4th Sunday after Pentecost 2026

Sermon: 4th Sunday after Pentecost 2026

Text: Jeremiah 20:7-13; Matthew 10:24-39

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our texts today highlight two important experiences that are often not centered in our modern culture: lament and rejection for serving the truth. To lament means to voice out our grief, sadness or despair. In our society, sometimes to lament is sequestered to a person’s private life. You don’t want to get everybody down, so we rather keep our griefs from the public eye. There are not many instances in which we can collectively or personally express lament. I think aside from sport matches, like in the World Cup, you can see people weeping at the loss of the country’s team, and aside from public tragedies, funerals, or historic commemorations of past injustices, when it is prompted for communities to come together to console one another.

But often we want to rush through the lament into happiness, or we like to cover the lamenting with unearned positivity or optimism. This can sometimes be the effects of an over-positivistic society, which idolizes happiness to the point of sweeping away human grief. In these societies, lament can be frowned upon because it confronts the society with the presence of grief and affliction that has not been recognized or tended to. For example, how in the United States, we have often thought that racism and civic right have been solved and does not exist, when the legacy of the injustices still linger in our communities. Sometimes, our world likes to hide collective griefs by capitalizing on what makes us or would make us happy. When we drive down the highway or down many city streets, and especially in our phones, we are bombarded with ads and commercials that promise that happiness is at the other side of your open wallet buying a product. Our global economy and social spaces are often geared

for maximizing enjoyment, and to makes us recurrent costumers, we are almost, if not in fact, made addicted to becoming customers of enjoyment. Being happy is also seen as the sign of providence, often we associate happiness with God’s presence, that to trust in God means to never be sad or despondent. In many churches, to lament is a lost practice, forgotten by the pressure to compete with a world that has made humanity to idolize pleasure and happiness. I do not want to say God doesn’t want to make us happy. I’m saying that we are human, and to be human, is also to experience grief and sadness. To lose touch with lament, is to lose touch with our humanity. Enjoyment and happiness have their place, and their appointed time, especially the eternal happiness of God. But in the world, sometimes even us Christ-witnesses must learn to lament in a world that is uncomfortable with lament. For those that have tasted the Kingdom, for those who know the goodness of God, there is much to lament for. Lament for moral confusion, lament for cold-heartedness, lament for violence and corruption, lament for the unrepentant, lament for social evil and suffering in the world. As remarked last Sunday, we are made a priestly people in Christ, and so we also share the vocation to bring up to God the desire to see restoration from destruction in our world. Even more so, for us believers, we are called to bring up our sufferings to God, to understand that grief and suffering are not God withholding His hand from our lives. On the contrary, in the seeming absence, He says He is more close to us than ever, to stand in the shade of the Cross of Christ, in the same way we also stand in His resurrection.

We heard today in our first reading the Bible’s expert lamenter, the prophet Jeremiah. His name is often associated with the tears and lament for Israel’s waywardness. In

the text we read, Jeremiah laments over his own predicament as a prophet who is rejected for proclaiming God’s desire to return to right relationship with Him. Jeremiah was called to become a prophet to his people in a time of great upheaval and division, alongside the existential threat posed by larger expanding empires. There was religious, political, and social corruption, the people forgetting or ignoring their call to honor God’s covenant. But instead of learning from the mistakes, they continued to act in ways contrary to God’s will. Jeremiah, wailed, threatened, spoke passionately, he sought to make his people see God’s will, but instead he was met with scorn and rejection. People laughed at his oracles and warnings, they mocked him. Jeremiah was so upset, he almost gave up on his call as a prophet. He thought the charge too bothersome, he could be back home tending his garden, yet this word of the Lord would not cease to be spoken to the people. There was much to lament for in Israel in those days, and so Jeremiah discomforted, disrupted, provoked the people to repentance, for them to turn back to God, not in acquiescence to mere religious duty, but in love and devotion to God, as he will prophesy, a law written on the heart. But when Jeremiah speaks the words we heard today, he was not in the hopeful mood, he was in the spiritual dumps. Not only was he lamenting over the people’s waywardness, the persecution he was suffering from other religious leaders, but his lament was also over his own situation. He felt captive to his prophetic calling, having to speak these words that would be rejected and scorned. He lamented that God had chosen him for this prophetic work, how much he would want to be at peace, but he cannot. Jeremiah, in a sense, teaches us that God can hold even our most raving laments and despairs. That even if our strength falters at the size our troubles,

the truth beckons to be witnessed to, God’s will demands to be heard. I’m reminded by the George Herbert poem “The Collar”, about a priest who is tired of his calling, feeling restless and constrained by the demands of his ministry, and as he fantasizes about his life outside the call of God, Herbert writes: “as I raved and grew more fierce and wild at every word, me though I heard one calling “Child!”, and I replied , “My Lord”. Our lament does not remain in wallowing, even lament has its appointed time and end, and the work must continue. The Lord sends us on the path to the greatest truth, even though we are weak and raving, he takes in all that we are, our lament and our hope. We see at the end of this reading, how Jeremiah even in lament remains faithful, and praises God for the beginning of a just restoration by God’s steadfast love and promise: “O LORD of hosts, you test the righteous; you see the heart and the mind; let me see your retribution upon them, for to you I have committed my cause. Sing to the LORD; praise the LORD! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers”. Even today, we can learn from Jeremiah, and know that our advocacy for justice requires that we lament, that we weep and advocate for the humanity that suffers, and also that we weep for the waywardness of our fellow humanity that persists in the sins of greed, violence, and the destruction of our environment.

In the Gospel, Jesus speaks in the same prophetic tradition of Jeremiah, in full knowledge that following the Gospel way does not mean a rose-colored view of unity. The sword that Jesus brings is not a literal sword of warfare, it is the sword of the truth of the Kingdom. The reign of God is at work, and it does not compromise. Therefore, a forking path is set for every household in this image that Jesus provides.

And we know from our histories, how in times of social strife over the rights of human beings, households were divided, and divisions were wrought because you either advocated for justice for the oppressed or you supported the status quo in detriment to God’s poor. And in this prophetic task, the Christian stands in a difficult terrain of truth-telling and God-speak that will put the Christian at odds with the world that refuses to be shaken for the sake of justice.

What a difficult task! Yet, the good news is what Jesus tells his disciples: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul… 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. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. “Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven” Preserve your soul for the kingdom, Jesus says! Do not compromise on love and mercy. By speaking the truth of God’s love and justice, we acknowledge where we belong, and the gates are open for all to enter in. In standing with Jesus, we are counted for, every single part of us. We are made whole, for the true humanity of God is one where love and justice for the oppressed are uplifted, it is where sins are forgiven and humanity reconstituted for the sake of love and mercy. We are called back together with God for a humanity that does not root itself in sin, but breaks free from it into loving and solidarious fellowship. Beloved, the task is great, the perils count for many, but be not afraid. You are in God’s count, you are accounted for in the hands of God, that even the sting of rejection, or the rebuke of the world cannot dissuade us from the new world of God. Christ becomes our portion, our strength, our belonging. Lament and weep in

faithfulness, speak and be not afraid for the truth of God’s love. Live with your soul, be faithful to the inner-voice of God that leads you to solidarity with the world’s needs. Let your lament be a voice for the voiceless, a light for the world that can be, the world that will be in true unity in justice and love. So let us pray: