Tag Archives: fear

Matthew: “Jesus is the Light!” Jesus: “You are the light!” (5th Sunday after the Epiphany, 2/8/2026)

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Readings

Last week we heard the prophet Micah: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” This week’s reading from Isaiah is working the same question. We might hear it as fleshing out Micah’s answer:

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

Doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly with God: both about responding to specific needs and reknitting the torn fabric of our culture, recovering our common humanity.

And, like last week’s psalm (Psalm 15), Psalm 112 offers a portrait of those who do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God. But it does something more, and, heading towards today’s Gospel, it’s worth noticing. So please turn to pp.754-755 of the BCP. Both psalms are acrostic, each line ordered—after the initial “Hallelujah”—by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, running from A to Z, as it were.

Back in Genesis we hear “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (1:26); we might hear these two psalms as a meditation on how that plays out.

The divine-human relation is certainly not symmetrical. Both psalms begin with “Hallelujah!” (Not first “Praise Yah” and then “Praise Us.”) The first psalm ends with “the fear of the Lord;” the second begins by declaring “happy” (there’s that word again that we met in last week’s Beatitudes) “they who fear the Lord.”

What is striking is the celebration of image/likeness, in the identical vocabulary (in Hebrew) in vv.3-4:

111:3b and his righteousness endures forever.
112:3b and their righteousness will last forever.

111:4b the Lord is gracious and full of compassion.
112:4b the righteous are merciful and full of compassion.

The celebration continues, taking the differences of scale into account. The Lord is generous (vv.5a, 6b, 9a), as are the righteous (vv.5a, 9a).

Besides the Creator/creature difference, perhaps the most obvious difference is that the Lord is unopposed; the idols of the nations are not worth mentioning. The righteous, on the other hand, live in the midst of the wicked. And here’s where the psalm notices a corollary to the fear of the Lord. The righteous fear the Lord. So they do not fear evil rumors (v.7), they do not “shrink” (v.8, same Hebrew word). A proper fear/reverence of God puts others who demand our fear into perspective.

Today’s Gospel: the middle section of Matthew 5. Last week we heard the first section, the Beatitudes, another fleshing out of Micah’s “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” The third section, that series of “you have heard…but I say to you,” gets preempted this year by Lent.

So what’s in this middle section?

First, the hearers as salt and light. Salt is an open-ended metaphor, inviting us to meditate on it, and see where that meditation leads. Light, on the other hand, is an image Matthew works with repeatedly. Probably the most important connection would be in Matthew 4, citing Isaiah: “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned” (4:16). That would be Jesus. Then in today’s reading: “You are the light of the world.”

It’s the same move made in that Isaiah text that begins “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me” (61:1) that Jesus reads in the synagogue in Nazareth. By v.3 the text is talking about those whom the speaker has touched:

They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations. (Isa 61:3b-4)

That, as you probably recognize, is the same project our first reading from Isaiah 58 was describing. Parenthetically, it’s easy to focus on Jesus as the light of the world, the generous God of Ps 111, and postpone “you are the light of the world” and Ps 112. In the first we’re the beneficiaries; in the second we’re also the agents. But it’s a package deal.

The Beatitudes: an implicit description of both Jesus as light and Jesus’ followers as light.

The second part of today’s Gospel is the lead-in to the “you have heard…but I say to you” section. Whatever Jesus is doing there, it’s fulfilling, not abolishing the law and the prophets. Since Lent is preempting hearing vv.21-48 this year, a couple general comments:

First, throughout the section we might more usefully translate “you have heard…and I say to you.” Jesus is fulfilling, not abolishing.

Second, Jesus’ words are addressed to us more as a parish than as individuals who happen to be in a parish. So the question they’re repeatedly asking: How do we live together in ways that support hearing and responding to these words?

Third, Jesus ends the section with “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That’s not about our being sinless. Recall the Beatitude “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” Jesus recognizes that we’ll always need mercy. And later in the Gospel: “Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times’” (18:21-22). What’s the point, then? It’s a replay of Ps 111-112’s insight: imitate this generous God. And we might recall Vince Lombardi: “Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.”

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.

We need, Jesus tells us, to up our game; this third section (vv. 21-48) provides examples.

Two more things and I’ll close. Paul’s contrast between God’s wisdom and the wisdom of this age maps in interesting ways on Jesus’ words. The wisdom of this age regards the Beatitudes as folly. Ditto Ps 112. This world’s wisdom: happiness consists in imitating the carnivores, the more powerful and brutal the better. That can generate a lot of fear, so Ps 112’s implicit call to nurture our fear/reverence of God as a sort of vaccination remains relevant.

