Sunday June 14th, 2026 Worship

Like many sermons, this was not what I had planned on preaching this morning. I had some stories from vacation and my adventures in trying to make it back to Seattle through severe thunderstorms; silly anecdotes of my time with my niece who is my mini-me and becomes more so each year! Those are the things that I wanted to be able to talk about in this first Sunday back after my vacation. Yet, as so often happens, the news of the world and our Scripture readings align a little too well and pull the sermon in a different direction on Sunday morning.
It isn’t very often that I forget I am a pastor. The responsibilities, but also the love for my work of walking alongside all of you and proclaiming the Good News of God’s love and mercy, means that it usually isn’t too far away in my mind. Yet, every once in a while, usuall when I am on vacation, I get to set some of those thoughts and burdens down long enough to just be a person for a little bit and not someone with the title “Reverend.” But, as we hear our readings today, especially our Gospel, about the disciples being sent out by Jesus, I also know that I cannot take my role for granted.
Some of you may have heard the news, others maybe not, but this past week, our siblings in the Southern Baptist Convention overwhelmingly voted to ban women from being preachers and pastors, preparing the way to officially add this as a part of their Constitution next year. I have seen a lot of ELCA Lutherans posting about this over the weekend, recognizing the pain that many women feel from being excluded, but also affirming our theological and Biblical understanding that God doesn’t just call men to be the bearers of the Good News. If that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t be standing up here today. But, I also know that this is not the first, or the last time, that there will be debates, votes, and rulings about who is allowed to proclaim the Good News, or what those proclamations should look like. After all, our Gospel today only lists men, as those who Jesus sent out, including Judas, the one who would betray him…but more on that later (Matthew 10: 2-4).
In today’s Gospel reading, the disciples are being sent out to continue the work that Jesus has been doing. He tells them, ‘As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘the dominion of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, cast out demons’ (Matthew 10: 7-8a) …you know, the simple things! If that list feels daunting, you might not want to hear what comes in the portion of the reading that was optional for today…
If we were to continue reading in the tenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus goes on to tell the disciples, ‘See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves….Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and rulers because of me…” (Matthew 10: 16-17a). Honestly, sometimes I’m amazed that Jesus had even twelve disciples when this is the job description! I imagine that these disciples spent a lot of time wrestling with their calling to follow Jesus and their commissioning today; maybe I shouldn’t say this, but, if I were them, I would have been tempted to go back to the fishing boats and the life that I knew before Jesus came and shook everything up.
For many of us who have felt dismissed or excluded by the church because of our gender, sexuality, nationality, or ability, this warning that Jesus is giving the disciples is nothing new. People will hate you simply because of who you are and what you are doing; for these men that are being sent out today, that wouldn’t have been their experience. They may not have been wealthy or powerful, but they still had the respect of many in their communities by virtue of their gender. What Jesus is asking of them is a lot; leave the life you have known and are comfortable with in order to bring this Good News to other people. He is asking them to set aside their comfort and desires for the sake of the larger community; and, they aren’t going to be greeted with warm welcomes.
The fact that the disciples did follow Jesus and were willing to accept this call, risks and all, is a testament to the grace that we receive only through God and the strength to endure even through the challenging and stressful times. It doesn’t mean that the disciples didn’t have questions or wonder what they were getting themselves into, but it did give them something to ground themselves when those questions, doubts, and anger were also present. As the Psalmist proclaims, through it all, there is a trust in God’s steadfast love and enduring faithfulness (Psalm 100:4). It is a love that is made clearer for us in the death and resurrection of Christ, as Paul goes on about in the Romans reading for today too (Romans 5:8). A love that continues in what Jesus did for us on the cross, but that is exemplified throughout the whole arc of Scripture in which God continually reaches out in love toward us even as we turn our backs and struggle to trust in God’s promises.
When I look at the state of Christianity today and this rise of Christian Nationalism, I can see how its roots come from readings like this one from Exodus (Exodus 19: 5-6) in which God’s chosen people are set apart from the others, as well as how denominations like the Southern Baptist Church use Scripture to claim that only men are allowed to preach and lead. Yet, I also know that we like to remove the commitment that we make to God in return, to uphold our portion of the covenantal relationship. This isn’t God giving the Israelites a free-for-all to go do as they please and exercise their authority over others, but they were called to be in right relationship with God and their neighbors…you know, remember those commandments that were given to them! God’s enduring love and faithfulness is there to offer us grace, but it isn’t a cheap grace that means all intentionality in our thoughts and actions can be tossed aside to follow all our whims. And, these readings are not supposed to be pulled away from the rest of their Scriptural or historical contexts. We are not the Israelite community from 2000+ years ago, nor are we the specific audience that writers like Paul had in mind when he wrote his letter to the Romans or the Galatians or any of the other early church communities. When we pull them from their specific contexts, we also pull them from the arc of God’s love and faithfulness.
