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

May 30, 2026, Summer Ember Day III, 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 listen when God called his name, and we heard Jesus turn his compassion for the shepherdless crowds into a command to pray for laborers, only for the disciples who heard that command to be drawn immediately into the harvest themselves. Today, on this Saturday before Trinity Sunday, we come to the question that closes these three days of prayer and opens the long work of the season ahead: having been called, having been equipped, and having been sent, will we be found faithful when the Master returns?

A brief word about today’s readings is important. The BCP 2019 provides two sets of Ember Day propers on page 732, Ember Days I and Ember Days II, but it does not assign a separate set of readings to each of the three Ember Days. Because I wanted these three Summer Ember homilies to follow three distinct sets of readings, for this final day I have chosen the BCP’s Common of the Commemorations for a Pastor, found on page 733: Isaiah 6:1–8, Psalm 71:17–24, Acts 20:24–35, and Matthew 24:42–50. These are not a third appointed set of Ember Day propers, but they are Prayer Book readings whose themes of calling, pastoral stewardship, perseverance, and faithful completion make them a fitting conclusion to these three days of prayer for the ministry of the Church. 

Isaiah 6 opens “in the year that King Uzziah died.” Uzziah had reigned for fifty-two years. A reign that had stretched across most of a lifetime had ended, but Isaiah is immediately shown that the death of an earthly king has not left the universe without a throne. He says, “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) Uzziah’s throne may be empty, but the throne of the Lord is not. Above every change of leadership, above every transition in the Church, above every season in which someone we thought indispensable is suddenly gone, the Lord remains enthroned.

That is a fitting vision on the eve of Trinity Sunday. Tomorrow the Church enters the Season after Pentecost with the Triune God before her, and after Trinity Sunday twenty-five Proper Sundays, Proper 5 through Proper 29, stretch from June 7 through Christ the King. We do not enter that long season without a King. The work may be ordinary, repetitive, and often hidden, but the throne above it is never vacant.

The seraphim cry to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3, ESV) Isaiah’s response is not ambition or excitement about his future ministry. It is confession: “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 of God does not first convince Isaiah that he is gifted enough for ministry. It exposes him. Before the holy God, his own uncleanness and the uncleanness of the people among whom he lives become impossible to ignore.

Yet the God whose holiness exposes Isaiah is also the God who cleanses him. A seraph takes a burning coal from the altar, touches Isaiah’s mouth, and says, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”(Isaiah 6:7, ESV) Only then comes the call: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah answers, “Here I am! Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8, ESV) The order matters. Isaiah sees the Lord, confesses his uncleanness, receives cleansing he could not provide for himself, hears God’s call, and then responds.

There is also a fitting and ancient Christian resonance here with Pentecost. Isaiah’s lips are touched by fire from the altar, cleansing and consecrating him for the prophetic word he is about to proclaim; at Pentecost, tongues “as of fire” rest upon the disciples as the Holy Spirit fills and sends the Church. Christians have therefore long seen in Isaiah’s coal an image of the Spirit’s purifying and empowering work. The scenes are not identical, but they belong to the same biblical pattern: God cleanses those whom he calls, fills them with what they lack, and equips them for the work into which he sends them.

Isaiah answers with the Hebrew hinnēnī (hin-NAY-nee), “Here I am,” the same response of availability we heard in Samuel’s story on Friday. It is the language of someone present before God and ready to receive what God gives. Isaiah does not yet know that his commission will be difficult. The verses that follow send him to people who will resist the word he proclaims. That matters because vocation is not validated by immediate visible success. The glory of the call does not guarantee ease in the work. Faithfulness may mean speaking truth when people will not hear it and remaining at the post when the fruit is slow to appear.

Psalm 71 takes that same calling and stretches it across a lifetime. The psalmist looks backward and says, “O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.” (Psalm 71:17, ESV) Then he looks toward old age and asks, “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) The prayer is not for a larger platform or a more impressive legacy. It is for enough grace to remain faithful long enough to hand on what God has revealed.

That is a beautiful Ember Day prayer because the Church needs more than people willing to begin ministry. She needs people whom God sustains through it. A calling may be recognized in youth, but Christian ministry is measured across years of preaching, visiting, praying, catechizing, forgiving, enduring, and beginning again. The psalmist does not boast that he has managed to hold himself together. He asks God not to forsake him, because perseverance is itself a gift.

The appointed portion eventually brings us to the joy of someone who has learned that faithfulness rests upon redemption. The psalmist says, “My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have redeemed.”(Psalm 71:23, ESV) That is the deeper foundation beneath a lifetime of ministry. The minister is first a redeemed sinner. Before he speaks for God, serves the Church, teaches the faith, or tends the flock, he belongs to the God who has redeemed him.

Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20 brings us still closer to the particular burden of pastoral ministry. Paul knows suffering lies ahead, yet he says, “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) This is not contempt for life, recklessness, or despair. It is the freedom of a life that knows it has been received from Christ and therefore can be offered back to him.

Notice also what Paul calls the message entrusted to him: “the gospel of the grace of God.” Ministry does not merely begin by grace and then continue by human determination. Its content is grace, its calling is grace, its endurance depends upon grace, and its fruit belongs to God. Paul wants to finish the ministry he received. He did not invent it, possess it, or make it his private project.

Then he turns to the elders themselves and says, “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) That sentence places an astonishing weight upon pastoral care. The flock does not belong to the pastor. It belongs to God, and its price is the blood of Christ. Those entrusted with the Church therefore cannot treat Christ’s people as instruments for personal ambition, an audience to be cultivated, or a possession to be controlled. The sheep belong to another Shepherd.

