Scripture Readings

The Season After Pentecost
Proper 26 (31) in Year A
For the Sunday during 30 October through 5 November

If you are observing All Saints Sunday, use the readings for All Saints Day.

Scripture readings are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® NIV® ©1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers. All rights reserved.

Alternate One:
Old Testament
Psalm

Alternate Two:
Old Testament
Psalm

Epistle Reading
Gospel Reading

Old Testament (Alternate One)

     And the LORD said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses. Tell the priests who carry the ark of the covenant: ‘When you reach the edge of the Jordan’s waters, go and stand in the river.’”
     Joshua said to the Israelites, “Come here and listen to the words of the LORD your God. This is how you will know that the living God is among you and that he will certainly drive out before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites and Jebusites. See, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth will go into the Jordan ahead of you. Now then, choose twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. And as soon as the priests who carry the ark of the LORD—the Lord of all the earth—set foot in the Jordan, its waters flowing downstream will be cut off and stand up in a heap.”
     So when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them. Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea) was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho. The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground.
—Joshua 3:7-17, NIV

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Psalm (Alternate One)

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
     his love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the LORD say this—
     those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
those he gathered from the lands,
     from east and west, from north and south.
Some wandered in desert wastelands,
     finding no way to a city where they could settle.
They were hungry and thirsty,
     and their lives ebbed away.
Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble,
     and he delivered them from their distress.
He led them by a straight way
     to a city where they could settle.
He turned rivers into a desert,
     flowing springs into thirsty ground,
and fruitful land into a salt waste,
     because of the wickedness of those who lived there.
He turned the desert into pools of water
     and the parched ground into flowing springs;
there he brought the hungry to live,
     and they founded a city where they could settle.
They sowed fields and planted vineyards
     that yielded a fruitful harvest;
—Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37, NIV

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Old Testament (Alternate Two)

This is what the LORD says:
“As for the prophets
     who lead my people astray,
if one feeds them,
     they proclaim ‘peace’;
if he does not,
     they prepare to wage war against him.
Therefore night will come over you, without visions,
     and darkness, without divination.
The sun will set for the prophets,
     and the day will go dark for them.
The seers will be ashamed
     and the diviners disgraced.
They will all cover their faces
     because there is no answer from God.”
But as for me, I am filled with power,
     with the Spirit of the LORD,
     and with justice and might,
to declare to Jacob his transgression,
     to Israel his sin.
Hear this, you leaders of the house of Jacob,
     you rulers of the house of Israel,
who despise justice
     and distort all that is right;
who build Zion with bloodshed,
     and Jerusalem with wickedness.
Her leaders judge for a bribe,
     her priests teach for a price,
     and her prophets tell fortunes for money.
Yet they lean upon the LORD and say,
     “Is not the LORD among us?
     No disaster will come upon us.”
Therefore because of you,
     Zion will be plowed like a field,
Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble,
     the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.
—Micah 3:5-12, NIV

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Psalm (Alternate Two)

Vindicate me, O God,
     and plead my cause against an ungodly nation;
     rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.
You are God my stronghold.
     Why have you rejected me?
Why must I go about mourning,
     oppressed by the enemy?
Send forth your light and your truth,
     let them guide me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
     to the place where you dwell.
Then will I go to the altar of God,
     to God, my joy and my delight.
I will praise you with the harp,
     O God, my God.
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
     Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
     for I will yet praise him,
     my Savior and my God.
—Psalm 43, NIV

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Epistle

Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you.
You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.
And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.
—1 Thessalonians 2:9-13, NIV

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Gospel

     Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
     “Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’
     “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
—Matthew 23:1-12, NIV

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