Please join us to find a place of prayer and rest in a busy week. From intimacy in prayer God is able to do many things.
Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives May you never give up praying. When you pray, may you keep alert and be thankful. Pray that together we may make the message of the mystery of Christ as clear as possible. Amen (Based on Colossians 3 and 4)
The Psalmist sings, “Oh, give thanks to the Lord. Call on his name. Make known his deeds among the people.”
Rachel cried out, and she was given a son, Joseph, in her old age. She was given another son, Benjamin, and died in childbirth. Jacob loved Joseph more than his other 11 sons and made him a fine colourful coat.
The coat became his downfall as he followed his brother’s flocks for his father traveling 100 miles. He was betrayed as they saw his coat from afar and plotted his death. Jacob’s eldest son by Leah Reuben was the main plotter. who saved Joseph’s life, firstly plotting to kill him then plotting to save him and finally with his brothers selling him into slavery to the Ishmaelites and they took him to Egypt.
The bloodstained coat was presented to Jacob as evidence of Joseph’s demise.
A sorry tale. Jacob’s son Reuben who is previously recorded as having raped Bilhah, his father’s handmaid given to Rachel, the mother of his brothers. This deepens the cultural distance we have from this tale. Envy runs deep and male power knows no bounds in this Bible story as it seems to know no bounds today.
Seek the Lord and his strength. Seek his presence continually, says the psalm.
This is our hope. The teaching of Deuteronomy 30 is interpreted by Paul through Christ. The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart.
There is no excuse. There was no excuse and there never will be an excuse for what happened.
Paul quotes Joel 2. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. The same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. This is our hope.
This is the good news we proclaim. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
And Isaiah 52:7, how beautiful are the feet of those that bring good news.
In the gospel, Matthew continues to show us the response of Jesus to the death of John the Baptist. Here we see Jesus in prayer all night and then walking on stormy water before dawn to the boat where the disciples have been battling all night against the winds to reach the shore and failed.
Jesus calms them and Peter calls out to Jesus asking that he might walk out on the water to Jesus only to doubt and sink, again calling on Jesus to save him. This is done and the storms subside as Jesus helps Peter into the boat and those in the boat worship Jesus as the son of God- Messiah. They had encountered God in Jesus and praised God’s special messenger.
What are we to take from this miracle? Jesus saves.
I believe Peter stepped out bravely but his faith was not sufficient to sustain him. Jesus walking on water challenges our understanding of reality. A manifestation of the kingdom of God. A transfiguration of Jesus that proclaims Jesus treading down and ruling over the abyss. This is no party trick. This was God hovering over the waters, the Creator.
And he called Peter to join him. Peter saw the waves, felt the wind, and became fearful. He sank. He did walk for a time. Peter walked on water.
Without a holistic view of creation, as spirit and matter and mind, this makes no sense.
As myth carrying deep meaning it challenges us. God is for each of us, lovingly present. He is reality. He makes himself present to us in breaking bread and wine and here in walking on water. Worship him. Call on him.
The psalm says, Remember the wonderful works he has done, his miracles and his judgments he has uttered.
Believe and life will never be the same. You may fail, but you have walked on water. and Jesus is with you. Did Jesus smile as he pulled Peter up or was he genuinely surprised? I don’t think he was angry. The child learning to walk stumbles.
(Angry) You of little faith, why did you doubt?
(Laughing) You of little faith, why did you doubt?
(Surprised) You have little faith, why did you doubt?
The only evidence we have of the work God does is the work that God does in us. He can give us transformed lives, people who live lives that attest to the truth. Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, Paul exhorts us.
None of what we say is true if our life isn’t transformed. And a transformed life is one of peace and not envy and not contention; one of integrity, not of self-aggrandisement.
Jesus goes before us and is there for us to see us transformed.
Grace and peace.
Attribution: Runge, Philipp Otto, 1777-1810. Christ Walking on the Water, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://act.library.vanderbilt.edu/artworks/59351 [retrieved August 15, 2026]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Philipp_Otto_Runge_-_Petrus_auf_dem_Meer_%28ca._1806%29.jpg.
That’s an interesting lot of scriptures. Notice that the liturgical order the Scripture reading, psalm, gospel (accounts of Jesus life and the life of the early church), then epistle (Letters written by the early church). The epistle for me is key to my interpretation of the gospel. The scripture and psalm prepare us for the gospel. Let’s start at the beginning.
