4th Sunday After Pentecost 2026

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's family now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hidden.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name.

Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Let us pray.

O Lord, grow in us perpetual love and reverence for your holy name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving kindness.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

A prayer for Father's Day.

We give our thanks, Creator God, for the fathers in our lives.

Father who does not come with a manual in reality teaches us that some fathers excel while others fail.

We ask your blessings for them all, and forgiveness wherever it is needed.

This Father's Day we remember the many sacrifices fathers make for their children and families and the ways, both big and small, they lift their children to achieve dreams thought beyond reach.

So too we remember all those who have helped fill the void when fathers pass early or are absent.

Grandfathers and uncles, brothers and cousins, teachers, pastors and coaches, all the men and women who reveal your love one day at a time, best as they are able.

For those who are fathers, we ask for wisdom and humility in the face of the task of parenting.

Give us the strength to do well by our children and by you, day after day.

In your holy name, go God, we pray.

Amen.

As you're being seated, our children, grades five and below, are invited to godly play in the background.

Now there was a certain man of Ramathine, a Zeophite from the hill country of Phriam, whose name was Elkanah, son of Jericho Jerohim, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zeoph, and Ephraimite.

He had two wives.

The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the second Pinanina.

Pinanina had children, but Hannah had no children.

Now this man went up year by year from his town to worship and to sacrifice to the sovereign of heaven's vanguard of Shiloh.

There the two sons of Eli, Hophani and Phineas, were priests of the Holy One of old.

And it was on the day Alcana sacrificed, he would give to his wife Hanina, and to all her daughters and her sons portions of the sacrifice.

But to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her, though the womb of life had closed her womb.

Her rival used to provoke her severely to irritate her, because the wellspring of life had closed her womb.

After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose and presented herself before the Holy One of old.

Hannah's soul was embittered, and she prayed to the source of life, and she wept profusely, and she bowed a vow and said, Holy one of heaven's legions, if only you would look on the affliction of your slave woman and remember me, and not forget your slave woman, but will give to your slave woman man seed, then I will place him before you as a Nazarite all the days of his life.

He shall not drink wine or strong drink, and a razor shall not go upon his head.

And it was as she increased praying before the faithful one, Eli was observing her mouth.

Now, Hannah, she was speaking in her heart, only her lips moved, her voice was not heard.

So Eli took her for a drunkard.

And Eli said to her, How long will you remain drunk?

Put your wine away, woman, away from you.

Then Hannah responded and said, No, my lord, I am a woman whose spirit has hardened.

I have not drunk either wine or strong drink.

I have been pouring out my soul before the God who hears.

Do not regard your slave as a worthless woman, for I have been seeking from my great grief and vexation all this time.

Then Eli answered him and said, Go in peace.

The God of Israel grant the petition you have made to God.

And Hannah said, May your slave woman find favor in your eyes.

Then the woman went on her way to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.

The word of the Lord.

Psalm appointed for the day is Psalm 113.

We will read responsibly by the high verse.

Hallelujah.

Give praise, you slaves of the Most High.

Let the name of the Holy One of all be blessed.

From the rising of the sun to its going down.

She who is wisdom is high above all nations.

Who is like the mother of all, our God, who sits enthroned on high?

She takes up the weak out of the dust.

She sets him with the rulers.

She makes the woman of a childless house.

Aristocus, my fellow prisoner, greets you all, so too Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, about whom you have received instructions.

If he comes to you, welcome him.

And Jesus, who is called justice, greets you.

These of the circumcised are my only co-workers in the realm of God, and they have been a comfort to me.

Ephaphoros, who is one of you, a slave of the Messiah of Jesus, greets you all.

He is always fighting for you in his prayers, so that you may stand mature and fully assured in everything that is the will of God.

For I testify for you, for I testify for him that he has done much hard labor for you all, and for those in Laodicea and in Heropolis.

Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you.

Give my greetings to the sisters and brothers in Laodicea, and to Nympha in the church in her house.

And when this has been read among you all, make it so that it is read in the Laodicean church, and you all read the one from Laodicea, and say to Aryppus, see that the ministry you have received in the Messiah, that you fulfill it.

The word of the Lord.

Just then a Canaanite woman from that area came out and shouted, Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David.

My daughter is badly demon-possessed.

But Jesus did not answer her a word.

Then his disciples came and implored him, saying, Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.

Now Jesus answered, I was not sent to any except the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

But she came and knelt before Jesus, saying, Lord, help me.

Then Jesus said, It is not good to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.

But she said, Yes, Lord, yet the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their Lord's table.

Then Jesus answered her, Woman, great is your faith.

