Lectionary 12 · Father’s Day · Jeremiah 20:7-13 · Psalm 69 · Romans 6:1b-11 · Matthew 10:24-39
Preached at DeSoto and Freeman Lutheran Churches. Voice recording forthcoming.
Grace and peace to you.
There is a farm about an hour south of here, in Monroe County, that belongs to a couple named Rick and Susan Case. They bought it in 1980. For more than forty years they have worked that land. They raised cattle on it. They tended the soil and managed the water and kept the place healthy through drought and flood and every hard season in between.
And this spring they did something that most people will never do. They signed the land away.
Not sold it. Signed it into a conservation easement, which is meant to keep the farm open. The land is protected from being developed or paved over. Long after Rick and Susan are gone, that land is meant to stay open. The water will still run clean through it. The birds will still nest in it.
They will not be there to see it.
That is a strange thing to do, if you think about it. To spend forty years building something, and then to bind it to a future you will never walk into. You do not get to enjoy the hundredth year of a covenant like that. You sign it for people you will never meet.
And do not imagine it was easy. They gave up the right to ever sell that land for what it might be worth. They gave up the option their children might have wanted. A decision like that carries a quiet cost. You do a hard thing you believe in without being able to see where it will finally lead.
I want to hold that picture for a moment, because it is the shape of something the Bible keeps showing us. Some of the work that matters most is work we will not finish. It is work we carry because we cannot put it down.
Listen to the prophet Jeremiah this morning. He is not having a good day.
This is one of the rawest things any person says to GOD anywhere in Scripture. Jeremiah does not dress it up. He says, you deceived me, LORD, and I was deceived. You overpowered me and prevailed. He says, I am ridiculed all day long. Everyone mocks me.
Hear how far this goes. Jeremiah is accusing GOD of tricking him. He took up the call to speak GOD’s word, and the call brought him nothing but insult. People laugh at him. His friends are waiting for him to slip so they can take their revenge. He is exhausted. He is alone. And he is blaming GOD for the whole thing.
This is not a man on a mountaintop of noble sacrifice. This is a man who wants out.
And then he says the thing that holds this entire sermon together. He says, if I try to quit, if I say I will not mention HIS word or speak anymore in HIS name, then HIS word is in my heart like a fire. A fire shut up in my bones. And listen to the next line, because this is the heart of it. I am weary of holding it in. Indeed, I cannot.
He tried to quit. He could not.
That is the fire you cannot put down. It is not a feeling of triumph. It is not the warm glow of a calling you are glad to have. It is something GOD put inside you that will not leave you alone. Jeremiah would have set it down if he could. He reached for the latch on the door and the door would not open. The word kept burning whether he wanted it to or not.
Some of you know exactly what that is. You have carried something for years that you did not ask for and could not give back. A responsibility. The care of someone you love. A burden that landed on you and never left. You have said, more than once, I cannot do this anymore. And then you got up the next morning and did it anyway, because the fire would not go out.
Now hear me carefully, because this matters. Not every weight you carry is GOD’s fire. Fear can cling to us. Shame can cling to us. Harm can cling to us. Sometimes the faithful thing is not to keep carrying. Sometimes the faithful thing is to lay a burden down, or to leave a place that is hurting you, or to ask for help. Jeremiah’s fire is the word of GOD. It is not every load the world has put on your shoulders. So hear the difference. The call that comes from GOD is one thing. The weight that comes from fear or shame or harm is another, and GOD does not ask you to carry that one to the grave.
Jeremiah gives you permission to say the hard part out loud. LORD, I am tired. LORD, this is costing me more than I have. The Bible does not hide that prayer. It writes it down and keeps it.
Now hear what Jesus says to the people HE is sending out, because HE does not soften it either.
In Matthew this morning, Jesus is talking to HIS disciples about what it will cost to follow HIM. And HE tells them plainly. The student is not above the teacher. If they called the head of the house Beelzebul, they will say worse about the household. In other words, they came after me, and they will come after you.
Then three times HE says the same thing. Do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid of the ones who can hurt your body. Do not be afraid of what people will say. Do not be afraid, because nothing hidden will stay hidden, and the truth you carry will be made known. And then HE gives the reason, and it is one of the tenderest things HE ever says. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And yet not one of them falls to the ground outside your Father’s care. The very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.
That is the promise underneath the cost. The work will be hard. People will misunderstand you. Following HIM may cost you peace. But the GOD who sends you knows the number of hairs on your head, and HE has not lost track of a single sparrow, and HE will not lose track of you.
And then Jesus says something that lands especially hard on a day like today.
Because it is Father’s Day. And right here in the reading, Jesus says HE did not come to bring peace, but a sword. HE says HE came to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother. HE says whoever loves father or mother more than HIM is not worthy of HIM.
I am not going to walk past that just because of the calendar. The sword Jesus is talking about is not violence. It is allegiance. HE is saying that following HIM sometimes rearranges the closest relationships we have. Sometimes it costs us approval. Sometimes the people at our own table do not understand the fire we are carrying.
And on Father’s Day, that touches a lot of us in a lot of different ways. Some of you are fathers, and you carry the weight of it well, and you carry the places you got it wrong. Some of you had fathers who were a gift, and some of you had fathers who were a wound, and some of you are missing a father this morning and the chair is empty. Some of you wanted to be a father and it did not happen. The text does not pretend families are simple. Jesus never pretended that. HE knew that following GOD can put a sword right through the middle of a family, and HE said so out loud.
