Lectionary Musings from the Church Anew Blog: February 15, 22, and Ash Wednesday
Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness.
February 15, 2026 – Transfiguration Sunday
Gospel: Matthew 17:1-9
Rev. Dr. Eric Barreto, “Not Knowing (A Sermon)”
Peter preached more than he was ready to believe, he said more than he understood. Sometimes that’s how the Spirit moves among us.
Sometimes God will teach us words to say to the grieving. Not knowing what we are saying.
Sometimes God will teach us to sing a song about the breadth and depth of God’s grace we will never fully understand. Not knowing what we are saying.
Sometimes God will teach us to speak words of forgiveness and repair. Not knowing what we are saying.
Sometimes God will teach us how to love one another, even to love our enemies. Not knowing what we are saying.
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February 18, 2026 – Ash Wednesday
Gospel: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Rev. Natalia Terfa, “Lent is not a holiness contest”
Jesus takes the things that people usually do in order to repent, to turn around, to turn back to God, and says - why? Why are you doing these? For others? For yourself? For God?
Thoughts on Lent
Dr. Michael J. Chan, “An Analgesic Faith: Reflections on Psalm 77”
If all our faith can do is numb pain, then it’s a faith worth rejecting. Lent is there to remind us of what a durable, trustworthy faith should look and feel like.
Laura Jean Truman, “Lent: Being Human With Our Human God”
The world isn’t the way it should be, and we aren’t the way we wish we were, either. There are aches of sin and death in the center of the world that we don’t know how to heal. The impulse is to use Lent to fix these aches. But Lent isn’t time to practice saying repeatedly “if only we could be better.” It’s time to practice being present to the ways we aren’t better: to practice being present to our humanity.
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February 22, 2026 – First Sunday in Lent
Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11
Dr. Deanna A. Thompson, “Lent Devotions: Adapting to the Wilderness”
The devil’s temptation of Jesus begins with the words, “If you are the Son of God . . .” (4.3) trying to provoke Jesus to live into his identity through self-serving power and control. But Jesus refuses, demonstrating his identity as Son of God is more about obedience and fidelity to God than it is to the use (and abuse) of power.
Narrative Lectionary: John 11:1-44
Rev. Angela Denker, “A God Who Cares? A Meditation on John 11:32-37”
To admit that you care is to admit your own powerlessness and fallibility. To admit that you care is to open yourself to sadness and pain, to hearing places where you have previously failed, to admit that you are inextricably tied even to the person you disdain because, at root, humanity is a we. This is what Jesus demonstrated so powerfully when he came to Lazarus’ tomb.
Elizabeth Berget, “The Sacred Ordinary: The Path of Love (Women Who Cry in Aldi)”
We are called as Christians, as people on the path of Love, to this kind of embodied empathy that truly sees others. Its foundation is rooted in God incarnate, Jesus, the Great High Priest who can relate with us, who intimately knows both the joy of overflowing wine and fishing nets as well as the pain of scraped knees and friends who died too soon.
