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Lectionary for July 5, 2026
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Zechariah 9:9-12; Psalm 145:8-14;
Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
You may have heard the phrase, “Idle hands are the devil’s playground.” That proverb’s origins are murky, some seeing a relation to the work of Jerome, Geoffrey Chaucer or Isaac Watts. In The Living Bible (a 1971 paraphrase, not translation, of the Bible), Kenneth Taylor substituted “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop” for the first half of Proverbs 16:27. Generally, that’s probably not great advice. If anything, most of us are working and living at a much too frenetic pace. We could probably use more time to rest and be idle.
At the same time, there are good things to be done with our bodies. Being idle all the time wastes the gifts of our bodies, which are meant to serve, love, comfort, repair and be enjoyed! This week’s lectionary texts insist that we use and enjoy our bodies as God’s gifts, and that we desist from using them in ways that harm and dehumanize.
Zechariah is one of my favorite books of the Bible because of the vivid imagery of deeply contextualized hope. Horses and riders range around the world looking for peace and rest. Teeth—and the empires they represent—haunt people. Sin is carried away in baskets. Flying scrolls deal with lies and theft. And a specific high priest and messiah (neither one is Jesus though) are symbolized as olive trees that provide oil to a lampstand.
In this context of intense images, Chapter 9 opens with a list of woes for city-states. Damascus, Tyre, Sidon, Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron and Ashdod receive warnings before the prophet says the Philistine cities of Ashdod and Ekron will become as a clan in Judah or even Jerusalem. God will move back into the neighborhood and will personally garrison Godself in Jerusalem. Seeing this, Zion and Jerusalem are told to shout and rejoice. The king will return, righteous and peaceful. God will eliminate weaponry and announce peace from sea to sea (10). God will also free prisoners from cisterns and strongholds.
What does that have to do with bodily actions? First, the residents of Zion are commanded to celebrate, rejoice and shout with their whole bodies. Those who threatened them have been pacified, not as a euphemism for being killed but literally made peaceful. Peace is worth celebrating! Also, those who had been made accustomed to chains and bars in prison will need to learn the habits of freedom as God brings them out of prisons. The one thing that humans should not do, in this vision, is fight or kill anyone in war. The time for violence, if ever there was one, is long past in Zechariah’s prophesy.
If the sorrows of the world speak to your heart: weep. If you encounter children: play. If you have the means: dance. If you are close to a loved one: embrace. If you see a child of God: smile. If you can put your body on the line to stop injustice: intercede.
Looking toward the Gospel, Jesus also commands bodily engagement in the work of faith. The generation that Jesus walked among was like children in the marketplace that taunted each other for not moving. We played you a song, but you didn’t dance. We wailed and you did not beat your breast (Matthew 11:17). In other words, if John the Baptizer fasted and Jesus the Messiah partied, they still couldn’t get the people to do anything with their bodies.
Though not part of this week’s lectionary, the sections on cities should be included. Chorazin, Bethsaida and even Capernaum received condemnation because of their inaction in response to Jesus’ deeds of power. If Sodom, Tyre or Sidon had witnessed Jesus’ actions, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes. That is to say, they would have used their bodies to repent. As it was, the cities of the Galilee simply weren’t enacting an embodied response to Jesus’ ministry.
Jesus finished this speech by making two more points about embodied responses. First, God hid the things that Jesus was teaching from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants. Babies and kiddos are known to embrace the world through physical action, movement and play. On the other hand, those who think of ourselves as wise and intelligent all too often neglect our embodied response to God’s world.
Second, Jesus said his hearers were doing the wrong kind of work—bodily and spiritually. Jesus is gentle and humble, and he wants his followers to push an easy yoke and only pull a light burden. Far too often, we are weighed down in backbreaking labor or soul-crushing difficulties. Jesus wants neither of those for us, but he also rejects inactivity. Instead, Jesus wants a meaningful, easy, light and delighted embodied response to God’s calling.
What does this mean? If the sorrows of the world speak to your heart: weep. If you encounter children: play. If you have the means: dance. If you are close to a loved one: embrace. If you see a child of God: smile. If you can put your body on the line to stop injustice: intercede. Not all bodies are created or work the same way, of course. So, how is God calling you to respond, bodily, to the good news?
