June 21 2026 - Rev. jonathan Warren

Good morning.

Please join me in the call to worship printed in your bulletin.

The God of ages past and days to come is here, inviting us to worship and praise.

The God of promises and challenges is with us, calling us to faithful service.

The God of boundless love is with us, making every one of God's promises possible.

Because we have faith in Him, we dare to approach God with confidence.

Let us confess together our sins before God and one another.

Merciful God, in your gracious presence we confess our sin and the sin of this world.

Although Christ is among us our peace, we are a people divided against ourselves as we cling to the values of a broken world.

The profit and pleasures we pursue lay waste the land and pollute the seas.

The fears and jealousies that we harbor upset neighbor against neighbor and nation against nation.

We abuse your good gifts of imagination and freedom, of intellect and reason, and have turned them into bonds of oppression.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Heal and forgive us.

Set us free to serve you and the world as agents of your reconciling love in Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Let us silently confess our sins.

God calls us and sends us out into a world that's challenging and difficult.

And yet we do not go alone.

Christ gives us grace and peace, each other, and the Holy Spirit.

Know that you are forgiven and be at peace.

Amen.

To prepare our hearts for Scripture, let us pray for illumination together.

Speak to us, living God, as you have spoken to our ancestors, through the voices of your prophets, the breath of your spirit, and the life of your Son, so that we may live according to your word through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Amen.

The scripture reading is from Psalm 100.

Let us listen to the word of God.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth.

Worship the Lord with gladness.

Come into his presence with singing.

Know that the Lord is God.

It is he that made us, and we are his.

We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him.

Bless his name.

For the Lord is good.

His steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Today's gospel lesson comes to us from Matthew chapter nine, beginning with the thirty-fifth verse and going through chapter ten.

Let us listen to the word of God.

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness.

And when he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

And then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

And then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to cure every disease and every sickness.

These are the names of the twelve apostles.

First Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector, James, son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus, Simon the Cain Canaanian, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions.

Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and as you go, proclaim the good news.

The kingdom of heaven has come near, and cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.

You received without payment, and give without payment.

Take no gold or silver or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics or sandals, or a staff, or laborers deserve their food.

Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave, and as you enter the house, greet it.

And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you, and if any one will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.

Truly I tell you, it will be more toler tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves.

So be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

And Woody and Buzz always end up far from their safe haven of Andy's home, and they discover the world out there is a dangerous place.

First, the toy torturing neighbor boy.

Oh, that one was tough.

And and then it's the toy collector who mends and sends all these little toys to a museum.

And then they're in a daycare toddler room.

Watch out.

I mean, who could have imagined that Darby's Ken would be sinister?

But these toys discover that it's a wild, wild world out there.

Every place they go out in the world is super treacherous and filled with danger, lurking in all kinds of places.

Of course, Woody and Buzz always emerge and they're ready for another 17th adventure.

In today's lesson, Jesus sends his disciples out into the wild, dangerous world.

It doesn't sound that bad because, of course, Jesus makes it look easy.

It says, then Jesus went about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness.

Jesus can go anywhere and talk to anyone in this wild world.

And it's like the world moves to his whims.

Essentially, when Jesus does it, he does a slam dunk every time.

Wherever he goes, slam dunk.

Whoever he sees, slam dunk.

And because Jesus is crushing it, many tired, hopeless, struggling people start coming.

And Jesus pauses just a moment to look deep into their souls.

And a few people quickly turn into a crowd, and this slam dunking Jesus realizes there's too many people in need of help.

And Jesus feels deep compassion for the crowd that keeps coming.

And so it's time, it's time for his disciples to get on the court.

Jesus gives his disciples a pep talk, getting them ready for the action.

Because the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.

And he gives them God's power and authority to do crazy, amazing miracles.

And since Jesus makes it look so easy, it's gotta be easy for them, right?

But then as Jesus continues, the amazing sounding peppetalk turns into an impossible sounding mission.

Whatever town or village you enter, find out if it is worthy.

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your word, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.

And truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.

It just keeps sounding harder and harder.

And we didn't even keep reading.

They will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues, dragged before governors and kings because of me.

Brother will betray brother to death, and you will be hated by all because of my name.

And when they persecute you in one town, flee to the next.

Flogging and persecution and death.

How can they possibly be ready?

In the movie The Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood are on a mission from God.

Now, Siobhan said I already talked about the Blues Brothers last summer.

But since it's such an iconic movie, and I'm from Chicago suburbs, these blues singing criminals have something more to teach us about God and how to face the world.

And I might just talk about them every summer.

Siobhan?

And just like Woody and Buzz, Jake and Elwood go out into this scary world and it's fraught with challenges and dangers at every turn.

Of course, most of it is probably self-inflicted.

Like Carrie Fisher is Jake's old girlfriend, and she's crazy.

She even blows up their house, their whole apartment building.

But then what do they do?

