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

 

1 June 2026 - vineyard crimes

Today's Readings
(Audio)

A man planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it,
dug a wine press, and built a tower.
Then he leased it to tenant farmers and left on a journey.

The man clearly cared for his vineyard and provided all that was necessary for its fruitfulness and protection. The tenants were meant to ensure these things in an ongoing way. But they quickly realized that they could exploit the fruit of the vineyard for their own purposes. They probably came to see the way they used their positions for selfish ends as justified, imaging it to be payment for their efforts. But the vineyard did not belong to them, nor the fruit. There was a proper time and a proper purpose for the fruit. But when that time arrived and messengers came to collect they responded violently. Their egos were wounded by the very idea that they were behaving selfishly, and they lashed out in order to distract themselves from their guilt. 

This parable about the vineyard is about the problems that corrupt leadership can bring. Regardless of the original good intentions behind the vineyard, regardless of the quality of the vines, there could be no abundance of fruit if the leaders were hording it for themselves. The individual fruit might still grow, but could not be well utilized. Thus God addressed himself not only to individuals, but to the corrupt systems holding those individuals back from living fully for their purpose. He could not leave leadership in the hands of those who say, "'My master is delayed in coming,' and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and get drunk" (see Luke 12:45). But the way he addressed it was not by responding to the violence of the tenants with an overwhelming show of force. That would be the human strategy. That is what we would probably see as the only option in a case like this. But God instead attempted appeals that appeared to be increasingly unsuccessful.

Again he sent them another servant.
And that one they beat over the head and treated shamefully.
He sent yet another whom they killed.
So, too, many others; some they beat, others they killed.

God kept trying because he cared about the tenants as well as the individuals with whose care they were entrusted. The point was not merely to replace them, but to convert them. He would take action even as drastic as sending his own Son to do so. Those who had failed to recognize how bad they had become in earlier interventions might at least see the problem if they responded to the Son with violent rejection. They might well pierce him first, committed to the sunken cost of their rebellion. But they might look on him whom they pierced and be converted. There was no guarantee since their response still required free cooperation on their part. But it was possible.

We hear a parable like this smugly enjoy the way it critiques, not only the religious leadership of Israel of the past, but even corrupt systems of our own political milieu. Yet while it certainly does critique politics and religious leadership both ancient and modern it also addresses us as individuals. We too have stewardships that we can chose to co-opt for selfish purposes, but that are meant to bear fruit for God. We may not exercise authority of any kind over anyone. But we still have some measure of influence that we are meant to wield for God's purposes. Moreover, we ourselves are in some way both a tenant and a vineyard meant to bear fruit. We can horde that fruit for selfish enjoyment, even to the point of violently protecting our atomistic individualism. Or we can contribute it a greater form of enjoyment in which we and others all share, a truly common good.

After all, the goal of life and devotion is not merely to receive a little piece of divinity ourselves, but to "share in the divine nature". It is not a blessing we can have as isolated egos, since God himself is basically the opposite of an isolated ego. This is basically the doctrine we celebrated on Trinity Sunday. But it does take what seems to be individual effort: "make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love". Yet this effort of ours is predicated on the fact that God has already "bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion", just as with the vineyard prepared so well for the tenants. All he asks is that we remember the reason for the gift and live, insofar as possible, to be worthy of it.

Indelible Grace Music (featuring Matthew Smith) - Love Divine, All Loves Excelling

  

31 May 2026 - the heart of the matter

Today's Readings
(Audio)

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son

God himself gave what he asked but did not require of Abraham. He stayed the hand that would have offered Isaac as a sacrifice but did not hold back from giving his only Son as the savior of the world. We might wrongly imagine God to be someone infinitely rich, rich enough to solve any problem from a distance simply by pouring into it his abundant resources. And we know there are people in our own world that are willing to give of their abundance as long as they never need to get overly involved. But from the beginning God's plan was not to give merely some extraneous resources. It was rather to give himself. The point of his plan was specifically to be involved. Thus we see in his theophany to Moses: God revealed himself in order to be in relationship with Moses and the people.

