Scripture: 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Luke 9:51-62 Series: Easter
A lectionary note for Ordinary Time (Proper 8, Year C) pairing two texts of departure, succession, and undivided commitment. The first reading recounts Elijah’s ascent in a whirlwind of fire and Elisha’s refusal to leave his master, inheriting a double portion of his spirit and his fallen mantle to part the Jordan in his own right. The second is Luke’s hinge passage where Jesus resolutely sets his face toward Jerusalem, rebukes James and John for wanting to call down fire on an inhospitable Samaritan village, and meets three would-be followers with the hard demands of discipleship: foxes have holes but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head; let the dead bury their dead; no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. The note contains only the full scripture passages and the headings (Ordinary Time, both readings) without a developed sermon body or illustrations.
June 28, 2026
Ordinary Time
Genesis 22:1-18
Genesis 22:1-18
After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. And the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them walked on together.
When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide,” as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “By myself I have sworn, says the Lord: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.”
matthew 10:40-42
“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous, and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”
Doing the Minimum
What are the moments in our life where we give the least?
I think all of us need to admit that sometimes we just do the minimum. We do what is asked of us.
It is like the pieces of flare in Office Space when Joanna only has 15 and she is fine with it because sticking buttons on her server apron is not something that gets her up in the morning. You don’t need to go the max in everything you do.
As a musician, an album that was all bangers all the time would be exhausting. They could never actually perform all the bangers. Even Metallica had ballads that would slow it down and let them catch their breath. The contrast actually helps you to appreciate the bangers.
So not everything in life needs to be taken to the nth degree. Or, as the UT Longhorns — their slogan used to be, “All gas, no brakes.” Thankfully, I think they changed it, because that’s not a really helpful way to drive unless there’s nobody else on the road. All gas, no brakes works if you’re in the middle of the Mojave Desert, but the brakes are there because you live in a world with other people.
So we can’t just say, “All right, do as much as you can all the time” — maximum effort everywhere, or minimum effort everywhere. Which is unfortunate, because usually you want to have a rule for your life, some kind of structure, a code that is applicable in every situation. But that won’t work. If you try to maximize everything, you just exhaust yourself. So how do we figure out what are the things to maximize in our life and what are the things to minimize?
The Virtue of Prudence
Last week, on Father’s Day, we talked about courage — Godly courage, and the courage to know what are the right fears: what are the fears to fear, and the courage and faithfulness to not fear what destroys the body but what destroys the soul. To realize that our soul is under threat by a million small decisions each day, when we decide to follow Jesus or we don’t.
Another ancient virtue is prudence. Prudence is the virtue of knowing the good, being able to discern the good in certain situations.
Prudence, like courage, is a virtue, which means it’s a habit. It’s a practice. It’s something you can be good at. It’s something that nobody is naturally good at — you don’t naturally improve at it.
And we are given, in our readings for today, two incredibly contrasting moments of prudential judgment. We have Abraham and Isaac up on Mount Moriah, taking faith to the absolute maximum, willing to sacrifice your only child, and we have Jesus talking about the power of giving even a cup of cold water to a little one.
Akedah
The sacrifice of Isaac, or the Akedah, is one of the most visceral stories in all of ancient humanity. There are carryovers in lots of culture, literature, and art — as well as, it should be said, often a lack of exploration into the depths of what is going on.
There’s one way to read it: that Abraham always knew that God would save Isaac, so he wasn’t worried. We had VBS this week — this would be the VBS interpretation, if I were going to sing a bunch of songs and read some stories about the Akedah. This is what the theme would be: isn’t Abraham so smart to trust God, because God is going to be faithful and save his son?
One of the great challenges is that we don’t know what Abraham was thinking. If he had resigned himself to slaying his son, he could have saved the trip up the mountain. Abraham called that place, Adonai Yireh or “The Lord Will Provide”.
Beyond Ethics: Godly Prudence
Ultimately, Abraham’s mind is opaque to us. He is inaccessible. It is easy to see the actions of Abraham as wicked.
This gets to the starkest understanding of the prudence of God versus the prudence of the world. Like last week, when we were talking about courage — there’s a difference between worldly courage and godly courage. Pagan, earthly courage lifts up the warrior, the fighter, the risk-taker; that’s what gets called courage. Godly courage lifts up the one who does not see death as the greatest thing to fear.
For Abraham, we see that Godly prudence — knowing the good, seeing the good — is not about following an ethical precept all the way to the end, but about a faith beyond that. Faith in a God beyond our human understanding, whom we see fully revealed in Jesus Christ — for whom the knife was not stayed, and for whom there was no lamb presented that could take his place on the cross.
What would you do if you were in Abraham’s shoes?
This is a hypothetical. Sometimes they can be funny or helpful. You switch roles up in a situation to try to imagine what you think you would do.
It may be fun to talk about, but it doesn’t get to the reality of who we are as humans, who God is as our Creator and Redeemer, what Jesus shows us, and how we can live in light of the resurrection.