We’ve come into a part of scripture where I believe we must culturally distance ourselves from the story because it’s a story fraught with problems for any reader who is a follower of Jesus. The only thing that seems to redeem it is the love and seeming chastity of Jacob waiting seven years for the one beautiful Rachel who he loved on being offered her as a wife. The way Rachel behaved afterwards, I am not sure love came into it for her, as she was chattel. Jacob’s listening to his parents is commendable also.
These may be good things, but I don’t think we can allegorize the story as the early Church Fathers did saying that Leah and Rachel stood for the Gentiles and the Jews and Jacob as Christ uniting them or, some of them, who talk about Leah being the synagogue and Rachel being the church. Leah has bad eyesight, though they’re supposed to both be beautiful which fits the picture according to the Church Fathers. But we need to pause here as Leah commits adultery as Jacob is actually married to Rachel and they are not free agents in terms of their culture but they as Paul are free to treat scripture in this way. I can’t accept that this story encourages us in the understanding of Christ, but the Fathers were conditioned to allegorise as part of their belief about the purpose of the Scriptures. If like me you think this story is awful, and read the next chapter, chapter 32, I must culturally distance myself from the mandrakes and from the shaking of sticks to affect genetics, but there you go. It probably makes a good Sunday School story, or inform us a bit about the working of the spiritual world, but I don’t think it is to be encouraged as a way to live our lives.
What’s the way we should approach these stories? They’re informative in terms of the history of the promise of Abraham; how it worked out despite the sin of men. The intervention of God in terms of the judgment between Rachel and Leah happens in this chapter, but not in these readings. Leah is fruitful and Rachel remains barren. This hardly seems fair on Rachel who has done nothing wrong. I think we could say that God accommodates the cultural idolatry, works with the society and intervenes as necessary. I make this judgement because of the life of Jesus. The story of the maidservants being forced to bear children continues into this generation and the children of promise, Joseph and Benjamine are late additions as God intervenes and hears Rachel’s cry. In my opinion God does not look good in this but the narrative of the older serving the younger continues.
Recently I was reading and preparing a piece on loving the Lord God with all your strength, … with all your might. You find that scripture in Leviticus 19 a chapter which begins: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Within that section we have the mitigation for the rape of slave girls. Surely, we can distance ourselves from that and realise that Leviticus is a constraining text for the most part on the evil behaviour of powerful unregenerate men. That is not very positive for women and wholesome and requires parental guidance if a child is to read it. People will pick and choose bits of Leviticus and say that as a result, their opinions are biblical. I think in studying the Bible you need to look a bit closer at the Bible and realize the cultural distance between us and these scriptures is immense because of the light of Christ in the life and words of Jesus. We cannot pick and choose according to our taboos or preformed bias but need to listen to the spirit and judge. Jesus teaches this in our gospel today (verse 52): …every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old…
The story is paired with what follows in an enlightening way and that’s good. But you know we can culturally distance ourselves from the bigotry of the early Church Fathers as we do from some of the practices in the early church written in the epistles. We can culturally distance ourselves from the way things were in these times and must, especially as the treating of women as chattel, second class citizens whose role is to submit to men, and the excusing of male sexual violence as boys will be boys, still happens in our world. Some cultures would not see that anything that’s in these chapters is wrong. But I think we can in the light of Christ and, in the light that these scriptures reveal Christ in us importantly, make the judgment of Christ with the authority of Christ and say, no, this is wrong and search the treasure for the good. I judge this is wrong in any time, in any place, and was wrong when it happened. Just because it’s in the Bible and Jacob is a hero of the faith, doesn’t make it right.
Thank God for the Psalm! It brings us back to what this is all about, the covenant of Abraham. As a church we are encouraged to sing and as individuals to seek God’s presence continually. Amen!
Now to Romans a beautiful exclamation of Paul who pours out his heart to the divided Roman Church where some trusted in their salvation because they were Jews and others found themselves on another culturally challenging course with respect to the Jews. They had been separated from the Jews because of the persecution and banishment of the Jews Under Claudius (c. 49 AD). When the Jews return to Rome, they find the church changed.
Paul begins with prayer pictured as a groan of the spirit as God searches our hearts and intercedes for us. Our place is to trust that we are in God’s will, and he is working everything for the good, so we don’t need to sort it out and worry that we get the right formula of practice or words. In fact, it says later that Christ intercedes for us in the grimmest of times through his love made real in us.
