Sermon for June 21, 2026

June 21, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Matthew 10:24-39



How is this year’s liberation season going for each of you?


You might be scratching your head, wondering what liturgical season I’m referring to and why haven’t we changed the paraments. Alternately, you might be feeling the first tingle of exasperation as you say, “I came to church to get away from talk of divisive holidays.” Maybe you’re saying, “If she’s wants to preach about Juneteenth, she should have done that last Sunday, and then we could have used that prayer petition that talked about Juneteenth.”


Summer brings us a stretch of holidays that gives us occasion to consider liberation, from June 6, which commemorates a major turning point in World War II, to Juneteenth, to July 4. We could take a more global approach: we could celebrate Bastille Day on July 14, when political prisoners were released, and France began to move toward democratic government.


Being honest about liberation season would mean including some non-joyful remembrances, like the Tiananmen Square massacre, which happened in early June of 1989, where unarmed students and workers were killed for demanding that the Chinese government change and abandon its policies that violated human rights. That government slaughtered them, with cameras rolling, rather than give them more liberty.


We must resist the temptation to see some liberation movements as ordained by God when they’re successful, and some as not favored by God—that risks us believing that God favors some nations and peoples above others, based on very human metrics. But if you read the Bible straight through, one theme is always there: God desires freedom from tyranny—all sorts of tyranny—for all of creation.


The approach of celebrating the human fight against tyranny might seem to be in line with the first part of today’s Gospel, where Jesus seems to be offering an egalitarian future, where no one is above anyone else. But go back and read the actual words, and keep in mind this is one of the verses that has historically been used to support slavery: “A disciple is not above the teacher nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher and the slave like the master.”


The use of this passage to justify slavery and other types of bondage is not the only troubling part of today’s Gospel. Make no mistake, Jesus isn’t necessarily commanding us to rise up and overthrow our government or to wage war, in the way that some of our summer holidays celebrate, but Jesus is clear-eyed about what happens when humans say yes to our God of liberation:


"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, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and one's foes will be members of one's own household.”


In the past 10 years, regardless of political affiliation, almost everyone I’ve talked to has had such severe political disagreements with at least one friend or family member, or more, that they’re no longer on speaking terms. We see first-hand the dynamic that Jesus describes.


Some of these political differences have been taken to extremes. An honest celebration of Liberation season might include those, as a reminder of what can happen when not everyone embraces the idea of liberty for all.


We might include remembrances of the slaughter of people partying at the Pulse nightclub in 2016, or the 9 people killed 10 years ago at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston by a young man hoping to start a race war. Sadly, this list could go on and on.


Being honest about liberation also means being honest about the other ways that the desire for liberation can be manipulated by unscrupulous rulers. Juneteenth is our latest federal holiday, but we didn’t come to have it without a fight, just like the Martin Luther King holiday before it. But even holidays that seem more straight forward, like July 4, can show how divided we are as a nation when we can’t agree on what the events of 1776 mean.


Of course, the people experiencing the events were themselves divided—I highly recommend the Ken Burns’ documentary on the 1776 Revolution, which explores the divisions between those who supported the colonists who wanted to break away from England and those who were loyal to the crown—divisions within families, as well as the larger political divisions.


Even if we go back to the liberation anniversaries that seem straight forward, we find that wars won often led to further battles. At the end of the 1776 revolution, many of the people living in the U.S. were not free. The news of emancipation that we celebrate on Juneteenth did not leave freed slaves economically better off, especially not in that first generation when so many experienced a different kind of slavery in sharecropping. Sure, they could leave and many of them did, only to be worked to death in northern factories. Soldiers who survived the invasion of Normandy went on to fight additional battles before Hitler surrendered, and of course, the war in the Pacific was far from over on June 6, 1944.


Again and again, Jesus calls us back to the truth that will set us free—truly free. The idea of liberation can be terrifying, particularly for those of us who have seen how things can go wrong and how one person’s liberation can have unforeseen consequences, like a divorce that leaves everyone in a more precarious position with family members pitted against each other.


Paul’s letter reminds us that we are not abandoned. God’s liberation leads to resurrection. And in the middle of today’s Gospel, Jesus, too, tells us not to be afraid, in a much loved passage: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”


Today’s Gospel ends with the assurance that the efforts we make for God will not be in vain: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Freedom!


Theologians from Paul onward have reminded us that God comes to set us free, and we’re set free so that we can unbind others from what holds them enslaved. Our liberation holidays celebrate the human yearning for freedom and liberty. It’s a yearning that’s yet to be fully realized, even if we think we’re done. We’re all in need of liberation, to be free from the forces that would enslave us, the powers and principalities that want us to be held in the chains of addictions or debts or anger or racism or inequality or violence—the list of evil forces in the world is long.


As we move through this season of liberation holidays, let us remember that we are resurrection people free from our chains even if we’re slow to understand how free we are.


Let us move forward in faith, developing a new liberation for this time, trusting in God’s promise that the forces of hatred, oppression, and slavery, all the powers and principalities that have caused so much destruction and death—these forces do not get to have the final word. God has the final word, and God’s word always leads to liberty and freedom and flourishing.