The hypothetical is designed for the big moment, the mountain top, the trolley problem, Sophie’s Choice, it misses driving to work, shopping, eating, working, relaxing, all the things we do and practice that don’t have the drama worth retelling but in fact tell us much more about ourselves than those mountaintops.
The small things we do show us more about our faith or lack thereof, than the mountaintops.
The Cup of Cold Water
As we see at the end of Matthew 10, in verses 40 to 42:
Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward. And whoever welcomes a righteous person, a just person, in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous. And whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple, a student, truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.
So Jesus is getting detailed here: into hospitality, into caring for the one who comes. And hospitality is gratifying, but exhausting. It can be a challenge to have a guest for a long time. It can be a challenge to have a lot of dinner parties all the time — to welcome people into your home all the time, to clean up all the time.
Sometimes we read the Bible and think, “Oh, hospitality was really important to those kinds of cultures.” And this gets to a way we moderns often, anachronistically, like to call the things we don’t enjoy in the Bible “cultural,” and the things we do enjoy “universal.”
But Jesus makes a number of these claims. Whoever welcomes me welcomes Jesus, the Son of God — welcomes the Father. So this seems like a big deal: “Oh yeah, I’m gonna welcome Jesus.” Whoever welcomes a prophet — this is trickier, welcoming a prophet — but it still resolves nicely: “Yay, this gets me to Jesus.” Then the small moment of mercy: whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple, a student of God — you will not lose your reward.
Which gets to this idea of what the reward is that Jesus is talking about. For us today, it’s abundant life with God. We will not lose out — because we will be living it. The reward is not an object we’ll attain; it’s the life that we live. It’s the life that we live, the life offered to us.
Godly prudence is what can be maxed without limit. Mercy. Generosity. Kindness. Sacrifice. There is no minimum. There is no maximum. It is grace all the way down. Knowing this doesn’t make it easy./
Prudence Together
We may be on the mountaintop confronted by a vision— or we may be driving home, and we just don’t want to see anybody. We don’t want to welcome anybody. We’re tired. We know what we should do, but we just don’t want to do it.
Part of being the church, part of being a Christian — being called together — and it’s a part we often fail at, but often succeed at, is that we’re called to be prudential together. We are not alone. For some of us, we know the thing we should be doing, but we don’t want to do it. But if we do it together, it’s a lot easier.
This past week we had VBS here at Covenant. It turned out beautifully. The kids had a great time, the volunteers had a great time, we met some new people, some new families. It was a lovely experience that would have been impossible alone — impossible without the people who shared, who did the thing together, who each stretched, who each took on a lot of responsibility.
In the past, our VBSs have been a lot more structured, to be honest. And this one was not as structured. It was the opposite of microm.≥≥≥≥≥≥≥≥≥≥≥≥ anaged — it was barely macromanaged. But God was there, because everybody knew why they were there. We gave them a clear direction and followed up. We prioritized the kids. We prioritized safety and fun and keeping things moving, and let them enjoy it and grow in their ideas about God — and about who they are: that they are loved, that they can have fun.
But there are ways to do this the rest of the year, too — to welcome families, to welcome children, to welcome prophets. To be a welcoming place. And faithfulness is about these little things. Prudence is about these little things: the way we welcome the stranger who walks through the door, the way we honor them as beloved by God, the way we honor them even more than the person we’ve known thirty years. We take the time to learn a name, to make a connection. The way we invite people to church, invite people to this life of faith. Is it something worth sharing?
These little steps — that are big acts of faith.
An Invitation
Most of us will never be stuck on Mount Moriah like Abraham, put in a position to make a faithful decision. But all of us, every day, are given opportunities to notice the good and to do it — to welcome the stranger, to welcome Jesus.
Right at the end of Matthew 25, Jesus gives the great parable of the Lord of the earth separating the sheep from the goats. Matthew 10 sets the scene for Matthew 25, and offers a pattern for us to follow in the small things, where our faith is truly tested and proven. And the reward we receive is the life we are able to live, because of who God is for us. We can let go of control because we know the one in control.
If that is a life you want to live, take a step — a step of faith. This day, take a moment to pray. Pray with someone else. Pray with the person around you. Pray with me after worship. Take a moment to try out a practice this week — a spiritual practice. A practice of prayer, a practice of service, a practice of fasting. Offer it. Give yourself an opportunity to put life in a different direction.
Generosity is a spiritual practice because it let’s go of control. Our personal financial situation for most of us is about control. We get to a certain level and we know what we can afford and what we can’t. We have our lifestyle and expectations and we control them. On Mount Moriah, Abraham let go of control. When we welcome the prophet, we let go of control. It could go a lot of different ways, but we let God have that.
We find the good we should do by following the one who is good, who offered himself for us. So we know where we can max out, where we pullback, where we live, where we give, where we love, who we are, and whose we are.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.