August 30, 2026 | Word Out!
Download the Bulletin from August 30, 2026
READINGS
First Reading: Jeremiah 15:15-21
15 O Lord, you know;
remember me and visit me,
and bring down retribution for me on my persecutors.
In your forbearance do not take me away;
know that on your account I suffer insult.
16 Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart,
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts.
17 I did not sit in the company of merrymakers,
nor did I rejoice;
under the weight of your hand I sat alone,
for you had filled me with indignation.
18 Why is my pain unceasing,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook,
like waters that fail.
19 Therefore thus says the Lord:
If you turn back, I will take you back,
and you shall stand before me.
If you utter what is precious and not what is worthless,
you shall serve as my mouth.
It is they who will turn to you,
not you who will turn to them.
20 And I will make you to this people
a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you,
but they shall not prevail over you,
for I am with you
to save you and deliver you,
says the Lord.
21 I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked
and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.
Second Reading: Romans 12:9-21
9 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; 10 love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 Instead, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Gospel: Matthew 16:21-28
21 From that time on, [after Peter confessed that Jesus was the Messiah,] Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
27 “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
SERMON— Pastor Dan Peterson “I Am with You”
Yikes. The final words of Matthew 16:21-28, our Gospel Reading for today, ring in my ears.
“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.”
Now, it’s no secret that Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel, seems fixated on punishment for evildoers. In fact, as I have pointed out before, roughly 90% of all references to Hell in the New Testament occur in Matthew’s Gospel.
But Jesus, at least in this passage, has good reason to be upset, and that is because Peter—as usual—doesn’t get it.
In verse 21, after Peter has confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, he takes Jesus aside and rebukes him for saying the Messiah will suffer and die.
The trouble, it turns out, is that Peter wasn’t listening to Jesus and his teaching. He expected a Messiah who would overthrow the Roman authorities by force. But Jesus rejected force as the way to bring about God’s kingdom. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he told Peter and the rest of the disciples earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, “for they will be called children of God.”
Do you see that? Peter doesn‘t get it. But Jesus does. He knows that preaching peace and tending to the weak, the marginalized, and the poor, will draw the attention of the Roman authorities. And sure enough, it does, just as he anticipates, according to verse 21. They will see him as a threat to the social order and crucify him as a result. Jesus will die as a victim of state-sanctioned terrorism.
Jesus’s rebuke of Peter in our Gospel reading for today accordingly makes sense, even though the apocalyptic imagery of him returning with the angels to “repay everyone in vengeance” has never—and probably will never—appeal to me.
But the person who makes less sense to me, at least at first glance, is the Apostle Paul and what he says in our Second Reading for today.
Now most of you know, after hearing me preach for over a decade, that I LOVE Paul. NOT only that, I have done everything I can to rehabilitate and redeem him. Contrary to popular opinion, for example, I have argued that Paul was not a misogynist; that women enjoyed various positions of leadership in the church s that he oversaw, and that in one case at least, according to the oldest copy of his letter to the Romans we have—he considered a woman, Junia, “Great among the apostles.” (ch. 16:7, if curious)
The main reason I love Paul, however, it’s the deep insight he had concerning the power of sin. How it overtakes us in moments vulnerability and compels us to “do the very things we hate.”
We all have moments like that in life, don’t we? Moments where we experience what the psychologist Daniel Goleman calls “neural hijacking;” moments where we lash out against someone we love, or participate in slander or gossip about a neighbor, only to regret it almost instantly.
Yet what Paul recognizes is that where the power of sin proliferates, grace—the power of God’s love as it appears in the disposition of God towards us in Jesus Christ—proliferates all the more.
That is the faith. That is our faith: that love, the power of integration in our lives, overcomes the separation and estrangement between us caused by sin.
Such love, Paul concludes, radiated so brightly in Jesus Christ that through Him it ultimately overcame death, as evident in his resurrection—however we define or understand it.
Indeed, nothing could overcome this power, Paul says, not even oblivion. This love isn’t just human love—it is divine love. It is invincible love—not the kind that merely resists death, as we read in the Song of Songs, but somehow overcomes it in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I consider Paul inspired, not because he was God’s “holy secretary” as the theologian, John Calvin, put it; “writing every word the Holy Spirit whispered into Paul’s ear.” No, I consider Paul inspired because of his graced ability to behold the true nature of things, to glimpse into the center of reality, and name it broken, yet not beyond repair.
Paul, to borrow the language of Albert Einstein, was a “religious genius.” His insight was truly penetrating.
But then, just as he nears the end of his letter to the Romans, Paul has to mess it up—or so it would seem!
