18 October 2026 - a tax question

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man
and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.
And you are not concerned with anyone's opinion,
for you do not regard a person's status.

Of course in saying that they knew Jesus was a truthful man they were themselves being untruthful. In praising him for not having regard for the opinions of others, and then asking for his opinion, they revealed that such freedom was not really a priority for them. They actually believed Jesus to be a liar and his thought his disregard for opinion was a fault. Yet here they sought to use these false pretenses to encourage Jesus to speak freely. They thought they could actually sway him by ingratiating themselves to him in his opinion about them just enough to make him speak freely and say something he ought not say. They posed a dilemma that, they thought, would prove that he cared either for the opinion of the Roman rulers, or else of the occupied Jewish people. But, as Jesus would prove, he cared not for the opinions of anyone, not those groups, not the crowds, and especially not people trying to entrap him in his speech. He did care for the people themselves, but not about their opinions of him, or their judgments on his words and deeds.

"Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? 
Show me the coin that pays the census tax." 

They were only pretending to have a genuine and sincere question. The fact that they possessed the coins, and had them ready at hand, all but proved that they were on the side of concession and cooperation with the Roman authorities. Even the possession of such coins, which hailed Caesar as divine, revealed their own compromised position. Shortly after the handing the coin to Jesus they probably began to realize the blow they had just suffered to their own public image. They were not free from the world of the flesh in which the opinions of others outweighed their concern for the truth. How could they be so blind as to make the claim that Jesus was guilty of the crime that they were themselves in that very moment committing? We will file this in the category of sin making us stupid. This is precisely the sort of spiritual blindness from which Jesus came to save us.

He said to them, "Whose image is this and whose inscription?" 
They replied, "Caesar's."
At that he said to them,
"Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God."
 
This section is commonly misunderstood to mean that there are separate and unrelated sections of reality known as the spiritual on the one hand and the secular on the other. In such an interpretation the secular realm ought to be entirely free from any spiritual influence since it would be, in theory, the proper domain of Caesar. The spiritual in turn ought to be free from any influence of the secular, ought not in fact even think about secular things. But since the secular world defines so much of our lives as embodied creatures this relegates the realm of the spiritual to mere subjective feelings and sentiments. But this is not what Jesus actually intended to imply. He did not simply fall for the trap of his interlocutors and explain why paying taxes was acceptable. He did indeed acknowledge that there was a legitimate sphere of political governance, in which rulers could tax their citizens. But this sphere was not to be regarded as independent of the spiritual. Rather it was hierarchically below and inferior to the spiritual. Far from independent, it ought to be ordered toward the spiritual. The coin of Caesar might have been contained his name and inscription. But Caesar himself, along with all of us, was made in God's image and likeness. Failing to recognize this fact leads us to fail to honor the true ruler of all things, and leads us to fail to direct all things to him as their true and proper goal. Revolt in this sphere is much worse than any mere political upheaval.

Our call today is to avoid the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the Herodians. We can do this when our inner reality, our words, and our actions all coincide. On our own we tend to fail. But, as  Paul reminded the Thessalonians, we are not alone.

For our gospel did not come to you in word alone,
but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.

Matt Maher - You Are The Lord

 

17 October 2026 - no hard feelings

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

I tell you,
everyone who acknowledges me before others
the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God.
But whoever denies me before others
will be denied before the angels of God.

We have recently seen the danger of hypocrisy, posed by a lack of consistency and integrity between our inner and outer worlds. Today we see again that it is not just our subjective inner feelings but our actions that matter. If we keep the fact that we belong to Christ a secret, if we can in fact keep it a secret, how true can it really be that we belong to him at all? It is our mission, even our privilege, to give testimony to Jesus. The world needs this testimony in order to be saved. Jesus himself did not waver in his testimony even in the face of persecution and death. Neither, then, must we. To know the name of Jesus but to keep it locked within our hearts is like receiving mercy but then refusing to let that mercy flow out of us. We may not realize it, but showing mercy may sometimes come with a genuine cost. The titular unforgiving servant in the parable would have had to pay a cost in order to show mercy to his fellow servant. But it was an incalculable lower cost than his own already forgiven debt. Indeed, even if we must give up our very lives for Jesus this is still negligible compared to the eternity he has won for us. This is why Paul is so insistent that we recognize the hope of our call.

