July 5, 2026 | Word Out!
Download the Bulletin from July 05, 2026
READINGS
First Reading: Zechariah 9:9-12
9 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.
Second Reading: Romans 7:15-25a
15 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!
Gospel: 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.”
SERMON—Guest Pastor Rachel Ringlaben
[sung] Listen, listen. Be open, O my heart. Listen, listen. Be open, O my heart.
How many times have you been misunderstood; labeled something that does not fully describe who you are? What neighborhood you live in; perhaps you had it assumed you are known only by one factor of your personality: your gender identity, your sexual orientation, your immigration status, your ethnicity, your nationality, married or single, to what political party you belong—and the list goes on and on. And these facets, while they are part of who you are, could never name the complexity of who you are wholly. Because when we generalize based on a minimum amount of information, that’s called a stereotype.
And Jesus and John were victims of stereotyping here. The crowds behave like taunting children, singing, “Nanny Nanny Boo Boo” to Jesus and John; saying, “Hey, when we want you to lighten up, we say ‘you’re too strict.’ And when we want you to be strict, when you loosen up and sit and eat with sinners, we tell you to ‘get serious and stop backsliding;’ and when you fast, we call you ‘holier than thou,’ and then when you eat like the rest of us, we call you ‘a hypocrite.’”
Instead of having a firsthand encounter with God’s chosen person on earth, they stare from afar and point at superficial distinctions. Jesus tells them, “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” Now, in New Orleans-speak, where I’m from, we say, “When you know better, you do better.”
Instead of letting people be bound by their stereotypes of Him, Jesus says, “Would you rather stick to your stereotype and watch me from afar, or would you rather pull up a chair, spend some time with me, learning about me from me; taking a rest from trying to put me in a box—because really, to know and see someone, you must spend time with them and learn who they are. So come to me. ‘Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. I am gentle, and you will finally be at peace with yourself.’ Because when you know better, you love better. So rest in your confession and absolution. Take a breath, and then take up the cross again. “
Especially this weekend in particular, many Christians are taking some time to take a good hard look to confess the implicit and explicit ways that we have perpetuated racism and white supremacy in our country. We are confessing and listening and learning the truth. And now we are asking for the wisdom to do better. We are asking Jesus, our Rabbi from Nazareth, to teach us as we rest in Him. “Come to me,” Jesus says. And then we hear Jesus, when we hear Him speak, we also hear the Spirit whisper, as she did through the prophet Zechariah, who told us, “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope. Today I declare that I will restore to you double.”
But we have to return home to Jesus to rest. And before we can learn, we have to unlearn, because wisdom learned in the shade of Christ focuses our attention beyond our blindness. In Jesus’ day, the yoke of the rabbi was the instruction to be obedient to the Torah. So, when you know the law better, you do better. And when we get to know Jesus, the “Word made flesh” better, we also get to know ourselves better, too.
So, what about us? What have we learned from Jesus this past month? What have we learned about ourselves? What have we learned about our neighbors?
Jesus says to us, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Exchange your yoke of self-serving stereotypes that keep people at a distance; for the yoke of my discipleship extends to all people. My burden of love and justice is lighter than the yoke of racism and transphobia and homophobia and misogyny and all other phobias and -isms that tear you apart. So integrate what you learn from me. Reflect my character. I will help you know better, to do better. Take upon you my yoke and learn from me, and I will show you what it looks like to be my disciple—where love is the way of life.”
But as Paul describes, we fall at Jesus’s feet because we know that we do the things we don’t want to do, and we relent and drag our feet in doing that which we are called to.
So Jesus is giving us rest, to have communal hearing and healing, because not only does Jesus promise us rest in the company of God, but Jesus brings forth restoration. Because to really know and see someone, we must spend time with them.
As a pastor working with the General Commission on Religion and Race, with the United Methodist Church, and with multicultural and cross-cultural ministries across the United States and the globe, helping dismantle stereotypes is a huge part of my job. It’s a huge part of how to help congregations communicate and be in relationship with each other, and one of my greatest joys as a consultant for congregations is helping them see the opportunities to be changed by the time shared among people different from them. They must take time to overcome stereotypes of one another, stereotypes of what a pastor looks like, stereotypes of immigrants, of Northerners and Southerners, of Democrats and Republicans, and everything in between.
And as I share cups of coffee, or chai, or arroz con leche, or mate, with our partners in ministry, we take time to spend time together. We make time to actually see each other, and we both delight, and huff and puff, at the ridiculousness of a God who calls such diverse people to collaborate together in the mission of the church.
But we have to move past stereotypes to be in relationship, and for that we have a great rabbi to teach us. In the whirlwind of anger and injustice and loneliness and bigotry and indignation and complacency and confusion that continues to plague us, especially the church, God longs, even in the midst of that, to meet us and teach us a better way. Jesus says “a gentle and humble way,” a way that moves us to lay down our self-declared titles, or the names that people thrust upon us that weren’t ours to begin with, and we learn the whole story, and unlearn half-truths.
I often imagine Jesus’s voice much like my kindergarten teacher, Miss Ball, as she would beckon us to hang up our backpacks and place them on the hooks, and for us to take a place in the multicolored carpet in the middle of the room, and sit and listen to her teaching us stories. “Come, come,” she’d say, “children, come to me. Come learn a story. Come, let me tell you a story.”
But can you imagine how distracting it would be if we sat on the carpet trying to learn and listen with our backpack still on? And Jesus, the Rabbi, knows this. He knows that we need to be unburdened to learn and to listen. We need to be able to lay down our sin to take up forgiveness.
And Jesus, our Rabbi, desires to gather us in a place where we can be stilled and quieted, and confronted, and swept up by the story that we were born anew in the waters of baptism, to be a part of: the story of the Magnificat that Mary sings to us, the story of toppling oppressive empires, the story of slaves being made free, the story of crossing deserts, the story of God dwelling with the outcasts… And as we sit and learn from Jesus, we will also unlearn the hard narratives of our hardened hearts and closed minds. And God’s redemptive and creative work will take shape within the very world we live.
So, may we, just like kids in Miss Ball’s kindergarten class, may we hang up what is hanging us up. May we sit in front of Jesus, our crucified and risen Rabbi. May we be transformed. May we be overjoyed. May we be made whole, and may we live at rest in Jesus, so that we can go about the work of the Kingdom of God manifesting in this place, and in all places where God will carry us. May we, dear brothers and sisters, find a way to rest, to unlearn, so that we can learn anew, and so that God can transform the world through us.
Amen.