Sunday Toolkit — 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 23rd August 2026

Please read first — the readings for this Sunday have changed

Updated Wednesday 19th August 2026. A guest preacher is leading worship on Sunday 23rd August and has brought her own readings. The service will now use Romans 12:1-8 and Matthew 16:13-20 — not Exodus 1:8-2:10 and Galatians 4:21-30, which everything below was built around.

In short: Paul asking the church to offer itself as a living sacrifice, and to stop measuring itself by one set of gifts, because a body needs all of them; and Peter naming Jesus as the Messiah at Caesarea Philippi. Different territory from the midwives entirely.

The encouragement in section 1 still holds, as does anything general about leading, and the notable dates in section 8 are unaffected. But the reading notes, songs, commentary links and pop culture picks below are all pointed at the wrong texts this week — please don’t prepare from them. If you’d like material matched to Romans 12 and Matthew 16 instead, ask Richard and he’ll pull something together.

1. Encouragement

If you’re the one standing up the front this Sunday, take a breath first — this note is for you. Leading worship is a strange, generous, slightly terrifying thing to do: for a few minutes, a room full of people lets you hold their attention, their grief, their hope. You don’t have to get every word right. Being seen while you fumble a line, or feel your voice wobble, isn’t failure — it’s just what being human in front of other humans looks like. The congregation is there to worship alongside you, not to mark you.

This week’s readings are about people who acted without certainty and without permission — midwives who lied to a king, a woman cast out with nothing but held by God anyway. If they could carry weight they didn’t ask for and still show up faithfully, so can you. Whatever you bring on Sunday — steady voice or shaky one — is enough.

2. This Week’s Reading

Superseded — see the note at the top of this post. The passages below are no longer the ones being used on 23rd August.

Old Testament — Exodus 1:8-2:10 — Shiphrah and Puah
Two midwives are ordered by Pharaoh to kill every baby boy born to the Hebrews. They quietly refuse, and God blesses them for it. The chapter ends with baby Moses being hidden in a basket among the reeds — and found, and kept safe, by Pharaoh’s own daughter.
Read the full passage on Bible Gateway (NRSVUE)

“But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live… So God dealt well with the midwives.” (Exodus 1:17, 20, abridged)

New Testament — Galatians 4:21-30 — Hagar and Sarah
Paul uses the story of Abraham’s two sons — one born to the enslaved Hagar, one to the free Sarah — as an allegory about freedom and slavery, promise and law. It’s a dense, uncomfortable passage: Paul is making a theological argument, but he’s doing it by using two real women’s pain as a metaphor, without asking either of them.
Read the full passage on Bible Gateway (NRSVUE)

“For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman.” (Galatians 4:22, abridged)

3. What Richard’s Explored Before

In his own preaching: Richard’s sermon log doesn’t have a single sermon covering Exodus 1-2 or Galatians 4 — this is genuinely new territory for him too, on both readings. There’s no old sermon to lean on here, which also means there’s no risk of accidentally repeating himself this week.

In past liturgies: Working out exactly where “20th Sunday in Ordinary Time” sits in the wider church calendar, this Sunday lines up with what the congregation’s resources label “Pentecost 13.” Under that label, the Words for Worship and L3 folders do have entries from several past years (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 in Words for Worship; one from 2025 in L3) — but those files follow the standard denominational lectionary rather than Richard’s custom Women’s Lectionary, and their exact readings weren’t recorded, so they may or may not touch Exodus 1 or Galatians 4 specifically. Worth a quick look for general Ordinary Time material (calls to worship, prayers of the people) rather than assuming they’re built around this exact story.

Where the congregation’s worship is currently sitting: Last Sunday (16th August, Genesis 39 — Potiphar’s Wife, and Mark 10 — divorce) was also about resisting coercion and protecting the vulnerable — a woman refusing to be complicit, and Jesus turning attention back to the children in the room. This week continues that same thread with two more women who refuse to go along with what power demands of them. If you were there last week, this Sunday should feel like a continuation, not a change of subject.

4. Resources

Good news here — Spill the Beans has a resource built for these exact two readings: a file named “Exodus 1-8-2-10 & Galatians 4-21-30.pdf”, filed under Women’s Lectionary/Pentecost. It’s worth pulling from the shared folder for all-age material and activity ideas tailored specifically to this week’s story.

5. Songs

Used before? There’s no record in the sermon log, past Monday Prep posts, or the liturgical resource notes of a specific song being sung for this reading before — so there’s nothing to confirm as a “usual” choice. The congregation’s song list itself is just an inventory, not a record of what’s actually been sung on which date, so treat any suggestion below as a fresh pick rather than a known favourite.

