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.

Mark 10:35-45 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 36 And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 37 And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38 But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” 39 They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” 41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

[sermon begins]

At some point during these last couple of years, some of you may have received an early morning e-mail from me and now know I’m an early riser.  For some unfathomable reason, my brain seems to like those pre-dawn hours best. Recently, on a second cup of coffee and well into my thoughts for the day, my husband Rob came walking into the kitchen searching for his first cup of coffee.  I was watching the sunrise as he casually asked, “What’s on your mind, honey?”  I answered, “I’m pondering the merits of hierarchical leadership versus the ‘liberal’ communal ideal.”  Ever the funny man, he turned on his heel to exit and said dryly, “I’m out.”  Hilarity, laughter until tears, ensued.  Fun, and funny, times.

The point of this story about coffee time in the kitchen is that there is a lot on my mind about leadership and systems – countries, families, and congregations.  Augustana especially.  No surprise there.  Pastor Pederson retired almost a year and a half ago.  Pastor Hytjan is our second interim pastor. We’re a large church in a call process for a Senior Pastor.

Reading the Bible verses today fits right into my current mode of thinking which is tricky territory for a preacher.  You’ll have to help double check my thinking on the way through. Jesus is with the twelve apostles.  They are a group of people, they have a leader.  They are a system.  And they are in an uncertain time.

In the verses just before the ones read today.  Jesus had pulled the twelve aside and told them for the second time that they were headed to Jerusalem where the Son of Man, Jesus, would be handed over to be condemned to death, killed, and would rise again on the third day.  The apostles are understandably concerned about what this means moving forward.  The future sounds terrible, making the current moment uncertain.

I’m curious about James and John.  They have some things right.  Their instinct is to move toward Jesus.  He’s a good place to start.  We learn this in Sunday School.  We sing it in our songs.  When it doubt, head towards Jesus.  If you pick up a pew Bible, and turn to the 10^th chapter in Mark, you’ll find out that James and John come forward to Jesus immediately following his second speech about his death.  The two of them move lightning fast.  It’s like they fly right by the other ten apostles who seem to be frozen in place.  It makes me curious.  Were there conversations between James and John before that point?  Maybe after the first time Jesus talked about his death.  Had they already strategized between themselves to leave the ten out?  Or was it more of a flight or fight response?  Was it reactive rather than thoughtful?

It’s entirely possible that their adrenal glands were kicking into fight or flight and that they didn’t think.  Oh, James and John sounded thoughtful alright.  There were words involved after all.  Interesting aside, just because words are involved, doesn’t mean gray-matter thinking is involved. James and John said to Jesus, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”

James and John want to be at Jesus’ right and left hand in his glory.  This request of theirs compresses Jesus into a two-sided, two-dimensional paper cut-out figure.  More importantly, James and John are also looking to the future to feel secure.  Looking to some future glory, that they do not understand, for security in the moment. But Jesus was onto them.  He replied, “You do not know what you are asking.”  Silly apostles.

In Jesus’ words that follow, the other apostles unfreeze.  They become angry. Fight-or-flight hangover perhaps.  Cortisol hormone still flowing from the fear of Jesus speech about Jerusalem and death.  Nobody knows what to do with the ‘rising again’ comment.  But now the other ten apostles are unfrozen, angry, and they circle up with James and John around Jesus.  Jesus is their leader too after all.

And thank God for Jesus.  Because the apostles are all looking to an indefinable future to feel secure in the now.  Again, thank God for Jesus.  Because Jesus responds to James, John, and the other apostles three-dimensionally.  In effect, Jesus answers James and John’s need for a back to the future safety net by reorienting the apostles back towards each other in the now.  Jesus says, “…whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”

I read an article recently about couples who tend to stay partnered well over time.[1]  There was some research done by The Gottman Institute along with the University of Washington on hundreds of couples to figure out why some couples do well and why some don’t.  They identified behaviors that could predict marital outcomes from staying married happily to staying married unhappily to being divorced.  I’ll save you some time.  And tell you that after years of observation that netted reams of data, these researchers identified kindness as the number one indicator for staying happily married.

There’s one behavior worth mentioning in light of the Bible reading today.  It has to do with “turning toward” and “turning away.”  The research suggests that, in part, good outcomes in a relationship are consistently about turning toward the other person when we’re under stress ourselves.  The all too easy route is to turn away when we are under stress.  To turn away to our phone, to our gardening, to our newspaper, to Facebook, to whatever it is, and to ignore the other person when we’re under stress.  This is true in marriage, in our place of work, in our school, in our churches. It’s true anywhere people are in groups and try to figure things out together.

When James and John are in an uncertain situation.  Their first instinct is to turn away from the other apostles.  We can call it fight or flight.  We can even cast a good intention to it and suggest that they were focused on Jesus.  But the bottom line is that they turned away from their people.  Under pressure, they were not in connection, they were not in a posture of kindness to the other apostles.

The Bible verses in Mark show James and John doing an end-run around the other apostles on their way to Jesus as they seek security in an unknown future.  They are right that Jesus is the person to turn to in an uncertain time.  But it’s the end-run around their people that was problematic.  Jesus reminds James and John and the other ten apostles to look around.  Reorienting them, turning them towards each other and serving like Jesus who came to serve.

To be clear, leadership is good.  A good leader makes a difference in every good system.  As our next Senior Pastor will most certainly be identified, called and make a difference in the future of our congregation for the sake of the gospel.  In the meantime, good people of Augustana, we continue as co-workers in the gospel, in the here and now.  As Jesus reorients James, John, and the ten into the task at hand, Jesus reorients us, too – to continue turning towards each other and to continue serving as Jesus who came to serve.

Jesus does not just hand out a to-do list.  Jesus just handed out a done-for-you list.  This reorientation toward each other is done for us by Jesus.  A done-for-you list, done by Jesus, at Jesus’ own expense, on a cross.  This is a freedom toward each other for our own sake and for the sake of the world.

Christian freedom means that what Jesus has done for you on the cross, Jesus has done for you today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and for all the days ever.  You are made free in Jesus.  James and John were looking to secure their future in an uncertain time.  The promise of God in Jesus is that your future is secure.  You live free today in the love of God, forgiven by the very one who created you, and sent back to the now.  Thank God for Jesus.  Amen.

[1] Masters of Love.  Emily Esfahani Smith.  The Atlantic.  June 12, 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/happily-ever-after/372573/