8 June 2026 - tldr for the Gospel

Today's Readings
(Audio)

There was a sense in the times of the Old Testament that physical and material blessings were a gift from God, and this was in fact the case. Moreover we see in the story of Job the idea that the privation of those blessings was a curse. Job's story revealed that it was not a curse caused by personal guilt. But it was nonetheless seen as a tragedy, something to be endured until material blessings could be restored. There was scant a hint even in Job that an absence of material blessings could yield even more important spiritual goods. Yet who can deny that Job's experience of God's self-revelation, terrifying and humbling as it was, was such a good? The fact that God eventually gave him double for the material blessings he lost was less significant than his spiritual gain. We can see this from the way Job became a vehicle for the redemption of others, those friends of his that had spoken against him. Yet neither Job nor anyone who knew of that story would have been so presumptuous as to call him blessed for what he endured. We can see from his story how much the beatitudes of Jesus really did turn traditional expectations upside down.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.

A variety of conditions and dispositions that most people believed meant something must have gone wrong were instead called blessed by Jesus. The absence of material goods (or at least detachment from them) and the absence of temporary worldly mirth could yield better riches and truer joy. A willingness to not attempt to dominate or control through physical or political strength, far from being tantamount to surrender, could yield a greater victory, or better, participation in the only true victory, that of Jesus himself. Somehow it was better for the saints that they have the opportunity to hunger and thirst for righteousness than to live in a perfect world where they could take the satisfaction of those desires for granted. Mercy was not a weakness or a compromise, but the underlying fabric of reality, since it was an imitation of God. The clean of heart weren't naively foregoing pleasures that they might have otherwise enjoyed had they been more savvy. Rather, they were keeping themselves free to receive greater spiritual pleasures. They refused to yet their hearts be obscured by the crud and gunk of lesser illicit pleasures so that they would be clear to perceive the true light shining from the face of God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.

Many today still consider peacemakers to be people too weak to impose their will on others, seekers of compromise in lieu of victory they cannot attain. But what if peace is actually a better and more permanent goal than victory? What does victory amount to in the end, beyond pride and vainglory, if the land does not enjoy peace after the struggle? Peacemakers, realizing the great good of peace, aren't content to wait for any one side to dominate. Instead, they struggle and strive to convince others to choose peace now rather than later. They tell us that justice can be realized and arguments can be resolved without the need for situations to devolve into violence. They don't allow us to maintain they illusion that one side is necessarily correct just because that side wins. Jesus himself was preeminently a peacemaker. He didn't achieve victory by fighting his adversaries, but rather by converting them. He was expected to be a military messiah. But instead he allowed himself to be put to death so that he could reestablish peace between men and God, and from that basis, between men themselves. Thus the peacemakers are children of God insofar as they share the heart of the Son of God himself.

Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.

Imitating the beatitudes means becoming more like Jesus himself. But the more closely we resemble him the more the world will necessarily feel threatened. The more we suggest that riches are not an absolute good, well, its easy to see what happens. The only reason that the beatitudes could have been so well received when Jesus delivered them was because of how Jesus himself lived and demonstrated them in his own life. Becoming like Jesus is a pleasant cliche until we explain that it means embracing the spiritual ideals present in the beatitudes. Then it becomes threatening. Jesus is the only way to salvation, as we know and proclaim. But his way is this way specifically. The only way this will be plausible to others in our own day is if we actually begin to live it ourselves

An upshot to the beatitudes is that we no longer need to consider ourselves cursed when we get what we don't want or don't get what we do want. They can instead become concrete examples of all things working together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose (see Romans 8:28).    

Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward will be great in heaven.

The Dameans - Beatitudes

 

7 June 2026 - Body and Blood, Fire and Spirit

Today's Readings
(Audio)

"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" 

To give his flesh as bread for the life of the world was a promise that was about as far from what was expected of the messiah as anything could be. It seemed impossible. And if it were somehow possible it seemed ill-advised. This was at least the posture of those who had grown a little too accustomed to living more on bread than on "every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD". The alternative posture was not necessarily one of perfect comprehension. Peter and the others did not understand the why or the how of what Jesus had said. But they continued to trust in his words. They knew that if he had said it he could do it. He could himself become, in his flesh, life-giving bread for the world.

Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you do not have life within you. 

