The Gospel According to Dolly Parton (Matthew 16, Romans 12)

Photograph by Irving Penn / © Condé Nast

This sermon was first preached at Augustana Lutheran Church in Portland, OR on August 30, 2026. The full livestream of the service may be viewed here (sermon begins at 41:00). The sermon with captions may be viewed here or below .
Scripture texts: Matthew 16:21-28, Romans 12:9-21

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Good morning, Beloved of God. Today marks the beginning of a new week and thank the Lord because last week was too full of grief, what with the passing of two Queer godmothers -- Dolly Parton and Tim Curry -- and the catastrophic loss of thousands of our kin in the flash flooding and mudslides that resulted from the glacial collapse 4,000’ above what has become a valley of death on the border between Nepal and China, which was itself only the latest in a long line of climate disasters across the globe that always seem to claim the lives of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable while those responsible for creating and benefiting from them are unscathed and get richer, and some Christians call it the work or will of god. 

But today also takes us into a word of real-world truth-telling, a word of warning to the risk-averse revolutionary, and an aspirational word of clarity and guidance to the disciple wondering how the heck to lose themselves without losing their Self amidst all the chaos of this here life. A life we’re called to actually Live, not just survive. And, because the Word and words so often leave us going, “Really, Jesus? REALLY, PAUL?” we’re going to be grateful for and dwell on the witness of Saint Dolly Parton who showed us for eighty years how to embody the radical, revolutionary love of Christ so well that not even the sitting president of the United States had a negative word to speak upon her passing into the Great Cloud of Witnesses. So let’s get to it, friends. 

For starters, today’s gospel is a stark contrast to last week’s, and will be an odd precursor to next week’s Transfiguration, at least insofar as our disciples are concerned. If you recall, when last we sat with Jesus and the disciples, their conversation culminated in Simon Peter’s confession that “Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God,” and Jesus’s declaration of Simon’s Blessedness as recipient of Divine revelation. He then gave Simon his second name, his Christian name, if you will: Petra -- literally naming him Simon the Rock on which the Messiah would build the Beloved Community, against whom no god of death could prevail, and to whom he would entrust the keys of the the kindom of Heaven, such that whatever they bind now will be bound forever, and whatever they liberate will be liberated, period. Which was significant, not just because this is the power of God to forgive or not forgive sin as in the 20th chapter of John’s gospel, but because their authority to open the way to the kindom will directly confront and defy the religious leaders’ hypocritical practice of “locking humans out of the kingdom of heaven” which Jesus condemns in Matthew 23:13. Which is to say: The power given to Peter and in turn to the disciples and the church is no trifling matter: It is liberation on a cosmic level.

So of course Simon’s head grows a bit in today’s gospel, thinking he’ll step into his new role as leader by rebuking the Son of God when he predicts his own execution at the hands of religious leaders allied with political powers, saying “Never, Lord! God forbid it!” Jesus, in turn, rebukes Simon the Rock for acting like a stumbling block set to trip him up with a small imagination stuck in imperial thinking.

And goes on to tell them all what they’re in for should they wield God’s revolutionary power to liberate the bound and bind up what binds others, because they are not ready for it, friends, any more than we are. Committing themselves to liberating the oppressed was as inherently risky then as it is now, and Jesus isn’t in the business of playing with life so he warns them: This revolution will involve more suffering than ascendance, more crosses than crowns. This world, on the other hand, will offer you its whole entire self as profit in exchange for selling me out, but leave you asking what’s a trillion dollars worth without a soul, huh? So they need to “settle their priorities now,” just as Jesus did when he rejected the very same offer from the Adversary in the wilderness and determined instead, as Rev. Dr. Mitzi J Smith writes, to “side with the poor who do not have the power to turn stones into bread; [refuse] to trivialize life [but] side with those who are defenseless from the daily onslaught of violence; and [turn] down ill-gotten material prosperity and power predicated on allegiances and partnerships with evil and oppressive forces.” This is the power of the Cross, and it will clash with the crown every time. Whose life will they choose? 

The appeal remains the same to all of us would-be disciples who’ve been offered the keys to the kindom just as Peter is here in Matthew and as Paul will be in Galatians 1. And the risks remain as well, along with the warnings and the dangers, right? Especially when the threat of imperial collapse and global catastrophe looms as heavily as it does now. Ours is still an invitation to reject whatever wealth and power the world might offer in service to the social, cultural, and political status quo, and instead offer up our bodies as living sacrifices, Holy and Pleasing to God, as our spiritual act of worship -- and I hope you hear the whole person in that invitation: The spiritual and physical are one and the same, and we cannot offer one without the other.   

What that looks like in practice is laid out precisely, if aspirationally, in Romans 12:9-21: “Let your love be genuine” Paul writes: “Abhor what is evil and fasten yourself to the good; let your sibling love be extravagant, and your honor for each other over the top. Do not dilute your passion, but let your spirit burn with it in service to Christ. Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; pray constantly. Contribute to the needs of those who are othered; and be as industrious in your pursuit of hospitality to strangers as a hound is on the hunt. 

Bless your enemies, do not curse them. Rejoice and weep with each other. Let your differences resound as harmony, not friction, in your life together. Follow the lead of those pushed to the margins rather than pursuing proximity to power; don’t pretend to know what you don’t know, and when you know better, do better [Maya Angelou]; Turn the evil cast upon you into winsome good for all that insofar as you are able you’re at peace with everyone. Trust God’s justice to be just, so that instead of becoming like the enemy who curses you, you feed them instead and offer them water when thirsty, because such an act of love which does not kill your enemy may be the very thing that transforms them into a friend. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Which all sounds powerful and transformative and, frankly, if we are honest, impossible. As I said: Paul’s instruction here is aspirational at best, but it is not without merit or possibility, nor does God ask of us what we cannot accomplish. And we know this because we have before us today the witness of Dolly Parton who somehow managed to make a whole life of doing all of it! 

