JUNEDAY (Matthew 10:24-39)

This sermon was first preached at Augustana Lutheran Church in Portland, OR on June 21, 2026. The full livestream of the service may be viewed here (sermon begins at 33:45). The sermon with captions may be viewed here or below . 

Scripture texts:  Matthew 10:24-39

---

Good morning, Beloved of God. As we close what has been a monumental weekend of gatherings galore and begin a new week, I want to acknowledge first the weight of all we’ve witnessed, been part of, and carried with us into worship as we come full of sacred celebration and grief, to this particularly fraught day -- Father’s Day -- when so many of our hearts are full and tender and raw for beautiful and brutal reasons alike. I want to name the Thing it is that I, a white woman, am here to preach about histories and stories in which my ancestors and people who look like me have been and remain the primary aggressors and oppressors, the primary obstruction of the Liberation to which we are called and by which we are all made whole and one. And that today we are going to go deep into some painfully direct, even harsh, but also extraordinarily hopeful Scriptures in our lectionary -- which can be uncomfortable to say the least. So I pray, Holy Spirit, as we gather at the precipice and of the deep, would you Hover over us as you did in the Beginning, breathing your peace into our being. That the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart may be as nourishing to your people as they are pleasing to you, Oh Living Word, Christ our redeemer and kin. Amen.

Indeed, friends, this week has been full of Life and Story: Abundant and resplendent, lamented and grieved -- all of it interweaving through our shared histories. 

It began last Sunday afternoon with Mississippi police shooting and killing a 1-year-old boy, Kohen Wiley, whose mother, Valleysia was suspected of stealing diapers and fleeing the scene, none of which was actually true. And even if it was true, police could have arrived at the scene with diapers in hand, rather than guns. So now a child is dead, a mother is grieving, and Black lives still don’t matter enough.

On Wednesday, ICE raided homes, captured, and indicted 15 Minnesotans charged with impeding federal agents for protesting and protecting their neighbors during Operation Metro Surge in January, and we all were reminded that ICE is not gone, our Black and Brown siblings are still being stolen and disappeared, and that those of us who stand in solidarity with them have targets on our backs too. White supremacist fascism is not near, it is here. 

All Thursday, we as a nation commemorated and grieved the mass murder of the Emanuel 9, 11 years ago on June 17, 2015; It was an act of white supremacist terror committed by a man who had been welcomed warmly and held in prayer by those he would gun down, hoping it would incite a race war. And this man, it must be named in this place especially, was born, baptized, and confirmed in the ELCA. He was ours.

And that evening, Pastor Mark and I attended the Miss Indian Northwest Pageant, hosted by Augustana’s own Rebekah Kirk who carries the sacred role as its CEO, passed down from her mother, her grandmother, and tribal elders since 1969. There, we reveled in the gifts and leadership of this year’s 10 contestants hailing from the unceded territories of the entire Pacific Northwest including the Yakama, Klamath, Shoshone-Bannock, Coeur d'Alene, Shoshone-Paiute, Washoe, Ojibwe, Oglala, and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, among others. What a profound honor it was to stand witness as future women elders, dressed in full regalia, named, grieved, and kept silence for their Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives, and paid homage to their elders and ancestors through the sharing of languages, ceremonial dances and songs, creation stories, and time-honed and -honored skills that have kept their ancestral cultures and traditions alive for millennia, and will keep them thriving for generations to come. It was incredible. 

Friday morning, we joined our siblings across this nation, state, at Portland’s 5th annual Interfaith Black Clergy Prayer Breakfast, where African and African American waymakers from Ethiopia, Yemen, and right here in Portland, were honored and celebrated for the liberation work they’ve committed their lives to, on the 161st anniversary of Juneteenth. Which is the anniversary-ish of when the news of emancipation finally made it to the enslaved people on the shores of Galveston Texas a full two years after President Lincoln gave his emancipation proclamation. It is not lost on me how deep a grace I am given when I am welcomed to celebrate among giants who survived and are still surviving Whiteness.

And the rest of the day, as I held this all in witness and sat down to finally write this sermon, I could not help but be reminded of how perfectly Lincoln timed his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which came just six days after what remains to this day the largest mass execution in US history. Indeed, on December 26, 1862, the day after Christmas and a months-long march in the dead of winter during which almost half of their people died, Lincoln ordered the hanging of 38 Dakota men for their roles in the historically erased U.S.-Dakota War. Originally, Lincoln’s commission had condemned 303 Dakota men, but he reduced that number to just 38 after being warned it might overshadow his forthcoming New Years Day address. 

Woven stories, interweaving always.

