Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on July 5, 2026

[sermon begins after two Bible readings; Zechariah reading is after the sermon]

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 [Jesus spoke to the crowd saying:] ¹⁶ “To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,
¹⁷ ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’
¹⁸ “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; ¹⁹ the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
²⁵ At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; ²⁶ yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. ²⁷ All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
²⁸ “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Romans 7:15-25a  I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But in fact it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.
²¹ So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³ but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ^25a Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

[sermon begins]

Happy bisesquicentennial! Or is it a happy sestercentennial? Or maybe it’s quartermillenial. Or perhaps you agree with the United States’ official term semiquincentennial. As a word-nerd, I prefer the former-most term. Bisesquicentennial packs poetic punch along with an insanely impressive number of syllables. Regardless, they all mean the same thing. These words denote the 250-year mark of a date or event like the 250^th celebration of our country’s Independence Day from England. Americans in the United States commemorate our democracy that began as a fledgling republic. On King Charles’ recent trip to the states in April, he noted, “The [Founders] were bold and imaginative rebels with a cause. Two hundred and fifty years ago, or, as we say in the United Kingdom ‘just the other day,’ they declared Independence.”[1]

“Just the other day” to many countries around the world, we are a country with youthful idealism about democracy and especially about freedom. These foundational ideals inspired passionate freedom movements that changed our civic life together over the past 250 years. Some of these movements were led by non-religious humanists and others were led by citizens across the religious spectrum. The shared ideal and essence of the conflicts often boiled down to who our countries’ freedoms are for. We can call this civic freedom or state freedom.

One challenge for Christians in the United States is that we talk about Christian freedom in the church. We are made free by what Jesus did and who Jesus is. But it’s difficult to tease apart these two freedoms because we interpret the separation of church and state to mean that we can’t talk about them in the same breath. Alas, this means that we don’t get to practice talking about these two major identities in our lives. Being an American AND being a Christian.

I am both. No shock there. I love my country, the place of my birth. I love our shared story, and I love our millions upon millions of different stories even as I lament historical and present day suffering caused by my country. I’m a patriot who appreciates the Framers’ founding documents that promise freedom then and now. I cry when I sing our national anthem and our black national anthem. I’m inspired to do better when I hear the stories of people and communities from whom freedom is withheld by habit or trampled by malice. I love that we can gather on Sunday mornings to worship, as do my Jewish family members who light Shabbat candles on Friday evenings, as do my Muslim friends who pray multiple times a day. I’m grateful for family and strangers who have served in the United States military who have protected all our freedoms.

Civic freedom is complex. Christian freedom is also. A couple of Sundays ago, Pastor Michael preached about Christian freedom. He said, “The strange promise of the gospel is that when God occupies the center, other loves are…freed. [Jesus] wants to free our congregation, our nation, and every other good gift from having to carry a weight they were never meant to bear. When God is first, everything else is finally free to be what it actually is. Not less loved, but more rightly loved. Not diminished, but liberated.”[2] Pastor Michael’s sermon caught my ear in a particular way because I was already working with our scripture for today and the confusion from conflating our civic freedom and our Christian freedoms.

Jesus’ preaching in our Bible reading this morning challenges his listeners, the crowds. The missing verses from today’s reading include Jesus’ woes to unrepentant cities. Cities who rejected Jesus’ deeds of power that gave sight to the blind, healed the lame, and raised the dead. Into the cultural chaos of unrepentant cities, Jesus commanded his listeners. He said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” The language of the scripture is an imperative. Jesus is not suggesting or inviting or sweet-talking the crowds. In the Greek, he speaks in the imperative tense of command. “Come to me…” He commands the weary. In Jesus’ command to “come to him’ he also says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.”

The language of “yoke” was often used by Jewish rabbis as a symbol for Torah and teaching. Yokes were used by farmers to connect animals to harness their power for heavy lifting beyond human capacity. It makes some sense that Jesus would use it with his listeners here. He leads his followers into the heavy lifting of loving God, loving self and neighbor, feeding the hungry, caring for widows and orphans, and setting the prisoners free. Jesus aligns himself with centuries of Jewish tradition as he commands the crowds to learn from him because, in his words, “I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

A gentle and humble Jesus’ described his yoke as easy, and his burden light. He didn’t, and doesn’t, use violence to take his listeners by force or fear. He commands in freedom. Christian freedom. Freedom to be on the way of Jesus, to live by faith, not to live by the sin to which we are bound.

