June 21, 2026

Good Lord, these readings are tough. So I'm going to talk to you all about the World Cup for a moment. I grew up in a land where baseball was absolute king. But besides that and Notre Dame football, the only other sport I've ever seriously followed is soccer. And I have a lot of thoughts about the Federation Internationale de Football Association, otherwise known as FIFA. They're by and large not a terribly upstanding organization, to put it mildly. And the various machinations through which they determine host countries for the World Cup and select the matches and arrange them seems very suspect.

And yet, every four years, it's as if the world rallies around this experience. It is as though we come together in this generous and open cross-cultural exchange. I know fans travel to things like the Olympics, too. But there is just something about the way fans interact and encounter each other's cultures during the World Cup that is unlike any other sporting event or even prolonged cultural engagement on Earth.

This year, international players and fans have streamed into the United States from all corners of the globe. And I have some quiet optimism that this might just break open the festering jingoism and isolationism that we have been struggling with as of late in this country. From everyday Jayhawkers warmly and enthusiastically embracing the Algerian national team in Lawrence, Kansas, to a group of Texans treating a Japanese man to his first life-changing taste of Texas brisket, we have seen over and over again the joy with which people from all walks of life are finding things to love about the U.S. and the joy and spark, too, of renewed openness that so many Americans are finding in being gracious and loving hosts to the world.

My absolute favorite video so far is of an Australian comedian and football fan named Nathan Ragclaw raving about Waffle House. With all sincerity, and maybe a little bit of jest, he proclaims, "If Waffle House came to Australia, they would take over. All the food's super fresh, and you can look right into the restaurant while they cook the food in front of you. Like, you can see them cooking your bacon. It's like teppanyaki, but with nicer food." I'm not sure, but sure.

And in a rather strange way, this brings me back to our readings today. If we step back and take Jesus' admonitions in total in the Gospel of St. Matthew, we need not get specifically fixated on this difficult language of familial alienation. What Jesus is saying here is that he is bringing not the staid, illusory peace of the world, of the routine, of the status quo, but he is bringing the peace of God with the sword of righteousness. He is bringing new life and transformation to all quarters. He is rightly pointing out that often our greatest resistance to such transformation are our settled and comfortable relationships and settled and comfortable ways of being that keep us closed off from what God is doing.

"Whoever loves [fill in the blank] more than me is not worthy of 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," Jesus says. It is not a matter of loving or not loving. It is a matter of loving in its proper context. To be a part of what God is doing, we have to see our own context, our own lives, passions, families, with new and fresh eyes—like, if you can, even seeing something as uninspiring to us as Waffle House with the wonder of fresh perspective.

In several weeks from now, we will read almost to the end of St. Matthew's 13th chapter. But the lectionary editors dumbly cut off the reading right before Jesus repeats a well-known saying in first-century Jewish life: "Prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house." This is not dissimilar from what he says today. The 5th-century doctor of the church, St. John Chrysostom, observed that Jesus said these kinds of things to help us focus on the kingdom of God just at the point where love might be most tempted to hinder it.

"Just at the point where love might be most tempted to hinder it." What an odd turn of phrase. As I said a moment ago, I think that one of the most meaningful parts of the World Cup this year is the way in which folks are being opened anew to the beauty and goodness of our country at a time when there's a lot to not like. And we are being given an opportunity to move outside of our narrow perspectives and see our own context differently with transformed eyes. And sometimes the challenge of that movement can be deeply rooted in the comfort of the familiar and familial—the things we most love in this world.

And what a strange thing it is, too, to wrestle with such a notion on this Sunday of Father's Day. But also, rest assured that whatever difficulty this presents us, it would have been doubly or even triply the case for Jesus' first-century audience. The family unit was one of the most important foundations in society. And Jesus reordering those foundations must have been profoundly disorienting for the hearers of this admonition.

It makes sense then that fear is named and acknowledged here. And I want to speak to that for just a moment. So much of what I've talked about this morning is in some form or fashion a nuancing of these difficult and challenging ideas—not dismissing them, but again putting them in their proper context. Moving beyond just fathers and reflecting for a moment on men in general in our society and country today, there is an endless stream of social and cultural thought pieces pumped out about the physical, mental, spiritual health of men today. I want to honor the place that that is coming from. Many men, many fathers are feeling adrift and disoriented by the challenges and pressures of the world in this moment.

But unfortunately, even within the church, there is often this bifurcated response presented: Be strong. Do not be weak. Be in control. Do not be subservient. Do not fear under any circumstance. And if we cherry-pick isolated verses, even verses in today's gospel, we can see where such admonitions might come from. But what does Jesus fully say? Have no fear of the forces of this world; rather fear him who has ultimate power.

As the Rite I, the traditional language version of our Collect of the Day—that prayer we began the service with—as it renders that prayer, it says, "make us have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy name." It uses fear instead of reverence. It is not, as is so often presented in male discourse today, the strength of fearlessness and the weakness of fearfulness, but it is the fullness of human emotion put in its proper context, its proper place. And that nuance, that truth of the complexity of lived experience is at the heart of living fully into the call we have as Christians in the world today.

What does it mean to be alive to God in Christ Jesus, as St. Paul talks about? It means being in the world and seeing the world for what it is—recognizing honestly the brokenness and incompleteness of the things of this world, of FIFA, of the church, of our own families, our own passions and loves, of our human understandings of peace, of our human understandings of fear. But then, in all of that, ultimately, letting the fullness of God's reality, the fullness of his love, his peace, his kingdom, envelop and transform us.

Not to live in alienation to one another, but in full embrace of each other—in the fullness of true love, of true fear, of true peace. And in so doing, we will see the world with transformed eyes. Not just the world out there writ large, but the world immediately around us: our own communities, our own families, our own selves. And maybe, just maybe, Waffle House too.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.