Lectionary Homily for 21 June 2026 (4th Sunday after Pentecost)

Readings

• Jeremiah 20:7–13
• Psalm 91
• Romans 6:12–23
• Matthew 10:5a, 21–33

Homily Transcript

Persecution has not been the universal experience of all Christians at all times in all places; there have been periods of peace, prosperity, and tranquility. (That these have virtually always been under the aegis of a Christian State with an established Church should not go without mention, but it will have to be a passing one today.) And yet, persecution has often been the fate of Christians down through the centuries (or even ages, if we want to include such men as Abel and Noah). And the existence of a supposedly Christian State is no perfect guarantee against persecution — Luther was persecuted by an Emperor and a pope, both of whom claimed to be Christian. Today, our government would not be called Christian by any but the most delusional of men, but Satan is never content; having virtually complete his conquest of the various Western governments and their attached or aligned institutions, he turned his attention to the churches decades ago (centuries ago, in some obvious cases). This should surprise no one; hear the words of our Lord from today’s Gospel reading:

»Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.« — Matthew 10:21–22 (ESV)

Does our Lord speak of persecution by the State or some other such authority? No, not even (exclusively, anyway) in the portion of this passage immediately before today’s reading, where He speaks of being “dragged before governors and kings”. He speaks, instead, of a more personal sort of betrayal. Our Lord was certainly persecuted and murdered by the Jewish authorities (and the Jewish people generally), but He was also betrayed by Judas, His former friend; it is that sort of personal betrayal of which Jesus speaks in this passage. Despite the parallelism, we should not limit our understanding of what Jesus means when He says ‘brother’ (or ‘child’ and ‘parent’, for that matter) to the familial; what is in view here is every sort of intimate or personal betrayal, and that certainly includes all those who are brothers by ways other than blood — close friends, brothers-in-law, brothers-in-arms, brothers-in-Christ. And that last category is certainly Satans’s focus today.

Mercifully, most of you are not in a position to hear many, and certainly not most, of the stories of all the ways our churches are betraying so very many men today (and it is mostly [relatively] young men who are being betrayed), but I am in a position to hear them. And I do not think for a second that the faithless men pushing for expulsion, excommunication, and blacklisting (among many other forms of persecution) would hesitate to use the State to literally execute (which is to say murder) the men they are persecuting, if they thought the State would cooperate. In fact, such persecutors and slanderers and blasphemers have engaged in attempted murder: doxxing and false reports to law enforcement. If such ‘men’ were not so cowardly (itself a grievous sin), then they would certainly have taken up arms themselves and murdered the men they have persecuted; and they would have firmly believed that they were rendering service to God in doing so. Of course, their assessment would have been half true: They would, indeed, have been rendering service to their god, who is most certainly not the Lord God.

The very persecution of which Jesus warns in this passage is rampant in the churches. In fact, things are so bad these days that it would be accurate to say that we are in a period of widespread persecution, and — more importantly — we can ‘use’ that persecution as an indication of who is faithful and who is faithless: In times of faithlessness and persecution, those who are not persecuted are not faithful. If you have never suffered for the faith, then I encourage you to examine yourself — and particularly you men, for cowardice, which is to say a lack of courage or manliness, is damnable sin. For most, such suffering need not be the sort of ‘grand’ or high-profile persecution that has been inflicted on some of us; for many, suffering for the faith will take a more ‘mundane’ form: lost friends, estranged family, perhaps some other social or economic consequences. The point is that Satan, for the moment, controls the board, and a faith that he ignores is a faith that is in some way lacking. We do not live in a time of a Christian ruler and a faithful established Church under him; rather, we live in a time of a wicked government, a pervasively evil bureaucracy that invades almost every facet of our lives, and a nearly universal apostasy among the so-called churches; under such circumstances, the Christian should not — and the Christian will not — expect to escape persecution. You will suffer for the faith. You may not be martyred — even Luther died of old age, but both the Emperor and the pope sought his head for many years, and we, unlike Luther, do not have faithful German princes to hide, provide for, and protect us. We can certainly rely upon God, but not all saints escaped the lions. If you must go the lions, then to the lions you must go.

The Christian proclamation is one of eternal comfort, not one of temporal comfort. Temporal peace relies upon having a righteous, competent, and powerful State; that is a valid and important consideration for Christian men, but it is not the core concern of the Christian faith. Whether the king is righteous or wicked, whether the culture is Christian or not, whether it will cost you nothing or everything, you must confess Christ and Him crucified in both your words and your deeds. A faith that produces no good works is a dead faith, and it is only a living faith that saves. Or do you think that the Christ so often employed plant metaphors idly? As any gardener (or keeper of houseplants, at least) will tell you: Living plants always grow, and healthy fruit tree always bear fruit.

Learn the lesson of the fig tree: It was not the season for figs, which certainly ‘excuses’ the fig tree, but the Christ did not curse the tree as punishment of the tree, but as a lesson for you: There are no ‘seasons’ for the Christian faith; you must produce fruit in season and out. There will be no excuse or defense on Judgement Day that you lived under a wicked State or in a wicked culture or that you ‘had to’ do this or that. The Christians of the Early Church went to the lions rather than deny the Real Presence. That is the minimum to remain faithful. ‘But it was not the season for figs.’ ‘Depart from Me, for I never knew you.’

