Hoo, boy… it’s great to be back in the saddle at my computer and in front of the microphone! I greatly enjoyed a short break to visit my family in New York, and I appreciate you all sticking with it while the audio has taken a break. I hope the printed materials continued to be helpful.
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This guide covers the readings appointed in the Revised Common Lectionary for the Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6), Year A, falling on June 14, 2026. The great festivals of Easter and Pentecost are behind us, and the church now settles into what has been variously called Ordinary Time, the Season after Pentecost, or simply the long stretch of green Sundays that runs all the way to Advent. The lectionary now walks through stories and letters in a more sustained way — not building toward a particular feast but simply listening, week by week, to the long witness of Scripture.
This Sunday offers two parallel Old Testament tracks. Track One (semi-continuous) follows the great stories of Israel in order, picking up this week with Abraham and Sarah and the visitors at Mamre. Track Two (complementary) chooses an Old Testament text that lines up thematically with the Gospel — this week, the giving of the covenant at Sinai, where God names Israel a kingdom of priests. Either track will preach. Most congregations pick a track at the beginning of the season and stay with it; this guide treats both fully and lets the preacher choose.
The Epistle and Gospel are the same for both tracks: Romans 5 on hope formed in suffering, and Matthew’s account of Jesus sending out the Twelve. One quiet continuity is worth noticing as you prepare. Matthew the tax collector, called from his table just last week, appears in today’s Gospel in the list of the twelve apostles being sent out. The lectionary is showing us how quickly being found becomes being sent.
Matthew the tax collector, called from his table just last week, appears in today’s Gospel in the list of the twelve apostles being sent out. The lectionary is showing us how quickly being found becomes being sent.
The Readings
Genesis 18:1–15, (21:1–7)
First Reading (Track One) — Sarah Laughs
Summary
Three travelers arrive at Abraham’s tent in the heat of the day, and Abraham — without yet knowing who they are — hurries to offer extravagant hospitality. Over the meal, one of them announces that Sarah will have a son within the year. Sarah is listening from inside the tent and laughs to herself, silently, as she thinks, at the idea that two old people could still have a child. The visitor knows. He calls out the laugh and asks the question on which the whole story turns: is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Sarah, frightened, denies laughing. He simply says: Oh yes, you did. The optional ending of the reading carries the story forward — the promise comes true, Sarah gives birth, and they name the child Isaac, which means “he laughs.” The laughter that began in skepticism comes back as joy.
Key Ideas for Preaching
1. Abraham welcomes strangers and ends up hosting God. He does not know who they are when he runs to greet them — he simply treats them like honored guests. What does it look like for your congregation to extend that kind of hospitality to people whose importance they have not yet discovered?
2. Sarah’s laughter is honest. After twenty-five years of waiting on a promise that never came, she is not pretending anymore. What does it look like to give your people permission to bring their honest doubt to God without dressing it up as faith?
3. The question at the heart of the story — is anything too wonderful for the Lord? — is not about whether God can do tricks. It is about whether we still credit God with the capacity to surprise us. Where has your congregation quietly written something off as impossible — about themselves, about each other, about the world — that this text suggests they should hold more loosely?
4. If you include the verses from chapter 21, Isaac’s name carries the whole arc: “he laughs.” The laughter that began in disbelief comes back as the laughter of joy. What would it mean for your people to trust that God can turn the laughter of skepticism into the laughter of celebration — and that both kinds of laughter can be holy?
Significant Cautions
• Sarah’s laughter is sometimes preached as a failure of faith, with Sarah cast as a cautionary example. The text is gentler than that. She is honest, and God is honest back. Be careful not to turn the scene into a morality lesson about doubt.
• The three visitors have been used in some traditions as a kind of preview of the Trinity. The text itself does not make that claim, and forcing it on the passage tends to distract from what is actually happening. Better to let the strangeness of the scene be what it is.
• The promise of a child in old age can land hard on people who have prayed for a child and not received one. Be careful not to suggest that those who do not get the miracle are short on faith.
Psalm 116:1–2, 12–19
The Psalm (Track One) — What Shall I Return to the Lord?
Summary
This is a psalm of thanksgiving from someone who has been heard. The opening lines tell us why the psalmist loves God: because God listened. The middle section asks the question every grateful person eventually asks — what can I possibly give back? The answer turns out not to be a material payment at all. It is to lift the cup of salvation, to call on God’s name, to keep the vows made in the day of trouble — and to do all of this publicly, in the presence of all God’s people.
Key Ideas for Preaching
1. The psalmist’s love for God begins with being heard. That is a much smaller and more reachable claim than it sounds. What might it do for your congregation to hear that the path to loving God can begin with something as simple as the conviction that God is paying attention?
2. The question “what shall I return to the Lord?” is asked by someone overflowing with gratitude, not by someone calculating a debt. Where in your congregation has gratitude turned into obligation rather than response, and how might this psalm soften that?
3. The thanksgiving is offered in the presence of all God’s people — public, witnessed, communal, not a private feeling kept to oneself. What would it look like to give your people room to name out loud where God has met them?