Second, there’s important tension between this week’s “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” and last week’s “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (5:11). It’s not that the disciples’ different actions are eliciting different responses; it’s that they have little control over the response they’ll receive—as Jesus had little control. His actions were celebrated by the crowds pretty much until Holy Week. John Howard Yoder nails it: “The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship between cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection.”[1]

How to pull this together? I think Matthew would be happy for us to return to Ps 112:

Hallelujah!
Happy are they who fear the Lord
and have great delight in his commandments!

[1] Cited in Hauerwas, Matthew, p.72.

Fear and Light (3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, 1/25/2026)

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Readings

Today’s readings: such a mixed bag! The Gospel continues Epiphany themes—more on that later. The reading from Isaiah: presumably selected because Matthew quotes from it. Psalm 27: perhaps because it’s ‘light’ (“The Lord is my light”) echoes the light in Isaiah and Matthew. 1st Corinthians: well, this is when the lectionary wants us reading 1st Corinthians. Nevertheless, because all the texts are talking about the same God and the same humans, there are some interesting connections.

Today’s psalm: besides the light image, an exploration of what to do with fear. The psalmist celebrates God’s deliverance in the past, but there are still enemies out there. Verse 10: “Hearken to my voice, O Lord, when I call; / have mercy on me and answer me.” Then there’s the psalm’s last verse, omitted by the lectionary: “O tarry and await the Lord’s pleasure; / be strong, and he shall comfort your heart; / wait patiently for the Lord.” The Lord’s timing only sometimes matches our preferred timing, so patience is necessary. What to do with fear? Acknowledge it, but don’t give it the steering wheel. God has been faithful in the past; God will prove faithful in the future; we can bring even our fear before God. Recall the saying attributed to Winston Churchill: “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Speaking of fear, our Gospel begins with “When Jesus heard that John had been arrested.” Matthew doesn’t mention it, but John the Evangelist tells us that there was a period in which John the Baptist and Jesus were baptizing in the same region (Jn 3:22-24). You never know how narrow or broad these sweeps are going to be, so Jesus, prudently, leaves Herod’s jurisdiction. Galilee is not safe, but safer.

Matthew then pairs Jesus’ move from Nazareth to Capernaum with a citation from Isaiah. Why? Well, probably for at least three reasons.

First, one of Matthew’s recurrent themes (one of our Epiphany themes) is that this Jewish Messiah is good news for the Gentiles. That’s important to the mixed Jewish/Gentile congregations for whom he’s writing. So the phrase “Galilee of the nations” in Isaiah is important.

Second, Matthew, like John, likes that light image. John the Evangelist has Jesus saying “I am the light of the world” (8:12); the quote from Isaiah is Matthew’s equivalent. It’s also a setup for what we’ll hear in the next chapter, toward the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount: “You are the light of the world” (Mat 5:14). Back in the first chapter the angel said to Joseph “he will save his people from their sins” (1:21); that’s about empowerment.

(Let’s stay with that for a moment. Matthew doesn’t waste time between “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light” (4:16) and “You are the light of the world” (5:14). It’s the same move made in Isa 61:1ff which lies behind the first three beatitudes in Matt 5:3-5, from “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me” (61:1) to “to provide for those who mourn in Zion…  They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations” (61:3-4; italics mine). Easy to focus on the benefits of salvation, but without an equal focus on being empowered and sent (John 20:21), we miss the point.)

Third, in the minds of some, Jesus’ association with Galilee counted against him being the Messiah. From John’s Gospel: “Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?” (7:41). And here, I think, Matthew is relying not only on the text he quotes, but on the continuation of the text. The reason for the light and joy Isaiah describes: “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (9:6). Galilee is precisely where we should expect the Messiah’s presence to be felt. Matthew sees the situation Isaiah faced prefiguring the situation in Jesus’ time, and builds on it!

Moving on, I think it’s helpful to have Handel’s “For unto us a child is born” ringing in our ears as we read the calling of the disciples, because it gives a sense of the authority of the one doing the calling. One commentator (Boring) sees the story as discipleship stripped down to its essentials. Why are we disciples? Jesus called us.