that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call,
what are the riches of glory
in his inheritance among the holy ones,
and what is the surpassing greatness of his power
for us who believe  

When we are told that we must not deny Jesus he does not say it because he can't stand having his feelings hurt. He says it because it has real consequences for ourselves and for the world whether or not we will stand up for Jesus and acknowledge him. By doing so we make ourselves more and more into the kind of people who can be acknowledged before the angels and less and less into those unrecognizable fakes that must be dismissed into the darkness.

Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven,
but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit
will not be forgiven.

Again, the problem is not that God can't stand to have his feelings hurt. Rather, by definition sinning against the Holy Spirit makes forgiveness difficult, difficult to the degree that to persist obstinately in such sin puts us beyond the scope of God's forgiving power. It is not that there is really any sin that is unforgivable per se. Rather, what is described is how we can render ourselves unable to come to God and receive his mercy. When we call evil good and good evil, when we insist that the Spirit of Jesus himself is unclean, how can we then turn to him for help, he who is the one and only person who can help us?

do not worry about how or what your defense will be
or about what you are to say. 
For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say.

Rather than blaspheming the Spirit we must rely on. He himself is the factor that makes the difference for whether we will be able to remain faithful enough to acknowledge Jesus before others. If we do not remain open to the Spirit we fall back unto the flesh, our own resources. These may be enough to get us by day to day. But they fail us during our own moments of testing "before synagogues and before rules". There is a virtuous cycle in which we can rely on the Holy Spirit to help us to acknowledge Jesus before others. But there is also a vicious cycle in which we refuse to rely on the Spirit and fail to acknowledge Jesus. One prepares us for a heavenly destiny. The other makes such a destiny increasingly improbable.

As long as we live it is never too late to repent and be forgiven. Even our own complicity in the death of Jesus did not prevent the Father from raising him up again for our salvation. But it is precisely on this reality above all else that we must rely, in which we must put our trust. We must be ready and willing to tell the whole world about a treasure so great.

 

 

Sonicflood - Open The Eyes Of My Heart

 

16 October 2026 - whom to fear

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

Christians are meant to have the ease that comes from consistency between our inner lives and our exterior words and actions. There are several extremes that we are meant to avoid, the first being hypocrisy. Christianity is not merely a facade to conceal our sinful priorities from other people. Rather, our hearts are supposed to be in the state of constant renewal by the Holy Spirit, helping us to want what God wants. This means we can actually have some consistency between what is inside us and how we act before eyes. We recognize that we are not perfect, but no longer need to conceal this as a dark secret, since it is not a part of ourselves that we are trying to cultivate or protect. We can be open and transparent about our liabilities while trying to live more like Christ day to day.

There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed,
nor secret that will not be known.

Our hidden lives will eventually be made manifest. So we should work on removing those things that embarrass us now rather than later. At the same time, we must not keep the genuine good of the Gospel hidden in our hearts. We must be willing to speak it in the light and proclaim it on the housetops. We may mask our sinful behavior because we fear to look bad. But we may hide the treasure of the Gospel from others because we fear the consequences. However, when allow that kind of fear to immobilize us it means we have things precisely backwards, fearing the wrong things too much, and not fearing the right things enough. Therefore Jesus gives us a helpful corrective.

I tell you, my friends,
do not be afraid of those who kill the body
but after that can do no more.

God's priorities matter more than any worldly consequences we might experience. It isn't that he wants to cast anyone into Gehenna. He cares about us far more than many sparrows, and has numbered all the hairs of our heads. This is why he wants us to share his priority of ensuring that no one has to experience that place of eternal fire. We fear God in the sense that we know that he isn't messing around, that he will allow people to make such a choice if they insist on it. And so our reverence for him extends to the choice he has set before humanity. He is too good, too worthy, too generous to offend, to oppose, and to reject. But such rejection is a terrible possibility. Our fear actually helps us to remember and rely on his overwhelming goodness lest we squander it through our own bad decisions.

