**sermon art: Rainbow Jesus by Tony Rubino (2020) acrylic on canvas
Pastor Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on June 7, 2026
[sermon begins after the Bible story; see two more readings at the end of the sermon]
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
10 And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
18 While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” 19 And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. 20 Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, 21 for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” 22 Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that moment. 23 When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, 24 he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. 25 But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. 26 And the report of this spread through all of that district.
[sermon begins]
A note on the apartment door said to come on in. Once inside, I noticed that there were shoes lined up inside the door on a towel. My heart sank. I knew the state of my socks because I’d put them on that morning. They were bright pink with a hole starting at the big toe. No one would ever have known because they were confined inside my black boots which were draped by my slacks. [Sigh.] I took off my boots inside the door and added them to the towel. One of my very first hospice patients was also one of my first adult patients. Up to that point I’d worked on pediatric units in hospitals with the proper socks and shoes for such occasions. But my clinical mentor in graduate school said that if I didn’t find my dream job right away in pediatric pain management that I should check out hospice because I’d learn more about symptom management than I’d ever dreamed. Thus, Denver Hospice. Thus, my first ever adult patients. Thus, standing in the living room of a stranger attempting to be professional with holey bright pink socks.
I walked into the next room where the young man in the hospital bed was being tended by a nurse aide. He took one look at me, saw my socks, and burst out laughing. Today, I can feel grateful that my fashion faux pas brought some laughter to his last days. Back then, I was mortified by the absurdity and that I wouldn’t be taken seriously as an R.N.. And I was worried that this young man with advanced Kaposi sarcoma lesions on his face and in the last stages of AIDS would feel disrespected by my ill-conceived sock wear. But that wasn’t the case. Rather, the young man’s laughter at the silly socks became one more step into grace as my world expanded through relationship with someone I never would have met otherwise.
I wonder if Matthew felt a little like that when he looked back on meeting Jesus. Although he had more going on than an awkwardly exposed big toe. He was sitting at his tax collector table, a traitor to his Jewish friends.[1] Tax collectors took profits for themselves as well as Rome. Jesus walks by and restores Matthew with two words. “Follow me.” It’s quite remarkable that Matthew actually follows him. The second remarkable thing Matthew does is throw a party for Jesus with other tax collectors and sinners. We don’t really know if these sinners are people who have been othered for religious or cultural reasons or if they really are bad actors hurting people with intention.[2] Regardless, the party attracts the interest of religious leaders called Pharisees who question Jesus’ disciples about his eating with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus answered their accusatory question himself, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
Jesus’ mercy is BIG. So big that the Gospel of Matthew reveals restorative mercy time and again throughout the story it tells about Jesus. Mercy way bigger than we can conceive overriding any judgment indicting us. Lutheran Christians often use the language of grace and mercy interchangeably—celebrating God’s grace as God’s last word.
After Jesus told Matthew to follow him and defended himself to the Pharisees, another synagogue leader asked Jesus to come help his daughter live. While on the way, a woman who talked to herself and whose blood flowed from her body nonstop for 12 years, reached out from behind Jesus to touch the fringe of his cloak. It’s difficult to convey how edgy, how radically audacious, how desperate this woman was to touch any part of Jesus’ attire or person. We live in a time of hugging and handshaking between all kinds of people across color, gender, religions, and more. In the first century, women on their periods weren’t allowed out publicly and they certainly weren’t allowed to touch men. Tough to imagine those norms but they were very real with serious consequences to life and limb if those norms were breached.
I love the image of this woman crossing all the boundaries to touch Jesus, to take a blessing that she couldn’t ask for.[3] Even better? It worked. Her story is an interesting lens for considering other communities for whom this has been true over time. Communities who took Jesus’ blessings they couldn’t ask for.