***
Most scholars believe that Romans is the final letter written by Paul in the New Testament. They read it, accordingly, especially chapters 1–8, as his “last will and testament.” This is Paul reflecting on his ministry as he looks forward to at least one more mission; a mission to Spain.
In Romans 12:9-21, Paul begins to say farewell, ironically to a community of the faithful he never met. This message of farewell seems appropriate for today, doesn’t it? I mean, in many ways Paul speaks through me as I read his words to you—with a little embellishment, given that this is my last Sunday at Queen Anne Lutheran Church.
“Members and friends of Queen Anne Lutheran Church,” he says through me, “Bless those who persecute you, who judge or speak against you for being religious in Seattle.”
“Rejoice,” he continues, “with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep, including those in your congregation who have suffered loss. Do not forget them in what can be a very isolating and lonely city.”
“Live in harmony with one another, especially if you have disputes over church property or budget issues at your annual meeting!”
“When Pastor Dan leaves,” Paul might add, “keep showing up, so that you can continue the legacy you built with him these past ten years of welcoming newcomers, caring for those less fortunate, and honoring serious doubt and the process of asking questions as one way—a legitimate way— of being faithful.”
“If it is possible,” Paul adds, going back to his letter, “live peaceably with all and never avenge yourselves.”
…It’s here, unfortunately, that Paul seems to ruin it. Here is where the Apostle apparently goes off the rails.
He writes, “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this—oh no, here it comes—“for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.”
What a shining example of Christian charity, right?!
Ten years of defending Paul, only for him to say, “feed your enemies, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads!”
Overcome evil with good, sure—remember, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel reading “but God will repay them.”
This is a problem!
***
Thankfully, what we assume Paul says here and what Paul actually says here are different. How?
Well, if you take a look at verse 20 of our Second Reading, you will notice that our translation, rightly, puts it in quotation marks.
Why?
Because Paul is quoting the Old Testament, Proverbs 25, to be exact. And here is where what Paul is actually saying becomes clear. A commentator* explains:
“Heaping burning coals on an enemy’s head in an ancient context is not a punishment; it is to enable life [and repentance]. To sustain life, one must keep the hearth’s fire burning. If the fire goes out, it threatens the ability to prepare food and keep warm. If a fire went out, one would go to a neighbor to ask for some burning coals, and would, typically, carry them back home in a container on their heads.”
*Nancy Gross, workingpreacher.org
Can you imagine?
So, not only are we to feed our enemy… but to enable life itself. This is the measure of God’s vengeance. Not to kill with kindness (as the saying goes), but to put down evil by doing good; that is, to give your adversary the time and the opportunity to repent by seeing to their health!
Now if that isn’t lost in translation, I don’t know what is. No wonder people, including the author of 2 Peter, consider Paul so hard to understand.
Context is everything.
By caring for others—which in the ancient world included giving them hot coals that they would carry on their heads to heat their food—we are performing God’s “vengeance” by giving them a chance to repent, to mend their ways —to “choose life,” to quote Deuteronomy 19:30.
As Johnny Carson would say, “That is some weird, wild stuff. I did not know that.”
Neither did I, and I’m guessing, neither did you.
***
So, where does this all lead? We know, having redeemed Paul, that “heaping hot coals on our enemy’s head”—properly understood—was an act of mercy.
But where do we go from here?
Well, for one thing, I don’t think repeating Paul’s language and then explaining what it meant to him in the first century would be helpful. That is way too much trouble, and it’s so easily misunderstood. I mean, come on, I don’t want my legacy here to be “Pastor Dan, following Proverbs and Paul, said heaping hot coals on someone’s head who I don’t like at work is actually an act of mercy.” No, I want my legacy to be the message of the gospel; that I preached it as faithfully and consistently as I could.
So, what is the gospel? What is the God-centered Good News in today’s readings?
Well, it isn’t that Jesus will return and repay everyone for their evil deeds—at least that is not the message to which we cling in time of despair and uncertainty.
We’ve also seen that heaping coals on our enemy’s head, while it was an act of mercy for them, doesn’t translate well as good news to us.
So, where do we find the Gospel, Good News, in today’s readings? Answer: It appears when God says to the prophet Jeremiah in our First Reading, “I am with you.”
“I am with you.”
I, Pastor Dan, will leave. But God will always be with you. That is God’s promise.
That is God’s Word.
In the months ahead, when you as a congregation face uncertainty, remember these words.
Remember what David says to God in Psalm 23, “For you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Remember what Jesus says to his disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
“I am with you,” God says.
This is the message.
This is the promise.
And this is the gospel of the Lord—to which all God’s people said,
Amen.