If I find favor with you, O Lord,
do come along in our company.
This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins,
and receive us as your own.

But what does it mean to be in relationship with God? Is it merely something he adopts because we are relational beings? Or is his existence defined in some way by relationship even apart from the created order? The doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that God is not only acting relational in order to be intelligible to us. Rather he is a set of subsistent relationships himself, always has been, and always will be. The fact that we are relational creatures is not accidental. It is so we can correspond to this deep truth about God. He himself is the primary relationship for which we are made.

Mend your ways, encourage one another,
agree with one another, live in peace,
and the God of love and peace will be with you.

God's very essence is that of perfected relationship, or, in other words, love. That fact means that he doesn't enforce morality on us for external or arbitrary reasons. God is Love. And thus love is the primary principle ordering all of reality down to and including the meaning of our lives as individuals. We are thus called to correspond to the deepest nature of God and the world by being loving individuals ourselves, and insofar as possible being defined by love just as is God himself. The doctrine of the Trinity, far from an abstraction, has real consequences for our lives. If God is the kind of God who enters into loving relationships, and if that is what he cares about, then we are not only meant to be recipients, but also givers of love, since that is what it means to participate in the love that is at the very heart of God's nature. And this is a reasonable definition for theosis, which means becoming God. We don't become God in the sense that we become all knowing or all powerful. But we do become transformed more and more into love itself, both giving it and receiving it.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.

God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world. But the world was required to respond to the revelation it received, and make a choice about whether or not to believe in the Son. There may have been other ways God could have addressed the symptoms of the problems sin unleashed in the world. But he sought to heal our relational nature that was at the heart of the issue. Thus he couldn't stay away or intervene from a distance. And therefore the only answer that would suffice was relationship with him. The possibility of not believing and of condemnation was a consequence of the fact that none of this could be forced. God had no answer to give other than himself. Any other answer, taken to the extreme, would prove to be hell. But he would not and could not compel anyone to accept his offer. Love freely given had to be freely received.

We tend to talk about love and celebrate it in an abstract and sentimental sense. But from the way that the Trinity intervened in human history in the life, death, and resurrection, of Jesus, we see what love really means. It is always the right choice. But it is not always an easy choice. In fact, God came to become one of us because we were so often unwilling to choose love over selfishness. He not only demonstrated how to choose love, but he gave us the Spirit. Filled with the Spirit choosing love consistently and cheerfully is possible, the first of the fruits we are meant to receive from him.

To the glorious God who chose to stoop down and teach us how to love let us repeat the refrain of today's psalm in all sincerity: "Glory and praise for ever!"

David Crowder Band - How He Loves

 

30 May 2026 - tell us what you really think

Today's Readings
(Audio)

“By what authority are you doing these things?
Or who gave you this authority to do them?”

They made it sound like they actually cared about authority or about truth. But they were not concerned with either of these in the abstract or for their own sake. Sure, they probably sincerely believed that Jesus didn't have the right to do what he did or claim what he claimed. They probably believed that Jesus was the one telling people what they wanted to hear and was thus only interested in his own popularity. But they wanted to exploit this, not for the sake of divine law or truth, nor for the sake of bystanders who might believe him, nor to correct him, but instead to sully his reputation. They attempted to exploit the truth in service of ensuring their own popularity to his detriment. 

Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 
Was John’s baptism of heavenly or of human origin? Answer me.”

If they were really concerned about truth they could have answered truthfully with the fact that they considered John and Jesus both to be of human origin. If authority mattered to them they could have also tried to undermine the perception of the authority of John along with Jesus. But John was apparently already too popular for such an attack. They would not say what they really thought for the sake of how it would be perceived. They imagined it was Jesus who was trying to appeal to the crowds but it was in fact they themselves. Jesus was the one speaking truth based on the authority of the Father no matter how others felt about it. We see that he never held back merely to ensure that he was popular. A particular instance of this occurred in the Bread of Life discourse when he refused to compromise on the realism of the Eucharist even though many disciples left him as a consequence (see John 6:66).

