your congregation to do mission in a way that does not arrive with all the answers and all the resources — but with empty hands?4. “You received without payment; give without payment.” The freedom of what has been given is meant to set the temperature of how it is given. Where in your congregation has ministry quietly become a transaction, and how might Jesus' instruction reset it?5. The harder verses about persecution are not meant to glamorize suffering. They are meant to be honest with disciples about what the road can cost. How might your sermon prepare your people for the real costs of faithful witness without making them dramatic about minor inconveniences?Significant Cautions• “The harvest is plentiful” has been used to fuel a kind of urgent recruitment that pressures and manipulates. The compassion of Jesus comes first; the harvest language is meant to motivate prayer (“ask the Lord of the harvest”), not panic.• The instruction to “go nowhere among the Gentiles” is specific to this moment in Jesus' ministry. By the end of Matthew's Gospel, the disciples will be sent to all nations. Be careful not to use this verse to argue for any kind of restriction or favoritism today.• “Shake the dust from your feet” has been used to justify cutting off relationships with people who do not respond the way we want. Read in context, it is permission to keep moving without resentment, not a license for contempt.• The persecution verses — brother betraying brother, being hated because of his name — have been pressed into service to dramatize any modern opposition to a religious agenda as fulfillment of prophecy. Be cautious. Jesus is preparing disciples for a specific kind of cost; he is not handing his followers a script for grievance.• “The one who endures to the end will be saved” can land cruelly on people who are exhausted. The verse is encouragement for the road, not a warning that those who burn out are lost.• The naming of twelve men has been used to argue that leadership belongs to a particular kind of person. The wider New Testament — including Mary Magdalene as the first witness of the resurrection, Lydia, Phoebe, Priscilla, and many others — tells a much fuller story about who is sent.Thematic ConnectionsDepending on which track you follow, the day takes one of two shapes — and both lead naturally toward the same Gospel.On the first track, the day is about God's faithfulness to people whose circumstances make the promise look ridiculous. Abraham and Sarah are old, and Sarah laughs. Psalm 116 gives the voice of someone delivered and overflowing with gratitude. Romans 5 grounds hope not in our endurance but in the love of God poured into us. And the Gospel sends an unlikely set of workers — Matthew the tax collector among them — out into a harvest that needs them. The thread is the stubborn, surprising reliability of God when the human side of the equation looks impossible.On the second track, the day is about identity and mission. Exodus names Israel as a kingdom of priests; Psalm 100 calls the whole earth to worship the God who has made and gathered them; Romans grounds the believer in the love of God; and the Gospel sends the disciples out as the very priestly people God has been forming all along. The thread is the long, patient work of God shaping a people who exist for the sake of the world.The Gospel is the natural preaching center either way. Jesus' compassion and the sending of the Twelve gather both threads — God's faithfulness across generations and the formation of a people who are sent. * If you are on Track One, Romans pairs with Genesis to insist that the church's hope is grounded in God's character, not in our circumstances. * If you are on Track Two, Exodus and Psalm 100 prepare the congregation to hear today's sending as the latest chapter in God's long pattern of making a priestly people. * The psalms work best as sung or spoken responses; either one offers a line worth carrying into the sermon — “what shall I return to the Lord?” or “we are God's people, and the sheep of God's pasture.”If you haven't already, be sure to check out “The Thursday Sermon” (which actually comes out on Wednesday each week) as an example of how these preaching insights can be used. There are also additional “Liturgical Resources” for each week that you are WELCOMED and ENCOURAGED to use in your worship services. Acknowledgment to “Lectionary.pro” will be greatly appreciated. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lectionarypro.substack.com/subscribe
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Ronnie's continuing exploration of Psalms from the Revised Common Lectionary arrives at Psalm 104, with an ode to the Psalmists and contemporary artist, Fernando Ortega. Ronnie urges listeners to rediscover God's good creation by saying: "We are more fixated on looking through tiny digital windows on the world than living in and enjoying God's actual, created world - a world that will remain more extraordinary than anything made by human hands or imagination."