Let it be for you as you wish.

And her daughter was healed at that moment.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise you.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Happy Sunday.

So this week here in Pentecost, as I was thinking about what it means for us to be church in the world, uh, that is the season, right?

We're thinking about the implications of our faith of these great stories of Christmas and the God that was revealed in Easter.

And so so what?

Like that's the so what?

The who cares season of the church.

I like to think about it.

I started thinking about the week and I thought, whoa, this is a complicated week because we got a lot of things going on today.

We got Father's Day for those of us that that feel like we have fatherly relationships in our lives, whatever those look like, it's a celebration.

And then we also have uh this really important uh holiday that happened on Friday called Juneteenth.

And so I thought, as I was thinking this week, I'm gonna tell y'all a couple of stories.

And then I'm gonna connect it to this really great gospel reading we have of Jesus, don't we?

Like, Jesus looks great here in the gospel.

Did you notice it's a little awkward?

Anybody notice this gospel is a little awkward?

I can't be the only one.

Like, this is okay, we'll get there.

So my first story that I have has to do with Juneteenth.

Everybody fail uh familiar with Juneteenth?

Maybe?

It's actually a really important Texas holiday, right?

So on Friday, June 19th, we celebrated what has been a Texas holiday since 1980 and a federal holiday since 2021 called Juneteenth.

Many of you probably know about the Emancipation Proclamation that happened, well, it went to effect January 1st, 1863.

But what many of you may not know is that in light of that, a lot of Southerners and Southern slave owners decided that because of that, they're just gonna move everybody to Texas because they are different down there in Texas.

They're gonna let us own people over there.

So a lot of people moved to Texas, and it wasn't until June 19, 1865, that Union soldiers landed in Galveston and they proclaimed what had already been said two years earlier that you can't own people.

And they freed the slaves that were still being enslaved in Texas on June 19th.

This then became a huge religious holiday for our black brothers and sisters because this was liberation, this was their story of Exodus, this was Moses, this was this was liberation.

And that lasted for a while, actually, until it sort of fell away a little bit, but not Houston.

Emancipation Park.

Huge place for people, especially black Americans, to come together and celebrate their experience of a liberation that they were told they had.

So I thought to myself, on Friday, I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna actually read about how the Episcopalians are celebrating June 19th, because surely if it's a federal holiday, it must be a religious one for us because you know we have saint days in our tradition.

So every day we celebrate a saint.

Most days we celebrate a saint of some sort.

So I went for Juneteenth and I looked at it and I thought, huh, that's Adelaide Case.

What's going on there?

Surely this must have been a celebration that they've had on the books for a long time.

Now, I must say that Adelaide Case is worth remembering.

Adelaide Case, she was a pioneer woman in the Episcopal Church in the late 19th century, early as the 20th century.

She was the first woman to teach as a full professor at an Episcopal seminary.

Mind you, they didn't even admit women into these seminaries at that time.

So in her own right, she was a pioneer.

She stood for like justice.

She pushed back against a system that saw her less than.

And so back in 2009, they said we should include her.

Let's do it on July 9th.

And they did for a trial run for like 11, 12, 13 years.

2017, they moved it to June 19th.

2021, they solidified that that was her same day.

Now, what's interesting is Michael Curry, the first black presiding bishop in the Episcopal Church, was elected and started serving in 2015.

And he made it a point to say racial reconciliation was going to be the heart of his ministry.

Now, how is it that a church that is so hard to raise up marginalized people missed Juneteenth?

In fact, they moved it to that date.

There's in fact still a group of people, in my opinion, rightly saying maybe we should go back to July 9th with Adelaide because she is worth remembering.

Because Juneteenth is a really special day, and I sure hope the church response.

Now I have a story I'm gonna tell you, my father's day story.

Now, many of you actually think that I'm actually like a good dad or a good person.

Yeah.

I debated telling this story, but you know, it's avarpo.

So I'm gonna tell you a story.

You know, I grew up in a spare the rod, spoil the child kind of environment.

Let's just say that.

There was a lot of rods.

Right?

Mike makes right a lot of rods.

So I told myself I was never gonna have a rod in my house.

That's not gonna.

Happen.

But in 2009, my had had a little five-year-old little girl, Maggie.

She's not here right now.

She goes by Margo.

And my son was born that time.

And as a gift, our aunties gifted us one of those like camera things.

We thought we were so cool and bougie.

You could set the camera up in the room, and you had the little television in the other room, and you could watch the baby, and it was crystal clear and incredible.

And it's like, oh, this is incredible.

