Adventurous Lectionary – Pentecost 4 – June 21, 2026

Last updated on: June 15, 2026 at 12:48 pm by Bruce Epperly

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Adventurous Lectionary – Pentecost 4 – June 21, 2026 2026-06-15T12:48:41-04:00 Bruce Epperly

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The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – June 21, 2026

Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39

The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost highlights God’s presence in conflict and threat, both internal and external. Fear and violence are not denied, but God is faithful, whether we are wandering in the wilderness, facing our own sin, or trying to live, despite our imperfections and the evil perpetuated by our nation’s leaders. In the course of the challenges we face, we may need to take a stand, and God is standing with us.

Still, to preach these passages rightly, we must remember that not everyone is delivered from danger. We are convicted by the bombs and attacks in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, and Iran. We protest the traumatization of families in the USA by ICE agents. Children like Ishmael perish from malnutrition and disease on a daily basis, and parents mourn in their helplessness to protect them. There are times in which God seems absent even in the midst of our prayers, and often we are overcome by inner turmoil, addiction, and sin.

Faith may lead to conflict – following Jesus may lead to scorn. We are asked in this time of protest: “are we following the way of Jesus or do we live by our own political and cultural biases and then baptizing them as Christ’s way?” To be faithful to scripture, we must look at our lives in their concreteness and not from a place of economic, emotional, relational, racial, or spiritual privilege. We must challenge our assumptions, constantly measuring our ethics and politics by God’s vision of Shalom “on earth as it is in heaven.”

The story of Ishmael and Hagar begins two weeks of lectionary studies on family dysfunctionality. Jealous Sarah banishes Hagar and her son to the wilderness, and God apparently approves of it. The issue is a matter of race, class, and standing in the family unit. Despite Sarah’s malice and Abraham’s weakness, God has a larger plan, the founding of a nation through Ishmael, but neither Hagar or her child are aware of it as they go into wilderness exile and the likelihood of death.

In this family, Hagar becomes the vulnerable one, the one who has lost everything, the refugee, the mother desperate to save her child. Her story is repeated in Syria and Africa as well as Lebanon and the West Bank but also in the United States. The collapse of international order and generosity has exacerbated the plight of the poor. Our own nation’s racial and economic alienation has created an underclass, and our national policies have created groups of expendable people, many of them children and single parents, whose well-being is of little concern when policy makers, representing us, make their decisions. Many of whom were described during the pandemic as “essential,” are not being discarded and hunted down by immigration police.

God experiences Hagar’s despair for herself and her son, and responds, “Don’t be afraid. Your son will be the parent of a great nation.” God hears the cries of the vulnerable. God provides water in the desert and a way where there is no way. God hears us in our pain and we are delivered from the forces that threaten us. But, realistically, this is not always the case. Millions die in despair. Does God not listen to their pain? Do divine purposes involve the death of their children? The passage can victimize victims unless we who are privileged see ourselves as those who must also listen and do all that we can to deliver the vulnerable through acts of justice-making as well as compassionate care. We may be God’s ears and God’s response. While the pain of others can be overwhelming and enormity of pain beyond our ability to solve, we can listen and respond, seeking healing in whatever way we can promote it and encouraging our leaders to place the pain of the vulnerable ahead of tax breaks and bailouts for wealthy persons and corporations. We need to look at the “big picture,” but God calls us to render aid in the immediacy of suffering, even if it is only food for the local pantry or a check to a relief organization, or a call demanding action from our political leaders.

Ishmael, the child God delivers, is revered in Islam and according to legend buried alongside Hagar in Mecca. This passage reminds us that God cares for Muslims as well Christians, enemies as well as friends, and that God’s story of grace extends beyond our own tradition.

Psalm 86 tells the story of a desperate person, perhaps a woman and her son, that may be recapitulating the story of Hagar and Ishmael. The poor and needy cry out hoping for divine response. God’s moral nature is reflected in God’s care for the lonely, lost, and forgotten. The wealthy and strong are mute; they see themselves (for the moment) as self-sufficient, but the poor and needy know they need a power greater than themselves and pray that God will listen and respond.

Paul speaks of death to the old and the birth of a new self. While Paul recognizes that followers of Jesus still sin, he equally asserts that new creation involves a new ethical perspective. Salvation is as much an outer as inner journey. We need to give up the old ways of life, as comfortable as they might have been to embrace a new vision of ourselves and the world. Surely this applies to individual behavior – to our embodiment of spiritual and ethical virtues – but it also compels us to create larger circles of ethics, possibly involving us in responding to the institutional sins of our nation and communities. This time of political malfeasance calls us to let go of old securities to embrace God’s security of just and life-affirming interdependence.

False individualistic readings of this passage take us off the hook from relational evils of which we are complicit even if we intend no ill: alienation, denial of science, injustice, misogyny, racism, incivility, preferential option for the wealthy, preference of profits over earth care.

The new creation must inspire creative activity to transform our communities and social structures to nurture persons we will never meet. The world is saved in one-to-one relationships, and it is also saved by creating healthy and life-supporting structures of equality and affirmation. New life must be social and relational as well as individual and private. New creation demands new generosity and new structures of compassion and justice.

The passage from Matthew appears to be a catalogue of Jesus’ sayings. While we cannot exegete each saying, certain sayings stand out. Jesus’ words express the conflicts that may occur when we follow God’s way. The paths of denial and witness are placed before us, and we are asked, “Where do we deny Christ?” and “What is the nature of our witness?” Denial and witness are relational; they involve whether we let our light shine in our personal and communal lives or turn away from God’s vision in our personal and political lives. We can affirm Christ doctrinally but deny Christ relationally and politically. Following Jesus’ counsel means “letting our lives speak” in our families, employment, lifestyle, and politics, and this may lead to conflict, to a sword and not peace. Yet, the way of Jesus calls us to seek healing with civility in our relationships – to promote justice, to support the vulnerable, to sacrifice for the greater good, to encourage morality among our leaders and in our nation’s policies. Far from individualistic, this challenges us to create structures of hope and safety for the “Hagars” and “Ishmaels” of our communities and the world. This may mean an overhaul of our personal and political priorities to reflect the values of God who cares for sparrows and also little children, refugee families, marginalized communities, and the lost child in ourselves. In recognizing God’s care for us, we can let go of our privilege and sacrifice for the greater good. We can “lose” the life of self-interest and individualistic isolation to “find” the life of community and planet loyalty, in which all are pilgrims and non are strangers.

God’s care inspires our care. God’s intimate concern inspires our concrete concern. God’s quest for safety and wholeness inspires our quest for safety and wholeness for the vulnerable. We can no longer let personal or corporate sin be “business as usual.” We cannot place patriotism, presidential ego, or economics ahead of morality and compassion or cry out “America first!” without uplifting vulnerable Americans and joining our national affirmation with an equally ardent “Planet first!” God delivers, and much of God’s deliverance comes through our listening to God’s call for us to hear the cries of the poor and needy.

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Bruce Epperly is Theologian in Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, MD and a professor in theology and spirituality at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. He is the author of over ninety books, including his Christological trilogy Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet; Whitehead and Jesus: An Adventure in Spiritual Transformation; and Messy Incarnation: Meditations in Christology in Process and also Creation Sings: Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom from the Non-Human World; and Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation with the Healing Wisdom of America’s Visionaries. He is married to Rev. Kate Epperly, D.Min. and lives in Potomac, Maryland.

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