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
This guide covers the readings appointed in the Revised Common Lectionary for the Day of Pentecost, Year A, falling on May 24, 2026. Pentecost is the fiftieth day of the Easter season — the Sunday on which the church remembers the coming of the Holy Spirit. The lectionary offers several choices at three of the four reading positions this day, which can be confusing. The note below explains the options, and this guide covers all of them.A note on the options (just so you'll know): The lectionary for Pentecost offers these choices. (1) First Reading: Acts 2:1–21 or Numbers 11:24–30. (2) Epistle: 1 Corinthians 12:3b–13 or Acts 2:1–21 (Acts moves to the epistle slot when Numbers is used as the first reading, so Acts is read either way). (3) Gospel: John 20:19–23 or John 7:37–39. The Psalm (104:24–34, 35b) has no alternative. Most congregations will use Acts 2 as the first reading; this guide treats Acts 2 as primary and gives full coverage to all the alternatives.The ReadingsActs 2:1–21First Reading (Primary Option) — The Day of PentecostSummaryOn the day of Pentecost, the followers of Jesus are gathered together when the Spirit arrives with the sound of rushing wind and what looks like fire resting on each of them. They begin speaking in languages other than their own. A crowd gathers — devout Jewish pilgrims in Jerusalem for the festival from many different countries — and to their astonishment each person hears the disciples speaking in their own native language. Some are amazed; others mock the disciples as drunk. Peter stands up and addresses them, explaining that what they are seeing is the fulfillment of the prophet Joel's promise: in the last days God will pour out the Spirit on every kind of person, crossing the usual lines of age, gender, and social status, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.Pentecost by Kseniya LaptevaKey Ideas for Preaching1. The miracle at Pentecost is, very specifically, a miracle of communication across difference. The disciples do not all speak one universal language that everyone somehow understands. They speak many languages — the actual languages of the people standing in the crowd. The Spirit does not erase cultural and linguistic differences; it crosses them. What might it look like for your congregation to take this seriously? Real welcome is not everyone becoming the same. It is everyone being met in their own voice.2. Peter's quotation from the prophet Joel insists that the Spirit is poured out on everyone: sons and daughters, young and old, those at the top of the social order and those at the bottom. Every line that might limit who has access to God is named and crossed. Which of those lines does your congregation still tend to observe, even without meaning to? Where might the Spirit be inviting you to cross one?3. The crowd's first reaction is mockery. When the Spirit moves, it sometimes produces confusion and ridicule before it produces understanding. That is worth naming honestly for a congregation that might expect a movement of God to look tidy. What if your people's discomfort with something new is not a sign that God is absent, but a sign that something is actually happening?4. The text begins by saying the disciples were all together in one place. That gathering is named as the setting in which the Spirit arrives. The Spirit is not poured out on scattered individuals here — it comes upon a gathered community. What does this say about why it still matters to show up, to be present together, in a culture that often treats faith as a private matter?Significant Cautions• Pentecost is sometimes called the birthday of the church. That phrase can give the impression that God was not at work among people before this moment, or that the Jewish community from which the church grew has somehow been left behind. Neither is true. Peter grounds the whole event in Jewish prophecy. The church does not replace something old; it grows out of it.• The mockers in the crowd are easy to dismiss as villains or to use as a foil for the faithful. But they are not really villains — they are genuinely confused by something they have never seen before. Be careful about setting up a sharp us-versus-them dynamic between the believers and the skeptics.• The promise that everyone who calls on the Lord will be saved is a quotation Peter draws from Joel and applies to this specific moment. Be careful about lifting it out of the story and turning it into a simple formula that ignores the communal witness and the changed lives that surround it in the rest of Acts.Numbers 11:24–30First Reading (Alternative Option) — The Spirit Shared with the EldersSummaryMoses, worn down by the burden of leading Israel through the wilderness, has cried out to God for help. God tells him to gather seventy elders at the tent of meeting and shares some of the spirit resting on Moses with them, and they begin to prophesy — though only this one time. Two of the elders, Eldad and Medad, had stayed back in the camp rather than coming to the tent, and the spirit comes upon them there too. Joshua, Moses's assistant, is disturbed and asks Moses to stop them. Moses refuses, saying he wishes all of God's people were prophets and that God