Significant Cautions
• “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones” can sound to a grieving person as if their loved one’s death is being called a treasure. The line means that God watches over the lives and deaths of God’s people with care — not that death itself is a good thing. Handle it tenderly.
• “I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice” can be heard painfully by someone whose prayers have not been answered the way they wanted. Make room in the sermon for them as well.
Exodus 19:2–8a
First Reading (Track Two) — A Kingdom of Priests
Summary
The Israelites have just come out of Egypt and are camped at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses climbs the mountain, and God speaks to him with a word for the people. God begins by reminding them of what they have already seen — how God carried them out of slavery on eagles’ wings — and then names what they are about to become: if they keep the covenant, they will be God’s treasured possession out of all the peoples of the earth, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. Moses brings the message back, and the people answer in a single voice: everything the Lord has said, we will do.
Key Ideas for Preaching
1. God’s word to Israel begins with what God has already done. The covenant is offered to people God has already rescued, not to people who have earned it. Where does your congregation still imagine that their relationship with God starts with their performance rather than with God’s prior love?
2. A kingdom of priests is a people whose whole life points others toward God. This is not a job for clergy or for a few specially gifted members — it is the identity of the whole community. What does it look like for your people to take seriously that their ordinary lives are meant to be priestly?
3. The people’s “we will do” comes very quickly. They will, of course, fail to keep it almost immediately. What does it mean to preach this scene knowing both that the commitment is sincere and that it will not hold — and that God enters the covenant anyway?
Significant Cautions
• “Treasured possession” has been used to claim that one group has been chosen over and against others — including, in tragic stretches of Christian history, to argue that the church has replaced Israel as the chosen people. That is a misreading. Be careful with the language of being chosen so that it does not slide into superiority.
• The image of being carried on eagles’ wings is beautiful but can be turned into the promise that God always rescues the faithful from hardship. The Exodus story itself does not promise that. Hold the image tenderly for people whose deliverance is still long in coming.
Psalm 100
The Psalm (Track Two) — The Sheep of His Pasture
Summary
The whole psalm is one sustained call to worship — seven imperatives stacked into five short verses. The reason runs through every line: God made us, we belong to God, God is good, God’s steadfast love endures forever. It is among the shortest and best-loved psalms in the Bible, often used to open worship.
Key Ideas for Preaching
1. The psalm is almost all imperatives — commands to worship. Worship here is not a feeling the worshiper has to manufacture; it is something the people are invited to do, and the doing tends to come first. Where might your congregation be waiting to feel ready to worship rather than simply showing up to do it?
2. The reason for worship in the psalm is not the worshiper’s circumstances but God’s character — that God made us, that we belong to God, that God’s love endures. What would change if your congregation grounded its praise in who God is rather than in how the week has gone?
3. This psalm pairs naturally with the Exodus reading. The people God is forming into a kingdom of priests are the same people the psalm calls to enter God’s gates with thanksgiving. The identity and the practice belong together. What might it look like for your congregation to feel both at once?
Significant Cautions
• The command to “make a joyful noise” has sometimes been turned into the requirement that worship always be exuberant and loud. Joy in worship comes in many keys — including quiet ones. Be careful not to make joyful noise the same as loud noise.
• A psalm of pure praise can leave out people who are grieving or hurting, who cannot easily summon gladness. The psalm is one voice in a larger book that also makes ample room for lament. Not every Sunday is Psalm 100 weather, and saying so honestly can be a kindness.
Romans 5:1–8
The Epistle — Hope That Does Not Disappoint
Summary
Paul opens this chapter with one of his great summary statements: now that we have been put right with God by trust, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ. From there he describes the strange logic of Christian hope. We can even hold our heads up in suffering, he says, because suffering forms endurance, endurance forms character, and character forms hope — a hope that does not let us down, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Then he gives the ground for it all: Christ did not wait for us to deserve him. He died for us while we were still weak, still sinners, with no claim on him at all.
Key Ideas for Preaching
1. The chain Paul builds — suffering, endurance, character, hope — describes what suffering can do, not what it always does. Paul is not telling sufferers that their pain is a tool God is using on them; he is telling people who are already enduring something hard that the road they are walking has been walked before, and it leads somewhere. Where does your congregation need to hear that distinction made plainly?
2. The hope Paul describes is not optimism. Optimism depends on circumstances; this hope is poured in from outside — the love of God by the Spirit. How might it help your people to be told that they do not have to manufacture their own hope?
3. Christ died for us, Paul says, while we were still sinners — before any of us had cleaned ourselves up to qualify. Where does your congregation still secretly believe that God will love them more once they have improved, and what would change if they let that go?
Significant Cautions
• “Suffering produces endurance” has been used to silence people whose suffering is real and unjust — to tell them they should be grateful for what their pain is doing to them. That is a cruel misuse. Paul is not blessing suffering; he is comforting people in it. Say so plainly.
• “Justified by faith” can be flattened into the idea that what saves us is the strength of our own believing — as if faith were a new thing to achieve. The weight here is on the trustworthiness of God, not the size of our trust. Keep the emphasis where Paul puts it.
• Paul’s contrast between sinners and the righteous has sometimes been used to draw lines around who counts as truly bad and who counts as basically good. The whole point of the passage is that none of us was on the right side of that line, and Christ came anyway.
