Sunday Closest to June 22
Proper 7
Year A
RCL
Genesis 21:8-21
Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
Romans 6:1b-11
Matthew 10:24-39
Found in the Desert and Free from the Tomb
By +Brian Ernest Brown, CWC
Every single one of us has a deep, underlying fear of being completely cast out. We fear being excluded from our social circles, being misunderstood by the people we love, or waking up one day to find that we are completely on our own, navigating a harsh and unforgiving world. We look for security in our families, our reputations, and our comfort zones because the thought of being discarded or forgotten makes us feel incredibly vulnerable. We often manage our lives by trying to please everyone around us, wearing whatever masks are necessary, just to ensure that we never find ourselves left out in the cold.
Our readings today drop us directly into the middle of spaces where people have been completely cast out, and they challenge us to look at what happens when our false securities shatter and we are forced to rely entirely on the grace of God.
In our first reading, we find a heartbreaking domestic tragedy playing out in the tents of Abraham. Hagar, an enslaved Egyptian woman, and her young son Ishmael, are abruptly cast out into the wilderness because of family jealousy and rivalry. Abraham hands her a bit of bread and a skin of water, and she is forced to wander into the barren desert of Beersheba.
Think about the absolute terror of Hagar’s situation. She has no wealth, no status, and no legal protection. When the water in the skin is gone, she drops her dying boy under a bush, walks away so she does not have to watch him perish, and lifts up her voice to weep. She has reached the absolute end of her human resources. She is in a literal and spiritual desert, completely abandoned by the family she served.
But look at how God responds. The text says that God heard the voice of the boy, and an angel calls to Hagar from heaven, saying, What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand; for I will make a great nation of him. And then, God opens her eyes, and she sees a well of water. She fills the skin, gives the boy a drink, and the text notes a beautiful baseline truth: God was with the boy, and he grew up in the wilderness.
This story reveals something profound about the character of God. God is not a distant deity who only hangs out in the tents of the powerful, the put together, and the successful. God is a tracker who pursues the outcast into the desert. He hears the quiet cry of a dying child under a bush when everyone else has written them off. He turns a barren wasteland into a place of springs because His mercy refuses to show partiality.
This radical shift from death to new life is exactly what Paul is hitting home in his letter to the Romans. Paul wants us to understand that through our baptism, we have experienced a structural relocation that is even more dramatic than Hagar finding a well in the desert.
Paul writes, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
Think about the architecture of your identity today. Paul is telling you that your old life, the life defined by your past mistakes, your enslavement to the opinions of others, your bad habits, and your frantic need to control your own destiny, has been completely buried in the tomb with Jesus. You are no longer under the thumb of sin or fear. You carry the very resurrection life of Christ inside your lungs.
Because of this baseline reality, Paul says you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. You do not have to live your week out of a place of defensive anxiety or spiritual panic. The tomb is empty, the chains are broken, and you have been set free to walk in total liberty.
This brings us straight into the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus prepares His disciples to carry this liberating truth out into a hostile world. Jesus is incredibly honest with His friends. He tells them plainly that if people have maligned the master of the house, they will certainly malign the disciples. Choosing to live the upside down way of the kingdom, the way of humility, radical inclusion, and sacrificial love, will inevitably cause friction with a culture that values leverage, tribalism, and self preservation.
But right into the middle of that intimidating forecast, Jesus repeats a command three separate times: Do not be afraid.
He tells them, Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. And then He paints this incredibly tender, rustic picture of how the Father watches over us: 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.
Jesus is redefining the nature of true security. The world tells you that you are safe only when you have zero risks, plenty of money, and total control. But Jesus looks at a tiny, cheap sparrow and says that even its passing is noticed by the Creator of the universe. You are fiercely loved, intimately known, and completely secure in the hands of the Father, no matter how chaotic or hostile the landscape around you becomes.
And then Jesus drops a radical challenge about what it means to follow Him: Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
To find your life means to cling frantically to your old securities, your comfort zones, and your masks to protect yourself from being cast out. But Jesus says that path leads to a quiet spiritual death. True life is found only when you are willing to lose your grip on your own control, take up your cross, and step out into the unknown behind Him.
The Psalmist captured this total, defiant trust in the middle of trouble in Psalm 86 when he sang, Turn to me and be gracious to me; give your strength to your servant, and save the child of your serving girl. Show me a sign of your favor, so that those who hate me may see it and be put to shame, because you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.
So, where are you sitting in the desert today? What is the area of your life where you feel cast out, forgotten, or completely overwhelmed by a situation you cannot fix through your own sheer exhaustion? It might be a parenting dynamic that leaves you feeling inadequate, a secret worry about your health, or a profound loneliness that you keep hidden behind a successful, busy exterior.
Hear the good news of this day. You are not a spiritual orphan lost in a wasteland. The God who found Hagar in the desert and raised Jesus from the tomb is standing right beside you in the middle of your ordinary, messy week. He has counted every hair on your head, and He looks at your life with a fierce, protective tenderness.
Stop trying to manage the entire universe on your own limited strength this week. Drop your defenses, step out of the bushes of your fear, and trust the baseline love of Christ who holds your times in His hands. Walk out of those doors today ready to lose your life for His sake, confident that the well of His grace will never run dry, and that He is guiding your steps every single mile of the journey.
Amen.