The 4th Sunday after the Epiphany
Sunday, February 1, 2026
Gabriel Sparks
A Tale of Two Kingdoms
Some of you might remember the pre-1979 Book of Common Prayer. Or maybe you remember the Roman Catholic church before Vatican II. If you do, you might remember that this Sunday, the 9th before Easter and the 3rd before Ash Wednesday, had a special name: Septuagesima. Now, if you do remember that, you’re likely a septuagenarian or close to it, so you can probably deduce that that name has something to do with 70. And if you’re good with numbers, you might know that we are 63 calendar days from Easter. And if you didn’t know either of those things, you’re in good company because neither did I when I started writing this sermon.
Now, there are several theories about why we used to call the Sunday 63 days before Easter “Seventieth”, but that’s not important for the moment. What is important is why we used to mark this Sunday with a special name. Our earliest record of Septuagesima is from right around the year 600, when St. Gregory the Great was Bishop of Rome. In his time, it began a season of education for children and new converts to prepare them for Baptism at Easter. Eventually, these 17 days from now until Ash Wednesday became kind of a pre-Lent season; a time for us to remember salvation history, that is, God’s plan of salvation starting at Genesis right through to the first Easter and forward to today and until his coming in glory.
While we no longer observe a pre-Lent season in the Episcopal Church, it seems prudent to take a moment (especially with everything that’s going on in the world) to ground ourselves in the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. That’s where our reading left off last week, with Jesus calling his first disciples and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom.
Our readings today point us toward what life is like in the Kingdom of God; how we live in a Kingdom that is not of this world. We don’t know exactly when our Old Testament reading was written. Micah prophesied for over 40 years, but I like to think today’s prophecy was made some time around 701 BC. At that time, Hezekiah was the king of Judah. There’s been a series of bad kings before him, but he listened to the prophets and has cleansed and restored the temple in Jerusalem in an effort to restore the nation to the covenant. So, he’s pretty upset when Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, decides to attack Judah. He’s been making sacrifices and celebrating Passover, so why is he still in danger?
“With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
This is why I love Micah. I understand that it may not be obvious, but this is peak sarcasm. Hezekiah, the priests, the army, and the elites of Judah are sitting safe behind the walls of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the people in the rest of the nation, where Micah comes from, what we might today call flyover country, are left to fend for themselves against a rampaging foreign army. And what do those elites think the solution is? More sacrifices! We just haven’t sacrificed hard enough! In other words, these people have misunderstood the covenant so much that they think maybe they think a human sacrifice might save them. St Paul might say they’re trusting in human wisdom instead of God’s wisdom.
So, after poking fun at the foolishness of the rulers, Micah tells us what a kingdom of God requires:
He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God?
How do we do justice? What does justice even mean here? Now, most of us are probably thinking of something to do with the legal system and punishing criminals or something. And that is part of doing justice, but what should we do if we’re not a judge, or lawyer, or in law enforcement? See, to God, justice isn’t about obeying the speed limit or jaywalking or any of the other petty ways you or I might break the law. (Though, he’d probably be happier with us if we didn’t!) Justice is about restoring equality.
If you know Handel’s Messiah, you might remember the aria “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted”. The lyrics here come from Isaiah 40:4. “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.” This is the image of justice for us. It’s raising the lowly and lowering the high. Indeed, this is how the Blessed Virgin describes it in the Magnificat:
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.
We can not do justice when we look down on others OR when we place them on a pedestal. We do justice when we treat everyone, including ourselves, as image bearers of God Almighty.