As Pride month launches, it’s a good time to remember our queer ancestors in the faith. These folks weren’t allowed to worship in their home churches even to return for family funerals. They couldn’t follow Jesus’ call to ministry as preachers and teachers. In the LGBTQIA+ community, reaching out to secretly touch the fringe of Jesus’ cloak looked like the Eucharistic Catholic Church who began meeting in 1946 led by a Catholic ex-seminarian.[4] Touching Jesus’ fringe in secret also looked like Pentecostal Pastor Troy Perry in 1968, who gathered 12 other faithful Christians into his living room for worship when they weren’t welcome elsewhere and so began the largest grass roots LGBTQ+ movement now called the Metropolitan Community Church.[5] Like the woman in our Bible story today who was blessed and affirmed for her faithful action, these folks secretly came to Jesus to take what was needed by faith.
Why the church history lesson? Because over the centuries, claiming scriptural authority and the authority of Jesus, Christians have taken positions against groups of people based on their identities and used the Bible to do it. In light of Pride Month, it’s good to note that there are only seven instances in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible combined that comment on anything remotely related to homosexuality, and certainly not reflecting our 21st century experience and knowledge of it.[6] Compare this to the 2,000 Bible verses about money and greed; or the over 500 verses about love. Neither the Ten Commandments, nor any of the prophets mention homosexuality. Jesus doesn’t say a word about it in the gospels. Not. One. Word.
Most recently in our congregation, our Welcome Connection Ministry has formed a Guiding Group of queer and straight Augustana folks “to help us listen well, speak honestly, and grow more deeply into the welcome we already experience and proclaim, especially alongside and with the children and adults in the Augustana community who are LGBTQIA+ and/or Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC).”[7]
This work is about becoming who we already are alongside our queer members and staff in a 2,000-year-old tradition that has caused harm in ways that we’ve no wish to perpetuate by accident of habit or unexamined practices. There may be awkward moments akin to taking off my black boots to reveal a holey pink sock that fit the moment only because my hospice patient’s laughter was full of grace and good humor. There may be other moments more painful than awkward in which the depth of our grace will be tested.
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus commits acts of restorative mercy as he did flagrantly with the call of Matthew the tax collector, as he did quietly with the shamed and bleeding woman, and as he did publicly with the synagogue leader’s daughter. Many of us fit in at least one of those examples of our ancestors in the faith, restored daily in Christian community by the audacity of Jesus who calls us together to be his body in the world, excluding no one.
Like the prophet Hosea, we are drawn by God’s steadfast love through liturgical repentance into the restorative mercy of justice and righteousness.[8] Like Abraham, we are “hoping against hope” that God’s promises and reliability hold true against our doubts, fears, and fatigue.[9] Our faith rests on the grace of God revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord who radically restores us to God and to each other for the sake of the world God so loves. Thanks be to God and amen.
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[1] Danny Zacharias, Associate Dean and Professor of New Testament Studies, Acadia Divinity Studies, Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26. Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary
[2] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Commentary Podcast on Bible readings for 6/7/26. #1087: Second Sunday of Pentecost – June 7, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary
[3] Cody Sanders, Professor of Congregational and Community Care Leadership, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Commentary Podcast on Bible readings for 6/7/26. #1087: Second Sunday of Pentecost – June 7, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary
[4] Livia Gerson, The Origins of LGBTQ-Affirming Churches – JSTOR Daily, March 23, 2021.
[5] Sanders, ibid.
[6] Peter J. Gomes. The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart (New York: HarperCollins Publisher Inc., 1996).
[7] The Tower (Augustana’s Monthly Newsletter), “Becoming Who We Are: Alongside and with LGBTQIA+ persons and people of color in our community.” May 2026, Volume 50, No. 5, page 7.
[8] Bo Lim, Associate Professor of Old Testament, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA, USA. Commentary on Hosea 5:15-6:6. Commentary on Hosea 5:15-6:6 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary
[9] Sanders, ibid.
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Hosea 5:15—6:6
until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face.
In their distress they will beg my favor:6:1 “Come, let us return to the Lord,
for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us;
he has struck down, and he will bind us up.
2 After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
3 Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord;
his appearing is as sure as the dawn;
he will come to us like the showers,
like the spring rains that water the earth.”
4 What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes away early.
5 Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
I have killed them by the words of my mouth,
and my judgment goes forth as the light.
6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
Romans 4:13-25
16 For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, 17 as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. 18 Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So shall your descendants be.” 19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 Therefore “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” 23 Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone 24 but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, 25 who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.