We can ask the Lord why us and why now — certainly righteous Job did so —, but after we pray or lament, we stand up and carry on. Here, perhaps, we should thank the Lord God that we are sons and daughters of Japheth, for it has always been in the nature of our race to rise from the ashes, to endure, to carry on, to rebuild. Our people have endured great hardships and suffered great calamities in centuries past, but we have, by the grace of God, always risen to the challenge and the occasion; we are here today because our ancestors did not fail and, one day, our far-distant sons and daughters will say the same of us. It is a tragedy and a crime that our forefathers in the preceding handful of generations squandered, failed to maintain, and destroyed so much that was entrusted to their care, but we cannot change the past — only the future is mutable. We must do what they failed to do; we must be like the tiny handful of faithful kings who ruled Old Testament Israel — we must repent in sackcloth and ashes. And yet repentance alone is not enough, for talk is cheap; yes, God demands our repentance, including of the sins of our fathers — ‘both we and our fathers have sinned’ —, but true repentance is not just words but also actions. We must not only denounce and turn from the evils both of the past and of our present, but we must also seek to destroy them. What does it even mean to renounce the worship of Baal if his high places and his priests remain? What does it mean to renounce the worship of Astarte if her perversions (such as prostitution and pornography) and her shrines (such as strip clubs) remain? What does it mean to renounce the worship of Moloch if abortion ‘clinics’ remain and abortionists go unpunished? What does it mean to denounce the worship of Saturn (Satan) if his synagogues, his mosques, and his false priests remain? “Who is with the Lord? Let him come to me!”

We must put to death the weak and decadent and easy faith that has masqueraded as ‘Christianity’ for the better part of a century. The Christian religion is not weak; the Christian religion is not easy; the Christian religion is not passive or pacifist, cowardly or craven, supine or submissive, inactive or indolent or inconsequential; the Christian religion is not ‘tolerant’. Do you think God will praise you for your ‘tolerance’ or reward you for your ‘restraint’ if you restrain your hand from opposing His enemies or tolerate those who blaspheme His Name?

»Maledictus qui facit opus Domini fraudulenter et maledictus qui prohibet gladium suum a sanguine.« — Jeremiah 48:10 (VUL)

»Accursed is the one who does the work of the Lord carelessly, keeping back his dagger from bloodshed.« Jeremiah 31:10

In the waters of Holy Baptism you died to sin, death, and the devil, and you were raised to new life in Jesus Christ to fight sin, death, and the devil. You are part of the Church Triumphant with regard to eternity, coram Deo (with respect to God), and every time you participate in the Divine Service, but you are also part of the Church Militant with regard to the temporal, coram mundo (with respect to the world), and every single day you yet draw breath on this Earth in this Creation. You are a soldier in a war that has been raging since the Garden, and will continue raging until the Christ returns to claim every crown of every earthly kingdom and cast each and every one of His enemies into eternal conscious torment. Does that sound like a weak or a passive or an effeminate religion to you? The ‘Christianity’ of the world and of too many churches is a damnable and damning counterfeit. After centuries of learning from his mistakes and his defeats, Satan realized that it is far, far better to subvert the churches than to try to sell a competing religion; certainly, he still does both, but the latter pays greater dividends and he enjoys it far more. To keep the goats wandering aimlessly is one thing, but to lead the sheep astray is quite another. I do not envy the false pastors, teachers, and leaders their appointment in God’s tribunal on Judgement Day. It will mean nothing for them to plead Christ when they never knew Him and He never knew them. “Depart from Me.” is the last thing they will hear, and it will echo for eternity. Do not pity them — it is not our place to pity the enemies of God, but only to affirm that His judgements are righteous and just.

That which comforts is Gospel and that which accuses and condemns is Law: For the impenitent and the unbelieving goats, there is only Law; for the penitent and believing sheep, there is only Gospel. For the unbelieving and false ‘Christian’, eternity is a monstrous threat and a terrible promise; for the true Christian, eternity is our greatest hope and God’s promise secured and sealed to us in our Baptism and confirmed each and every time we partake of the Christ’s body and blood in His Supper. To the beloved son or daughter, every word from our Father is reassurance, comfort, and love, for even though He disciplines those whom He loves, we know that everything He does is for our good; to the damned, every word from God is a fearful promise of unending wrath, for nothing good awaits the impenitent.

In this life, you will have — you must have, under present circumstances — persecution and suffering, for those are marks of the true Christian the same as good works, but such things are nothing compared to the infinite good that God has prepared for us. And yet we must not permit eternity to become an excuse for inaction or indifference — both marks of a false ‘Christian’ with a dead faith; rather, we must meet the challenges of each day, firmly relying on God and faithfully pursuing our vocation and executing our duties. It matters not if you are a king, a prince, a shoemaker, a magistrate, a homemaker, or any of a thousand other things God has ordained for man to do under the Sun. You are to do your duty diligently and faithfully, never forgetting that your good works for family, neighbor, and nation are how you serve God — they are the very good works that God prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. Do not be the slothful servant who hides his talent in the ground or the faithless soldier who keeps back his sword from blood.

The world wants you to be a weak, worthless, unprofitable ‘Christian’; what God demands is something far different. So you must rise to the occasion, the same as our ancestors have always done. Whatever persecution may come, we will, by the grace of God, endure and overcome it. And when we have overcome the persecution, we will, again by the grace of God, turn and destroy it, so that future generations may know the peace and tranquility that did not fall to us. This we owe to God and this we will do for our sons and our sons’ sons.

God with us.

Amen.