would put the Spirit on every one of them.Key Ideas for Preaching1. Moses's wish — that all the Lord's people would be prophets — is exactly what Pentecost finally delivers. If you are preaching both this text and Acts 2, you can draw that line clearly. What Moses longed for, the Spirit at Pentecost gives. The Spirit is no longer reserved for a few special leaders. What might change in your congregation if people actually believed that the Spirit had been given to all of them, not just to the clergy?2. Eldad and Medad receive the Spirit out in the camp, away from the official gathering, without having done the expected thing of showing up at the tent. The Spirit moves where it wants. Joshua wants to stop them; Moses refuses. Where in your congregation, or your community, is the Spirit clearly at work in places or people you would not have predicted? Are you paying attention, or are you trying to call them back to the tent?3. Moses's response to Joshua shows a kind of leadership that is not threatened by other people receiving what he has. He does not protect his role; he gladly shares it. Many leaders in church and elsewhere quietly fear that empowering other people will diminish them. What would it look like to lead the way Moses leads here?Significant Cautions• The seventy elders prophesy this one time and never again. It is a moment, not an ongoing gift. Be careful about treating Moses's story as a straight preview of Pentecost in a way that flattens out the genuine newness of what happens in Acts. The connection is real and worth drawing; the two events are not identical.• Joshua is not condemned for wanting to stop Eldad and Medad — he is acting out of loyalty to Moses. Be gentle in using him as a negative example. The instinct to protect structures and proper channels is not always wrong. It is just sometimes misapplied.Psalm 104:24–34, 35bThe Psalm — The Spirit That Renews the Face of the EarthSummaryThis part of the great creation psalm marvels at how varied and abundant God's creation is. Every living thing — from the countless creatures of the vast sea to all the rest — looks to God for food and receives what it needs in its time. When God withdraws, creatures are troubled; when God takes back their breath, they die and return to dust. But when God sends out the divine Spirit — the same word that means breath or wind — they are created again, and the face of the earth is made new. The psalm closes with a vow to sing to God for as long as the singer has life, and a prayer that God will be pleased with the song.Key Ideas for Preaching1. The word for Spirit in this psalm is the same word for breath and wind (ruach )— the same creative power that hovered over the waters at the beginning of Genesis. On Pentecost, this image reaches back across the whole Bible and grounds the coming of the Spirit in something much older than the upper room in Jerusalem. The breath of God has been animating creation from the beginning. (Genesis 1:2) What does it do for your congregation to hear that the Spirit who came at Pentecost is the same Spirit who breathed life into the first creatures?2. The line about God sending out the Spirit so that creatures are created and the face of the earth is renewed is one of the most hopeful sentences in the whole Bible. Renewal is what the Spirit does. How might this widen the frame of your Pentecost sermon beyond the church alone? The Spirit who renewed the earth is the same Spirit poured out on the disciples.3. The mood of the psalm is wonder — delight at what God has made. Could Pentecost be an occasion not just to explain the Spirit but to invite your congregation into that same posture: paying attention, giving thanks, being astonished at what God is doing?Significant Cautions• The psalm describes creatures dying when God withdraws breath. It is part of the rhythm of creation in the psalm, but it can land hard in a congregation where someone is grieving. Be careful not to use this image casually in a way that suggests God has withdrawn from a person's loved one.• The poetry of the psalm is expansive and imaginative. Resist the urge to flatten it into a proof text for a particular view of how creation happened or how it works scientifically. The purpose of the psalm is praise, not explanation.1 Corinthians 12:3b–13The Epistle (Primary Option) — Many Gifts, One SpiritSummaryPaul is writing to a church in Corinth that has been arguing about spiritual gifts — specifically, about who has the more impressive ones. He begins with a basic test of authenticity: only the Holy Spirit enables someone to say Jesus is Lord. Then he describes the wide variety of gifts in the church — wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miraculous works, prophecy, discernment, tongues, interpretation — insisting that all of them come from one and the same Spirit, who distributes them as the Spirit chooses, and all are given for the good of the whole community. Paul closes with the image of the body: just as a body is one but has many parts, so it is with Christ. We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body — Jews and Greeks, enslaved and free — and we all share in the one Spirit.Key Ideas for Preaching1. The gifts Paul lists are not awards for spiritual achievement. They