A sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 7
Father’s Day
June 21, 2026, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
Readings: Jeremiah 20:7-13; Psalm 69: 8-11, (12-17), 18-20; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39
“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 a man against his father … 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.” Happy Father’s Day, from Jesus. It is a hard reading for any day, but perhaps especially for a day when we remember the fathers in our lives, and when we seek to honor them. It is a hard reading, but it is the truth.
There are some days when preaching the words of Jesus is an easy thing. Jesus says to love God and our neighbor. Jesus says to care for the least among us. Jesus says to love one another as he loves us. Jesus says abide in me and I will abide in you. These words from Jesus, the Prince of Peace, are easier to preach than his words today. So what, exactly, is up with Jesus today?
We will come back to that in one moment. But first I want us to look at our reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. St. Paul here is talking about baptism and the transformation of our souls at baptism. St. Paul could not be clearer. Baptism is baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection. And it is baptism into his death and resurrection, and not anything we can do, that confers the grace of eternal life with God.
St. Paul asks, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” St. Paul goes on, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his [through baptism], we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his”; “if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” St. Paul is saying that baptism, rightly administered, is nothing less than this: God’s pledge of eternal life to us. It is God saving our souls from death, hell, and the grave, and marking us as beloved children, sealing us with the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. We do not deserve it. We cannot earn it. It is pure grace. It is through baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection that we have been saved. A little water, poured on us in the Name of the Trinity, accomplishes this, because God said it would. Period. Full Stop. It’s a promise from God that we claim with boldness.
But it is not the end of the story. It is only the beginning of our life in Christ. And as Christians, we are being negligent if we do not take our next steps. If we stop at baptism, we stay infants in the faith. To put it more bluntly, we become spoiled children, clinging to our rights but neglecting our responsibilities.
Baptism is only the start of our baptismal journey, as our baptismal vows make clear. From there, with the help and grace of God, we are called to be faithful in prayer and worship. We are called to be faithful in the study of God’s Word. We are called to support with our time, talent, and treasure, the spread of the gospel. We are called to live lives that reflect Christ, to help the poor and the oppressed, to strive for justice and peace, to call out evil and sin whenever we see it, and to proclaim God’s good news for all creation. In short, we are called to grow more and more, day by day, into Christ. We are called to be open to the Holy Spirit changing us, bit by bit, until our old self is gone, and our new self, our self in Christ, is all there is.
Today’s hard message is one that many of us no doubt heard from our fathers at one point or another. Here’s the hard message for today: It’s time to grow up. Time to grow up into Christ. Time to grow up into God’s will for our lives. Time to grow up into the new life that God has promised us at our baptisms. None of us is there yet, not you and not me. But there’s grace for us to continue this journey into Christ. We just have to reach out and grasp it.
And here’s where that difficult gospel passage comes into play. Growing up into Christ means Christ must become number one in our lives. Our walk with God must become our number one priority. Nothing can stand in the way. Our wealth cannot be more important. Our politics cannot be more important. Our social life cannot be more important. Our dreams cannot be more important. And the hard truth is, sometimes, even those we love most can seek to take us away from our promise to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Sometimes, we must choose Christ, even over those we love. That’s what the gospel is saying.
My friend Amy can tell you about that. She and I have similar backgrounds. She came to The Episcopal Church as an adult, and her baptized life took her where she did not want to go. God called her to be a priest. It was a decision her family did not approve of, because they did not think women could be priests. But God doesn’t ask us for our permission. For her, saying yes to God meant saying no to her family. Saying yes to God and following God’s call on her life, meant that her father turned his back on her.
She prayed everyday that her relationship with her dad would be healed. If you asked her about it, she would tell you that God was already working it out. She believed that. But she would also tell you that sometimes God calls us to hard things, and we must say yes.
Years passed, but she never gave up on her relationship with her father. She never stopped praying, never stopped believing that God would heal the divide. For ten years she prayed; she prayed everyday. Until one Father’s Day a few years ago, as she was processing in behind the cross, she saw her dad sitting in a pew in her little church. The man who had refused to come to her ordination was now in her church, and he had tears streaming down his face.
He told her after the service that God had been working on him. He had been angry; he felt like she had done all of this just to spite him. Then someone asked him, “well, have you prayed about it?” He hadn’t been, so he started. Through prayer God moved him from anger to curiosity. He started studying his Bible, and he read about Miriam, and Deborah, and Judith, and Ruth, and Esther, and Anna, and Mary, and Mary Magdalene, and Tabitha, and Priscilla, and Phoebe, and Junia, and on and on and on–women who had been called by God to be prophets and apostles and ministers of the gospel. He prayed, read, and studied, until one day, he said to himself, God has called my Amy to be a priest, and thank goodness she didn’t let me stand in her way.
Where is God calling you? What’s holding you back? What is keeping you from taking that next step, from growing more into who Christ is calling you to be, into God’s will for your life? It’s time to take up that cross. It’s time to lose those things in your life that stand between you and there.
And here’s the secret: When we say yes to God, when we sacrifice to follow God’s will for our lives, when we give up whatever is standing in the way of our growing more into Christ, no matter how hard it may be, we will find that God is there waiting for us, with grace sufficient, and new life abundant, and more good for us than we could ever ask for or even imagine.
Storied Grace 