Fourth Sunday after Pentecost June 21, 2026

Prayer of the Day
Teach us, good Lord God, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, except that of knowing that we do your will, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen.

Gospel: Matthew 10:24-39
[Jesus said to the twelve:] 24 “A disciple is not above the teacher nor a slave above the master; 25 it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

26 “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered and nothing secret that will not become known. 27 What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 28 Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.
32 “Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, 36 and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. 37 “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, 38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Sermon:
For those among us who are risk averse and hard wired to get along, passages like the one we just read are confounding and fear inducing. Yet, three times in a few sentences Jesus says “have no fear” or “do not fear”.

The divisions Jesus speaks of are inevitable consequences of being who you are and doing what you’re called to do. Jesus’ followers —remember Matthew, the tax collector?—make choices that put them at odds with their families and certainly with the occupying empire.

It’s scary to take a path that others don’t understand or accept. The prospect of alienation or reprisal is frightening.

Modern wisdom teaches us that if we let fear rule us, we react in a mix of four ways—we flee, we fight, we freeze, or we fawn over those who threaten or oppress us. If we’re reduced to living only with these fear responses, what happens to our essential selves? Who else loses if we abandon the path we’re called to walk?

Danny Zacharias from Acadia Divinity school speaks about how indigenous Christians are caught in the middle, in a condition similar to Jesus’ earliest followers. On one hand, the European-born church doesn’t understand or completely accept the traditional celebrations and values. On the other hand, some indigenous voices accuse these Christians of betraying their own people and siding with the oppressor. Imagine the cost a person or community would incur by denying parts of their truest selves.

A man incarcerated for 27 years for resisting the apartheid regime in South Africa knows all about fear and about others denying him his own sense of self. Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president famously says that “Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the triumph over it.” His commitment to the freedom and equality of all people earned him enemies from nearly all sides—the White minority government charged him with terrorism because of his methods of sabotage. When he was finally free and was dedicating his energy to the truth and reconciliation process, his own people accused him of forgiving too quickly.

In 1994, as we sat in class one early afternoon, the door whooshed open and our classmate Thuli Ndelu, a Xhosa woman from South Africa, burst in, beamed, pumped her fist in the air and said “For the first time ever, I voted!”. In the spring of 1994 Nelson Mandela was elected president of the country that imprisoned him and that denied him status as a full member of his society. His Vice-President in the early days was one of the architects of apartheid, F.W. De Klerk. Together, they and their people began the arduous task of reconciliation and dismantling structures that oppressed all but a few.

Perhaps Professor Zacharias, Mr. Mandela, and Thuli can teach the church and all of us about what the contagion of courage looks like. Being better together happens when the courage we find together clarifies who and whose we are… maybe it is in this discovery that what Jesus describes happens—in losing, we find and are found.

May the Spirit of the risen Christ breathe courage into each of us and among all of us- Encouraged, may we keep following Jesus along the path to the restoration of all things.