Just like Jesus says, they emerge from the bricks and they dust off their jackets and they move on to the next place.

When their band is getting restless, they pull into a bar and steal a gig from a Western band.

And now they're chasing them.

The Illinois Nazis become furious at Jake and Elwood after the brothers aggressively run off their rally off the bridge.

And then they also have to evade the cops at every turn.

And they're in the midst of a tough and dangerous world, and every turn they make, getting the band back together seems impossible.

Our world isn't that much different.

It's impossible and dangerous and scary.

We're more isolated than ever.

It's hard to trust the news and the media, politics, whatever side of the aisle you're on, it's super hostile.

If you want to talk about religion, watch out.

Even talking about the weather can be difficult these days.

Christianity in America has changed so much that it's now a different paradigm.

And organizations and churches, you've probably seen it.

We have the 80-20 rule, which uh 80% of the work got done by 20% of the people.

And one expert said post-COVID it's changed to 95.

95% of the work in the finances get done by 25% of the people.

It used to be every church member spent three hours a week at church.

Three hours a week.

One hour in Sunday school, an hour in worship, an hour attending another event.

Now it's changed to three hours every month.

And we can look around, we see it every week.

And there's so many tired and hopeless and struggling people out in our world.

And we're in a time where the harvest is plentiful.

But the laborers are few.

And like the disciples, we're it.

We are the ones who are sent out.

Jesus only enlisted twelve.

There's twelve people here.

Are you ready?

Are we ready to go out into our post COVID challenging and dangerous world?

Now, Jesus doesn't ask the disciples if they feel ready.

He gives them an assignment, gives them power to do it.

And you might have missed one of the best parts of the entire passage.

It's a slight change of Wording starting in Matthew 10, 1, when it says, Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out to cure every disease and every sickness.

These are the names of the twelve apostles.

The twelve disciples are now the twelve apostles.

In fact, apostolos in Greek means one who is sent forth to a messenger or an envoy.

And as Jesus sends them out, now as apostles, he gives each one power and authority and strength.

And each of them is given a partner.

As you read those twelve people, it says this person and that person, this and this and so they each have partners.

And God does this again and again in scripture, not just with the twelve apostles, but for Moses.

Ruth has Naomi, Saul and Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, David and Jonathan, Mary and Martha, Paul and Barnabas.

And God expects people to go out into this world and share love and healing and truth.

God doesn't send these people alone but with a partner.

And with God's power, they do incredible things.

I still love Nintendo video games.

Since I was a kid, I never outgrew them.

And my favorite video game is Zelda.

In the very first game, Link is the hero, and he's on a quest to help the princess Zelda.

And when the opening scene starts, you go into the very first hut, and a character tells him this.

It's dangerous to go alone.

Take this.

And he gives the hero Link a sword.

The quest is fraught with danger and dungeons and castles, but Link doesn't go alone.

Similarly, in Toy Story, Woody and Buzz go out into the dangerous world, and the Blues brothers, Jake and Elwood, go out into the dangerous world.

In scripture, God sends the disciples out.

So they're now apostles and they don't go out alone.

And God equips and sends us out.

We don't have to have it all figured out.

Where do we go first?

Maybe we start out easy and go to the folks we know who aren't here.

Because it's a dangerous and wild world, and we already know them.

And we miss seeing them.

And they need prayers and love and support because our world is tough and scary and hard.

And then we also have to go out to other places.

And it might make us uncomfortable.

But we are sent to people.

And Jesus calls us out into the world that's wild and dangerous to places and people we might not want to go or see.

For on our quest, we hear similarly.

It's a dangerous, it's dangerous to go alone.

Take this.

Instead of a sword, Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit so we don't go alone.

We have our church family and friends to go with.

That's a call to action.

And we might be few just like the apostles, but we are the very laborers that are sent out.

God sends us out together with compassion for people in this dangerous world.

And much like the apostles, we're probably not ready for it.

And like the apostles, Jesus sends us out anyway.

For we're on a mission from God.

It's time for us to go out and do this important work.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

If you found this podcast inspirational and would like to support the First Love Ministry programs at First Presbyterian Church, please send any contributions to First Presbyterian Church at 870 West College, Jacksonville, Illinois.

Our zip code is 62650.

Our phone is 217-245-4189.

You can contact our secretary there between the hours of 9 a.m.

and 4 p.m.

Monday through Friday.

Our email is office at firstfresjaff.org.

That's office at F I R S T P-R-E-S-J-A-S.org.

Now our in-person church services start at 10 a.m.

on Sunday.

Access to our online church service starts at 9.55 a.m.

You can listen to these live services on our Facebook page, which is www.facebook.com slash first F-I-R-S-T P-R-E-S-Jack.

We have a choir that meets from 7 to 8 p.m.

every Thursday night, and we welcome all who are willing to sing.

We look forward to hearing from you either by email, mail, or phone.

God bless.

And may you have a peaceful and safe year.