So we hold the whole of it this morning. The gladness and the grief. And we do not soften the word to fit the day.
Here is the question all of this presses on us. If the call costs this much, where does anyone find the strength to keep carrying it?
And this is where so many of us get the answer wrong. We think the strength is supposed to come from us. We think if we just try harder, dig deeper, grit our teeth, find a little more willpower, then we can carry the fire one more day. We treat the Christian life like a test of our own endurance.
Paul says something in Romans this morning that takes the whole burden off that shelf and puts it somewhere else entirely.
He says you were baptized into CHRIST. And to be baptized into CHRIST is to be baptized into HIS death. You were buried with HIM. The old life, the life ruled by sin and death, was crucified with CHRIST. Hear what Paul is not saying. He is not condemning your exhaustion. He is not telling you that faithful people never reach their limit. He is telling you that you do not have to save yourself by your own endurance. And then Paul says, just as CHRIST was raised from the dead, we too may live a new life.
Hear what that means. The strength to carry the fire is not your strength. You already died. The life you are living now is not yours to muscle through. It is resurrection life. It is CHRIST alive in you. Paul says it plainly. Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to GOD in CHRIST Jesus.
So when Jeremiah says I cannot, he is telling the truth. He cannot. Not on his own. And when Jesus says do not be afraid, HE is not asking you to manufacture courage out of nothing. HE is telling you that the One who conquered death is the One holding you up. The fire in your bones is not your fire. It is HIS. The strength to carry it is not yours. It is HIS. The work was never yours to finish in the first place. It belongs to HIM.
That changes everything about how we carry a hard call. We are not grinding it out alone. We are raised people doing work that belongs to GOD. The strength is not something we generate. It is something we receive, even when we are tired enough to need rest. The well does not run dry, even on the days we do.
Let me bring this back to the river, because this is where we live.
You know that the flood maps for this region are open for review right now. For the next ninety days, people up and down these valleys are looking at new maps that could change what their homes are worth and what their insurance costs. The ground people thought was solid is being redrawn. Some of you have water that comes up over the road. Some of you have watched a river take back land that was supposed to stay put.
I am not going to stand here and tell you the ground under your house is not moving, because for some of you it is. The maps are real. The water is real. The worry is real. For some families, the next letter from the insurance company may already be part of the worry. There are people who have watched the number their home is worth go the wrong direction, and wondered who would ever buy a house the new map calls a flood risk. That is not a small thing. That is your home, and your savings, and the place you raised your family.
But hear the word of the LORD in the middle of it. Jeremiah said, the LORD is with me like a mighty warrior. He said that in the same breath as all his complaint. The ground was moving under Jeremiah too. His friends had turned. His call was costing him everything. And he did not say the ground was solid. He said GOD was with him on the moving ground.
That is the promise. Not that the water will never rise. Not that the maps will never change. The promise is that the GOD who numbers the sparrows is standing with you on ground that will not hold still, and HE is not going anywhere.
And here is the last thing, and it is the thing the Cases knew when they signed their farm away.
The work does not depend on us being there to finish it. There is a project on the river not far from here where crews have spent years building islands back into the Mississippi, restoring the backwaters and the habitat that the river lost. The people who started that work will not be the people who finish it. One generation builds what the next one inherits. The workers come and go. The work goes on.
That is true of everything that matters. The farmer who plants a tree he will never sit under. The volunteer who answers the fire pager at three in the morning for neighbors he will never be thanked by. The father who pours himself into a child and does not get to see who that child becomes. The faithful people in small churches like these two, who have kept the doors open and the lights on and the word preached for generations, most of them never making the news, all of them carrying a fire they could not put down.
You are part of that. You did not start this work, and you will not finish it. You received it from people who carried it before you, and one day you will hand it to people who come after. The fire passes from hand to hand. And the One who lit it is the One who keeps it burning, long after any of us has set it down.
So this is what I want to leave you with.
The call costs. Jeremiah told the truth about that, and Jesus did too. Do not let anyone tell you that following GOD is easy or that the fire never burns. It burns. It cost the prophet everything. It cost the disciples their lives. It may cost you peace, approval, comfort, certainty, the solid ground you thought you were standing on.
But you are not carrying it alone, and you are not carrying it on your own strength. You died already. The life in you now is HIS life. The fire in you now is HIS fire. And the GOD who is with you like a mighty warrior has never once lost track of a sparrow, and HE will not lose track of you.
The water may rise.
The maps may change.
GOD’s work will outlast every one of us.
And the One who called you remains.
Amen.
Grace and Peace. Amen.
The worship music for this Sunday at DeSoto and Freeman Lutheran Churches, Fourth Sunday after Pentecost.
Gathering Hymn · Will You Come and Follow Me
ELW 798. John L. Bell, Iona Community. Tune: Kelvingrove. Listen on YouTube →
Hymn of the Day · Take Up Your Cross, the Savior Said
ELW 667. Charles Everest, tune Bourbon. Introduced at the service in a contemporary setting in the spirit of ELW 667. Listen on YouTube →
Closing Hymn · I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry
ELW 732. John Ylvisaker. A baptismal close that ties to the Romans 6 reading. Listen on YouTube →