As difficult of a doctrine as the Eucharist is it is far more strange and incomprehensible without the context of the Old Testament. That the Eucharist didn't come out of nowhere was tied to the fact that Jesus was, as John the Baptist pointed out, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. It was the sacrifice of the lamb that allowed its life to be offered to God and then shared by those who offered it. But the lamb was only a temporary stand-in while the world waited on the one who could truly offer what the lamb merely signified. 

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (see First Corinthians 5:7-8).

What is expected of us now that the true lamb of God has been offered? That we keep the feast, celebrate the festival. And what festival is that, exactly? Merely that of the Old Covenant? No, because it was transformed by the Passover meal Jesus celebrated in his Last Supper. During the meal Jesus offered his own Body and Blood as a living sacrifice to the Father. It was the unbloody version of what was about the take place on the cross. In fact, without the Last Supper the cross would not have been recognizable as a liturgical sacrifice. It would have only seemed to be an execution. But that separation of the Blood from the Body of Jesus on the cross was in fact the same offering Jesus made at his Last Supper. And it is the same offering that he continues to make through his priesthood in every valid mass. 

All of the sacrifices offered before Jesus in some way addressed the guilt of sin, but only temporarily and imperfectly. They did not address the root cause. The animals could not really take upon them the sins of others. A lamb could not convey its spotless innocence to those who partook. Even those who anointed their doorposts with the blood of the lamb only deferred death from taking them temporarily. It would still come for them in time. The sacrificial meal could in some sense unite those who received it. But it could not truly bring them together as one Body.

For my flesh is true food,
and my blood is true drink. 
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
remains in me and I in him. 

The self-offering of Jesus was different. So too were the Body and Blood that with which he desired to feed the world from the sacrificial meals found in the Old Testament. In feeding on Jesus his followers received the true life that was only hinted at in the past. The blood, which contained, as it was thought, the life of the animal, had been reserved for God. Drinking blood was considered an abomination. But now, precisely because it was God's own life that was to be shared, partaking in the Blood of Jesus was not only permitted, but commanded. The sins of those who availed themselves of this sacrifice were truly forgiven. The more they consumed the sacrificial lamb the more the root cause of sin would be addressed and they themselves transformed. It was truly food for the journey, addressing exactly the needs of those who are pilgrims in this world. And where other meals may bring us together, the Eucharist truly makes us one, since it unites all of us to the one Body of Jesus himself.

Because the loaf of bread is one,
we, though many, are one body,
for we all partake of the one loaf.

We have been told much about the promise of the Eucharist. And yet it remains an elusive mystery, since our own experience of it often seems so ordinary. After all the bread and the wine, though transformed, still seem ordinary to our senses. And so too with the transformation that they bring about in us. It is usually not overwhelmingly obvious to us in the moment. But it is real. Therefore we should not grow lukewarm and take this gift for granted. We should come and keep coming to the one whose words are Spirit in life. We need to pray for the faith to see past the humble appearances of bread and wine to everything promised to us by Jesus himself contained within. The more we approach the Eucharist with faith the more we will be open to being transformed by it.

He who eats it with faith, eats Fire and Spirit 
- Saint Ephrem the Syrian

Damascus Worship (feat. MarySarah Menkhaus) - Body And Blood

 

 

6 June 2026 - when a little is a lot

Today's Readings
(Audio)

They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext,
recite lengthy prayers.

No amount of religious facade or superficial generosity can take the place of the need for a genuine gift of self. But we tend to be more interested in looking the part than in acting it. We want to be seen as good people but actually being good is fairly far down our list of priorities. As long as others are greeting us and giving us due honor we convince ourselves that we must be doing enough. And when it doesn't feel enough we may pray more, but we don't often give more of ourselves. We tend to make the easy moves, ones that don't really touch the deeper levels of our being. We may have been the sort to wear a What Would Jesus Do Bracelet when those were popular, but without reflecting much on what he would in fact have done. We may sometimes wear a cross or even a crucifix without thinking much about the sacrifice it represents.

They will receive a very severe condemnation.

We may shy away from genuine effort because it often feels so impossible to have a meaningful impact. When we do try to give of ourselves for the sake of God and neighbor it seems so difficult to move the needle in any noticeable way. And we want to gauge whether or not we are actually doing what we ought based on whether or not it yields results. But we should not be so fixated on what we are able to accomplish. The hidden nature of the progress of the Kingdom and the long time horizon in which it takes shape imply that we do not always see the connection between our efforts and their ultimate fruits. We are creatures who can never be in control of outcomes. So instead we must be faithful to do what is our part, to give of ourselves, and trust God to handle the rest.