Our holy fear helps us to remember our dependence on God. When we do remember it we basically cannot fail and need fear nothing else on earth or in the evens. In him we were chosen and sealed. We have already tasted the first installment of what will one day by our eternal inheritance. Rather than living to indulge ourselves as hypocrites, or hiding from our mission as Christians, we are meant to exist, as Paul wrote, "for the praise of his glory". May it be so.

 

 

Matt Maher - Sophia

 

15 October 2026 - blessings unlocked

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets 
whom your fathers killed.
Consequently, you bear witness and give consent
to the deeds of your ancestors,
for they killed them and you do the building.

The apparently pious practice of building memorials for the prophets was an easy external way to honor their memory. But what did it matter if one did not honor their message? We can celebrate our saints with statues and holy cards. But what good does it do if we reject the witness of their lives and their words? In fact, the more we use saints as mere spiritual decorations in our lives the more we actually oppose the goals of their teaching and the purpose of their lives. Their words and their lives were full of the dangerous fire of God's love. But we prefer tame decorations and inert celebrations that are more decorations on an affected Christian lifestyle, lived for the sake of appearances. But can we see? The saints were never concerned with appearances. They were willing to appear and act in any way that was necessary to please God. Rather than build memorials to them out of stone or precious metals they would prefer that we built a temple of God in our hearts.

Woe to you, scholars of the law!
You have taken away the key of knowledge.
You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.

Why is it that we often use what we know in a way that makes it more difficult rather than easier for others to have access? We should want such knowledge as we have to be shared by as many as may be. But we prefer to hoard our knowledge in order to maintain our status as, if not experts, at least educated. We may make a show of instructing others, but more to feel smug ourselves than to help them. We don't want what we know to be common because we fear that would make us common in turn. This could be because we, like the scholars of the law, never used the key ourselves, never applied the knowledge in our own lives. Without this important first step, passing on our knowledge to others is always going to work against our own hypocrisy and sinfulness. Without using the knowledge we have we are stuck in a condition in which we don't want what we ought to want and do want what we ought not to want. Our goals in such a state are never going to be purely for the good of those whom our knowledge could benefit. We didn't use the knowledge ourselves to remove our own self-serving egotism, and are thus not free to use it in the service of others. The solution is straightforward, if not simple. First, we must actually apply the things we learn in our own lives. Then we must generously share what we know with others.

This Christian thing isn't supposed to be an act or a mere lifestyle decoration. It is supposed to be a transformation. There is so incalculably much that we have received. It would be a shame to receive such a gift and not open it.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing in the heavens

Let us, therefore, open the gift! Let us really begin to live, with our whole beings, for "praise of the glory of his grace".

 

 

Brooke Ligertwood - Bless God

 

14 October 2026 - if we live by the Spirit

Today's Readings

(Audio)

 

Woe to you Pharisees!
You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb,
but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.

The Pharisees were guilty of what we might call majoring in the minors. They dedicated immense effort to getting small details correct to the degree that they lost sight of the big picture. This is, we regret to acknowledge, a normal tendency for humans. We like to do things that give us a sense of accomplishment, things that are easy to control, have an obvious scope, and clear conditions for success. They are easy to check off of a list. Doing so gives us a sense of satisfaction. By contrast judgment and love for God are more nebulous. It's not that they are necessarily vague, since we known from our consciences how to respond moment by moment. But they are often not reducible to bullet points on a list. There cannot be the same sense of completion since we are never finished with our need for judgement or for love. 

Woe to you Pharisees!
You love the seat of honor in synagogues
and greetings in marketplaces.  
Woe to you!
You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.