Matthew 9:35–10:8, (9–23)
The Gospel — The Compassion and the Sending
Summary
Jesus has been moving through the towns of Galilee, teaching and healing, and when he looks at the crowds something gives way in him. They are exhausted, he says — harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. From that compassion comes the saying about a plentiful harvest and too few laborers, and then the response: Jesus summons twelve of his disciples, names them one by one, gives them authority, and sends them out. The instructions are striking. Stay with Israel for now. Take nothing — no money, no extra clothing, no traveling kit. Whatever you have received, give freely. In the verses that follow, the warning grows sober: you will be sent like sheep among wolves, you will be hated, you will need to endure. The mission is real, and so is the cost, and Jesus hides neither. Talk about some straight talk!
Key Ideas for Preaching
1. The mission begins in Jesus’ compassion. Before there is a strategy or a sending, there is a look at the crowds and the sense that they are sheep without a shepherd. What does it look like for your congregation’s own sense of mission to begin in compassion rather than in obligation or ambition?
2. Among the twelve named and sent is Matthew the tax collector — the very man called from his table in last week’s Gospel. The lectionary is showing us how quickly being found becomes being sent. Where in your congregation are people waiting to feel qualified before they are willing to be sent, and what would change if they took Matthew’s story seriously about themselves?
3. The travel instructions are notable for everything they leave out. No money, no bag, no extra clothes. The mission is meant to be carried out in a posture of vulnerability and dependence on those who receive them. What does it look like for your congregation to do mission in a way that does not arrive with all the answers and all the resources — but with empty hands?
4. “You received without payment; give without payment.” The freedom of what has been given is meant to set the temperature of how it is given. Where in your congregation has ministry quietly become a transaction, and how might Jesus’ instruction reset it?
5. The harder verses about persecution are not meant to glamorize suffering. They are meant to be honest with disciples about what the road can cost. How might your sermon prepare your people for the real costs of faithful witness without making them dramatic about minor inconveniences?
Significant Cautions
• “The harvest is plentiful” has been used to fuel a kind of urgent recruitment that pressures and manipulates. The compassion of Jesus comes first; the harvest language is meant to motivate prayer (“ask the Lord of the harvest”), not panic.
• The instruction to “go nowhere among the Gentiles” is specific to this moment in Jesus’ ministry. By the end of Matthew’s Gospel, the disciples will be sent to all nations. Be careful not to use this verse to argue for any kind of restriction or favoritism today.
• “Shake the dust from your feet” has been used to justify cutting off relationships with people who do not respond the way we want. Read in context, it is permission to keep moving without resentment, not a license for contempt.
• The persecution verses — brother betraying brother, being hated because of his name — have been pressed into service to dramatize any modern opposition to a religious agenda as fulfillment of prophecy. Be cautious. Jesus is preparing disciples for a specific kind of cost; he is not handing his followers a script for grievance.
• “The one who endures to the end will be saved” can land cruelly on people who are exhausted. The verse is encouragement for the road, not a warning that those who burn out are lost.
• The naming of twelve men has been used to argue that leadership belongs to a particular kind of person. The wider New Testament — including Mary Magdalene as the first witness of the resurrection, Lydia, Phoebe, Priscilla, and many others — tells a much fuller story about who is sent.
Thematic Connections
Depending on which track you follow, the day takes one of two shapes — and both lead naturally toward the same Gospel.
On the first track, the day is about God’s faithfulness to people whose circumstances make the promise look ridiculous. Abraham and Sarah are old, and Sarah laughs. Psalm 116 gives the voice of someone delivered and overflowing with gratitude. Romans 5 grounds hope not in our endurance but in the love of God poured into us. And the Gospel sends an unlikely set of workers — Matthew the tax collector among them — out into a harvest that needs them. The thread is the stubborn, surprising reliability of God when the human side of the equation looks impossible.
On the second track, the day is about identity and mission. Exodus names Israel as a kingdom of priests; Psalm 100 calls the whole earth to worship the God who has made and gathered them; Romans grounds the believer in the love of God; and the Gospel sends the disciples out as the very priestly people God has been forming all along. The thread is the long, patient work of God shaping a people who exist for the sake of the world.
The Gospel is the natural preaching center either way. Jesus’ compassion and the sending of the Twelve gather both threads — God’s faithfulness across generations and the formation of a people who are sent.
If you are on Track One, Romans pairs with Genesis to insist that the church’s hope is grounded in God’s character, not in our circumstances.
If you are on Track Two, Exodus and Psalm 100 prepare the congregation to hear today’s sending as the latest chapter in God’s long pattern of making a priestly people.
The psalms work best as sung or spoken responses; either one offers a line worth carrying into the sermon — “what shall I return to the Lord?” or “we are God’s people, and the sheep of God’s pasture.”
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out “The Thursday Sermon” (which actually comes out on Wednesday each week) as an example of how these preaching insights can be used. There are also additional “Liturgical Resources” for each week that you are WELCOMED and ENCOURAGED to use in your worship services. Acknowledgment to “Lectionary.pro” will be greatly appreciated.
