Congregations will have a choice on January 18, 2026, whether to celebrate Epiphany or the Confession of Peter. Whichever observance seems most important to your community this year, there is opportunity for the preacher and the assembly to consider how the scripture readings speak to the well-being of the natural world. 

Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A

Isaiah 49:1–7       Psalm 40:1–1        1 Corinthians 1:1–19          John 1:29–42

Hymns to consider:

In ELW:

#314 Arise, Your Light Has Come!

#525 You Are Holy

In All Creation Sings:

#1052 When Our World Is Rent by Violence

#1062 Build a Longer Table

Right about now in the history of our world, nation, communities, and our individual lives––as we have just begun a new church year in Advent and now Epiphany––on this day Jesus gives us a command that is actually an invitation. In addition, from Paul and Isaiah, we receive promises to bolster our spirits and our energy so that we can respond to Jesus’ invitation.

I’ve always found it fascinating that when Andrew asks Jesus where he is staying, Jesus doesn’t tell him. Instead, Jesus invites Andrew into his life. Jesus says, “Come and see.” Essentially: I’m staying where we can be together. Jesus is calling us as well to “Come and see.” This is to dwell with him wherever we are together in his name for the sake of the life of the world.

In this welcome is an echo of what Jesus told the disciples to convey to John the Baptist who, while imprisoned by Herod, asked them if Jesus was “the One.” Jesus counselled them to go to John and tell him what they had seen: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” (Matt. 11:5) They were to witness to what they knew because of what they saw and heard.

Witnessing to what we see is to tell what is true. The truth builds the community and binds together the body of Christ. Telling what we see and hear and know of Earth’s beauty and pain, the beauty and pain of our communities, and the beauty of God’s creation. This witnessing builds the body of Christ because the truth brings us together.

We witness, as well, Earth’s pains and that of human communities uprooted by climate chaos, driving human migration due to mudslides, floods, droughts, wildfire, loss of animal and plant life… not to mention human lives.

A recent editorial by Thomas Friedman informs us about human migration in our time. “Today, more people are living outside their country of birth than at any point in recorded history. There are approximately 304 million global migrants — some seeking work, some seeking education, some seeking safety from internal conflicts, some fleeing droughts and floods and deforestation.”[1] 

Along with the first disciples, Jesus calls us to join him, to reside where he is on Earth as the body of Christ, the Church. And there, together, to witness to what we see and hear, just as he told the disciples: Tell John what you see.

The readings also address how we––in our current fearful and exhausted state––are to find the insight and courage and strength to look at what is painful and come together with others to reckon how to make positive change.

Revealing what it is to be a witness, the prophet Isaiah says:

The Lord called me before I was born…

He made my mouth like a sharp sword…

he made me a polished arrow… (Isa. 49:2)

The prophet speaks to Earth along with his witness to the people: “Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away!”

The Lord gives excellent tools. A sharp sword can make a clean cut. A polished arrow has a steady aim to fly to what it intends. The ones who speak with these powers cut through lies and distractions to unveil what is necessary for everyone to know for the goals of mercy and justice.

Yet, it is hard to be a “polished arrow” aimed at policies and projects that harm our neighbors and our Earth. It’s hard to be a “sharp sword” ready to critique what’s going on in our worlds. In the current climate of turning away from sensible energy policies and violating what should be compassionate relationships with immigrants and refugees, it can seem like too much of an uphill battle to even try to keep strong for salvation to “reach to the end of the earth.”

Isaiah, however, says God “hid me” “in the shadow of his hand…” and uttered this promise: “I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Truth tellers are protected by God for the sake of all the Earth. We are not lacking in anything. We have what we need to stand firm for what is merciful and healthy. And we are promised that Christ Jesus “will also strengthen [us] to the end.”

All of us have everything we need to witness to what is true and to what God wants for all creation just like Paul tells the Corinthians: “You are not lacking in any spiritual gift.”

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Confession of Peter

Acts 4:8–13     Psalm  18:1–6, 16–19     1 Corinthians 10:1–5     Matthew 16:13–19

Matthew’s Gospel on this day brings us particularly strong language if we are thinking of how to care for God’s creation:

“Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

This is a stark yoking of earth and heaven. What happens here and now will be forever tied together.

We hear this binding in the context of a celebration of Peter, the Apostle, who many times failed to live up to his calling. Passionate, vehement, impetuous, fearless, and especially known for his three denials of Jesus, he “makes it possible to imagine our fallible selves being welcomed and loved by Jesus.”[2]

Despite our inabilities to answer Earth’s call to let God’s creation live and breathe, we operate not on shame and self-denigration but on Jesus calling us again and again to act from love.

Knowing the cosmic import of our relationships––with God, with each other, with all creation––we turn toward opportunities to mend what is broken: repair what is flooded, change how we farm  to built up soil that has been depleted, plant and harvest where water is plentiful, watch over fields prone to drought, exercise discretion in our use of minerals and metals, and care that all people are able to enjoy Earth’s bounty.

We do this because Jesus has welcomed and loved us as he loved and welcomed Peter. Even more, we do this because what we loose on earth has eternal value.

When my husband, Fred, thinks about what has been bound on Earth and what we are loosing on Earth, he thinks about carbon.  As Fred describes it, we live in a geological era in which there is relative equilibrium between the rate at which plants and animals grow and die and the rate at which the dead biomass deteriorates and releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere to be used again by plants for photosynthesis.

 During the Carboniferous Era in geological time, conditions on Earth were such that plants and animals were growing and dying at a much faster rate than their dead biomass could deteriorate, so vast thicknesses of dead biomass accumulated.  That undeteriorated biomass lasted so long that much of it eventually was covered with silt and other mineral material. It was buried in Earth’s crust to become deposits that we now call fossil fuels.  Across geological time, some of those deposits were combusted by natural processes, like volcanic activity. When that happened, carbon stored in the depths was loosed back into the atmosphere. 

Now, however, when human beings burn fossil fuels, we reintroduce that stored carbon back into the atmosphere at a rate faster than ever before. When conditions on Earth change slowly across geological time, plants and animals can evolve and adapt to the new conditions.  But when conditions change rapidly as is the case today, Earth experiences mass extinctions. 

What we are loosing on Earth––and therefore loosing in heaven!––will be another mass extinction that will become part of Earth’s geological history.

Honoring God’s marvelous creation calls us to confess with Peter what he received from the Lord: the conviction that Jesus is “the Son of the living God.” The path is laid for us to remember Peter as our brother and our inspiration in faith: fearless and also flawed. Jesus calls us to bind and loose, to live as companions of the salvation we are given through God’s expansive forgiveness. Confessing Christ as the Son of the living God compels us to care for the land, the creatures, and all the people Jesus came to bring into a way of life that gives life.

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Hymns to consider:

In ELW:

#652 Built on a Rock

#861 When Long before Time

In All Creation Sings:

#920 All Things of Dust to Dust Return

#953 Before the Ancient One, Christ Stands

[1] Thomas Friedman, New York Times, Dec. 13, 2025.

[2] Bill Doggett, “Confession of Peter,” in New Proclamation Commentary on Feasts, Holy Days, and Other Celebrations,” ed. David B. Lott (Fortress, 2007), 48–49.