A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. 

The idea we are supposed to take from this widow is not necessarily that we should divest ourselves of all of our possessions. But we are to entrust our efforts to God just as she did. What is asked of us often feels too difficult when especially at times when it will apparently be of little use to others. But this is precisely the call: to do little things with great love. The little things are not little because they are easy, but because they don't seem great in our eyes. But, as we see this morning, they are great in God's eyes. And he is able to far outmatch our generosity. As we give of ourselves he increases our capacity to do so. It may be that he increases it in a financial sense. But we will certainly grow in love.

Paul expected Timothy to understand this when he commanded, "be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient", whether the effort seems likely to bring useful results or not. It was a call to be faithful in sharing the gift he had received. And although we have different gifts, we have the same call. Let us be faithful to it, so much so that we can say, together with Paul:

I have competed well;
I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.

Nichole Nordeman - You Are My All In All

 

5 July 2026 - the Lord said to my lord

Today's Readings
(Audio)

How do the scribes claim that the Christ is the son of David?

Jesus pointed out an apparent contradiction between a psalm that was widely considered to have messianic connotations and the actual content of that psalm. He did so not in order to disagree with the interpretation of the psalm but rather to shed light on it and unlock it even more fully.

David himself was considered to be the author of the psalm in question. Thus he was person indicated by "my" in the statement "The Lord said to my lord". The two others indicated in the statement were God, "Lord" with a capital "L" and another lord, this one considered to be the messiah who was to sit at the right hand of God. But the messiah was commonly (and correctly) understood to be coming from the descendants of David. Yet David would not address any normal son as his lord. Just the opposite. So something different was happening here. What could account for one who was both David's son and yet his lord? 

David himself calls him ‘lord’;
so how is he his son?”

At another time Jesus explained that there was one greater than Solomon, a son of David, present in his person. He himself was greater than Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. And though he was the descendant of David he was greater even than David himself. This could not have been the case if he was offspring in the normal sense, simply a better version of Solomon, or something along those lines. Lordship is the sense of royalty was never going to produce a son superior to his father and held in honor over him. But what if Jesus possessed Lordship in some other sense? What if the son of David was also the son of the God, and therefore himself capital "L" Lord in the sense of the Lord of all creature? This was never the sort of thing Jesus simply asserted outright. Rather, he hinted at it so that people could make the mental leap themselves as they were prepared to do so. He didn't have to testify to himself, to force feed an audience that was not entirely onboard. All he had to do was set the table. Seeing the feast, the people were happy to eat at his banquet of wisdom.

The great crowd heard this with delight.

We can see that the people had been prepared for the coming of the messiah by the prophecies in the Scriptures. And even Jesus himself chose to demonstrate his messianic claims on the basis of the Scriptures, which were in fact, as he said, written about him (see John 5:46-47). Nor did the Scriptures become obsolete for this purpose after the coming of Jesus, as though his miraculous resurrection rendered the evidence of the prophets unnecessary. It was not the case that once Jesus came the Old Testament could be tidily set aside. Though it may contain much that is shocking, much that is hard to understand, and needs much in the way of context to process, it is nevertheless vital for understanding why Jesus came, what he did, and what he still means to the world. As Paul reminded Timothy:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching,
for refutation, for correction,
and for training in righteousness,
so that one who belongs to God may be competent,
equipped for every good work.

By themselves the Scriptures of the Old Testament cannot give us salvation. But our faith in Jesus unlocks them so that they really become capable of giving us "wisdom for salvation". In our Gospel reading we see one such way in which the Scriptures invite us to have faith and faith in turn unlocks the Scriptures. But they are replete with such examples. We may not think them practical for refutation or correction of our contemporaries, who believe themselves to be too sophisticated for what they probably consider to be archaic nonsense. But the wisdom we need is really found therein. We only need the eyes of faith to see it. Jesus invites us to have such eyes open to his revelation. If we learn to do so we too will join the crowd in their delight.

Songs In His Presence - Like A Son Of Man

 

4 June 2026 - in the first place

Today's Readings
(Audio)

"Which is the first of all the commandments?"