It might seem benign to seek satisfaction from achievement or honor but it can result in an internal corruption of our souls that is all the more dangerous because of our external mask of religiosity. Rather than seeking our joy as a fruit of the Spirit we will be left with nothing better than to seek it at the level of the flesh. We may end up with a hidden life where we conceal and cherish those works of the flesh that particularly appeal to us, keeping up an external religious facade all the while. This may seem to the fallen mind to convey the best of both worlds. But it really gives us nothing. Fake religiosity helps to distract ourselves from our pangs of conscience regarding our hidden sins. But it also distracts us from the lack of satisfaction they provide, trapping us in an endless loop in which we continue to pursue such behavior, but never recognize that it isn't working. Thank God for Jesus and his woes helping us to see ourselves more clearly. Thank God for Paul, telling us we aren't meant to live at the level of the flesh, but encouraging us to rise to the level of the Spirit, since that is our calling as those united with Jesus himself.

“Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too.”
And he said, “Woe also to you scholars of the law!
You impose on people burdens hard to carry,
but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.”

We might think that our false religiosity and hidden sins only impact us, that they are, as we may say, private matters. But, as we already saw with the Pharisees, our hypocrisy is dangerous for others as well. It was dangerous in their case because they potentially exerted influence over others, as if a noxious cloud permeated wherever they went. But from the scholars of the law we can see that it also makes us fail in our obligations to others. One couldn't tell from social media, but we are not in fact meant to merely shout forth condemnations toward others. Yet the more we convince ourselves of our own religious excellence and take pride in it the harder this is to avoid. Something has gone very wrong indeed if we celebrate our neighbor's failings so that we can delight in our own supposed moral superiority. Instead we should be like Jesus. He took our burdens on himself first, creating the possibility that we could carry them ourselves, together with him. He didn't point out any problem without also demonstrating the willingness to do whatever he could to help. It is this approach which can make the Church persuasive when she must criticize or correct behavior. In such moments she says to us that we don't want to live in that way, but we don't have to, if only we will receive the Spirit and rely on him for strength. What God commands he gives grace to do.

If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit. 

Maranatha! Music - I Will Delight

 

13 October 2026 - alms and joy

 

Today's Readings
(Audio)

 

The Pharisee was amazed to see
that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal.

It wasn't as though this washing was required by the law. It was a human tradition, no doubt one that began based on good intentions, but of human origin nonetheless. Why, then, were they so amazed? Jesus no doubt knew about the tradition, and was aware that the Pharisees expected that he would perform it. Therefore it was an intentional omission. The Pharisees had perhaps begun to use it to signal religious insider status to one another. They certainly didn't seem actually concerned with it as a metaphor for anything deeper within their souls. It ought to have been a deeply personal symbolic act, one in which a person reflected on their need for inner purity. But for the Pharisees it had become a means to pass praise or judgment on others. They did it themselves to check a box and then were careful to make sure others were checking the same box, indicating their common membership in the same religious club. In the first place, Jesus had no need to cleanse himself. And in the second, he wasn't interested in joining the mutual adoration society that the Pharisees seemed to represent.

The Lord said to him, “Oh you Pharisees!
Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish,
inside you are filled with plunder and evil.

It is possible that our motivations for specifically religious acts can be not only neutral but negative. If we perform our religious duties merely to appear praiseworthy to others, or so that we can judge others who don't  meet our standards, we are not only not growing, but becoming corrupt. In Galatians, Paul taught that circumcision for the Gentiles would potentially lead them away from path to salvation revealed in Jesus. But so too can merely human systems of religious traditions and self-imposed laws. How are they similar? Both, seemingly, are meant to be signs that point to something important. But, without grace, they remain at the level of the flesh and are easily twisted to our destruction. They make us fixated on ourselves, and on what we do at an external level, and make us forget that we are really supposed to be awaiting the hope of righteousness through the Spirit by faith. As Paul said "neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything", how much more could Jesus say, 'neither handwashing nor the lack of handwashing counts for anything'. However, Jesus didn't go on to mention faith or hope directly. Rather he mentioned giving alms, and therefore charity. For Paul and for Jesus charity was meant to be the result of faith. Alms were meant to be an instance of "faith working through love".

