From the Lectionary for 23 August 2026 (Proper 16A)

Matthew 16:18-19 (NRSV Updated Edition)

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Romans 12:1-8 (NRSV Updated Edition)

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God's mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the encourager, in encouragement; the giver, in sincerity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

~

"When Jesus called Simon “Peter,” meaning rock, to honor his correct answer, perhaps Jesus was reminding Simon of the words of Isaiah: “Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you.” (Is. 51: 1–2) Simon Peter, like all Jews, was hewn from the rock of Abraham, the one called to leave his own idolatrous country for a land God would show him where he would make out of Abraham a great people. If Peter is a rock like Abraham, then Peter, too, will leave the idolatrous imperial culture surrounding him and will allow God to make yet another great, new people out of him and the other disciples. What kind of people? What kind of culture?

"In writing to the Romans, Paul admonishes them to follow Abraham out of the idolatrous empire in which they live: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom. 12: 2) And what does this transformed people with renewed minds look like? Paul has just told the Romans that such people present their bodies “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [their] spiritual worship.” (Rom. 12: 1)

"The imperial culture is all about using power to make sacrifices of others for the sake of the Empire. The culture of Christ is all about making a sacrifice of self as did Jesus, so as to make all of our lives an act of self-sacrificial worship. Although emperors always think more highly of themselves than they should, Paul warns us not to think more highly of ourselves than we should, “but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” (Rom. 12: 3) Paul then goes on the enumerate the measures of faith as a distribution of gifts of the Holy Spirit so that each of us makes our bodies living sacrifices of worship in various ways, making up the Body of Christ.

"Being transformed by the renewal of our minds entails a radical makeover. It's not just a matter of changing one's mind about what book to read next. Paul is writing about a radical turnaround in one's attitude to power. The first step is to be very vigilant about the power we happen to have in relation to other people and how we use it. Even if some of us have rather little power we need to be acutely aware of how we use what little we have. Do we try to get an upper hand against other people one way or another rather than looking for ways we can lay down our selves in service to them?

"[... T]he rock we stand on in the culture of Jesus is the rock of being vulnerable to the forces of Empire. Whether we are going to take the way of vulnerability, the way of giving ourselves for the sake of others, even when such gifts of self are not appreciated or are even actively scorned is a question that presents itself to us day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. We can easily get tired of asking this basic question so constantly, but if we persevere even when we are weary, we will eventually find that God makes a living but vulnerable rock not only out of Peter but out of each one of us."

- Andrew Marr, from blog post titled "The Rock From Which We Are Hewn" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2020/08/20/the-rock-from-which-we-are-hewn/)

~

"Aren't we told that those we loose on earth are loosed in Heaven and those who are bound on earth are bound in Heaven? (Mt. 16:19; Jn. 20:23) Sounds like we have the power to bind other people for all eternity, and God's hands are tied for as long as we want them to be. How much power is that? Not so fast. Why is it that we so easily assume we are being allowed, even encouraged to bind on earth? Why are we slower to see that maybe we are being encouraged to loose on earth?

"Let's return to Peter's question about how many times he must forgive and Jesus' Parable of the Unforgiving Debtor. If we have to forgive others as God forgives us, and that without limit which is what seventy-seven times means, then we are indeed being encouraged to loose on earth. We are being warned that if we do not loose on earth, we are bound to our resentment for what others have done to us (or we think they have done to us.) If we remain bound to our resentments, we will be so bound even in Heaven since God's hands are indeed tied for as long as we refuse to let God untie us. Truly accepting this free gift of forgiveness entails passing this free gift on to others. We are all thrown into the same world together. The question is whether we will be tied up in vengeance or bound with others by forgiveness."

- Andrew Marr, Moving and Resting in God's Desire, pg. 121

~

"As death loses its power, so commitment to the flourishing of what is fragile and precarious becomes possible, and our relationship with time changes. [...] If time is not your enemy, then what you achieve or don't achieve [...] is secondary, and whatever you have will be for the flourishing of the weak one for as long as it takes, since you know that you will be *found there*. Being on the inside of the life of God looks like being decanted, by a generosity you didn't know you had in you, into making a rash commitment which makes a nonsense of death, of worry, and of the panic of time, because you know that you want to be found in loving proximity to what is weak and being brought into being. Wanting to be found there is a huge statement of joy at the power and gentleness of One for whom it is the apparently weak and futile things that are going to be enabled to be brought into being. Being given the daring to be able to lose yourself in being found there is recognized as a privilege to be greeted with praise.