We didn't have a lot of money back then, so this was a big deal.

Everybody pitched in.

We were so excited, second kid and all.

So I'm in the living room and I'm playing with Maggie, Margo, and baby sleeping.

And Marg keeps messing with the TV screen.

She keeps messing with it.

And I'm like, hey, Maggie, Maggie, don't do that.

Okay, yes, Dad.

And she comes back, she messes with it again.

Maggie, you're gonna break that.

Don't touch that.

That's for adults.

Oh, yes, Dad.

Then she comes back again and she messes with it and she snaps off the aerial.

No.

And it goes.

Now, here I am.

I'm not gonna grab the rod.

I'm gonna be different, but kids gotta know.

Kids gotta learn, right?

And so I politely ask Maggie to go to her toy room and get her favorite toy.

It's this little Disney princess camera, you know, the one you would put over and you would click it and it would cycle through all the images.

And so Becky is wondering what's going on.

The baby wakes up, she goes and gets the baby, she's in the kitchen, and in the meantime, I'm very ceremoniously laying out a white towel on the floor.

And Maggie sits across from me, and I ask Maggie to put that there.

And I say, you know, Maggie, in life sometimes, right, you break other people's things, but I told you not to.

I gave you lots of warnings.

And you did it anyway.

And so if you break my stuff, I'm gonna break your stuff.

So I close it up and I pull a hammer out that I had.

I'm serious.

I know.

This is where you guys are like, this guy's a priest, and I smash her toy.

Now Becky is in the background, like, Sean, Sean, like, are you sure?

But what's interesting, right, is I turn to her in like this really condescending way, and I'm like, almost like she doesn't understand.

Like, don't worry, I got this.

I'm gonna teach this kid boundaries, right?

And I thought I did, y'all, until the following week, when sweet little five-year-old Maggie made a mistake, and she looked up at me and she goes, Are you gonna break my toys?

Yeah, right?

Yeah.

That's my second story.

So here we have Jesus.

We don't know why Jesus is up in this region and Tyr and Sidon, but he's not in a Jewish territory.

He's hanging out with the Gentiles.

Now, you know, up until this point in the gospel, Jesus is very crystal clear.

He is, you know, knows his vision.

He knows what he's supposed to do.

It is to go to the lost sheep of Israel.

So he is ministry and sends the disciples out.

Don't worry, I'm gonna redeem my story here.

I know everybody's like, Oh my god, that's horrifying.

Everybody's looking at me like, Sean, you can't, you gotta have sent there.

I'm gonna redeem it.

I actually love this story because it gives me permission to tell you that one.

There's a reason I'm telling you this story.

Who stands up and tells you a story like that unless God gives us permission?

So here we have Jesus.

He's up and he's in the northwest side.

He's not hanging around with a bunch of Jewish people.

He's already told his disciples, When you go out into the world, I want you to just go to the lost sheep of Israel.

I don't want you to go to the Gentiles, I don't want you to go to the Samaritans.

So his ministry up until this point has only been to Jewish people.

And so he is certain that this is what he is supposed to do.

He's got it clear in his mind.

He's doing the right thing.

He's picking Adelaide case, he's setting a boundary for his daughter.

He knows what he's supposed to be doing.

And all of a sudden, this woman comes.

Now, what's interesting is in Matthew they call her a Canaanite.

They do not call her a Serophoenician.

In Mark, they call her a Serophoenician because that's actually how they referred to each other.

It was an ethnic and geographic title.

These people were from the Syrophoenician region.

He calls her a Canaanite, and nobody used that language.

Like Canaanite was not a term that they were using.

Basically, what he is saying is, Matthew, this woman is a descendant from their ancestral enemies.

The people who were the enemies of the Jewish people, the Canaanites.

And so this woman comes and says, I have a sick kid.

Will you do something?

And Jesus basically brushes her off.

She won't stop.

And he says, I have not come for you.

And then he says, Because you're a children of the dogs.

I mean, can we just not run past this?

Basically, he calls her a female dog?

Y'all, we have a word for that in our language.

He calls her a dog.

And she says, But don't you see God's vision is so much bigger?

And I don't know what happened in that moment.

Maybe Jesus remembered the stories his mom told him about the magi that came from the east, the Gentiles who worshiped him and laid down treasures and said, You are the one that is anticipated, you are the one we've been waiting for.

Maybe he had a revelation in that moment where he realized that God's vision was bigger than the one that he had.

Some commentators will tell you that he was just testing that woman.

Are you kidding me?

I mean, let's always maintain a God worthy of worship, people.

Do you want your sick daughter healed enough, woman?

