Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 25, 2026
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Sing, sing, sing
Three readings for Sunday plus a psalm. Three stanzas of a poem, plus a picture. Sunday is always full of surprises, sabbath surprises, and we notice them more quickly because we are (sort of) at rest.
Reading One …
Anguish has taken wing, dispelled is darkness:
for there is no gloom where but now there was distress.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
a light has shone.
In the midst of war, Isaiah calls for Judah to trust God. Amidst the chaos and prophecies of impending invasion, Isaiah reminds King Ahaz of the joy of his salvation, long and forever accomplished.
The Lord brought us abundant joy
and great rejoicing,
as they rejoice before him as at the harvest,
as people make merry when dividing spoils.
For the yoke that burdened them,
the pole on their shoulder,
and the rod of their taskmaster
He has smashed, as on the day of Midian.
And now a poem …
It’s part of The Book of Seventy – “The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog” by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, another gem made more famous by Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac.” Here’s the first of its three stanzas:
To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God’s love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow
Close to my heart –milk through a cow. The name of my least favorite cow is the only one I remember after all these years. SHE was named John, and apparently she resented the gender confusion, because she kicked at me (and everybody else) whenever we’d get close. Which I had to do every single time we milked, twice a day every day, week after week, month after month, and at last year after year. God’s love washes right through you, like milk through a cow. It never stops. If you don’t show up to catch that milk, God will just moo and moo and moo.
At least, that’s what John the cow did.
 Reading Two …
I urge you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that all of you agree in what you say,
and that there be no divisions among you,
but that you be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.
Paul insists that his friends in Corinth stop thinking only of themselves and their appetites. There is so much more to live and die for.
Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel,
and not with the wisdom of human eloquence,
so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning.
John Donne the poet wrote, “Do not ask for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” John Donne the preacher read Paul’s words to the Corinthians and knew nothing had changed over the centuries, how much each one of his parishioners depended on each other in all their lives and in all their deaths. Pastor and poet Donne insistently echoed Paul (later in his Corinthian letter) in his sermons and poems and prayers:
Now you are Christ’s body,
 and individually parts of it.
Alicia wrote her second stanza watching a tulip open in the morning sun.
To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by
your up-ended
skirt
Catch me if you can, the poet sings. (Yes, I’m talking about blessing, what did you think?) Ron Rolheiser calls this mix of desire and yearning the “holy longing.” You can call it lust, you can call it passion, you can call it praise. Any way you call it there is dancing and singing involved, and joy. Isn’t joy God’s medium for our growth? Two hundred years ago the German poet Goethe wrote:
Finally, insane for the light,
You are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced this: to die and so to grow,
You are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.
Funny how we must die to live. Words like these call us out of our cocoons, before they become our tombs. (Ron Rolheiser’s most recent book is titled Insane for the Light.)
Reading Three …
Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles,
the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light,
on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death
light has arisen.
From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say,
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
At last, God will host a jubilee. God’s ancient command, so awkward for the rich that they ignored it or did as little as possible to honor it, has come at last! All property will be returned to its original owner. Really? Maybe God will settle for tithing, charity the giving of alms.
Or maybe not. In his hometown synagogue, after Jesus preached, his hometown listeners turned on him, tried to stone him and throw him off a cliff. Clearly a true prophet had come among them, and they couldn’t handle it.
Was Alicia among Jesus’ listeners? Did she go home and write this third and final stanza?
To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other dogs
can smell it
Jesus came, not to make peace, but to separate those who wanted to follow him into the kingdom of Heaven, from those who did not believe he could lead them there. Jesus preached and healed, and his followers told the story of his short few years of ministry, and then his death, and then his resurrection. The people of Israel had always been asked to choose, and after hundreds of years they were being asked again.
And now the psalm for this sabbath Sunday … is the Lord my light and my salvation?
One thing I ask of the LORD;
this is what I seek:
To dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life.
Can you smell the pinch of God? Cinnamon on the applesauce, garlic in the marinara, a taste of life in the gritty cereal of death?
The Lord is my light and my salvation!
Take a deep breath and believe. In the eternal present, Jesus is alive!
(Isaiah 8, Psalm 27, 1 Corinthians 1, Matthew 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