Of course, all of this landed in the middle of Pride Month for LGBTQIA2S+ folks who also are full of celebration and grief alike as we come to this day, especially for the lives of our Two-Spirit siblings across tribal nations and our Queer Black siblings who still struggle to find welcome in their communities. We are in the middle of celebrating a monthlong ode to the Black Trans women whose casting of riot bricks made way for us to wave our rainbow banners; and a 30-day display of both our sparkling beauty, and the hate of those who will not see us as anything but grotesque. This week for us is bookended by our commemoration of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting, a homophobic attack which happened a week ago Friday, and saw the murder of 49 Queer beloveds and the injury of 58 more. And today, Father’s Day, which is especially painful for a lot of us Queer Christians whose fathers deny our sacred belonging, declare us deviant, and proclaim our damnation according to the will of God, and into the smoldering trash heap that is Jesus’s “hell” in today’s text.

You see what I’m saying: Abundance and loss, celebration and grief, all of it -- all of it - commingling together as one thing in our Bodies and this Body. Which is why I call upon and draw upon Spirit breath today of all days, in this text of all texts. 

For we know what it is to see sons cut off from fathers, to be daughters torn from our mothers. We know how it feels to sit down for dinner, be fed a sword, and expected in turn to both say thanks and apologize. And friends, I praise God, because so did Jesus. His own family called him crazy and tried to drag him from the temple. Right? So we can also know that when Jesus says in verse 34 that he didn’t come to bring peace but a sword, he is not making a promise, but is simply stating a fact. Following him may cost us our lives. 

And not just in our families and personal lives, friends. For in the very same breath, Jesus says those who actually follow him must pick up a cross, which was not an invitation to don expensive gold jewelry, but was instead a very specific kind of calling: To defy the Roman Empire whose primary apparatus of humiliation and execution, reserved for traitors and enemies of the State, was crucifixion. Those in his hearing that day understood this, just as they understood how divisive his radically inclusive gospel was and had already become in both Jewish and Roman circles. Which is to say, beloved, Jesus knew where he was headed and invited us to follow even unto death. 

Put another way, Jesus said if we are to be his followers, we must put on our goggles and be ready to be teargassed, beaten, detained and criminalized, as proud and unapologetic enemies of Empire. We must be prepared to house and hide those whom the State hunts down, and to be hunted for it. We must put our bodies in the way of violence, spend our dollars and our time protecting and feeding and caring for those it labors to disappear, to give our lives until we lose our lives, for the sake of a gospel that prepares and reserves places of honor for the disowned, deadnamed, detained, and disappeared. 

These are the facts of discipleship, right? The Kindom Life Christ promises can get us killed by Kingdoms of Earth. But take heart, beloved of God, and do not fear, do not fear, three times Jesus begs of us “DO NOT FEAR.” 

Do not fear the body snatchers and neighbor killers. Instead, he says, know this: Not a single sparrow --  one of the most common, cheap, easily hunted, eaten, sold, sacrificed, and forgotten birds in Jesus’s culture; akin to the common pigeon if you will - falls without God noticing, seeing, and caring. This God who cares for sparrows also counts our hairs, and according to the Psalmist, “collects all our sorrows and bottles every tear.” And if this is the case,” Indigenous Theologian Danny Zacharias writes, "we can extract from that a belief that all truth will be plain before God, which is both an affirmation and a warning to us as followers,” one Matthew will reiterate again and again in his gospel: Whether we suffer systemic or imperial violence, injustice, and oppression; or commit them against others, either by violent action or silent complicity -- All is known and will come to light. And all will be made right.

So Jesus says, Do not fear the liars, not even the ones who make laws; do not fear the body snatchers, not even the ones who kill. Do not fear any but the One who Sees, who will Free all, and will set it all right.

Do not fear, Beloved, Instead, let us Be Bold enough to Tell the Truth, Out Loud, trusting and that Words still Create Whole Worlds and these are living promises to us who labor to build them! So I charge you, today, to all of us who follow Christ:

Renounce the devil and all his lies, and proclaim with raucous joy and sparkle hands the belovedness of Queer siblings and our belonging in Christ Body! 

Renounce the devil and all his violence, and say their names: Raise your voices and fists in proclamation that Black Lives Matter, but not nearly enough.

Renounce the devil and all his lies, and confess out loud the sacredness of this stolen land, the ancestral wisdom of Indigenous water and land protectors, and the truth that it is way past time to give Land Back!

This is our holy calling, our most sacred obligation: To tell the truth with our words, and give our bodies, our breath, every power at our disposal to turn these systems of oppression and degradation inside out and upside down, and All Is Finally Made Right. 

Amen, Ashé, Aho!

---