Now I firmly believe that the election is in Christ. This is the promise of Abraham fulfilled. The inclusion of the Gentiles was foreknown and predestined in the promise of Abraham and its fulfilment is in Christ. It is sad to me when a scripture that is meant to be inclusive has ended up being about the nuts and bolts of election. And so the baying wolves are released, and Christians forget to disagree agreeably even to the point of violence. The elect are as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore according to the promise and they certainly shouldn’t be going at each other’s throats. Shame on you church.
When Paul writes of his certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, he meant it. His outburst confirms that our election is sure both for both Jew and Gentile, church and synagogue, in Christ.
The epistle links forward to the Gospel in my understanding, and I hope you will allow me some latitude in what they mean for me. This teaching comes after the parable of the Sower taught to the people and is a section of parable’s taught to his close followers which includes the parable of the wheat and the tares. It’s a teaching for those who have heard as Jesus says.
The mustard seed indicates that the disciples must expect this message to go to the nations represented by the birds of the air, those same birds who picked at the message in the parable of the Sower. The pearl of great price speaks to them of the hiddenness of the treasure, which is buried once found. It can be seen to be preparing the disciples for a life of hiddenness which they will have sold everything to gain. Historically this was the case with the church growing by people witnessing Christian lives and seeking to know why they were so counter cultural and flourished. So strong was the need for the church to remain hidden, records show that it would take over three years before people were admitted to the church. They were concerned about the habits of nonviolence, purity in relationships and self-sacrificial love, especially in the care of the poor and attitudes towards enemies; the Way. We can see from the Paul’s letters how protective the church was of the reputation of the Way. Jesus himself prophesied the marginalization of his followers as these habits marked them out.
The parable of the net repeats the message of the wheat and tares. The link back in our scriptures is that this is the promise to Abraham and the letter of Paul; all will be included, every nation. As people are drawn in to the church the church needs to exercise discernment, but it is at the end of time that the angels judge. Paul helps us not to fear this in his exhortation! Both in the case of the wheat and tares and the net it is the angels that judge. The kingdom of heaven isn’t like the judgement, Jesus taught, he did not come to condemn anyone, it is the drawing in of the net and the harvesting of the field. The tares are wrong teachings sown by the evil one and the bad fish are people judged to be bad by the fishermen. It is the angels who separate the evil from the righteous.
My interpretation of this takes Paul’s exhortation and adds these parables and is that, the church is to disagree agreeably knowing that the Spirit in each will discern the truth and that though they have to exercise authority with regards to the Way, they do not have the final say as to destiny of people. We can be reassured that Paul exhortation says: who can bring any charge against God’s elect. For me the parables say, it’s not the church that gets to decide this.
And surely Christians have persecuted and set to the sword one anther because of their judgement of who is good and who is bad, whose word is planted by the evil one and whose of God. The warning for me is that we are to be humble, because when the judgement is made, when the end of the age comes, we may find the fire of God proving us, burning away the dross to reveal a treasure we had rejected(1 Corinthians 3 and Hebrews 12). Indeed, there will be much weeping and grinding of teeth as we must let go of our treasured opinions about doctrine and treasured judgements about who the elect are not. Salvation is to be found in Christ’s teachings on love. We will suffer loss in the flames of God’s purging fire. For those found in Christ this may fall as persecution as we stand for truth in this world as Paul lists.
I believe these parables are a call to humility and cautionary for the close followers, those who have heard; you’ve found a treasure you can’t boast in as all people can see is you have sold everything for a field; you need to stay humble especially as the age comes to an end, and stay close to God; and not be drawn out by evil teachings that don’t lead to love of our neighbour and our enemies, and the power of people who don’t welcome the stranger and do good to the afflicted (parable of the sheep and goats)
For some of you that has challenged my credentials. Thank goodness we get to discuss this and we can agree to disagree agreeably in this gathering. Jesus teaches us to find the treasure.
Parable of the Seed Edie Mae Herrel, the multi-talented and award-winning artist, developed her distinctive style in etching and printmaking, characterized by delicacy and attention to detail. Her artwork, stimulated by biblical scripture, encourages her observers to connect deeply with spirituality and inspires them to live by the beliefs of love, truth, and joy. Read more information about the artist at Edie Mae Herrel.
Genesis 25:19–34 tells a story that reveals something deep about the sovereign will of God, a will that operates beyond human strength, tradition, or expectation.
Isaac, the son of Abraham, married Rebekah when he was forty. She was barren, but Isaac prayed, and God answered. When she conceived, the twins inside her struggled so intensely that she cried out, “If this is how it will be, why go on living?”
She sought the Lord, and He revealed a prophecy:
“Two nations are in your womb… the elder shall serve the younger.”
Even before their birth, God had already declared how His promise would unfold.
