Sermon for 4th Sunday after Pentecost – Jeremiah 28:5-9

These days, it seems like everything’s up for grabs. We’ve overwhelmed with explosive issues of justice and righteousness. Stories keep coming to light about police brutality. We argue whether the entire policing system is utterly broken, or whether we just have a few bad actors that need to be brought to justice, though a few folks insist there’s nothing wrong at all. Or there’s all these confederate monuments aound the country, whether we tear them down because of the oppression they perpetuate, or whether we preserve them as painful reminders of our legacy of injustice. Or there’s the folks demanding to remove product branding like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben as racist tropes, and those who resent everything familiar being taken away from them. Everything’s up for grabs. You and I have our dead-set convictions. But in theory we all want the same thing. We want peace. So, who’s right?

Sermon for 3rd Sunday after Pentecost – Matthew 10:24-39

We’ve got a lot to argue about these days. Do we still have to hunker down at home, or do we start eating out again? Do we have to wear a mask or not? Do we gather for in-person worship or not? What do we really think of the president? What do we believe about the police? Systemic racism? Is it ever ok to bring any of this up in a sermon? At the end of the day, we all make our choices or answer our calls, I suppose. But not without a cost. We’re exhausted from all this fighting. Every day we witness a new worst case scenario that leaves us cynical. We struggle to hang onto some kind of hope for peace and justice even though we can’t see it right now.

So of course we look to Jesus to reassure us that this is only a passing phase. But Jesus doesn’t seem very reassuring today. He says “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set man against father, daughter against mother. One’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” That doesn’t sound like peace. That sounds like strife. Like Jesus wants us to be a bunch of Pharisees at each others’ throats in the name of some kind of righteousness. In what universe does this jive with what we know about Jesus as the source of forgiveness and community?