Which gets us to Paul’s letter to the Roman church in the Bible’s book of Romans. He wrote, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…Now if I do what I DO NOT want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.” Paul wasn’t having a crisis of confidence. Elsewhere he wrote about being an upstanding Roman citizen and a righteous Jew.[3] Paul’s writing here captures a truth about sin that many of us experience. We don’t seem to be able to solve sin ourselves—our own sin much less the sin of others. Sin describes our separation from God that leads to sins, plural. Sins that include violence against our very own selves and inflicts ourselves on the people around us. Violence is anything that is the opposite of the love we’re yoked to in Jesus. The paradoxical yoke of Jesus that binds us to obedience in love and for love as we are freed by faith into his love.[4]

Freed by the yoke of Jesus into naming my sin that separates me from God and other people also allows the wide-angle view of how my sin becomes cooperative and systemic, even intentional through willful ignorance. We are social creatures. It makes sense that our individual moral failings combine to form social systems that bind us further into what we do not want.[5] Big examples include the intentionality of the opioid epidemic or tech algorithms that change our neurobiology.[6] Insidious, quieter examples are local and national laws and legislation that make it hard to feed our families or take care of our bodies or recover our lives after being in prison or to find places of rest.

Our 21^st century moment is moving fast and can feel exhausting. Jesus’ promises rest for our souls. Souls are the deepest part of ourselves. The soul is often how we describe where God connects with us. There’s so much coming at us that demands our identities right through our souls. And before we’re aware of it, we’ve squandered our Christian freedom and foundational identity in Jesus Christ. No longer are guided in faith by the One who teaches us to follow his gentle humility. We unyoke ourselves from the One who commands us to love and pray for our enemies only to become the very worst of our enemies. We unyoke ourselves from the One who frees us from sin, as the Apostle Paul writes in Romans, only to be “at war with the law of [our minds], making [us] captive to the law of sin.”[7] We unyoke ourselves from the One who revealed on a cross that vicious insults and violence have only one end–death.

Jesus commands us to learn from him, he who is gentle and humble in heart. Jesus was the embodiment of our reading from Zechariah—a humble, triumphant king riding on a donkey leading “prisoners of hope.”[8] You may remember hearing that verse quoted on March 29^th in the Palm Sunday Gospel reading from the 21^st chapter of Matthew.[9] Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time before he was executed in a plot concocted by religious and Roman leaders. The crowds, prisoners of hope, celebrated his arrival as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

We, too, are prisoners of hope given a foundational identity in Jesus Christ – our humble, triumphant, non-violent king. We who are weary are commanded to come to Jesus with our heavy burdens to learn from him and rest our exhausted souls. Yoked with Jesus we are freed to share repentance, forgiveness, wisdom, gentleness, and humility. These are gifts given as promise for God’s sake, for our sake, and for the sake of the world. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”[10]

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[1] King Charles III, The King’s Full Address to Congress on April 26, 2026. King Charles’ speech to Congress: Read full transcript – NBC New York

[2] Michael Tassler. Matthew 10:24-39 – Hanging Our Hearts. Augustana Lutheran Church. June 21, 2026. https://www.youtube.com/live/twgH_7qfBxc?si=lqmR3htIAcV_tbhz minute 24:34.

[3] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Podcast discussion on the worship readings for July 5, 2026. #1091: Sixth Sunday after Pentecost – July 5, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[4] Karoline Lewis, Professor of Biblical Preaching, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Podcast discussion on the worship readings for July 5, 2026. #1091: Sixth Sunday after Pentecost – July 5, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[5] Cody J. Sanders, Associate Professor of Congregational and Community Care Leadership, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Podcast discussion on the worship readings for July 5, 2026. #1091: Sixth Sunday after Pentecost – July 5, 2026 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[6] Ibid.

[7] Romans 7:23

[8] Zechariah 9:12

[9] Matthew 21:1-11

[10] Romans 7:25a

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Zechariah 9:9-12 Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
¹⁰ He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
¹¹ As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
¹² Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.