June 28, 2026

I don't know this for a fact, but I'd hazard to guess that this Sunday's lectionary readings may be some of the shortest readings of any of our lectionary readings in the whole of the three-year cycle. So it gave me some time to kind of ruminate on what we hear and sent my mind off in a variety of different pathways.

I was particularly thinking these last couple of weeks, and preparing for this Sunday, about what it means to follow or to be a follower. You know, back at the beginning of the year as I started talking about preparing for my marathon that I ran back in May, several people came up to me and they said, "What kind of training regimen are you following?" Just now, in the midst of the World Cup going on, so many people will ask, "Are you following the matches? Do you have a team that you follow? Are you following what is going on?" Or, you know, how many of us talk about following or not following, maybe, what's going on in the world around us—how overwhelming the negativity of the news can be, and we just want to shut it off and not pay attention.

So I was contemplating all these different ways of following, or what it means to be a follower, and thinking about all of the different definitions or ways we can conceive of that concept. When I deal with a difficult issue, normally what I do is I ask Anna about it, because if I need just a straightforward answer, usually she is able to provide one. So I asked her, I said, "What does it mean to be a follower?"

And she gave me three answers. She said: you do what the leader does, you say what the leader says, or you follow where the leader is going—you walk in a line behind the leader. Those are three really good answers, so I want to think about that in the context of the readings we have, but also where we have been in this journey over the last several weeks. What it means to do what Christ does, to say what Christ says, and to follow in his footsteps.

It's a good place and a good way of thinking about how we bring to a close what we've been reflecting on these last three Sundays as we've journeyed through chapter 10 of St. Matthew's Gospel. Because remember, this is a commissioning. It's not the Great Commission that we hear in chapter 28, the one that sends us out to all the world, to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. But it is nevertheless a commissioning. It is a sending out. And it is, when we kind of reflect on it as hearers in our own day and context, a commissioning into our immediate circumstances—the immediacy of the world we live in, to the communities in which we exist, our local people to whom we go.

Thinking about this commissioning, this localized sense, I think it connects, too, to what we hear in this section of St. Paul's epistle to the Romans in chapter 6. Because in reality, if we step back for a moment and let go of our hang-ups about language—and I don't want to dismiss those—but if we can kind of hear what St. Paul is saying and break through those barriers, we can appreciate, I think, that we all are enslaved in our own ways. We are enslaved to passions, and we all are unavoidably followers. We follow some regimen or routine in our lives. We follow some thought leaders and people that we listen to in terms of understanding the world around us. And so the ultimate question is not "Do we follow or not follow? Are we enslaved or not enslaved?" but "Who and what do we follow, and to whom or what are we enslaved?"

The simple answer to cut through everything is that we should always and forever follow and be enslaved to the things of God, the things of righteousness, as St. Paul talks about. Not the things of this world, the things of sin, of temporality, of impermanence, but the things of everlasting substance, the things of the kingdom.

But what does that mean? It's easy to say that, but how does that impact or frame our lived experience? I want to go back to Anna's answer about following, because I think those three answers can kind of give us a sense of what this means for our everyday lived experience.

So what does it mean for us to do what Christ does? Well, we heard one answer to this back three weeks ago when we entered chapter 10. In verse 8, Jesus is instructing his disciples as he's sending them out in this commissioning, and he says: "Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold or silver or copper in your belts." He's giving specific instructions to live in the way that he lived, to do the things that he did—that we, as his followers, as his disciples in this age, are empowered to do the things that he does.

We see that kind of manifested here at the end of chapter 10, too, this reflection of providing the material things of substance in this world, of giving that drink and glass of cool water. So often I think this is manifested in the way we see our mission and ministry as St. Anne's. We do the things that Christ did. We go out. We help those in need. We help to cure the sick, to lift up the brokenhearted, to feed the hungry, to raise up the poor. This has been the heart of our identity since our founding those 60 years ago.

But there's more to being a follower of Christ than just doing what Christ did. We also have to say the things that Christ said. We have a ministry, a proclamation, that we should be on about as well. And we get a glimpse of what this can look like in a section of scripture that we're actually going to miss entirely, because we end chapter 10 today and next week we actually pick up in the middle of chapter 11, beginning in verse 16. But the first 15 verses of chapter 11 are a story about John the Baptist sending his disciples to Jesus to kind of clarify who Jesus is, to make sure that they understand what he is doing and what his ministry and mission is.