Circling back to today’s psalm and the beginning of the Gospel text (“Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested”) notice what Matthew leaves implicit. With the combination of Roman occupation and compliant local elites, no occupation is safe, but fishing is usually safer than most. Jesus calls them to leave that, and today’s gradual hymn reminded us of the consequences (“Young John who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless in Patmos died. Peter, who hauled the teeming net, head-down was crucified” [The Hymnal 1982¸ 661].) “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”

After the other readings, the 1st Corinthians reading is almost comic relief. Jesus, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” has called us, and here we are, driven by our fears to seek status through one-upmanship. “’I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’” Almost comic relief, because whatever Corinth needs, it isn’t more darkness, and Jesus really needs those folk to be light.

So perhaps our lessons suggest an additional piece of advice to “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” That would be: “Going through hell doesn’t cancel the need to repent.” Matthew summarized Jesus’ message in today’s reading: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” It’s easy to postpone repentance until we’ve—say—gotten rid of the Roman occupation. But that simply guarantees that if we get power, we’ll use it as destructively as the Romans did.

“The Lord is my light.” Let us, with patience, allow that light to continue to do its work within and among us, the work that we know needs doing, the work about which we’re clueless. And we can do so with confidence, for the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace has promised to be with us always.

Jesus: God is generous; be like God (9th Sunday after Pentecost, 8/10/2025)

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Readings (Track 2)

Today’s Gospel contains a promise, a warning, and a surprise—more than enough for one sermon!

The promise: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” It’s probably originally addressed to the disciples, to whom last month we heard Jesus say “See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves” (Lk. 10:3).

“Do not be afraid.” Not because there aren’t things to fear, but because all these are no match for the Father’s good pleasure.

“Do not be afraid.” Our efforts often seem to have no effect; this kingdom is pure gift.

What kingdom are we talking about? Recall Daniel’s vision: four beasts (empires) rise from the chaotic sea, each more inhuman than the last. The Ancient of Days deals with them. Then: “I saw one like a son of man / coming with the clouds of heaven. / And he came to the Ancient One / and was presented before him. / 14 To him was given dominion / and glory and kingship, / that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” (7:13-14).

That was an important vision for Jesus, the reason he often referred to himself as “the son of man.” It was important enough that Jesus needed to correct it; vision and reality often don’t correlate exactly. The vision: “that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.” Jesus: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). And if this is what Jesus is about, it’s what his followers are to be about. Recall Jesus’ words leading up to that: “42 ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many’” (Mk. 10:42-45).

That’s the kingdom the Father is pleased to give to the disciples, to us. Lambs in the midst of wolves, we hang onto it. And we’re greatly encouraged to have Abraham as our adoptive father (our first lesson). Descendants as numerous as the stars at his age? About as believable as us receiving the kingdom. But he believes and it happens.

The warning: stay alert (in the short parable about the waiting servants). What’s that about? In today’s Gospel Jesus doesn’t explain it, but starting with “Be dressed for action” he assumes his absence. His return is certain, but the timing unknown. Stay alert, first, because with the timing unknown it’s not prudent to put off the more difficult parts of discipleship until tomorrow. Stay alert, second, because it’s too easy to fall into the habits of Jesus’ opponents.

A few weeks ago our Gospel text from Luke centered on the Lord’s Prayer. Luke then described multiple conflicts with Jesus’ opponents. Jesus to a Pharisee: “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness” (11:39). So our current chapter (chapter 12) begins with Jesus warning the crowd: “”Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is, their hypocrisy” (12:1). Surprisingly, in the middle of his teaching someone calls out “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” We heard that last week. To Jesus it sounds like the same greed he encountered among the Pharisees, so tells the parable of the rich fool and transitions into a longer teaching about the Father’s generosity and pointlessness of worry (the last bit of which we heard today).

Stay alert. The Gospels record Jesus’ critiques of the Pharisees not because the Pharisees were particularly bad, but because we too easily fall into the same errors, as twenty centuries of Church history sadly attest. Circling back to “it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” the last thing we want to do is take that as license to “lord it over” others, to be “tyrants.” Stay alert.

The surprise. Let’s return to that short waiting servants parable. “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes…” However we expect it to continue, it isn’t with “truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.” Jesus is really serious about this “not to be served but to serve.” The Table: not where we feed God, but where God feeds us. What might this do to our imaginations? I’m intrigued by Miroslav Volf’s suggestion regarding the New Jerusalem: “God has now made the world such that God does not need to rule” (The Home of God p.214).

