The Text for June 29th, 2014 - the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost

Note: June 29th can also be celebrated as St Peter and St Paul this year as the festival has its day on June 30th. I chose not to do that. My partners did otherwise so there is only one commentary for you today. Here is the regular text for the day.

First Reading: Jeremiah 28:5–9

⁵Then the prophet Jeremiah spoke to the prophet Hananiah in the presence of the priests and all the people who were standing in the house of the LORD;  ⁶and the prophet Jeremiah said, "Amen! May the LORD do so; may the LORD fulfill the words that you have prophesied, and bring back to this place from Babylon the vessels of the house of the LORD, and all the exiles.  ⁷But listen now to this word that I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people.  ⁸The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms.  ⁹As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that the LORD has truly sent the prophet." 

Second Reading: Romans 6:12–23

¹²Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.  ¹³No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness.  ¹⁴For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

¹⁵What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!  ¹⁶Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?  ¹⁷But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted,  ¹⁸and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.  ¹⁹I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.

²⁰When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.  ²¹So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death.  ²²But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.  ²³For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Gospel: Matthew 10:40–42

⁴⁰Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.  ⁴¹Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous;  ⁴²and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."