"This, I think, is [...] what St Paul would describe as “rightly reasoning worship” (Rom 12:1-2). That God is the One who brings into being what is not. And dwelling on the inside of the life of God means being prepared to lose sight of all the apparently important things that are and to give yourself away in extreme gentleness and tenderness towards that which is apparently not, and yet which is being brought into being out of the brink of nothingness by one not ashamed of mingling with the least important of all, one who has nowhere more important to be (1 Cor. 1.22-29)."

- James Alison, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, pg. 550

[Source of link to Andrew Marr's blog and quotes from Andrew Marr' Moving and Resting in God's Desire and James Alison's Jesus the Forgiving Victim, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper16a/]

[James Alison's homily on the full Gospel passage (Matthew 16:13-20): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDR10_Q7P04]

From the Lectionary for 16 August 2026 (Proper 15A)

Matthew 15:21-28 (NRSV Updated Edition)

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.

~

"Matthew's calling the woman a Canaanite was an anachronism that recalled Israel's historical relationship with this people, in much the same way that calling a contemporary Danish woman a Viking would invoke ten centuries of history for us. Jesus would have grown up absorbing his people's tradition that the Canaanites were the worst of enemies, enemies to be exterminated by the likes of Joshua, enemies who were periodic oppressors of Israel in the period of the Judges. Worst of all, Canaanites were dangerous because they tempted the Israelites to forsake their God in favor of their idols and sacrificial practices. Mark gave the woman the more up-to-date designation of a Syrophoenician. This meant she was a member of the oppressing class of the Roman Empire, which made victims of the Jews. [...]

"The Canaanite woman's retort is justly famous for its cleverness and humility, qualities that make her words subversive. Jesus seems as amazed by her faith as he is by the faith of the centurion who asked him to heal his servant (Mt. 8:10). That the woman asked for the deliverance of a daughter possessed by a demon may have aroused Jesus' sympathy. The Gerasene Demoniac had shown Jesus how a dysfunctional culture can possess a person and need to be exorcized. That this woman wanted her daughter delivered of the demon possessing her own culture would alert Jesus of the need to eject the demon of hatred of the Canaanites that had possessed his own culture. This understanding of the story has Jesus modeling the ability and willingness to overcome an ancestral enmity by listening deeply to the reality of a person in need so that she ceases to be an enemy. We desperately need to learn to follow this kind of example offered by Jesus today."

- Andrew Marr, Moving and Resting in God's Desire, pp. 105-6

~

"There are several clues to this reading. The first is seeing that Matthew might be doing something intentional here by changing Mark's “Syro-Phoenician” woman to a “Canaanite” woman [...] But “Canaanite” fits well to the time of Joshua and his conquest of the Promised Land. Is Matthew's Jesus reconstituting that conquest?

"[... A] second important clue appears through what comes next in chapter 15 of Matthew's story of Jesus: healing of Gentile crowds (Matthew tells us they are Gentiles by remarking that “they praised the God of Israel”; Matt. 15:31) and then a repeat of the miraculous feeding, this time with Gentiles. In the first feeding with Jews (14:13-21), there is a hint of reconstitution by the gathering of twelve baskets leftover, for the twelve tribes of Israel. In the second feeding with Gentiles (15:32-38), there are seven baskets leftover. If we look for a similar symbolism of reconstitution, we might look to the time of the “Canaanites.” As the people of Israel stand poised for conquest of that land, Moses says to them:

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations — the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you — and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.” (Deut 7:1-2)

"In the first encounter with the seven nations of “Canaanites,” they are to show no mercy. But Matthew's Jesus has come to teach them something different, to learn what this means, “I desire mercy not sacrifice” (with Matthew's Jesus twice quoting Hosea 6:6 in Matt. 9:13 and 12:7). [...]

