October: What next?

If September was about how a people is sustained (manna at dawn, water from the rock, a God who keeps showing up when we grumble), October asks what a sustained people does next.

We begin at Sinai, where the freed and fed receive the shape of a new life together. Within a week, they have melted their gold into a calf. Moses pleads for them, then asks to see God’s face, and is given presence instead. By month’s end, he stands on Nebo, looking over a land he will not enter, having served a people to the edge of their promise.

In Matthew, Jesus faces sharper questions in the temple each Sunday:
Whose vineyard is this?
Who is welcome at the banquet?
What belongs to Caesar, and what to God?
Which commandment matters most?

Paul lets go of his credentials and writes to young churches about how a leader serves.
All in all, the month is about Jesus’s greatest commandments: love God, love your neighbour. Everything else hangs on that.

Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23; Philippians 4:1-9;
Matthew 22:1-14

I nearly skipped this week’s summary because I simply do not know what to do with Matthew’s feast and a parable that begins with “the kingdom of heaven is like …” and then erupts into violence against a community who refuses an invitation, and even against one who accepts the invitation but arrives wearing the wrong clothes!

It helped me to look again through a trauma lens: this is Matthew’s adaptation of an older banquet story all about grace as he alludes to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE and accompanies a wounded, persecuted faith community in working out their history and identity.

Which is, I think, what the frightened, restless, no-longer-slaves are trying to do at Mount Sinai as they ask Aaron to make them a god they can see in place of the God-who-hides-God’s-face on the mountain with Moses. Perhaps the Psalmist’s admission, “we have sinned, even as our ancestors did; we have done wrong and acted wickedly,” resounds just as honestly in our own lives today.

Yet, these stories land alongside Paul’s passionate call to think about what is lovely and commendable and praiseworthy. That call is not some naive positivity but an intentional choice of gentleness over violence and unity over bickering in response to the knowledge that “The Lord is near.”

PrayerPoem

This month, the prayerpoem takes a new shape. Each week, instead of one longer poem, you’ll find four haiku, one for each of the appointed readings separated by a simple photo for meditation.

Haiku asks us to look at a text the way we might look at a single stone in a stream. My hope is that each one gives you something small to carry into the week, and that you might try writing your own alongside them.

THE PSALM

Wickedness is death.
Who will stand now in the breach
to keep us from wrath?

THE OLD TESTAMENT

We can't see your face;
we feel so lost and alone. 
Put God in our hands.  

THE GOSPEL

Like the Red Wedding,
this feast starts and ends in blood - 
circles of violence.

THE EPISTLE

Trust: the Lord is near.
May His presence shape your life;
don't give in to fear.

Feel free to leave a comment below with your reflections or ways this week’s readings and prayer speak to your journey. You’re also invited to subscribe for weekly prayer-poem downloads and deeper reflections.