From the congregation’s song list, worth considering:

Freedom is Coming (ATOK 355) — a liberationist song that sits naturally alongside two midwives choosing life over obedience to an unjust order.
God of Freedom, God of Justice — direct, simple, and names exactly what Shiphrah and Puah were standing for.
There is a Line of Women — a lovely fit for a week built entirely around the stories of women (midwives, a mother, Hagar, Sarah) who don’t often get top billing.

From outside the usual list: We Shall Overcome is worth considering if you want something the congregation may already know by heart — it’s not on the CotT song list, but its history as a song of quiet, determined resistance fits this week closely.

6. Weblinks

A short jumping-off list from Richard’s own “Websites I Use,” picked for this week’s themes:

Working Preacher — solid commentary on the midwives’ defiance and what it sets up for the rest of Exodus.
Howard Wallace — reads Shiphrah, Puah and Pharaoh’s daughter together as a pattern of “faithful subversion” from people with little formal power.
Old Testament Lectionary (UCA) — useful background on why the midwives are named at all, unusual for minor characters in this kind of text.
Bill Loader — worth checking for either passage; his lectionary notes often cover ground other RCL-based sites miss.
Textweek — a good broad sweep if you want to see what a range of preachers and commentators have done with either reading.

A heads-up: because Galatians 4:21-30 isn’t part of the standard Sunday lectionary most of these sites are organised around, you may find far more written on the Exodus reading than on Galatians. That’s just the nature of the source material, not a sign you’re missing something.

7. Pop Culture

Five songs for the lead-up to Sunday:

Brandi Carlile — “The Joke“ — an anthem for anyone who’s been underestimated or dismissed, which is basically the story of every woman in this week’s readings.
Phosphorescent — “Song for Zula“ — about refusing to be caged or defined by someone else’s terms; echoes the freedom Paul is reaching for in Galatians, even amid an uncomfortable argument.
Nat Bartsch — “Hope“ — gentle piano pieces originally composed for premature babies in hospital care; a tender, wordless echo of two midwives determined to protect fragile new life.
Hozier feat. Mavis Staples — “Nina Cried Power“ — a tribute to generations of people who used their voice against unjust power, a fitting soundtrack for Shiphrah and Puah’s quiet civil disobedience.
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit — “White Man’s World“ — a searching, honest song about reckoning with inherited privilege and the debts owed to people whose labour and survival made room for others.

Book: Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible (ed. Gregg Drinkwater et al.) is a strong, direct match this week — it includes an essay specifically on this Exodus passage, reading Shiphrah and Puah’s resistance through a queer lens. Well worth a read if you want a genuinely fresh angle rather than the usual commentary.

Film: A Hidden Life (2019, dir. Terrence Malick) tells the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who quietly refused to swear allegiance to Hitler’s regime, at enormous personal cost. It’s a slow, contemplative film rather than a dramatic one, but it sits close to this week’s readings — ordinary people choosing conscience over self-preservation when no one is applauding them for it. Thoughtful and reverent rather than graphic; a good one to sit with rather than screen for a group.

8. Notable Dates

A few things happening in the world and the wider church around this Sunday — handy for a line in the notices, a prayer prompt, or just to know what’s in the air.

22 August — International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief (UN). Worth holding in prayer, especially for a community that knows what it’s like to be targeted for faith or identity.
23 August — International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition (UN). Falls on this very Sunday — a significant one to name, particularly for a congregation committed to justice and truth-telling.
24 August — Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, is remembered on the church calendar — one of the quieter disciples, a reminder that faithful service doesn’t need the spotlight.
28 August — Augustine of Hippo is remembered on the church calendar — one of the most influential theologians in Christian history, whose Confessions still speaks to anyone wrestling honestly with faith and doubt.

9. Final Word

The practical tip below was written for the Exodus reading and no longer applies this week — the blessing that follows it still does.

One small, practical thing to try this week: when you get to the reading of Exodus 1, resist the urge to rush past the midwives’ names. Shiphrah and Puah are two of the only named women in the whole Exodus story, in a narrative full of unnamed pharaohs and unnamed daughters — say their names slowly, like they matter, because the text is going out of its way to tell you they do. Small choices like that are often what a congregation actually remembers.

Whatever else happens on Sunday — a reading that doesn’t land quite the way you hoped, a prayer that runs long, a moment of quiet that stretches further than planned — may you know that you did something worth doing, and may the God who worked through two midwives with no institutional power at all work through you too. Go gently. You’re not carrying this alone.