So Doing: Saturday of Summer Embertide 2026 (Matthew 24:42-50)

Summer Ember Day III, Year A, 2026, Saturday of Summer Embertide

Matthew 24:42–50, Psalm 71:17–24, Isaiah 6:1–8, Acts 20:24–35

Grace, mercy, and peace be with you on this third and final day of Summer Embertide.

On Wednesday we lifted our eyes and saw the fields already white for harvest. On Friday we heard Samuel learning to hold still before the voice of God, and Jesus pressing the compassion of the crowd into a prayer for laborers that changes those who pray it. Today, on this Saturday before Trinity Sunday, we come to the question that closes every Embertide and opens every season of ministry: having been called, having been equipped, having been sent — will we be found faithful when the master returns?

A brief word about today’s readings. The BCP 2019 appoints two sets of Ember Day propers on page 732 — one for Wednesday and one for Friday. There is no third appointed set for Saturday. For today’s service we draw from The Common of the Commemorations on page 732, specifically the propers appointed for the Commemoration of a Pastor: Isaiah 6:1–8, Psalm 71:17–24, Acts 20:24–35, and Matthew 24:42–50. These readings are fully within the BCP 2019’s lectionary and speak directly to the calling, perseverance, and faithful completion of those in ministry. They are a fitting close to three days of Ember Day prayer.

Isaiah 6 opens on the year of King Uzziah’s death. Uzziah had reigned for fifty-two years. He was the stability of a generation, the fixed point around which an entire national life had organized itself. And now he is gone. Into that political uncertainty and generational grief, Isaiah has a vision. In verse 1: “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.” (Isaiah 6:1, ESV) The throne of Uzziah is empty. The throne of the Lord is not. Above every vacancy of leadership, above every moment of national or institutional transition, above every season when the person we thought was indispensable has gone — the Lord sits enthroned, high and lifted up. Tomorrow is Trinity Sunday — the gate through which the Season after Pentecost enters. The twenty-six Sundays of Proper 5 through Christ the King lie ahead, beginning June 7. We do not enter them without a King.

The seraphim cry to one another in verse 3: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3, ESV) And Isaiah’s response in verse 5 is the only honest response available to a human being who has actually seen this: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5, ESV) The vision does not produce pride or ambition or a sense of personal destiny. It produces devastation — the honest recognition of what we are before the holiness of God. No pretense is possible before the seraphim. This is where genuine ministry always begins: not with a sense of gifting or a strategic vision, but with the undeniable reality of who God is and who we are in his presence.

But the vision does not end in devastation. In verses 6 and 7 a seraphim touches Isaiah’s lips with a live coal from the altar: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” (Isaiah 6:7, ESV) The holiness that exposes also cleanses. The God who makes Isaiah cry “woe is me” is the same God who sends the coal. We cannot miss the Pentecost resonance here: just as fire fell on the disciples in the Upper Room three days ago, so fire from the altar touches Isaiah’s lips. The same Spirit that exposes is the Spirit that equips. And then in verse 8, the voice: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6:8, ESV) And Isaiah: “Here I am! Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8, ESV)

Here I am. The Hebrew is hinnēnī (pronounced “hih-NAY-nee”) — the same word Samuel used on Friday. Present. Available. Ready. The throne room vision precedes the commission. The cleansing precedes the sending. And the commission that follows is not what Isaiah might have chosen: he is sent to a people who will not listen, whose hearts are dull and whose ears are heavy. He is sent to preach faithfully in a season of apparent futility. This is the shape of most ministry. The vision at the beginning is glorious. The work is long and often slow. And the question that Matthew 24 presses on every minister is: are we still at it when the master returns?

Psalm 71:17–24 is the prayer of an old man who has been in this a long time. In verse 17 he looks back across a lifetime: “O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.” (Psalm 71:17, ESV) And in verse 18 he looks forward with the one request that remains: “So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.” (Psalm 71:18, ESV) This psalm is not asking for glory or recognition or a larger platform. It is asking for enough strength and enough time to pass the word to the next generation before the end comes. The ministry is not finished until the transmission is complete. For a congregation that has been faithfully worshipping and praying and serving for many years, this psalm is not a distant aspiration. It is a description of exactly what we are already doing, Sunday after Sunday. Here at Christ the King, we know what gray hairs and decades of steady faithfulness look like.

And then verse 23, which closes the appointed section with the characteristic voice of the one who has been held up long enough to keep going: “My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have redeemed.” (Psalm 71:23, ESV) Shout for joy — not in spite of the gray hairs and the long years, but because of what those years have shown. The God who was faithful at the beginning has been faithful through every decade. That is the song of the person who has been found still doing the work.

