Sunday Toolkit — 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, 13th September 2026

1. Encouragement

Whoever is leading this Sunday — take a breath before you read any further. There’s a particular kind of nerve that comes with standing at the front of a room: people are trusting you with their attention, their quiet, maybe even a hard week they walked in carrying. That’s real weight to hold, and it’s completely normal to feel it.

You don’t have to be flawless to do this well. A steady, present person who’s clearly put care into the morning is worth far more to this room than a perfectly smooth run sheet. If your voice wobbles or a page goes missing, nobody here is grading you — they’re glad you showed up. Go gently with yourself this week.

2. This Week’s Reading

Old Testament — Numbers 27:1-11 — Mahlah and her sisters
Five sisters — Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah — walk up to Moses together because their father died without a son, which under the law of the day meant their family’s name and land would simply disappear. Moses doesn’t have an answer, so he takes it to God — and God agrees with the sisters. The law changes, on the spot, because five women refused to be written out of the record.
Read the full passage on Bible Gateway (NRSVUE)

“Then the daughters of Zelophehad came forward… ‘Give to us a possession among our father’s brothers.’ Moses brought their case before the Lord… ‘The daughters of Zelophehad are right in what they are saying; you shall indeed let them possess an inheritance.’” (Numbers 27:1, 4, 5, 7, abridged)

New Testament — Colossians 4:2-15 — Nympha
Paul closes this letter the way a lot of us close an email — a string of names and greetings for people he cares about. Tucked into that list is Nympha, a woman who hosted a whole church in her own house. It’s one line, easy to skim past, but it’s evidence of a woman quietly running a congregation almost two thousand years ago.
Read the full passage on Bible Gateway (NRSVUE)

“Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house.” (Colossians 4:15, abridged)

3. What Richard’s Explored Before

In his own preaching: This is new ground for Richard — nothing in his sermon records touches Numbers 27 or Colossians 4, so there’s no old sermon to lean on or accidentally repeat here. Worth knowing, though: he’s preached a similar shape of story more than once lately — an overlooked woman in scripture whose role turns out to matter far more than the text first lets on. If that thread shows up again this week, it’s part of a pattern he’s been drawn to this year, not a coincidence.

In past liturgies: Words for Worship and L3 don’t have anything filed under this particular reading pairing — those two resources are built around the standard church calendar, and this week’s readings come from the Women’s Lectionary instead, so the dates don’t line up. Nothing to draw on there this time, said plainly rather than stretched.

Where the congregation’s worship is currently sitting: The past couple of Sundays have circled around women whose voices nearly got lost — Miriam’s song fading back into Moses’ story, Euodia and Syntyche needing Paul to plead their case in a letter read aloud to the whole church. This week keeps that thread going from two directions at once: five sisters who insist on being counted, and one woman whose name barely survived being written down at all.

4. Resources

Spill the Beans has a resource built for these exact two readings — titled “Courageous Daughters of Zelophehad” — check the shared folder for it. It’s worth pulling in full: it includes a five-voice retelling of the sisters’ story that could work well as a group reading in the service itself.

Words for Worship and L3 don’t have anything for this specific pairing — as above, that’s the usual Women’s Lectionary/standard-calendar mismatch rather than a gap worth chasing further.

5. Songs

Used before? There’s no record of either of these readings being paired with a particular song before — this is genuinely fresh ground, and none of the suggestions below have been sung by the congregation recently.

From the congregation’s song list, worth considering:

There Is a Line of Women (Iona, One is the Body, no. 60) — about as direct a match as it gets: a song built entirely around naming the women of the Bible whose stories carried the community forward.
All Are Welcome (Marty Haugen) — a gentle fit for Nympha, who opened her own home to become a church.
Woman in the Night (TiS 661) — about a woman who makes herself seen and heard on her own terms; sits well alongside sisters who refused to stay quiet.

6. Weblinks

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

Working Preacher — reliable, accessible commentary, worth checking for both readings.
Textweek — a broad aggregator of links across many commentators, useful for a wider spread of views.
Journey With Jesus — thoughtful, pastoral reflections, generally strong on lesser-preached texts.
Howard Wallace — solid Old Testament background, useful for grounding Numbers 27 in its context.
Sacredise — liturgy-focused resources that can help translate a reading into something usable in worship.

7. Pop Culture

Five songs for the lead-up to Sunday:

Jason Isbell — “White Man’s World“ — a song about reckoning with inherited privilege and whose voice gets to count; resonates with five sisters demanding a place in the record.
Phosphorescent — “Song for Zula“ — a slow-building refusal to be caged by someone else’s expectations, echoing the sisters’ refusal to quietly disappear.
Nat Bartsch — “My Favourite Person“ — a tender, unhurried instrumental piece, good company for reflecting on being someone who is treasured and named.
Mitski — “Your Best American Girl“ — about not fitting the mould you’ve been handed, and claiming your place anyway.
Slow Pulp — “Cramps“ — a song about pain being dismissed rather than believed, an echo of the “erasure” running through this week’s readings.

Book: Dirrayawadha by Anita Heiss — a novel set during the 1820s Bathurst War, following a Wiradyuri woman navigating the seizure and renaming of her homeland by an outside legal system. It’s a different context to Numbers 27, but the same underlying question: who gets to claim what’s rightfully theirs when the system in charge wasn’t built with them in mind.

Film: Girls Can’t Surf (2020), an Australian documentary about the women who fought to be taken seriously in professional surfing through the 1980s and 90s — pay inequality, being dismissed, and the sisterhood that formed among them as they pushed back. Worth knowing before you recommend it: it’s rated M, and touches on sexism, alcoholism, disordered eating and unwanted advances (discussed, not shown graphically), plus some coarse language and swimwear/beach shots — a good film, but not an “anyone, anytime” one.

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.

15 September — International Day of Democracy (UN). A day about people’s right to have a voice and be counted in decisions that shape their lives — a striking echo of five sisters walking into Moses’ tent to insist their family be counted too.
17 September — Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). A Benedictine abbess, composer, poet and visionary who wrote dozens of songs and founded convents at a time when women rarely held that kind of authority. She’s remembered for her deep appreciation of the feminine and for holding soul, mind and body together as one — a lovely companion for a week already thinking about women’s authority being recognised.
18 September — Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961). UN Secretary-General killed in a plane crash while negotiating a ceasefire in Congo, and posthumous Nobel Peace laureate. His private journal, published after his death, revealed a much more contemplative, prayerful inner life than most people around him ever knew about.

9. Final Word

One small thing to try this week: somewhere in the service, read out a name — or a few names — slowly, the way you’d read a roll call. It doesn’t need explaining or dressing up. Let the room simply hear a name spoken carefully and given room to land. That’s the whole heart of this week’s readings: people insisting on being named, and one woman remembered by a single line that very nearly didn’t survive.

Whatever else Sunday holds — a moment that doesn’t go the way you planned, a face in the crowd that needs to feel seen today — may you lead the way Mahlah and her sisters did: steady, together, and unwilling to let anyone go unnoticed. Go well. You’re not carrying this alone.