Homily, June 21, 2026, Rev. Holly Cardone
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
June 21, 2022
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus begins by assuring the disciples they don’t have to be better than him. Just be like him. He says, just do what I do. That’s what it takes to change lives. Be like me.
And then he says, don’t be afraid. What I tell you in secret shout from the rooftops. Here’s why this is an important directive from Jesus. In the structure of Jewish life as Jesus lived and experienced it, everyone knew everything about you and in order to get any breathing space, a little bit of autonomy, you had to keep secrets. And you got really good at it.
Bible Scholar James Pilch tells us that the “nosy behavior of Jesus’ fellow villagers, so typical in the Mediterranean world, demands and encourages secrecy. Otherwise daily life becomes unbearable.”
Because there was so much secrecy and deception, how would you know if someone was telling the truth or not?
Jesus is directing his followers to not keep secrets. Everything I am teaching you, Jesus says, shout it from the rooftops. Eventually, God will uncover everything. Because, Jesus says, those two sparrows, the cheapest items you can purchase, the least valuable thing in this world, God pays attention when they fall to the ground and die. Aren’t you so much more valuable than a sparrow? Trust me, Jesus says, God values you much more than you will ever know.
And then Jesus lets the ax fall:
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.
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; 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 is quoting Micah 7:6 here, “for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; your enemies are members of your own household.”
For Jews in the ancient world, in the 1st century, what Jesus was asking of them is a radical and profound shift in their way of being in the world. Jesus is unraveling their entire cultural and structural way of life. Their way of life totally revolved around their family. And the families were big. They all lived together. The father, the pater familias, head of the household, was the owner of the family, and by the grace of God, if you had sons, then the sons would bring their wives to live in their father’s house. Not only that but family members married other family members, 1st cousins being the most common, and this just made the family stronger.
Life expectancy in the ancient world was anywhere between 30-45 years of age and 30% of children died before the age of 6. 60% died before reaching their mid teens and 75% before their mid 20s. A small weak family dies, but a large strong family survives. Your value, your identity, your very survival is based on family ties. Even then it’s shaky because 80% of the population in the Mediterranean world in the 1st century living under Roman occupation lived in extreme poverty and were prone to all kinds of sickness and disease.
When Jesus called the disciples out of the crowd and they chose to follow him, they were giving up their lives. They were literally putting their lives on the line, and Jesus knew this. Jesus wasn’t telling them what they might get for this kind of sacrifice but he had certainly given them a glimpse. Compassion, a sense of value, worth, a life of purpose and meaning. Community in a way they had never experienced community before. They would lose the identity of their biological family to take up with this new, made up, all in the same boat family.
I can’t speak for the 1st century followers of what was known as The Way, those who chose Jesus over their own families. But if humans then were anything like humans today, which I imagine they were, they must have felt like they had nothing to live for. They must have been so broken, so sick, so tired, so hopeless that they were willing to go to any lengths to change things. They were going to die anyway, physically, spiritually, or maybe both, and this itinerant, Jewish rabbi who was making the religious elite crazy with his vague and bizarre stories and going around preaching about how God’s reign of justice and love is right here, right now, and people being restored to seeing, hearing, and life, maybe, if all that was true about this guy from Nazareth, well maybe they’d take the risk. Maybe they would jump into the boat too, with all the others: tax collectors, fishermen, prostitutes, mentally ill, homeless, sick and disabled.
Jesus was doing something powerful in the world. Jesus was showing them what God is really like, not what they grew up believing God was like. But what God is really like. Jesus is teaching them, showing them, and living out who this God is:
“A God,” prolific American author, Presbyterian minister, and theologian, Frederick Buecner says, “half tipsy with compassion, going around making marvelous promises and loving everybody and creating healing, loving, compassionate communities, like the last of the big-time spenders handing out hundred-dollar bills.”