are given by the Spirit, however the Spirit chooses, and they are given for the benefit of the whole community rather than the prestige of the recipient. This cuts both ways. It speaks to the person who quietly believes their gift makes them important. It also speaks to the person who quietly believes they have no gift at all. Neither of those positions matches the text. What might happen if your congregation actually believed that every person in the room had been given something for the good of everyone else?2. The body image at the end of the passage looks simple but carries real weight. Every part of the body is needed. No part can opt out, and no part can claim to be more important than another. What does the body of your congregation actually look like? Which members get treated as more important? Which members feel like they barely belong? What would change if everyone took Paul at his word here?3. Paul is not writing a peaceful, theoretical description of an ideal community. He is writing pastoral correction to a real church that is fighting about exactly this issue. That makes the passage more useful, not less. Where is your congregation tempted to rank one another — by gift, by giving, by visibility, by status — and what would Paul have to say about it?4. The last line of the passage says that the unity Paul is describing is already a reality. It happened in baptism. The congregation is not being asked to build unity from scratch; it is being asked to live into something that has already been given. How does it change the way you preach about unity when you stop treating it as a goal and start treating it as a gift to be received?Significant Cautions• Lists of spiritual gifts have sometimes been used to rank Christians, or to claim that one particular gift — often speaking in tongues — is the real sign that the Spirit is present. Paul's whole argument here runs against that use. The Spirit gives whatever the Spirit chooses to give. No person and no group gets to decide which gifts count the most.• Paul mentions the categories of “enslaved or free” alongside Jews and Greeks. He does not, in this letter, challenge slavery as an institution. Be honest about that. The image of being one body in Christ did not, on its own, end the social and economic injustices of the ancient world. Speaking of unity in Christ should not be used to suggest that hard questions of justice take care of themselves.• The unity Paul describes is not uniformity. The whole point of the body image is that the body has many different parts that do different things. Be careful not to use the language of one body to pressure a diverse congregation into one cultural or stylistic expression of worship.John 20:19–23The Gospel (Primary Option) — Peace and the Breath of the SpiritSummaryOn the evening of the first Easter Sunday, the disciples are huddled together behind locked doors because they are afraid. Jesus comes and stands among them and says, peace be with you. He shows them the wounds in his hands and his side, and they are overjoyed. He says it a second time: peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you. Then he breathes on them and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit. If they forgive anyone's sins, those sins are forgiven; if they hold them against someone, the sins remain.Key Ideas for Preaching1. Jesus breathes on the disciples and gives them the Spirit. The image deliberately echoes the moment in Genesis when God breathed life into the first human being. This is presented as a kind of new creation. How might it shift the meaning of Pentecost for your congregation to see it as part of God's long pattern of creating and renewing life, rather than as an isolated, one-time event?2. In John's telling, the Spirit is given on Easter evening — not fifty days later. That is a different account than the one in Acts 2. Rather than smoothing over the difference, what would it look like to be honest with your congregation that the two accounts are doing different theological work? John ties the Spirit directly to the resurrection. Acts ties it to the Jewish festival of Pentecost. Both are saying something true about who the Spirit is.3. The commission and the gift come together. As the Father has sent me, Jesus says, so I am sending you — and then he gives them the Spirit. The Spirit is not given for a private spiritual experience. It is given for a sending. What does it mean for your congregation to receive a gift that, from its very first moment, is pointed outward?4. Jesus places in the hands of this community the responsibility of forgiving sins, of releasing one another from what binds. This has caused real argument in the church about authority. But at the very least, what would it look like for your congregation to take seriously the practice of concrete, embodied forgiveness — not as an abstract idea but as something this community is actually called to do?Significant Cautions• The difference between John's account and Acts is real. John puts the Spirit on Easter evening, and Acts puts it fifty days later at Pentecost. Resist the temptation to harmonize them or explain the difference away. Sermons that name the difference honestly tend to land better than sermons that pretend it is not there.