July 19, 2026 | Word Out!
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READINGS
First Reading: Isaiah 44:6-8
6 Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel,
and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts:
I am the first, and I am the last;
besides me there is no god.
7 Who is like me? Let them proclaim it;
let them declare and set it forth before me.
Who has announced from of old the things to come?
Let them tell us what is yet to be.
8 Do not fear or be afraid;
have I not told you from of old and declared it?
You are my witnesses!
Is there any god besides me?
There is no other rock; I know not one.
Second Reading: Romans 8:12-25
12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are obligated, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—13 for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Gospel: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
24 [Jesus] put before [the crowds] another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field,25 but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27 And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ 28 He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30 Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”
36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” 37 He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38 the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40 Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42 and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”
SERMON— Pastor Dan Peterson
God Depends on Us
Grace to you, and peace, from God, the source of life, and from Jesus the Christ, who is that light and life in the world. Amen.
“God Depends on Us.”
Last week we talked about each of the readings and how they reflected the conviction, in the words of the old hymn, that “the world was about to change.” The world was about to change. A new age, or as we heard in the Gospel reading for today, a new era—as Jesus calls it, the Kingdom of God—had dawned. Accordingly, Jesus’s preaching invited his audiences to help him bring about God’s Kingdom in heaven on earth by living as he did: loving God and loving one’s neighbor, paying special attention to those in need, to the marginalized, to “the least of these,” as he says later in today’s Gospel; even by, as we read in the Gospel of Luke, praying for his enemies.
It was a radical vision, a revolutionary vision, a reordering of social relationships and even society itself: an Upside-Down Kingdom, where the least of these and the most of these would both receive food and drink and enjoy relationship in harmony with one another.
It was an invitation, we concluded, that Jesus continues to offer each of us today; an invitation, you might say, to Life.
This morning we continue with the same set of readings, albeit with different selections—readings taken from the Book of Isaiah, Paul’s letter to the Romans, and of course, the Gospel of Matthew.
But something here is different. Something here is strange. If you take a look at Isaiah 44, our First Reading for today, you’ll see what I mean.
Now, this is part of Isaiah, it’s written in three parts. We may recall from last week that it was written near the end of the Babylonian exile. There are two definitive historical events in the Old Testament that would shape the Israelite outlook upon themselves and their relationship with God. The first of these, of course, is their liberation as slaves from Egypt by Moses; and the second is their exile and, ultimately, liberation from the Babylonians, who invaded in 586, almost 600 years before Jesus, conquered their land, destroyed their temple, and brought most of them back with them in forced captivity to exile in Babylon, where they would live under the yoke of Babylonian rule for 50 years. This period takes place, again, from 586 to 536, and this part of Isaiah is about the Israelites at the end of their time in Babylon.
The people had heard now God’s promise that through a foreign king, God was about to free them. God was about to liberate them. So how did they respond?
Well, quite understandably, with fear. They were afraid. Even though they were in captivity, they probably wondered, “What will happen to us next? How will we survive this transition?”
This is why, presumably, in verse 8 of our first reading, God says through the prophet, “Do not fear or be afraid.” Have I not told you from of old and declared it? You are my witnesses.”
Two of the most important phrases from the Old Testament: Do not fear, and do not be afraid. Here, God comforts and reassures God’s people, in the midst of very uncertain circumstances. God tells them, “Have faith. Place your confidence in me. Something good, something great is about to happen. Something new is on the horizon.”
The world indeed is about to change—and that’s really what faith is, in the Biblical sense. It’s not believing that God exists. It’s not believing that there’s some kind of entity out there that we call God, who resides among the heavens as the Great Guy in the Sky, it’s trusting, rather, in God’s presence among us, and God’s promises. As Martin Luther says, relying on God, counting on God, having confidence in God.
Well, that’s great, you say. Faith is not about believing God exists; it’s an attitude of trust. But why should I, or why should we, trust in God? I mean, think about all the atrocities in history. One great philosopher of Germany calls history “a slaughter bench,” and of course, on the other side of the bloodiest century in recorded history, it makes sense, the image. Think about all the atrocities in history.
Why should we, or why should each of us, have faith or trust in the God of Israel, and by extension, the God of Jesus Christ? Well, one man answers that compellingly in the context of South Africa, and his name is the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Now, how many of you, by a show of hands, have heard of Desmond Tutu? A few of you. Okay, that’s good. That means you’re attending at least this church, where I’ve talked about him before, and I love to see that. I love to hear that.
Desmond Tutu was a South African Anglican bishop and a human rights activist. He was the leader of a nonviolent struggle against legalized racial segregation or apartheid in South Africa. Not only that, he was the first Black African bishop of Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa, and he won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1984. After segregation in South Africa ended 10 years later in 1994, Desmond Tutu wrote about it in the book I just showed you, one of my favorites. It’s called God Has a Dream, a Vision of Hope for Our Time.
When I was about your age in my youth group, I heard Desmond Tutu speak at a national Lutheran youth convention, and I will never forget the charisma and the good spirit of that man. This book, God Has a Dream, carries that spirit. There, Tutu says, “If you had said a few years ago, before the end of apartheid, that South Africa would be a beacon of hope, people would have taken you to a psychiatrist, and yet it was so.”
And yet it was so. While other problems obviously persisted, South Africa became the basis, and what happened there, of hope for Tutu. What happened was totally unlikely. What happened was totally improbable, and yet it happened. People were freed from the segregation that had persisted for many, many years. Who’s to say that God, through activists like Tutu, as well as many others, couldn’t make something like this happen again? That was the basis of Tutu’s hope. He saw in real life the kind of transfiguration of society that Jesus calls for in the Gospels, and that, I submit, is the logic that informs our First Reading for today.
