The Truth will Come Out – 25 June 2023

Matthew 10:24–39

Jesus says that we do not need to be afraid on several grounds. First, the truth will finally be revealed. All will be made right because God is in charge. Additionally, we are more than just bodies subject to destruction. We are part of God's creation and continuing care. As Paul would point out later, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. In sum, we are invited to take the long view. . .

Jesus calls us to testify to the truth, to follow him, to march in testimony to the sovereignty of God who is in heaven. Courage in proclaiming the good news. . . is a common problem. . . Fear of something keeps us silent.

Why is it so hard? . . . God has already won the victory over death and destruction. It is even harder to say that the demonstration of this truth is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Therefore, we do not say it because we want to be accepted and not be the “other” who creates uncomfortable silences. . .

The invitation Jesus gives. . . asks us to live and speak as though the good had already happened, because it has. –– Judith Simonson

Romans 6:1b–11

We have already been raised to new life through the waters of the font. Writing to a church he did not found, Paul could not have assumed what the Roman church understood about baptism. The congregation was both gentile and Jewish. Gentile believers might have believed that baptism effected a mystical union with the deity along the lines of a mystery religion. Jewish believers might have regarded baptism as a turning point in one's life. Paul has deftly combined both views: baptism joins one to Christ and marks a turning point in one's life. As Christ was raised from the dead “by the glory of the Father,” so the believer “walks in newness of life” (the Hebrew halakah is walking in the way of the commandments). This new life is lived both in present (v 4) and in the future resurrection (v 5).

Paul does not discuss baptism as washing but as immersion (“we have been buried with him”). The “old self” is literally Adamic humanity that has died with Christ on the cross. This death is a “death…to sin” and the new life is “life…to God” (v 10). The “body of sin” has been “destroyed” (v 6), but not necessarily for us as individuals. From his experience with the Corinthians Paul knows that the new life cannot be taken for granted. “You must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (v 11). In other words, we must live as though it were so; the death of the old and the birth of the new cannot be taken for granted. –– Frank C. Senn

Jeremiah 20:7–13

In the time of need, God is there. In what way, or ways, does being in need increase our awareness of God's presence? –– John P. Fairless

John P. Fairless is senior minister of the First Baptist Church of Gainesville, Florida.

Frank C. Senn, an ELCA pastor who served Immanuel Lutheran Church in Evanston, Illinois, from 1990-2013, has also taught liturgy courses at a number of seminaries and divinity schools and published thirteen books mostly on the history of the liturgy.

Judith E. Simonson is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Homily Service 41, no. 3 (2008): 63–74.