And it says, beginning in verse 2, that when John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, to Jesus, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" And Jesus answered these disciples of John, saying, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."

When we say the things that Jesus says, not only do we proclaim the power of who Jesus is, but we proclaim the works done in his name. It's not that we just participate in those works, but we proclaim them. We lift up the places where justice is breaking through. In a context and in a world today mired in so much pessimism, when we say the things that Christ says, we show the power of the kingdom in this broken world. We point to the things of transformation that upend the things of brokenness. We show the things of righteousness in a world mired in the things of sin.

And then what does it mean for us to follow in Jesus' footsteps? I was trying to piece that final part of this together, even as late as last night. Anna and I came, as we so often do, to worship with our Church of South India brothers and sisters, and they had a visiting pastor, Reverend Sherwin Doss from Dallas. Their readings last night were from the Gospel of St. John, but it was this discourse on discipleship.

Reverend Doss told this apocryphal story from Tamil Nadu, where he is originally from. There is this story that in the middle of the 19th century, an English missionary arrives on the Indian subcontinent, all inflamed and vigorous for the proclamation of the gospel. He arrives in this rural village, goes up to a farmer out in the field, and says, "Sir, do you know Jesus Christ?" And the man responded to him, "No, sir, I do not know Jesus Christ. But if you go into the village and find the headmaster, he has a list of all the families in the community, and he can tell you where Jesus Christ lives. He will have his address."

I think so often we kind of actually have that mentality. We think about Jesus in this kind of settled and stayed historical period. He is a wisdom teacher of the first century, Second Temple period in Jerusalem. He was a man of good works, a man who transformed the broken systems of injustice in society. But we limit who Jesus is to that period—to a historical figure that we emulate, whose teachings we share. We don't think about him as the lived, present, real person who continues to walk; whose ancient footsteps we do not follow, but whose present-day footsteps we follow, even as he is on about the work of transformation in this world at this very moment.

As Episcopalians, I think we often hear that kind of evangelical sensibility and are not quite sure what to do with it. We are not a people who are well-versed in the language of relationship, of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But there's a power in that. There's a power in the proclamation that we have and in the personage of the real and present Christ who goes before us even now.

When we talk about what it means to follow in his footsteps, we talk about the lived presence of Christ in our lives, the places where we see him moving even in this moment, and the ways in which he is transforming our journeys—the paths we follow as he goes before us and works through us, and in us, and around us, turning the places of sin in this world into places of righteousness, turning the places of brokenness into places of new life, turning the places of injustice into places of justice and peace.

And so this morning, friends, as we bring to a close this season of reflection on commissioning, as we think about what it is that Jesus has taught us over the course of this chapter 10 in St. Matthew's Gospel, may we be renewed in our call to do what Christ does, to say what Christ says, and to follow in his footsteps. Because it is not one of those individually, but all of them together, that is the fullness of what it means to be a Christian, to live fully into our call as Christians, and to proclaim anew the goodness and glory of the God who is even now transforming the world around us.

To go into our context, to be the people of good news, of gospel, in our neighborhoods and to the people that we go, is to be a people of doing, of saying, and of following. May we be reminded and renewed in that commitment today and always.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

June 21, 2026

Good Lord, these readings are tough. So I'm going to talk to you all about the World Cup for a moment. I grew up in a land where baseball was absolute king. But besides that and Notre Dame football, the only other sport I've ever seriously followed is soccer. And I have a lot of thoughts about the Federation Internationale de Football Association, otherwise known as FIFA. They're by and large not a terribly upstanding organization, to put it mildly. And the various machinations through which they determine host countries for the World Cup and select the matches and arrange them seems very suspect.

And yet, every four years, it's as if the world rallies around this experience. It is as though we come together in this generous and open cross-cultural exchange. I know fans travel to things like the Olympics, too. But there is just something about the way fans interact and encounter each other's cultures during the World Cup that is unlike any other sporting event or even prolonged cultural engagement on Earth.

This year, international players and fans have streamed into the United States from all corners of the globe. And I have some quiet optimism that this might just break open the festering jingoism and isolationism that we have been struggling with as of late in this country. From everyday Jayhawkers warmly and enthusiastically embracing the Algerian national team in Lawrence, Kansas, to a group of Texans treating a Japanese man to his first life-changing taste of Texas brisket, we have seen over and over again the joy with which people from all walks of life are finding things to love about the U.S. and the joy and spark, too, of renewed openness that so many Americans are finding in being gracious and loving hosts to the world.