Esau came first — red and hairy, a strong hunter, a man of the field. Jacob followed, gripping Esau’s heel, and grew up as a quiet man who stayed among the tents. Isaac favoured Esau for his game, but Rebekah favoured Jacob.
One day, Esau returned exhausted from the field and begged Jacob for some stew. Jacob seized the moment:
“Sell me your birthright first. ”Esau, driven by hunger rather than wisdom, replied, “I am about to die; what good is a birthright to me?”
He swore an oath and traded the blessing of the firstborn for a simple meal.
This moment shows us something important: Esau was strong, but not strong in God.
He had the birthright — the promise — yet he treated it lightly. Jacob was not strong, nor the firstborn, yet he desired what God had promised.
He sought the blessing that mattered.
Even the circumstances testify against Esau.
He surrendered God’s promise for temporary satisfaction. And so, the blessing went to Jacob — not because of human tradition, not because of manipulation, but because God had already intended it.
Did God manipulated Esau to treat him lightly? Didn’t Jacob seek God’s promise like it matters more than anything he could desire?
The stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob consistently show that God’s purposes stand above human expectations and traditions. And this is how he chooses according to 1 Cor 1:27-29
1Co 1:27-29 NET27 But God chose what the world thinks foolish to shame the wise, and God chose what the world thinks weak to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, what is regarded as nothing, to set aside what is regarded as something, so that no one can boast in his presence.
And this is what Romans 8:5-11 said as well
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law–indeed, it cannot,and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
But if Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 tells us about the parable of the Sower, it reminds us that when we hear the Word of God, we must sow it in good soil.
The parable of the Sower and the seed that same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea.
Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach.
And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seeds fell on a path, and the birds came and ate them up.
Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil.
But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away.
Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.
Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. If you have ears, hear!”
“Hear, then, the parable of the Sower.
When anyone hears the word of the KINGDOM and does NOT understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in (your) the heart; this is what was sown on the path.
As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet such a person has no root but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away.
As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.
But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
The Word of God produces fruit in our lives when it is planted in the good soil God intended. This good soil is not our strength or our wealth, but a heart that treasures His Word as the only true source of life, even in seasons of nothingness or the loss of things we laboured in the flesh.
Through it, nothing can hinder the Word of God to grow abundantly in our hearts, neither could anything take it away.
Herrel, Edie Mae. Parable of the Seed, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59800 [retrieved July 22, 2026]. Original source: Image was donated by Edie Mae Herrel and Dan Herrel, dkherrel@hotmail.com, nancynuss@gmail.com, Patrick.herrel@hotmail.com.
I don’t know about you, but for me the story of Abraham and Isaac takes on a much gentler tone in what we have this morning; the servant of Abraham goes gently to find Isaac a wife. Sarah has died and Isaac mourns the death of his mother for a number of years. The servant reports that for this reason he has gone to find a wife for his master’s son. Abraham has been greatly blessed and all his wealth falls to Isaac his only heir. He has come to see if there is a suitable young woman to be given in marriage to Isaac. Abraham’s servant clearly has a faith and a trust in the Yahweh, the LORD. He asks the LORD that a young woman would be provided in a manner of his choosing, it talks about him speaking this in his heart asking the LORD and Rebekah fulfilling his request. His prayer is answered in the coming out and hospitality of Rebekah. The scripture recounts the blessing promised Rebekah and the consent of Rebekah to go. She was asked if she would leave her household and become the wife of Isaac and she consented.
The scripture then recounts the seeming melancholy of Isaac walking in the field on his own in the evening. Then seeing one another, there is the acceptance of Isaac of Rebekah as his wife, and the taking of Rebekah into his mother’s tent. Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death. Rebekah was a comfort to him. Genesis 2 states that the way of men should be, a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Sarah never got to see, as we’ve noted before, the fulfilment of the promise in her son Isaac. Hagar did. Ishmael fulfilled the requirements of the law in terms of taking a wife and prospered. Isaac prospered to repeat the sins of his father Abraham and Rebekah, the folly of Sarah. Read on!
Isaac seems to be a detached individual, walking in the field on his own in the evening. But maybe that’s just me. My heart says that having survived the trauma of his father trying to kill him, he was profoundly affected and maudlin. But who knows? There is much to trouble us in our separation by history from this story and it is hard to see its value to us now as scripture. We must take from it what we can and trust the truth in it that God is good and accommodates Isaac’s folly as we search for Christ in its telling. Many have seen Isaac as a type for Christ and note that he remains in the land, prospers and is the longest lived of the Patriarchs. God also does not change his name.