That may feel unconnected to what is happening in the Gospel, but it is actually a part of that same arc in which God is constantly calling God’s people back to the promises of what it means to be in relationship with God and one another. Whether that be through the prophets, who were also despised and abused, or through the disciples who are now being sent out to continue that work. It wasn’t something that was done for the sake of making a few peoples’ lives miserable, although the disciples and the prophets didn’t have it easy, but it was a commitment to determining what it means to live faithfully as God’s people for the well-being of all that God created. A claiming that will eventually extend beyond just the Israelites, but God needed the Israelites to understand what it meant to be faithful before they started teaching others.
We see it even with the instruction of who the disciples were to go to; they weren’t instructed to go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, the people who were considered outside of God’s love at that time, even though that barrier later gets broken down too. But, the disciples are sent to the Israelites; the people who have passed down the stories of who God is and what God has done for them, whose ancestors also struggled with what it meant to live faithfully when the world was offering so many other tempting options for power and control. When Jesus tells them to only go to the Israelites, it isn’t because the others didn’t matter to him; I think a large part of it had to do with the fact that if the Israelites were struggling in their relationship with God and each other, it would not have only created more division and hatred when Jesus tells them to include the Samaritans and the Gentiles too. It may seem easier to go to our own people, but I think the disciples actually receive the much more challenging commissioning here. How much harder is it for us today to be in disagreements with our Christian siblings, than those of other faith traditions, because we share the same Christian label, even if our denominational title is different.
I think that is why I have always loved the stories of the prophets, because they almost all felt unworthy of their calling, and yet persisted in sharing this news that led to them being outcasts in their society because of their commitment to their understanding of who God is for us. Granted, they had the advantage of being the mouthpieces for God, but in this time after Pentecost, we remember that we too are gifted with this Spirit in grace to love God and love the world, and to share that love with others. There are times when this will be incredibly difficult for us, when we have to choose between standing firm in what we believe and being hated for that or deciding if we would rather go with the crowd and be liked. It is a choice that is asked of us in both big ways and small, as we engage with the world on a daily basis, as we prepare to vote in midterm elections, and as we decide how to respond when we are confronted with ideas of Christianity that are the very opposite of our understanding of who God is and what it means to be a Christian.
As the disciples are warned, not everyone is going to be welcoming of what you have to share about faith. There are so many reasons why this might be, including that people feel judged if we don’t agree with them, people don’t want to acknowledge that they might change their minds and viewpoints or they feel ashamed of their previous actions and beliefs, and people don’t want to confront the uncomfortable thoughts and questions that come up for them when they see people living in a different manner. It’s tough, emotional work to interrogate what we believe and why. It is so much easier to have someone else tell us what we should do, think, say, etc. Yet, as our Scripture reminds us, God’s free gift of grace is a space that is wide enough for us imperfect people who are wrestling with life and faith, trying to figure out what it means to follow this Jesus guy after all.
While all that we are feeling regarding the South Baptist vote this week is valid, I want to remind us that Lutherans in general, not even us ELCA Lutherans, have gotten everything perfect throughout history. In fact, we have only been ordaining women for 56 years, even that only includes white women. It wasn’t until 2009 that someone like me, happily partnered, was allowed to lead a congregation. When I was going through candidacy, one of the forms we had to sign, which thankfully has since been replaced, had an asterisk at the bottom that said marriage was defined as being between one man and one woman; friends, this was less than 10 years ago! I grew up surrounded by female pastors who are a large part of the reason that I am even here today, but I also spent almost half of my life being told that I could never be a pastor, and even hearing directly or indirectly from people who taught me about faith that God had somehow made a mistake when it came to my creation. So, before we start judging our siblings in the SBC, I want us to remember that our history has its own painful moments too.
Thankfully, God never asks us for perfection. After all, even Judas is included in those who are called to steward the Good News of God. God simply asks that we are willing to show up and put in the relational work required in following the commandments, to love God and love all that God has created, opening our hearts and minds to accept the fact that we have more to learn along the way too. There is so much grace and mercy to meet us as we learn from one another and journey alongside each other, seeing the ways that we are all equipped to share the Gospel in word and deed, in a world that so desperately needs to be reminded of the ways that God loves us, doesn’t just judge us. So, may we join the disciples in their courage to proclaim the Good News of God for all people.