My absolute favorite video so far is of an Australian comedian and football fan named Nathan Ragclaw raving about Waffle House. With all sincerity, and maybe a little bit of jest, he proclaims, "If Waffle House came to Australia, they would take over. All the food's super fresh, and you can look right into the restaurant while they cook the food in front of you. Like, you can see them cooking your bacon. It's like teppanyaki, but with nicer food." I'm not sure, but sure.

And in a rather strange way, this brings me back to our readings today. If we step back and take Jesus' admonitions in total in the Gospel of St. Matthew, we need not get specifically fixated on this difficult language of familial alienation. What Jesus is saying here is that he is bringing not the staid, illusory peace of the world, of the routine, of the status quo, but he is bringing the peace of God with the sword of righteousness. He is bringing new life and transformation to all quarters. He is rightly pointing out that often our greatest resistance to such transformation are our settled and comfortable relationships and settled and comfortable ways of being that keep us closed off from what God is doing.

"Whoever loves [fill in the blank] more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it," Jesus says. It is not a matter of loving or not loving. It is a matter of loving in its proper context. To be a part of what God is doing, we have to see our own context, our own lives, passions, families, with new and fresh eyes—like, if you can, even seeing something as uninspiring to us as Waffle House with the wonder of fresh perspective.

In several weeks from now, we will read almost to the end of St. Matthew's 13th chapter. But the lectionary editors dumbly cut off the reading right before Jesus repeats a well-known saying in first-century Jewish life: "Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house." This is not dissimilar from what he says today. The 5th-century doctor of the church, St. John Chrysostom, observed that Jesus said these kinds of things to help us focus on the kingdom of God just at the point where love might be most tempted to hinder it.

"Just at the point where love might be most tempted to hinder it." What an odd turn of phrase. As I said a moment ago, I think that one of the most meaningful parts of the World Cup this year is the way in which folks are being opened anew to the beauty and goodness of our country at a time when there's a lot to not like. And we are being given an opportunity to move outside of our narrow perspectives and see our own context differently with transformed eyes. And sometimes the challenge of that movement can be deeply rooted in the comfort of the familiar and familial—the things we most love in this world.

And what a strange thing it is, too, to wrestle with such a notion on this Sunday of Father's Day. But also, rest assured that whatever difficulty this presents us, it would have been doubly or even triply the case for Jesus' first-century audience. The family unit was one of the most important foundations in society. And Jesus reordering those foundations must have been profoundly disorienting for the hearers of this admonition.

It makes sense then that fear is named and acknowledged here. And I want to speak to that for just a moment. So much of what I've talked about this morning is in some form or fashion a nuancing of these difficult and challenging ideas—not dismissing them, but again putting them in their proper context. Moving beyond just fathers and reflecting for a moment on men in general in our society and country today, there is an endless stream of social and cultural thought pieces pumped out about the physical, mental, spiritual health of men today. I want to honor the place that that is coming from. Many men, many fathers are feeling adrift and disoriented by the challenges and pressures of the world in this moment.

But unfortunately, even within the church, there is often this bifurcated response presented: Be strong. Do not be weak. Be in control. Do not be subservient. Do not fear under any circumstance. And if we cherry-pick isolated verses, even verses in today's gospel, we can see where such admonitions might come from. But what does Jesus fully say? Have no fear of the forces of this world; rather fear him who has ultimate power.

As the Rite I, the traditional language version of our Collect of the Day—that prayer we began the service with—as it renders that prayer, it says, "make us have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy name." It uses fear instead of reverence. It is not, as is so often presented in male discourse today, the strength of fearlessness and the weakness of fearfulness, but it is the fullness of human emotion put in its proper context, its proper place. And that nuance, that truth of the complexity of lived experience is at the heart of living fully into the call we have as Christians in the world today.

What does it mean to be alive to God in Christ Jesus, as St. Paul talks about? It means being in the world and seeing the world for what it is—recognizing honestly the brokenness and incompleteness of the things of this world, of FIFA, of the church, of our own families, our own passions and loves, of our human understandings of peace, of our human understandings of fear. But then, in all of that, ultimately, letting the fullness of God's reality, the fullness of his love, his peace, his kingdom, envelop and transform us.

Not to live in alienation to one another, but in full embrace of each other—in the fullness of true love, of true fear, of true peace. And in so doing, we will see the world with transformed eyes. Not just the world out there writ large, but the world immediately around us: our own communities, our own families, our own selves. And maybe, just maybe, Waffle House too.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.