Finally, a short postscript. This coming of the Son of Man “at an unexpected hour:” that’s about the end of this age, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, that’s primarily what “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again” is about. But recall Jesus’ parable towards the end of Matthew:

“’Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’” (25:37-40). That also is a coming of the Son of Man. That also is a reason to stay alert.

John the Baptist on putting “trust and be not afraid” into practice (3rd Sunday of Advent, December 15, 2024)

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Readings

So, today’s candle, pink, not violet. The traditional name for the third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete (Rejoice). There’s plenty of rejoicing in the first three readings, but John the Baptist’s instructions might sound more like violet. And Luke ends that account with “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.” How’s that good news?

Last week we heard John saying “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.” Well, there go the property values! God’s coming to sort things out. Whether I hear that as good news can easily depend on how comfortable I am with current arrangements (economic, social, etc.). So Luke’s “good news to the people” might be a challenge: am I willing to stand enough with the poor and dispossessed to welcome God’s coming as good news?

God’s sorting things out: how’s that supposed to work? Zephaniah: “I will deal with all your oppressors at that time.” John: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Here what John does is more important than what John says, because it’s too easy to interpret John’s words (and many other words in Scripture) in ways that collide with Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s observation (“If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds”, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”). John calls everyone to baptism: everyone in the water! Continuing repentance is everyone’s work.

Nevertheless, this pink candle: Rejoice. Rejoice, not because things are rosy, but because God’s coming. Paul: “The Lord is near.” Or, with Isaiah: “I will trust in him and not be afraid.” Isaiah isn’t talking about emotions. Often fear is knocking on the door. It’s a matter of what we choose to do, let fear in or let it keep knocking; act on the basis of fear, or trust.

This is what John the Baptist is talking about in the bulk of today’s reading. Yes, he’s talking about repentance. But ‘repentance’ is just a fancy word for making a U-turn: stop doing that, start doing this. Stop acting out of fear (tax collectors: collecting more than prescribed; soldiers: false accusations); start acting out of trust (“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”). For John, as for Scripture in general, fear and trust aren’t isolated emotions, but the more-or-less conscious motors of our everyday actions.

Two more things about fear and trust, and then we’re about done. First, notice that John’s instructions mostly have to do with the moments when we may think we’re not accountable to anyone. During Advent our culture directs us largely to observable matters: getting the Christmas lights up, sending out cards, buying gifts, issuing invitations. Our tradition doesn’t denigrate that, but does direct us to the non-observable matters, the things we think to do with impunity. While these things may represent a small or large sphere of action; they are our clearest testimony to whether we view God’s coming kingdom as good news or not. And the choices we make there are forming us into people who will feel at home in that kingdom—or not.

Second, these actions expressing trust: in Zephaniah we heard “And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.” One of the ways God does this is through the trusting actions of former oppressors. So the “Gaudete/Rejoice” is about not just God’s future coming, but about the present effects of our responses to that coming.

How might we summarize John’s “good news” today? The Coming One, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and fire, is more than capable of empowering us to act in the daily grind not out of fear, but out of trust. Rejoice!

Re the Daily Office Readings 4/19/2020

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The Readings: Exodus 14:5-22; 1 John 1:1-7; John 14:1-7

Exodus: A paradigmatic deliverance story, also, perhaps, a reflection on the challenge of belief. The Hebrew words for ‘to see’ (rāˀâ) and ‘to fear’ (yārāˀ) are close in sound, and the story employs them from the introduction of the crisis to its resolution (‘to see’: 14:13, 30, 31; ‘to fear’ 14:10, 13, 31). And so the story ends (tomorrow’s reading) with “Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the LORD and believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses” (v.31).

That’s the end of that story; it’s more challenging in the middle. The Letter to the Hebrews: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (11:1). I like Jim Wallis’ paraphrase: “Hope means believing in spite of the evidence and then watching the evidence change” (“The Way of Hope,” written in 2015, but equally relevant today).

Program note: Jesus’ words in John come right after Judas’ departure to betray Jesus and Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denials. The soundtrack for Exodus is increasingly dominated by approaching Egyptian army; the soundtrack for John by the approaching soldiers and police.

COVID-19 and fear, both in the air. So I might take some time to enter today’s Exodus reading contemplatively. The Jesuits talk of “composing the place,” asking for God’s help to imagine oneself in the story in as much detail as possible. What do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell? What do I feel? What do I taste? Now, the place composed, I ask God to be with me as I let the story play out in my imagination. How will the story play out? What will God and I discover together? (See “Father James Martin: An Introduction to Ignatian Contemplation.)