This question could be asked in different ways. One could ask in order to find and excuse to neglect the importance of some commandments for the sake of others. Many of the religious leaders in the time of Jesus often did try to pit commandments against each other, using supposed love of God to excuse themselves from their duties to their neighbors. But one could also ask because they wanted their priorities to be determined by God's word rather than their own predilections. They would not ask in order to seek an excuse but in order to be accountable to the truth. They might know well the temptation to twist God's word serve their preferences. But they would desire to be sufficiently armed with the truth to resist that temptation. This scribe is generally considered to have asked with sincerity, impressed by the answers of Jesus to earlier questions.

The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind, 
and with all your strength.

This part of the response of Jesus was in fact sufficient in itself, since it did not leave room for the selfish ego to have any space of its own in which to stand. If one loved God with their entire mind there would be no extra capacity available to resist his duty to his neighbors. If every thought was taken captive to Christ and if one invested his full strength, their very life, into acting on the basis of that renewed mind, there would be no room left for temptation or sin.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than these.

Although the first part of the answer was, in a way, sufficient, it was not complete without the second part that was like it. How was it like it? Because loving God and loving those made in God's image, as God himself loved them, were the most interrelated ideas imaginable. Jesus added this second part because he knew people's tendency to subvert the first part when it was considered too abstractly without any kind of reality to put it to the test. Love of neighbor was how one could demonstrate and integrate their love for God into daily life. As John reminds us, "he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen" (see First John 4:20).

to love him with all your heart,
with all your understanding,
with all your strength,
and to love your neighbor as yourself
is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices

Burnt offerings and sacrifices were offered precisely to atone for failures of love of God and neighbor. But to actually do the thing well and completely was of even more value than such reminders of sin. Even in exile the people already began to understand that spiritual sacrifices had sufficient value to be offered in lieu of the temple sacrifices which were impossible at that time. 

But with contrite heart and humble spirit
let us be received;
As though it were burnt offerings of rams and bulls,
or tens of thousands of fat lambs (see Daniel 3:39).

Still, it wasn't until Jesus came and united his perfect love of God and neighbor to his sacrifice of himself, that burnt offerings and sacrifices were no longer needed. Only after he died once for all could we truly experience the freedom necessary to love God and neighbor with all that we are. This is what Paul was getting at in his letter to Timothy:

If we have died with him
we shall also live with him;
if we persevere
we shall also reign with him.

Bob Fitts - One God

 

3 June 2026 - are you not misled

Today's Readings
(Audio)

And the seven left no descendants.
Last of all the woman also died.
At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be?

At first the challenge of the Sadducees seems unrelatable. After all, it isn't as though we have laws today where a brother has to marry a woman to ensure descendants for his brother. No one is posing challenges to the idea of the resurrection and insisting that we solve them based only on the five books of Moses. And yet this tactic of the Sadducees is really quite modern. It applies a reductio ad absurdum to the very idea of resurrection, attempting to demonstrate that the concept is too naive and simplistic to hold water when subjected to realistic analysis. This is a still a common tactic among modern skeptics. And the resurrection of the body is still a common target. Wouldn't the earth fill up? Hasn't the matter that composed one person's body been in others by now? Who gets it? The list goes on. Further, modern skeptics also limit the means by which an argument for the resurrection can be made. Those who accept any Scriptures do so only on within a system of self-constructed limits based on an interpretive hermeneutic of suspicion. Supposed later redactions do not receive the same wait as some imagined original underlying authorial intent. Others accept no evidence from Scriptures or indeed anything other than method of scientific experimentation. For them we can refer neither to prophets, nor philosophy, nor logical necessity, nor anything else that cannot be demonstrated in a lab environment. 

To all of skeptics ancient and modern Jesus says, "Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?" When we people think they've reduced religion to an absurdity it is because they are thinking as humans, on human terms, with human concepts. They don't have the ability to conceive of what God has prepared for those who love him (see First Corinthians 2:9). The life of the resurrection will not merely be the same but more. It will be qualitatively different, transformed in such a way that many of the current conventions that govern our lives will no longer be appropriate. Marriage was appropriate to ensure the propagation of a species limited by mortality. It was thus an image of the eternity of God, even an icon of it. But once God's own eternity comes to renew and redefine creation the icon will no longer be needed. The portrait on the wall can be remove once the person himself comes to dwell in our midst. Like angels those who rise from the dead will live, not to fight a losing battle against death, but to worship and enjoy the glory of God forever.

As for the dead being raised,
have you not read in the Book of Moses,
in the passage about the bush, how God told him,
I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, 
and the God of Jacob?

