Third Sunday After Trinity 2026
As we begin our Gospel for this Sunday, we should notice who draws near to Jesus. We read this: “THEN drew near unto Jesus all the Publicans and sinners for to hear him.” St Luke here in our Gospel is harkening back to an earlier event to which all the publicans and sinners were responding.
In the previous chapter, Jesus spells out the cost of discipleship - he says “ If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. 27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. Yet, notice who draws near to this high calling - it is the class of people whose consciences would be most cognizant of failure.
St. Luke says the tax collectors - those who loved money more than being a member of Israel and “sinners” - those who loved the pleasures of sin rather than the Law. The worst of society are eager to hear Jesus. They desire to hear the truth even if it is corrective against their values.
Why is this? Perhaps it is because Jesus is willing to draw near and honor the image of God in them by engaging with them. Perhaps they could sense the love of God in the Son and they were eager to hear Him.
The petition to “hear us” in our collect for today should connect us to those who were eager to hear Jesus. For the one who hears Jesus, who believes Jesus, can be assured of being heard by our heavenly Father. The attitude of the heart that characterizes the Publicans and sinners is that of humility. They knew that they were sinners. No one had to argue with them to convince them of that fact.
Beloved, we must also acknowledge ourselves to be sinners, to humbly petition God for grace and mercy so that we might be clothed properly when engaging our souls' great enemies.
The last two weeks in Trinity Season, the focus has been on the primacy of love as we enter this long season of practicing what the first half of the year preaches - that Jesus came into the world to save sinners and transform them through loving obedience to God’s commandments. Justification leading to sanctification. Love is key. Love animates us to seek what is desired. In the case of our standing with God, love animates us to love and serve Him and to express this love by right attitudes and actions toward other humans. Love animates and humility seeks to hear and understand what is loved.
In contrast to those who drew near to Jesus to humbly hear his words of life, we read of the murmuring of the scribes and Pharisees.
Beloved, we must keep in mind the parallels between Israel in the Wilderness and our temptations, our challenges. Between Israel’s passing through the waters of the Red Sea out into the adventure of pilgrimage to the land flowing with milk and honey and our passing through the waters of baptism into the pilgrimage of our sanctification toward our eternal home. St. Paul draws upon this image of pilgrimage in I Corinthians 10 where he warns them about the negative example of Israel. He writes - Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, 2 all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. 5 But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.
6 Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.
Indeed, these things were written for our example that we might not lust after the wrong things. Israel served the golden calf, their stomachs, their sex drives in the Wilderness. What should have been a honeymoon of sorts for Israel and God away from the idolatry and slavery of Egypt became a perverted opportunity for Israel to take its freedom and serve its own desires. Israel was completely oriented toward themselves, serving pleasures experienced in the desert and lamenting the pleasures removed by the exodus. Murmuring is the sin of those who romanticize their abandoned sins and we should note that murmuring/complaining is universally associated with disbelief, discontent, and unthankfulness. Murmuring is the voice of pride; prayer and thanksgiving give voice to humility.
The physical and spiritual ancestors of these scribes and Pharisees refused to see their present circumstances through the lens of God’s earlier actions of redemption.
The first episode of murmuring in the OT was at the waters of Marah where Israel murmured because they were running out of water. They found the waters of Marah but the waters were bitter. God provided a remedy by commanding wood be thrown into those waters so that they would be sweetened. The wood of Moses' staff was the instrument of judgment to Pharaoh in bringing the first plague. It was the instrument of rescue for the Israelites in the parting of the Red Sea. Here, wood was the remedy, converting bitterness into sweetness.
A month later, we have the second instance of murmuring in which the Israelite accused Moses and Aaron of bringing them out to the desert to die. They murmur that they are dying, but God still provides them with manna from heaven and quail.
Interesting to note, at Rephidim, the third occasion of murmuring occurs and Moses directs a stunning rebuke toward Israel.
He says, ‘How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions?’ (v. 28; author’s italics). It has been noted that the only other time Moses speaks in this fashion is to Pharaoh earlier in Exodus chapter 10 when he says- ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?’ (10:3; author’s italics). The people of God in their murmuring earn themselves a rebuke like that of Pharaoh, one whose heart was hardened towards God. Stubbornness and pride are similar faults, and they can be in the heart of the wicked, but also in the heart of the people of God. In the case of the Israelites it begs the question - if God could release them from slavery, could he not provide for their well-being?
The third murmuring episode relates, once again, to water and exasperates Moses so that he disobeys the commandment of God and strikes the rock rather than speaking to it as directed.
Murmuring has a powerful effect and the discontent of Israel is such that it causes the faithful Moses to sin and not enter the Promised Land. He should have trusted the murmuring to God but he took the matters into his own hands - a particular temptation of leaders - taking the burdens of God upon themselves, placing the weight of the world on their shoulders and then falling into sin.
These are the examples from Exodus and point to the broader reality, that murmuring is the result of pride. Pride is the result of not properly understanding the grounds of God’s provision for them. The Israelites did not rightly discern what they deserved. They were an adopted, redeemed people, but they didn’t consider how that related to the challenges of life. They rejoiced with the King of Glory as he redeemed them from the shadow of death, but they did not cultivate humility through thankfulness.
We believe in and rejoice in a God who seeks and saves the lost, but do we also give thanks daily for His love and care rather than focus on and murmur about what doesn’t go our way?
In our Gospel, the Pharisees murmur because of the expansive, seeking, all-embracing love of God for sinners. He comes to seek and save the lost, not to affirm the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world but so that through Him the world might be saved. The purpose of Jesus coming was to redeem us from sin and death.
Let the baptized, let the faithful remember, that it is God’s good pleasure to break into the darkness of those outside; it is the point, it is the purpose of Christ’s coming - may we never forget. In terms of publicans and sinners in our Gospel, it may appear that they seek him and he eats with them - that is he is willing to draw near to them to the degree that they desire to draw near to the Lord.
In all of this is the mystical tension between the perception that they draw near to hear him and that Jesus is seeking those that are lost. St. Luke records it, the Pharisees are scandalized by the fact Jesus will receive them and eat with them. To address this complaint, He speaks in three different parables - the first of the lost sheep - one out of 100; the second a lost coin - one out of ten and the lost son - one out of one. The Lord seeks and saves the lost. He goes before and draws men to himself. It is the Lord that saves. It is the Lord who hoists us upon his shoulder. It is the Lord who exhausts remedies and sweeps, seeks, lights candles to find those hopelessly lost without Him. And when the work of finding and redeeming is done, salvation is celebrated not just by Our Lord, not just the redeemed sinner but all the host of heaven. There is joy in the presence of the angels. This may also be true of that host of saints that are in His presence, that the saints rejoice that another has been added to their number.
So, if Jesus’s purpose for coming in the wonder of the Incarnation was to seek and save sinners, and the perfection of the angelic host delights in man’s salvation, who are we to scrutinize, to judge those whom God came to save? Let us look out into the world with wonder - that Christ still saves. With humility, let us receive the yoke of salvation; with humility, let us not murmur as God animates the strangest and most peculiar of people. Let this meditation fill the whole of this Trinity season as we seek, by God’s grace and the Spirit’s empowerment, to put on the fullness of Christian virtue, laboring in faith to direct our attention, our efforts toward conformity to the image of Christ in ourselves, Christ who seeks and saves the lost. As we do so, let us remember our redemption. Our redemption not because we deserve it, but rather our undeserved redemption. Let us not be those who murmur and complain. Let us labor instead in all circumstances to have the humility to cultivate thanksgiving and hospitality so that we might be the instruments of Christ’s work in this world. Amen.