But as to what is within, give alms,
and behold, everything will be clean for you.

Alms might have appeared to be a merely external act, one that could be performed for show. And perhaps this was not impossible. Yet it was more difficulty to sabotage an interpersonal act of charity than it was to forget the purpose of something that was merely symbolic. It was possible to blow one's horn in the city square when giving alms. But if one simply gave alms in a normal unaffected way it was likely to be an action that affected the whole being, internal and external, cleansing the soul in the process. Alms-giving not predicated on rewards for the ego required faith. Without faith it might seem futile. The fact that the poor will always be with us might seem insurmountable. Without faith we might not recognize the God given dignity of the poor, his presence in them. But when we have faith we reach beyond the walls of our egos to make truly human connections. We become the hands and feet of God reaching out to the world and begin to embody in ourselves the heart of Jesus Christ. Faith works in love because it opens the door for Jesus to work in us. So we say with Saint John Paul the Great, "Do not be afraid. Open, I repeat, open wide the doors to Christ!"

Chris Tomlin - Give Us Clean Hands

 

12 October 2026 - Jonah, brother?

Today's Readings
(Audio)

This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah.

The people in the crowd were an evil generation in that they did not respond to Jesus with faith, just as those who journeyed through the desert under the leadership of Moses did not respond to God's guidance with faith. Both groups had, in fact, already seen many signs. But in spite of this they kept asking for more. Jesus, knowing that they would never be satisfied, referred to a final sign as a kind of last resort to help them to understand and believe.

Jonah did not want to preach the message of repentence to the Ninevites. He did not want to see the enemies of God's people blessed, to such an extent that he preferred to die rather than participate in the mission. Yet even spite of this the people of Nineveh were able to recognize and respond to God's word. Jesus too expanded God's message beyond the bounds of Israel. It was typically the outsiders and even Gentiles who responded and recognized that what he said was true. Jesus was the faithful messenger of God, conveying the truth to the people. But the crowds of that evil generation played the part of Jonah's reluctance, finally attempting to kill the messenger before, they imagined, he could accomplish his mission. Yet even this attempt at sabotage, like Jonah's attempt at self-sabotage, was foreseen in the divine plan. Jonah was raised to life after three days on the shores of Nineveh to proceed with his mission. Jesus was vindicated on the third day after being put to death. They could look to this to reveal their own hidden resistance to God to them, and from there to the reality that Jesus was who he claimed to be. 

An additional aspect of how the sign could be interpreted was the result of Jonah's preaching. Just as the word of God had been successful in his day, and as the wisdom of Solomon was persuasive even to the queen of the south, so too was the way the words of Jesus successfully reached even the most unlikely individuals a testament to the wisdom of those words. Thus the sign of Jonah refers to Jesus both in the aspect of the wisdom of his preaching and in the way it foreshadowed his miraculous resurrection.

At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation 
and condemn it,
because at the preaching of Jonah they repented,
and there is something greater than Jonah here

It is interesting that Jesus did not try to guide them gently but instead used imagery that he knew would be provocative. He didn't refer to much of the obvious common ground that existed between them but instead highlighted the precise point of their resistance. Doing otherwise might have left them dancing around the true issues indefinitely. He didn't refer to the inclusion of the Gentiles just to make them mad, but rather to provoke them to a point of crisis. From that point they could look to the history of what God had already done in the past for the Gentiles and choose to place their faith in him. They might not fully understand or agree, but faith could make up for help them get there. Or, otherwise, they could remain in their obstinate opposition. Jesus is wise in revealing the strongholds of opposition within our own hearts as well, not to antagonize us, but to set us free. He can guide us, even kicking and screaming, through our own death to self, until our hearts our large enough to accept the entirety of his plans for the world.

Keith & Kristyn Getty, Matt Papa - Christ Our Hope In Life And Death