Like, are you kidding me?

Jesus didn't do that.

But I do think Jesus was open.

And when he saw somebody confront him, when the little daughter said, Are you gonna bring my toys?

He said, Oh, there's something bigger going on here.

And he changed.

Because from there on out, Jesus's ministry was different.

Prior to this, in chapter 15, it was only the Jewish people.

And afterward, he does another feeding of the 4,000 and include Gentiles.

It was healing of more Gentiles.

At the end, the Great Commission is go forth, baptize all nations in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

In this story, this weird, awkward story, we see somebody who is doing the best that they can, doing everything that they thought was faithful, and then when somebody confronted them with a bigger vision of love, they changed.

I cannot be the only one who has had that experience.

I cannot be the only one who is moving through their day in their life and their relationships, doing the best that they can, trying to be faithful to their spouse, trying to be faithful to their kids, trying to be faithful to their friends, trying to be faithful to their parents.

And then something happens and you're confronted with a bigger vision of love.

And in that moment you have a choice.

You can either run from it and hide, you can double down, you can defend, or you can change.

Now, there are some people, I've actually heard it right out here.

It wasn't somebody saying it, but they said something like, Well, you know that June 19th, I don't know what it is, that's just a black holiday.

Like, whoo, you heard somebody say that?

Maybe you said it.

I sure hope not.

Let me tell you why we need June 19th.

We need June 19th to remind us that there is a big gap between what we say and the two years it takes for people to have the lived experience of it.

As a culture, as a society, we need to be reminded that we can talk all we want about equality and justice.

We can say that we are an anti-racist community, and I think Mike leads us pretty well in trying to be that.

We can say that we are trying to be anti-racist in our life, but are the people around us experiencing what we say?

What is the gap between our words and our actions and people's lived experience?

That's why, well, we need the holiday for a lot of reasons, but that's a big reason that we need that holiday.

And we need that in our own lives.

Started thinking, you know, how wonderful is it that God doesn't abandon us to the certainty of our smallness?

Right?

That the Holy Spirit is real and moving through people, and we are constantly being invited to a larger vision of love, a larger vision of justice, a larger vision of equity and equality, a larger vision of welcoming and forgiveness and generosity.

Like God is moving.

And so the question I have is like, what are we doing as a community and what are we doing individually when we're confronted with that in our lives?

Like, are we even open to it?

Like, I think it's gonna happen.

But are we looking for it?

Because I think Jesus is giving us permission to be limited, to say that we're doing the best that we can, and sometimes the best just isn't enough for the big vision of God.

And the way that we get confronted with that is a good community or people that love us or kids that look us in the face and say, Oh, dad, I'm kind of scared of you now.

Darn, I thought I was never gonna be that dad.

And you know what?

I've never broken a toy since.

Yeah, that's worth clapping.

I got PTSD, man.

You know, I've never broken a toy since.

Now, listen, I'm not a perfect dad, right?

But like, I haven't broken a toy.

Not since then.

And so, do you give yourself the permission to engage your limitation?

Because if you do, you might find out what Paul found out.

Mike and I were talking about this morning.

You know, the gospel and in the in the in the in the epistles and in the writings of Paul, you get this story that essentially says he thought he had it all together.

He was perfect.

He even says that to the law, I was blameless.

I was perfect.

I was doing everything I should externally for the system to tell me, but like it wasn't doing this thing inside of me.

I wasn't experiencing transformation.

And then something happens, we don't really know what it is.

And from that point on, he actually boasts about his brokenness and his limitation and his weakness because he says that when we engage that faithfully, when we when we are confronted with the gap between who we are and who God is calling us to be, and we engage that gap faithfully, transformation happens and we experience grace.

In that gap, we don't hear condemnation and violence.

In that gap, we hear you are beloved and loved, and despite your imperfection and your limitations, God loves you.

And let's not give up on trying to be the beloved kingdom that we know we can be, the beloved community that we know we can be.

And so my invitation to everybody this morning is to like open yourself up.

You know, I hope the Episcopal Church changes and says, you know, June 19th, that's a date we can't move.

But we can move Adelaide case.

I sure hope I don't break any of my grandkids' toys.

I don't think I will, God willing.

But I want to I want to open ourselves up to embrace the God who says that limitation is not failure.

Limitation, even when we are certain we're doing the right thing, when we're confronted with it, is an opportunity for us to grow and change and experience grace and God's love.

So I don't know what that looks like in your life.

I don't know what that looks like today.

But I want to give you permission to embrace it faithfully.

And hopefully, in the midst of that, you'll experience transformative love and change.

Amen.