When, as a little girl, her peers and teachers made fun of her for bringing the same lunch to school every day, and later mocked her for glorying in the “coat of many colors” that her mom sewed out of scraps of cloth, she did not curse them but, like Joseph with his own coat and curses, turned it into a lifeline for those who mocked her. When her haters all later piled on, calling her a whore or a dumb blond, she did not curse them either but disarmed their vitriol saying, “I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb - and I'm not blonde either.” 

When Whitney Houston’s remake of “I Will Always Love You” skyrocketed up the charts and embedded Dolly’s song in the global imagination, she was not jealous but rejoiced over Whitney’s gift — even planning for that version to be played at her funeral. And she quietly poured $10 million of what she earned in royalties from Houston’s rendition into buying a whole strip mall in a predominantly Black and underprivileged part of Nashville, turning it into a community space for them to share, and naming it “The House that Whitney Built.” Ten million dollars for Black folks who loved a Black woman’s version of a song they didn’t even know she wrote. And then she went to hang out and spend time with them, saying Whitney’s people were her people too. And so they were. There can be no doubt that by rejoicing with Whitney she also mourned with them as well.

When asked at various times for her opinion about those “different” people -- the gays and lesbians and trans folk -- she said, “If I was gay, I’d sprint out of the closet,” and that if she wasn’t born a girl, she’d be a drag queen. That people should be unafraid to be who God made them to be, and no one better judge them for it cause that work is God’s alone. When white folks were lashing back against the movement for Black lives in 2020, Dolly balked at an interviewer who asked her where she stood. “Of course Black lives matter,” she said. “Do we think our little white butts are the only ones that matter? No!”

And of course, there’s this: instead of becoming a billionaire as she very well could have a few times over, she spent her life and fortune contributing to the needs of alllll the saints: Her Imagination Library has given away 332,411,218 books to children across the country, which has done way more than just combat illiteracy, at least according to a woman named Kristina Reed’s son who said, “Mama, did you know Dolly Parton died? I did. She loved me. She used to send me lots of books.” 

When she learned the high school dropout rate was 35% in Sevierville County where she was born and raised in poverty, she founded the Dolly Parton buddy program to pair 7th graders with each other with the promise that if they could get each other through graduation they’d each get $500 -- and dropouts plummeted to just 6%. Which is to say, graduation rates increased to 94%.

She established the Dollywood Foundation and opened the eponymous theme park, which pays living wages to all its employees and covers 100% of their college education expenses -- tuition, books, and all. Oh, and she also paid for the band uniforms and other such expenses for underfunded predominantly Black middle and high schools across the country. You wouldn’t believe how many people were talking this week about how they never knew her songs, just that she was the lady who paid for them to stay in band!

After the 2016 wildfires in Tennessee, she personally gave $1000 a month in cash to families who lost their homes, and donated millions more again in direct aid to families and to organizations like Mountain Ways after 20204’s Hurricane Helene barreled through that region of the Appalachians. 

When the pandemic hit, she donated a million dollars to vaccine research at Vanderbilt University, which directly supported early scientific studies and tests that helped them roll out the vaccine in record time, which has saved millions of lives, AND she was one of the first to take the vaccine, on camera, in a mask, in order to encourage her fans to do the same. 

And then, at the end, even during her last months of life when she knew she wasn’t going to beat the cancer, she still literally offered up her body for her medical team to try whatever experimental drugs they could, so that future cancer patients might live.

Her legacy is such that millions of people don’t even know she was one of the most prolific songwriters of the century, who wrote over 3,000 songs, was nominated for countless awards and won 11 Grammys, 10 CMAs, and an emmy; and had 55 top 10 hits -- many don’t know the names of any of her songs besides Jolene or I Will Always Love You -- and she’d be fine with that, because all that hubbub was just her job. 

Who she was, she said, was “everybody’s mother.” 

Which is why the whole internet has been awash with people, myself included!, regaling the world of the 30 seconds or 30 years we spent in her presence, and how seen we felt for that split in time, not because we were famous but because we weren’t -- we were just people from nowhere who mattered to her. Actually and truly. 

Saint Dolly once famously said, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose, with purpose,” which she absolutely did. But her purpose wasn’t to be a country star or drag mother; to make millions or turn mockery into moxie and mutual aid. Her purpose was to glorify God in everything she did because -- her words -- God was already in it all. 

As I revisit Paul’s wisdom about what a living sacrifice of spiritual worship looks like, there’s not a piece of it that Dolly didn’t embody: She fastened herself to the good like diamonds to a dress; her love was as genuine and extravagant as her persona was campy and her look determinedly “trampy” -- her words. There was no one she’d deign to dishonor, not even when they dishonored her. She was passionate and on fire, for 80 years, for anyone with ears to hear, if nothing else, “I will always love you,” and watch those words take on flesh and blood. 

She was, in all her fame and fortune, a gleaming example of what it means to lose your life and find it, to deny yourself for the sake of others. Which is good news indeed, because it means we can too. And it doesn’t take fame or fortune; just the will to know who we’re made to be, and to do it on purpose, the way Dolly did, the way Paul did, the way Jesus did. So go. Do it. Amen, Ashe, Aho -- Beloved let this be so.

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