Paul’s farewell address to the Ephesian elders at Miletus in Acts 20 gives us the same long view in the language of a man who knows he is not coming back. In verse 24 he says something that could only be said by someone who has been in the throne room: “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” (Acts 20:24, ESV) I do not account my life of any value. This is not recklessness or despair. This is the freedom that comes from having seen the seraphim, from having had the coal touch your lips, from knowing who sits on the throne when every earthly king has died. When the Lord’s claim on a life is clearer than one’s own claim on it, the cost of faithful ministry becomes not a burden to be managed but a gift to be offered.

In verse 28 Paul charges the elders with the weight of what they carry: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” (Acts 20:28, ESV) With his own blood. The flock was bought at the highest possible price. The minister who understands what the sheep cost does not treat them carelessly, does not abandon them when the work gets hard, does not conclude that the master has been delayed and that it no longer matters whether anyone is tending the household. He stays. He tends. He gives the household their food at the proper time.

And our Gospel reading from Matthew 24 closes the Embertide arc with the question that must be answered at the end of every season of ministry. In verse 45 Jesus asks: “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time?” (Matthew 24:45, ESV)

Faithful and wise. Not spectacular. Not celebrated. Not the one who launched the most initiatives or built the largest audience. The servant who is faithful — still at the work when the master returns — and wise — giving the household their food at the proper time. That is, week after week feeding them the Scriptures, the sacraments, and the prayers—nothing spectacular, but everything necessary—so that when the Master returns He finds His table set and His people nourished. And in verse 46, the Ember Day benediction: “Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.” (Matthew 24:46, ESV)

The wicked servant’s error in verse 48 is instructive: “But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed’” (Matthew 24:48, ESV) — and then begins to beat his fellow servants and eat and drink with drunkards. The failure is not dramatic apostasy. It is the quiet assumption that the master has been delayed, that the urgency has passed, that the standards can relax. It is the ministry drained of the throne room vision. The coal has cooled. The lips have gone silent. The harvest is left untended because someone concluded that there was time.

This is the vision that sustains the long ministry: not the throne room experience alone, though it begins there. Not the clarity of the initial call alone, though that is necessary. The vision that sustains is the image of the master returning and finding us still at work. Faithful and wise. Still giving the household their food. Still proclaiming wondrous deeds to another generation. Still standing at the post.

Three days of Summer Embertide. We lifted our eyes and saw the white harvest. We heard the voice in the night and learned the posture of the servant. And now this: the throne room vision that exposes, cleanses, and sends, and the long faithfulness of the one who, having been sent, is still found doing the work when the master comes.

What does this mean for us on this Saturday before Trinity Sunday?

First, it means we enter the Season after Pentecost with the throne room clearly in view. Tomorrow is Trinity Sunday — the gate through which this season enters. The twenty-six Sundays of Proper 5 through Christ the King begin on June 7. They will not all be glorious. Many of them will feel slow and unremarkable. The Ember Day gift is this: we begin the season having seen the King on the throne, having had the coal touch our lips, having said ‘here I am, send me’ before the first Sunday arrives. The season is not ours to manufacture. It is the Lord’s to build. We are fellow workers in his field.

Second, it means we pray for those whose gray hairs mark decades of faithful service — the Psalm 71 people in our congregation and diocese who have been proclaiming the wondrous deeds since before many of us were born. Their ministry is not finished. The transmission is not yet complete. We pray that God will sustain them until they have passed the word to one more generation.

Third, it means we close this Embertide asking honestly: when the master comes, what will he find us doing? Not what we plan to do. What we are doing. The faithful servant is not the one with the best intentions. He is the one found at the work. We plant, we water, we feed the household, we proclaim to another generation — and we leave the harvest to the Lord of the harvest.

Here is how to close these three days of Embertide in prayer.

Today we pray the second of the two BCP Ember Day collects, printed here for you. Use the first collect this morning and the second this evening, as on the previous days, to close the three-day arc of intercession.

The Second Collect — BCP 2019, p. 634

O God, you led your holy apostles to ordain ministers in every place: Grant that your Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may choose suitable persons for the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and may uphold them in their work for the extension of your kingdom; through the great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Fast today as you have fasted on Wednesday and Friday, and let the hunger be the final prayer of Embertide: Lord, we are empty enough to be filled. Then bring before God the specific person you have been praying for these three days — the one in discernment, the one in whose life the voice has been recurring, the clergy carrying burdens you may not fully know. Pray for them by name one more time. And close with the Ember Day question that Matthew 24:46 puts to each of us: when the master comes, Lord, let him find me so doing.

“Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.” (Matthew 24:46, ESV)

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.