From the limited point of view of earthly beings Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, seemed to be dead and therefore gone, no longer related to creation or even to God. Many biblical scholars take for granted scientific ideas like creatures being nothing more than matter, like and impose those apparently mature and rational principles on their interpretation of the bible. They end up with confused ideas about Jesus as just another revolutionary fighter against oppression or as nothing more than a teacher of spiritual truths. But this is because they've never let themselves take a serious look at who God really is, and what claims are made about him. They date the books of prophets after their prophecies are fulfilled because to them prophecy is obviously impossible. They can't take seriously the idea of a God who is truly God, with a transcendent perspective, who fills our world of time without being confined within it.

Given the modern scientific sensibilities it may be tempting for us to be ashamed of the Gospel.  But if so, let us read what Paul wrote to Timothy:

So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord

But, we ask, how can we avoid it? We are not experts. We have the same limited human intellects as that befuddle the skeptics. And so we do. But we also have the mind of Christ (see First Corinthians 2:16). We ought not to rely only on the merely human. We have no excuse for being deceived because we did not know "the power of God". But perhaps we are only vaguely in touch with that power. If so, let us defer again to Paul:

For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame
the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands. 
For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice
but rather of power and love and self-control.

Every alternative to the resurrection leads eventually to despair. The modern world is caught up in this despair and only we have the antidote. So we can't hold back because we are ashamed or unprepared. God has given us the key to boldness, equipping us with all we need for the challenges of our times.

for I know him in whom I have believed
and am confident that he is able to guard
what has been entrusted to me until that day.

Maverick City Music - Forever And Ever Amen

 

2 June 2026 - a tax against him

Today's Readings
(Audio)

Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man
and that you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion.

They absolutely did not believe these complements, but made them in order that the crowd would believe that they actually meant well, or so that Jesus himself would lower his defenses and say something unguarded and objectionable. Yet it was they and not Jesus who were not interested in the truth but instead concerned with the opinions of others. They sought to decrease the standing of Jesus before the crowds while increasing their own. They were not particularly interested in the correct answer to the question, that is, in the truth about this particular case, as long as the answer of Jesus provided fodder to use against him.

Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?
Should we pay or should we not pay?

In theory it was a clever trap. Either Jesus would endorse the tax and be branded as a Roman sympathizer by the common people or he would oppose it and be branded as a potentially dangerous revolutionary by the government. At first the answer of Jesus seemed like a compromise; this for Caesar, that for God, separate, non-overlapping spheres of life, the political on the one hand, the religious on the other. But his answer was not that compromise it might seem to us at first.

Bring me a denarius to look at.
They brought one to him 

It was noteworthy that they had a denarius ready and available, that they were already participants in the Roman system, implicitly accepting its legitimacy to some degree. The very image of the emperor, basically in itself idolatrous, since he claimed to be divine, was already present in their moneybags. The crowds of common people must have noticed this point. And yet, Jesus did not condemn them for having such currency. Governments might not be perfect, as the history of Israel's subjugation had taught, but they could still be supported for the sake of the goods they did provide to society (see Jeremiah 29:4-7). Yet, Jesus did not imply that the economy was an isolated sphere in which one could participate without reference to God.

“Whose image and inscription is this?”
They replied to him, “Caesar’s.”
So Jesus said to them,
“Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God.”

Jesus did not say that it was basically OK to collude with the Romans as long people maintained virtue in the separate arena of private faith. Rather, he insisted that although the coin may have been made in the image of Caesar and with his inscription, Caesar himself was made in the image of God. There was therefore nothing exempt, nothing that did not belong to God, nothing that was not due to him as payment. The important element of this response was how it portrayed the fact that Caesar was not absolute, was not in any sense divine. One could therefore order one's business and interaction with even a state that was hostile to the truth to a higher end than the state itself intended, to the common good of the people, and the glory of God most high.

We know with certainty that the political order will never be perfected, and that the Kingdom while never arrive merely as the progress of nations. We remember that our true citizenship is never in any earthly city, however good or corrupt that city might be, but is rather in heaven (see Philippians 3:20). And because we remember this we have patience, patience like that of the Lord, which is meant to lead to salvation. But all of the imperfection does make us eager for the day when even the heavens will dissolve and the elements themselves will be melted by fire. The mass is always a prayer of "Maranatha!" in which we not only wait for but even "hasten the coming of the day of God". We do this because we look forward to a Kingdom not made with hands (see Second Corinthians 5:1), new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness, properly speaking, God himself, will dwell.

 

David Crowder Band - Here Is Our King