• Jesus says that if the disciples retain sins, those sins are retained. Throughout history, this line has been used to justify exclusion, punishment, and harsh church discipline. Be clear that the main direction of what Jesus says here is toward forgiveness — the releasing of what binds people — not toward the exercise of power over those who are kept out.• The locked doors and the fear of the disciples can be used to make the post-Easter community look like a failure. But these are still the people Jesus comes to and the people he sends. Their fear is the starting point of the story, not the verdict on them. Take care not to shame your congregation's own fear when you preach this scene.John 7:37–39The Gospel (Alternative Option) — Rivers of Living WaterSummaryOn the last and most important day of the Festival of Tabernacles, Jesus stands up in the temple courts and cries out, inviting anyone who is thirsty to come to him and drink. Whoever believes in him, he says, will have rivers of living water flowing from within. John then adds a note explaining that Jesus was speaking about the Spirit, who would be given to believers later — after Jesus had been glorified.Key Ideas for Preaching1. The image of rivers of living water flowing from inside a person is one of the most vivid pictures of the Spirit in any of the Gospels. It is not a trickle. It is not a reservoir you fill up once. It is an ongoing, outward flow. The Spirit is not given to be stored. What would it look like for your congregation to think of the Spirit not as something they have, but as something that flows through them on its way to someone else?2. Jesus makes this announcement on the last day of the Festival of Tabernacles, when water was being poured out as a ritual prayer for rain. The crowd would have felt the weight of the image right away. Could your congregation feel what it means to be genuinely thirsty — not mildly curious about God, but actually in need?3. John explains in a brief note that the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified. The coming of the Spirit is tied directly to the cross and the resurrection. How does it deepen a Pentecost sermon to remind the congregation that the Spirit they celebrate today comes as the fruit of what happened at Easter?Significant Cautions• The phrase about living water flowing from within can sound as though the Spirit is essentially a private inner experience of abundance. But the setting here is a public festival, and Jesus is shouting in the middle of a crowd. The water flows outward, not just inward. Be careful with a reading that turns this into a purely personal experience.• Jesus says the scripture has said something about rivers of living water, but no single passage in the Hebrew Bible is a clear match. Different scholars suggest different texts. Avoid confidently pointing to one specific passage as the source without acknowledging that no one is sure.Thematic ConnectionsEvery text appointed for Pentecost points toward the same central claim: the Spirit of God is now given freely, widely, and without the restrictions that once limited who could receive it. * In Acts, the Spirit crosses every linguistic and cultural line in Jerusalem. * In Numbers, it escapes the official gathering and finds two men out in the camp. * In Psalm 104, it is the breath that renews the whole face of the earth. * In 1 Corinthians, it distributes gifts to every member of the body for the good of the whole community. * In John, it is given on Easter evening to a group of frightened disciples and turns them into a sent people — or it is the living water that flows outward from whoever believes.Acts 2 is the natural center for Pentecost preaching. It is the story the day is built around, and its images of wind and fire and languages are difficult to displace. But 1 Corinthians 12 offers a strong complementary angle for congregations that need to hear about the practical, community-shaping work of the Spirit rather than just its dramatic arrival. And for congregations that preached Acts 2 last year and want something different, either John 7:37–39 or John 20:19–23 opens a distinctive door. The psalm works best in worship as a spoken or sung response rather than as the main preaching text, though its image of the Spirit renewing the face of the earth is worth a sentence or two in almost any Pentecost sermon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lectionarypro.substack.com/subscribe
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
Daily Lectionary with Hunter Barnes takes listeners through the daily Bible readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Our lectionary readings follow a three year cycle through the Bible. Join Christians around the world in daily readings of the Bible as they point our hearts to the God who is love. Find out more at www.dailyradiobible.comPartner with us to produce these podcasts by gifting us HERE.We are reading through the New Living Translation. Listen to our daily podcast for KidsHERE on Spotify HERE on itunes PodcastListen to the Daily Proverbs podcast.HERE on SpotityHERE on itunes PodcastLeave a voicemail here: https://www.speakpipe.com/dailyradiobible
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