The second thing Micah says we need is to love kindness. Does anyone here not love kindness? Does anyone wake up in the morning and think, “Gee, I hope everyone treats me like an jerk today?” Of course not! So, what does it mean to love kindness? What does kindness even mean? Well, kind comes from the word kin, and our kin are our family. So in one sense, kindness is treating people like their part of your family. But there’s much more to it than that. The Hebrew word used here is chesed. Chesed is one of those words that doesn’t translate perfectly into English. It appears almost 250 times in the Old Testament where it gets translated in a number of ways: lovingkindness, goodness, mercy, loyalty, pity, favor, righteousness, devotion, unchanging love, and steadfast love. So, this chesed that Micah tells us to love, this lovingkindness, this unchanging or steadfast love, is ultimately the love that God shows towards us. It’s loving people regardless of what they do, which is grace. It’s loving people so that you do not treat them the way they deserve to be treated, which is mercy. It is loving them even in the face of betrayal, which is faithfulness. This is how God loves us and how he asks us to love each other.
The last thing Micah says is missing is to walk humbly with God. And this is what Hezekiah does that saves the people. You can read this full story in 2 Kings and in 2 Chronicles, but what Hezekiah does is simple: he goes before God in prayer and acknowledges Him as the only means of salvation. This is a king with an army. Kings and generals are not known for their humility. But Hezekiah saved his people by acknowledging the sovereignty of God and his own powerlessness in the face of his enemies.
That brings us to today’s Gospel. Jesus has been working miracles and proclaiming the Kingdom, and a crowd has gathered. So, he goes up on a mountain side and begins to teach them. This is the beginning of the famous Sermon on the Mount. We have a short Epiphany season this year, but we’ll hear more of it next week and on Ash Wednesday. If you want to read the whole sermon, it’s chapters 5-7 in Matthew. But Jesus begins the sermon with 9 Blesseds or Beatitudes.
Now it’s important to note, Jesus is not pronouncing a blessing on the people he’s about to mention. He’s using the word slightly differently. Some translations will use the word happy instead, but that doesn’t quite capture the meaning. We might say that these are the people who live the good life in God’s kingdom. Or as Gen Z might say, “They’re the moment.”
The first three is who God’s Kingdom is coming for. It’s not the rich and powerful, or even the pious or moral. God’s Kingdom is for the poor in spirit. Remember this word spirit is the same word for breath. But this isn’t just being out of breath. This is the exhausted, the person at the end of their rope, the person who drained of their very vitality. God’s Kingdom is for those who mourn, that is, those who have lost in this world. God’s Kingdom is for the meek. Now, this word is more than just humble, this is the powerless and those with no influence. These are the first people in the Kingdom of God.
If you remember Luke’s version of this sermon, which I hope you do, we heard it three times last year, this is basically where he stops. But Matthew records more of it. He goes on to tell us the type of people who enjoy the Kingdom of God, who will be most at home. It’s those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who are merciful, and the pure in heart. Here we have a parallel with Micah. In seeking righteousness, we seek God’s justice. This word for mercy is the same word the Septuagint scholars used to translate chesed. And those whose intentions are pure are those who walk humbly with God. These people thrive in God’s Kingdom.
The last 3 blesseds are about the difficult path of living in God’s Kingdom. We are to be peacemakers. We are not called to avoid conflict, but to enter into it, not with violence and intimidation, but to seek reconciliation. We will be persecuted either for doing what is right or just for standing for God’s Kingdom. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
What we ultimately have in the lessons today is a tale of two kingdoms. We have the kingdom of this world and the Kingdom of God. They are right here, right now, at the same time. The kingdoms of this world rise and fall, but they’re all the same. They rule through violence, through exploitation, through fear and coercion. 2000 years ago, Christ conquered the kingdoms of this world in his sacrifice on the cross. And in his resurrection he inaugurated God’s Kingdom in their place. But when you turn on your radio or TV or open up social media, you don’t usually find God’s Kingdom. If you’ll allow me the anthropomorphic language, what you see is the last gasps of the defeated powers of darkness in this world. As my father says every time we watch the Royals lose, it’s all over but the crying for them.
So on this Septuagesima Sunday, let us remember that the victory is already won. The Kingdom of God is here. And as we approach the season of Lent, may we all dedicate ourselves to living out the Gospel as citizens of the one true King of Kings. Amen.