Paul begins by telling these leaders to pay attention both to themselves and to the flock. Pastoral vigilance cannot be directed only outward. Doctrine, character, prayer, repentance, and holiness matter in the shepherd as well as in the sheep. The Ember Collect asks God to fill ministers with “the truth of your doctrine” and clothe them with “holiness of life” for exactly this reason. A pastor cannot faithfully tend Christ’s flock while neglecting the life of the shepherd.

Then our Gospel from Matthew 24 places all of this beneath the return of the Master. 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) The qualities Jesus praises are strikingly ordinary: faithful and wise. The servant has been given a household that does not belong to him and a task he is expected to continue until the master returns.

For pastors, there is a natural application in that image of giving the household its food at the proper time. The Church must be fed faithfully with the Word of God, nourished by the Sacraments Christ instituted, led in prayer, guarded from false teaching, comforted in suffering, corrected in sin, and continually directed back toward Christ. Much of that work is wonderfully undramatic. Sunday follows Sunday. Sermon follows sermon. Baptisms, Eucharists, hospital rooms, gravesides, catechism classes, confessions, prayers, conversations, and ordinary acts of pastoral care accumulate over years. Jesus calls blessed not the servant who makes the household revolve around himself, but “that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.” (Matthew 24:46, ESV)

The warning that follows is equally important. The wicked servant begins by saying in his heart, “My master is delayed.”(Matthew 24:48, ESV) That inward falsehood eventually bears terrible fruit. He begins beating his fellow servants and abusing the freedom entrusted to him. The problem is not merely that he became less energetic while waiting. He began living as though the household were his and the Master’s return no longer governed his conduct.

That is one of the deepest dangers in Christian ministry. A person may begin with a vivid sense of calling and gradually begin to act as though the Church belongs to him. The throne room vision fades, the Master seems distant, and stewardship quietly becomes possession. Matthew 24 brings the minister back to reality: the Master is coming, the household is his, and every servant will give account.

This is the vision that sustains long ministry. Isaiah sees the King, receives cleansing, and is sent. Psalm 71 asks for grace to proclaim God’s mighty acts into old age. Paul wants to finish the ministry he received from the Lord Jesus and charges the elders to care for a flock purchased by Christ’s blood. Jesus tells his servants to remain faithful at their appointed work until the Master returns. Calling, cleansing, sending, perseverance, stewardship, and accountability all belong together.

That also completes the arc of these three Summer Ember Days. On Wednesday we lifted our eyes toward the harvest and remembered that God gives the growth. On Friday we listened with Samuel and prayed with Jesus for laborers whom the Lord himself must send. Today we ask what happens after the call has been recognized and the laborer has entered the field. The answer is not complicated, though it may cost everything: remain faithful to the Lord who called you and to the people he has entrusted to your care.

As we stand on the eve of Trinity Sunday, that is the right way to enter the long Season after Pentecost. The Church does not need twenty-five Sundays of manufactured excitement. She needs the steady work of grace. She needs pastors who preach the faith once delivered, administer the Sacraments faithfully, tend Christ’s sheep, repent when they sin, endure when the work is hard, and remember at every point that the Church belongs to Jesus Christ. She also needs faithful lay Christians who pray for those ministers, support them, correct them when necessary, and offer their own gifts for the building up of the Body.

Psalm 71 gives us another Ember prayer as well. Many among us have served Christ through decades of ordinary faithfulness, and the Church should pray that God would sustain them in that work and use them to hand the faith to another generation. Christian ministry is not only about identifying the young person who may be called next. It is also about honoring and supporting those who have remained at the work long enough to teach the rest of us what endurance looks like.

And Matthew turns the question finally toward each of us: if the Master came, what would he find us doing? Not what we intend to do eventually, and not the ministry we imagine we might have under different circumstances, but the work actually entrusted to us now. The faithful servant is found doing what his Master gave him to do. We plant, we water, we feed the household, we proclaim God’s mighty acts to another generation, and we leave the growth and the final accounting to the Lord.

The BCP gives us two Ember Collects on page 634, and one useful devotional practice across these three days is to let both prayers shape our intercession, perhaps using one in the morning and the other in the evening. That is a devotional pattern rather than a Prayer Book requirement. The second Collect is especially fitting as these Summer Ember Days close because it asks that the Church, “under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may choose suitable persons for the ministry of Word and Sacrament,” and then adds the equally important petition that she “may uphold them in their work for the extension of your kingdom.” The prayer does not stop once the candidate is chosen or ordained. The Church is to uphold those whom God has called. At the Eucharist, the BCP appoints the Preface of Apostles with either Ember Collect.

If it is prudent for you to keep some form of fast today, let that bodily discipline turn you again toward these prayers. Bring before God the person you have been praying for during these three days, whether someone discerning Holy Orders, a seminarian, a bishop, priest, or deacon, or a congregation waiting for a faithful pastor. Pray for those just beginning and for those whose gray hairs testify to many years in the work. Ask God to give the Church suitable ministers, to keep them sound in doctrine and holy in life, and to sustain them until the work he has given them is complete.

Then allow Matthew’s question to become personal. The Master has entrusted something to each of us. For some, that includes ordained ministry. For all Christians, it includes some measure of stewardship within Christ’s household. We do not make ourselves faithful by force of will, but neither does grace make faithfulness unnecessary. The same Lord who calls and cleanses also gives grace to persevere.

So as Summer Embertide closes, let us ask the Lord who sits upon the throne to cleanse those he calls, send those whom he chooses, uphold those already serving, and keep his whole Church faithful until Christ returns. And when the Master comes, may he find us, by his grace, still doing the work he gave us to do.

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