They discussed this among themselves and said,
“If we say, ‘Of heavenly origin,’ he will say,
‘Then why did you not believe him?’
But shall we say, ‘Of human origin’?”– 
they feared the crowd,
for they all thought John really was a prophet.
So they said to Jesus in reply, “We do not know.”

The chief priests, the scribes, and the elders were in a state of mind that prevented them from perceiving the truth about the identity of Jesus. They had convinced themselves that truth and proper divine authority were their top priorities. But they were in fact manipulating the truth for the sake of public opinion and popularity. In other words, their egos, and not the truth, were running the show. This is a trap to which it is easy to succumb. It is easy to manipulate the truth to generate feelings of self-righteousness as those religious leaders did. It is easy to use it to project a self-image of ourselves as pious religious individuals. But do we have a genuine concern for the truth? Or is our real goal controlling how others see us? If we can't set our egos aside we won't be able to perceive reality clearly or discern truth from falsehood. Giving priority to the truth means that it stands in judgment on us, and not the reverse. Truth is true whether or not it is popular or profitable. This is why Jesus was such a breath of fresh air. People who tell it like it is often are in a world of people telling us only what they think we want to hear. When they do this selflessly and without ulterior motives they naturally come across as highly credible. 

Then Jesus said to them,
“Neither shall I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

We often hold back from fully owning up to the false things which we believe so that others can't critique them. But if we can't at least be honest about where we stand forward progress will remain elusive. Yet for us, because of what we have been given, it should be different. Because we strive to build ourselves up in our most holy faith and remain in the love of God our weakness does not lead to despair. Rather, it should help us be sympathetic to others who struggle, just as was Jude in our first reading.

On those who waver, have mercy; 
save others by snatching them out of the fire;
on others have mercy with fear

Newsboys - Not Ashamed

 

29 May 2026 - making room

Today's Readings
(Audio)

The next day as they were leaving Bethany he was hungry.

Seeing from a distance a fig tree in leaf,
he went over to see if he could find anything on it.

Jesus hungers and thirsts for righteousness, and knows that he can find that fruit in season or out of season since the one who trusts in the Lord "is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit" (see Jeremiah 17:8). Thus the Gospel is preached in season and out of season, since it always has the power to bear fruit (see Second Timothy 4:2). There are, however, real consequences, for those who fail to bear fruit. "Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away" (see John 15:2). But who are the ones who fail to bear fruit? They are the ones that choose not to abide in Jesus as branches on a vine. They fail to trust in the Lord and put their trust in lesser things such as money, power, or pleasure. They fill the temples of their souls, intended for the worship of God, with idols, making them dens of thieves.

My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples?
But you have made it a den of thieves.

There is a subtle implication that the people who had surrendered to these base desires did so partially because they failed to make room for others in their hearts. It wasn't only that they failed to make room for God directly, but also failed to share his priorities. Each time they encountered another person who was marginalized or excluded they could have chosen to love him and invite him in to the worship of the one God. Or instead, they could close their eyes to such people, passing by on the other side of the road. But when they ignored what God wanted, what was left but to fill the void with things to assuage their egos? They had to fill that absence with something, and the didn't fill it with what God had offered.

Jesus, as King, has the authority to command us to use our the temples of our souls for the glory of God. As the presence of God on earth, he wants us to make room in our hearts to worship him. But this worship not be self-serving. It must instead be God-serving, reaching out to and inviting others in rather than existing in some kind of isolated euphoric state. When we choose lesser things and fail to bear fruit he does not come at once to destroy the temple. He first casts out the money changers that represent our varied forms of idolatry. We can easily imagine the whip of cords he uses is not going to be a pleasant experience. But it is meant to open space for Jesus himself so that we can become who we are meant to be. In other words, the results are worth the price. But once the temple has been emptied of pretenders we need to fill it with right praise. Otherwise the gift of our being cleansed will be only temporary, and things will revert to an even worse condition than where they started.

Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first (see Matthew 12:45).

If this seems like too much to consider all at once let us finish our reflection with Saint Peter's summary of what it is really all about.

Above all, let your love for one another be intense,
because love covers a multitude of sins.

Maranatha! Music - I Will Delight (In The Law Of The Lord)