And then the psalm equally distant from us in history and in some ways troubling but a psalm we might interpret for the Church, the Church being the daughter here, “O daughter, consider and incline your ear. Forget your people and your father’s house. “
As the church, we’ve been called; called from sin into forgiveness, the old has passed away and we live in the newness of grace; we have left our father’s house and cling to the King. We are the Church because of our repentance, our turning away from our old lives. The king sees this and desires our beauty.
“O daughter of Tyre seek your favour with gifts; the riches of the people with all kinds of wealth,” speaks to us I think of the inclusion of the Gentiles into the church. Also the psalm speaks to us of the hiddenness of the glory of the church in that the princess is decked in her chamber with gold woven robes. Her glory is for the king; it’s a concealed beauty. And then it says,”… in the place of ancestors you o king shall have sons. You will make them princes in all the earth.”
This is the promise, the provision, the increase that will be the Church. And we know that the Church will be celebrated in all generations, its purpose, to bring praise and glory to God. Maybe this interpretation is a stretch but, in our time, and in our place what are we to make of it as scripture? We are to search the scriptures and find Christ, to find testimonies of Christ, his incarnation, life death and resurrection (John 5:39“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.” Jesus says. And in his resurrection, Jesus taught, Luke 24:25-26… ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiahshould suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’)
In Romans, I see a rhetorical exploration of the human condition, the human struggle. It talks to us of our conscience, talks to us of the word of God speaking within us, talks to us of the light within each and every person that guides and directs us, holds us to account. It talks to us about the law, how the law is good.
And then it talks to us about the counter to the law within us, saying how the desire to do the good lies close at hand but not the ability. Having started off saying, I do not understand my own actions it ends up saying, wretched person that I am, talks about the inmost self, delighting in the law; talks about another law being at war with the law of my mind; of knowing the truth and yet not being able to act according to the truth. It talks about the struggle, the struggle of humanity to do good and the examination of the law that causes us to know guilt and shame. All this human effort is not good news, it is good but leaves the individual bereft, lost, confused by the contradictions in themselves, the very contradictions we find in Genesis. The contradictions we find in today’s stories of forced adoptions of single parent children up to the 1970s in the UK where evil was done by some in the name of good, yet not all acted for evil intent, but the outcomes were the same. In this case we choose not to allow for the distance of history we have decided that it never was right.
The good news is that we’re delivered from the inner turmoil through Jesus Christ who brings peace and makes sense of all the mess, by naming the power of sin and taking it to the cross, defeating death. The answer for each of us is gained through keeping a short account in Christ, listening to our hearts, not in our ability to name our sins and reform ourselves through penance. Any solution we as people think we have come up with becomes a tyranny, a lie and kills us; death reigns again. The LORD speaks directly into our hearts, you are a new creation in Christ.
In Christ we are rescued and perfected, saved from our own self-improvement, our own atoning despair. And the peace we come to know by giving up self-help is the peace of Christ who says to us, “Come to me. All you who are weary and are carrying a heavy burden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
The yoke being the discipline of trusting in the work of God alone, the way of Christ, and the burden being the truth of Christ that we live and find to be a place of still waters and green pastures. It’s freedom. It’s freedom from the oppression of the law, it’s grace.
What leads up to this saying of Jesus are sayings that tell us that it’s hard to accept this good news especially if we are invested in the old ways and not the message of grace. We don’t really know what we want when we allow the ways of the world to cloud our judgement. We have to undo our knowing and rest in God the perfector of our souls, walking in gentleness and humility as he did and loving one another as he loved us. We need to listen and trust even to our own loss.
The passage says, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance. We wailed and you did not mourn.” Jesus contrasts his teachings with John the Baptist’s way of austerity and highlights the criticism he’s received for being a drunkard; he speaks to me of the hiddenness of this message of grace, the hiddenness that we saw in the psalm, which is the actual beauty of the Church. This beauty can only be seen from within, and recognised by those who walk the same path.
The work is a hidden one, made visible in the life we lead but not always apparent and a source of much trouble. It is a cause for us to delight and is to be enjoyed despite this, knowing that we are saved from strife. Our saviour is humble and our saviour is gentle. The tyranny of the law has been overcome in him and we are called into the abundance of grace, freed from slavery to sin. Through turning to Jesus, every part of our lives is redeemed, piece by piece. Our gospel is good news; in our stumbling we grow, in our taking up of the cross and in hardship our character develops as we endure, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Daily Readings from Lectionary
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