The Daily Lectionary, Pentecost 4A

The Daily Lectionary, Pentecost 4A

Readings for the Week of the Fourth Sunday of Pentecost, Year A

Join us for Morning Prayer in the chapel, Monday through Friday* at 8:30am, where we read and discuss these Scriptures and pray together. We do the same during Vespers in the parsonage Sunday evenings at 6pm. Join us! The parsonage is across the street from the church. 

Our readings for the week of the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost are listed below. Each verse is linked. Click the link to read online or read in your Bible. The additional reading each day speaks to the common conversation between the three readings.

Sunday: Ecclesiastes 6:1–12; Acts 10:9–23; Luke 12:32–40

Faith in God, then, as Jesus teaches it, means a trust so absolute that earthly guarantees of well-being are not only needless but must be positively discarded. Property, the holding of possessions, is not merely superfluous, but imposes a limitation upon the power and grace of God.

William Manson, The Gospel of Luke, ed. James Moffatt, The Moffatt New Testament Commentary (New York; London: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1930), 156.

Monday: Ecclesiastes 7:1–14; Galatians 4:12–20; Matthew 15:21–28

The more deep, therefore, and the more dreadful the sufferings are, the more clearly are seen the comforts of the Spirit, when a man has comfort where the flesh is dead, stirreth not, and can do nothing. When a man can be comfortable at the loss of all-when he is under the sentence of death, or at the place of execution — when a man’s cause, a man’s conscience, the promise, and the Holy Ghost, have all one comfortable voice, and do all, together with their trumpets, make one sound in the soul; then the comforts are good, of the right kinds, of God and his Spirit.

John Bunyan, Seasonable Counsel, or, Advice to Sufferers, vol. 2, 735.

Tuesday: Ecclesiastes 8:15–9:10; Galatians 4:21–31; Matthew 15:29–39

Those who possess the Spirit of Christ bear His moral fruits. Their life fulfils the demands of the law, without being due to its compulsion. Law can say nothing against them. It did not produce this fruit; but it is bound to approve it. It has no hold on the men of the Spirit, no charge to bring against them. Its requirements are satisfied; its constraints and threatenings are laid aside.

George G. Findlay, “The Epistle to the Galatians,” in The Expositor’s Bible: Luke to Galatians, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll, vol. 5, Expositor’s Bible (Hartford, CT: S.S. Scranton Co., 1903), 899.

Wednesday: Ecclesiastes 9:11–18; Galatians 5:1–15; Matthew 16:1–12

There are still consciences greatly distressed if one tittle of a cumbersome round of external ordinances has by any chance been forgotten, or has for any reason gone (blamelessly) unfulfilled. It is, moreover, easier to perform a round of duties, catalogued and prescribed and “ticked off” in the day’s list as each is accomplished, than to cultivate the holy life within, to wage the unceasing warfare there and to keep up the incessant guard over one’s own spirit. A piece of external asceticism is easier than an act of merely inward self-denial.

Henry J. Foster, I & II Corinthians, The Preacher’s Complete Homiletic Commentary (New York; London; Toronto: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1892), 442–443.

Thursday: Ecclesiastes 11:1–8; Galatians 5:16–24; Matthew 16:13–20

Very often [God] permits us to labor long and arduously and without results, till it becomes bitterly painful to us, and we are forced to complain with Peter: “We toiled all night, and took nothing.” This he does that we may not venture to depend upon our labor, but may know that he must grant it success, and that we have not secured this through our own effort, skill or diligence.

Martin Luther, “Fifth Sunday after Trinity (Second Sermon: Luke 5:1–11),” in Luther’s Church Postil: Gospels: First to Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, ed. and trans. John Nicholas Lenker, vol. IV, The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther (Minneapolis, MN: Lutherans in All Lands Co., 1904), 151.

Friday: Ecclesiastes 11:9–12:14; Galatians 5:25–6:10; Matthew 16:21–28

Christ’s law of love not only says, “Thou shalt not bite and devour; thou shalt not provoke and envy thy brother;” but also, “Thou shalt help and comfort him, and regard his burden as thine own.” This law makes of the Church one body, with a solidarity of interests and obligations. It finds employment and discipline for the energy of Christian freedom, in yoking it to the service of the over-burdened. It reveals the dignity and privilege of moral strength, which consist not in the enjoyment of its own superiority, but in its power to bear “the infirmities of the weak.” This was the glory of Christ, who “pleased not Himself” (Rom. 15:1–4)

George G. Findlay, “The Epistle to the Galatians,” in The Expositor’s Bible: Luke to Galatians, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll, vol. 5, Expositor’s Bible (Hartford, CT: S.S. Scranton Co., 1903), 909.

Saturday: Numbers 3:1–13; Galatians 6:11–18; Matthew 17:1–13

As the writer of Hebrews shows in his own way Christ is the mediator of sanctification no less than of justification. He ‘bought’ men with the ‘price’ of His blood — the bodily ‘limbs’ along with the inner self — so that we are no longer ‘our own’ and may not ‘live for ourselves,’ but are, from the hour we know this, men ‘living for God in Christ Jesus’; and Christ ‘presents’ His redeemed ‘to God as holy’ and makes them God’s ‘sure possession,’ destined ‘for the praise of His glory’ (1 Co 6:19f., Ro 6:11–14, 12:1, Col 1:22, Eph 1:14, 1 P 2:9, Rev 1:6 etc.). 

James Hastings et al., Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 826.

*We do not meet in the chapel on Saturdays. On Sundays, we meet in the parsonage at 6pm to discuss the readings.

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