Why should people, the Israelites in this case, trust in God, or place their confidence in God? Because God had liberated them before! You remember what I said at the beginning. The two defining historical events of the Old Testament are the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, where they were slaves, and the liberation of the Israelites from Babylon, where they were held for 50 years in captivity. In the first of these, through Moses, God freed Israel from being enslaved, as I said, to the Egyptians.
The only catch was—are you ready for this?—God depended on Moses to make that happen. Let me repeat this: God depended on a human being to make that happen, and by extension, Jesus implies in today’s Gospel, God depends on each of us.
God depends on each of us. Our God is a God, Tutu writes, who comes down to deliver. But the way that God delivers us is by using us as his partners, by calling on Moses, and on you, and on me.
It’s strange. Preachers, (unlike Pastor Tom, of course), always say “Have faith in God, believe in God, trust in God,”— and that’s true, and good. We should have faith in God, but does it ever occur to anyone that God has placed God’s faith in us?
My brother, who’s a Methodist pastor, once heard what he calls something like the essence of Lutheran Christianity. He was speaking with a fellow member of a Lutheran parish back east, and that member of the church said in a small group setting, “It’s not just that we believe in God. In this tradition, it’s that God believes in us.
That’s why we have the motto of the denomination as “God’s work. Our hands.” God relies upon us to do God’s will in history. God depends upon us by partnering with us in the work of the Kingdom.
Now, if you don’t think that’s a radical idea, I don’t know what is. The Almighty God of the universe depends on a small batch of people, first, the Israelites, and now, us as Christians, to do God’s work in the world, to partner with God to bring about the very Kingdom Jesus preaches on this morning.
Now naturally, there is one man who constantly invites us to partner with God, and with him as God’s ambassador, as God’s representative on earth, and bringing about the kingdom—and I just mentioned his name. Can you guess who it is?
[a murmur] [Speaking to our visiting youth group] Wow, that’s so weak. Really? We’re really doing this today? It’s not even 8 o’clock! This is the 10 o’clock service. Now, I know you all stayed up late last night playing hide and seek. I was around. I chastised you for it. I got very upset at the pastor. Just kidding. None of that happened. They were great. There were a few things broken, but we’ll fix those later.
Let me hear it again: Naturally, there is one man who constantly invites us to partner with him as God’s ambassador and representative on earth in bringing about God’s Kingdom, and his name is___ [Jesus!] Nicely done!
Let’s hear then what he says. Take a quick look at Matthew 13, our Gospel Reading for today. Now, historically, some people interpret today’s parable as an illustration of “works righteousness.” That’s a fancy theological way of saying that, if you do good things, that if you live a good life, a holy life, God will save you—and the others, the evildoers, those people, people who commit sin, usually, of course, in the thinking, sin of a sexual nature, well, the angels Jesus sends at the end of the age will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
That’s one reading, but there’s another way to read this parable. Listen closely:
In the original language of the gospel, that is Greek, the word for “evildoers,” verse 42, means “those who do not obey the commandments of God.” Later in Matthew’s Gospel, the same gospel, Jesus boils down all the commandments of God in the Old Testament, more specifically the Torah (the first five books), to two. Can you guess what they are? I said them at the beginning of today’s message.
“You should love God, and love your neighbor.” That’ll be on a test, by the way, for the youth group here. You can boil down all 613 commandments to two. Jesus says, “Love God, and love your neighbor.” Do you have to memorize all 613 in Confirmation? (I do that. We tend to have a trouble retaining some of our confirmands afterward…) But yes: from 613 to two. “Love God, love your neighbor.” In other words, here: Those who do not love God, those who fail to love their neighbor, those are the evildoers.
The righteous, on the other hand, are those who enact, as one commentator says, the love of God and the love of neighbor. By following these two commandments, Jesus says, we not only do God’s will, we bring about the Kingdom of God, here and there, now and then.
But here’s the catch: following these two commandments doesn’t make us righteous! It demonstratesthe righteousness already within us. Jesus saves us from sin so that we’re freed, so that we’re healed to perform these good works.
Now, I tried to think about a helpful illustration here, and with the help of one commentator, along with a little additional modification, I came up with this.
Imagine a mechanic who fixes lawnmowers. Once restored to working condition, its owner, presumably, would be expected to use the lawnmower the mechanic fixes to mow the dang lawn! The refusal to operate the lawnmower would undermine the mechanic’s hard work. And the same is true here of the Kingdom.
In this case, the mechanic functions like God, and we function like the owners of the lawnmower. If we don’t mow our lawns after the lawnmower has been fixed, then we’re not doing the work of the Kingdom, and our yard appears…not so great. Weeds grow, everything else. God has restored us, like a lawnmower, through Jesus, to mow the dang lawn, to prevent it from being overtaken by weeds, so that the Kingdom can become manifest, even in little acts of service and kindness.
The point here is not to scare people about what might happen in the next life. At least as I read this parable, the point is to partner with God, as Moses did in this one, in this life, to make it, as Tutu did, a better place, by loving God and loving our neighbor.
The whole point is to bring about God’s Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Here’s the message of today. You can boil it down to four words: God depends on us. God depends on us, as God did with Moses, as God did with Jesus, and as God did with Desmond Tutu and the others who worked against apartheid in South Africa. God depends on you and me to bring about the Kingdom, and to make this corner of the world a slightly better place.
Amen.