"[T]he “Canaanite” woman [...] seems to remind Jesus of what the promise to Abraham and Sarah is really all about. She doesn't begrudge Jesus the fact of his mission with his own people who have lost their way (Jesus himself calling them “lost sheep”). But she knows that if he is successful with his own people in helping them to find their way again, that she will at least receive scraps from their table. For the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham and Sarah is not for Jews to be blessed for their own sake but that they might become a blessing to all the families of the earth (Gen. 12:1-3)."

- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from discussion on this passage on the Girardian Lectionary page (link below).

~

"And now I wonder whether Jesus isn't actually going to do something much smarter than seems to be the case. He listens to the woman shouting, he hasn't intervened, he hasn't made any determination on whether she's of the demonized or of the prophetic sort. He sees the disciples are fed up he sees they want to get rid of her, so he answers them something which is strange enough - he is playing to their feelings: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That, of course, is what he's been doing, he's been re-enacting Joshua in you know, [crossing] the sea, putting right the things that Joshua hadn't quite completed.

"So [...] she's come up and knelt before him. Now please notice, she wasn't there when he told them, “I was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” that was for the benefit of the disciples, and I suspect that it's at least as much how they are going to react to all this and what they are going to learn from this that this story is about. But she comes and she kneels before him - so what we're talking about is something very peaceful very respectful - saying, “Lord, help me.” And it's a much simpler word: it's not to have mercy on me, which might be drama-queen, it's Lord help me - it's a very simple, very humble word.

"[Jesus] answers, and it's not clear that he's half saying this for the disciples and half saying this for her: “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the house puppies.” The translations will always say “dog.” It's a very special word for little domestic dogs - house puppies. In other words, [...] he's making a reference that she might get to the relationship between Israel and the nations. It's recognizing that they're not dogs, they're “house puppies.” They're insiders, there's a certain sense of being an insider, in being one of the nations whom Joshua allowed to stay. So he's saying something, yes to her, but very much in the hearing of his disciples.

"And this is where she gets it right with an extraordinary turnaround of what he's saying, and maybe, as I say, again this is as much for the benefit of the disciples as for anyone else. She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” Actually, the word is not crumbs, it's swabs. We have napkins or serviettes with which we clean our mouths after being at a table. Not so in the ancient world, they would use swabs of bread to clean their mouth after eating, then throw the swabs on the floor. And of course the house puppies, the domestic dogs, would love that and would be very grateful. So she's referring not to accidental dropping but to deliberate discarding of something that's a sign of being satisfied and having come to the end of your meal, and therefore there is leftover for the dogs.

"And so she's [...] taking the image of the house puppies and running with it, and she's running with it in a very elegant way - even the dogs eat the swabs, even the little house puppies eat the swabs that fall from their master's table. In other words, she reveals that she herself is very much on the prophetic side rather than the demonized side. She knows what she's asking, she's asking respectfully, and she's actually playing David back to David's son because she's almost quoting, certainly paraphrasing Psalm 17 [v 14], in the Septuagint version [...] “Oh Lord, from few things from earth separate them in their lives and with your hidden things their belly was filled. They were fed with sons and they left the remains to their infants.” She's playing back: You are the Son of David, this is what David said, rather than treating us as enemies, as those who should be thrown out, you actually fill them. So fill me, let me be one of those who's being fulfilled, and my daughter as well.

"So Jesus is very struck about this, he makes no secret at all that one of the 'house puppies' has spoken up and is beginning to break through, hopefully in the presence of the disciples so they'll get this and they'll remember that he came to the house of Israel, [but] the house of Israel has house puppies also. Israel's 'house puppies' are beginning to come in. It's for the disciples not to have a 'get rid of these people, yeah sort them out and get rid of them' attitude. They're going to have to learn to discover that there are many people like the Syro-Phoenician woman who are going to become insiders in the house of God, because they know who it is who is amongst us and who it is who is setting us free from our co-dependencies, our demonized relationships, our inability to be good and holy by purity and by ritual. In the midst of all of this our Lord is allowing us to be filled and to go away free and whole."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 20 in Ordinary Time Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBGFTXHTr3c)

[Source of quotes from Paul J. Nuechterlein and Andrew Marr's Moving and Resting in God's Desire, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper15a/]