I have a confession to make. I am a Tennessee Vols fan, which I know is nearly a cardinal sin here in the Diocese of Lexington, but it is my birthright as one who was born and raised with the sounds of “It’s football time in Tennessee” in the background as the Kello family did our Saturday morning chores. Another confession, is I’m not really a sports person, but these past few weeks have sort of radicalized me with the stories of the Knicks winning the NBA Finals with a group of friends on the team playing from college to professional ball, not to mention the father-son hug that made me cry about a team I did not really care about a week or so before hand. And then you’ve got the World Cup being hosted in the U.S. And honestly, I was nervous for the people coming into our country, but as I saw many people noting the world didn’t need the World Cup to come to the United States, but the United States needed the World Cup to come to us. For weeks, we’ve been able to see parts of our country that we know to be true but are so deeply hard to believe in the wake of the heaviness of news, which is so easy to believe. And I have one more confession, if y’all can oblige it: I am uncharacteristically and deeply hopeful about just about everything right now.
Maybe that doesn’t sound like a confession, but in truth, I’m really a “shadow proves the sunshine” kind of Christian, but lately I’ve just been wanting to shout from the rooftops about the hope that I feel. I frame this as a confession, in part, because I do believe our confessions free us and ought to be done in the pursuit of God’s true liberation. In that vein, I confess that it feels like I’ve been hearing whispers of hope all over, and I am ready to shout about it, even though things are, in truth, very bad in many ways and for many people. But things being very bad and powerfully hopeful is sort of key to the message of the Cross, and central to just about everything we do.
Perhaps this is why as I have been praying with the Gospel text set for today from Matthew’s account that I have been so drawn to Jesus’ description on the cost and realities of discipleship. There is something so powerful in Christ telling the disciples shortly before he leaves them that we shouldn’t fear those who malign the work we do in Christ’s name. There is something deeply empowering about hearing Christ’s command to proclaim the Good News from the housetops, even if it is merely whispered. Beloveds, there is something overwhelmingly tender about Christ describing the hairs upon our head being counted to relay God’s loving embrace.
But just as all of that is true, so true is that our Christ did not come to this world to pacify a sense of complacency with relationships that are unjust, where the relationships are built upon the systems of the world, not even families are too sacrosanct to avoid the critique of Christ’s standard of how we ought to treat each other. The most important thing Christ came to bring was love, not peace, as he says, and it is a love worth fighting for. And to add just a bit of confusion, Christ tells his disciples – his friends – and in truth, tells us – that the point of following him is not even understanding what we are doing. It’s not knowing we or finding ourselves, but it is about losing ourselves in the common good. Paradoxically, Christ says, that is the only way to find your life, is to lose it.
In my religious journey, I have a complicated relationship with some passages, usually they are the ones from St. Paul, but occasionally a Gospel writer will sneak in there too. The lectionary passage from Matthew today is chock full of one-liners that are easy to lean upon, pull out of context, or to use to proof-text vast and varied theologies, but I think what matters most about this passage, at least for today, is that God is present with us in the complex realities of all that it means to be human. And yet, in that complexity, Christ challenges us to stand in the middle of the struggle and to amplify whispers of hope and shout it from rooftops. Christ challenges us to trust that what is done in the dark will come to the light, and that the injustices of this world that are covered will be uncovered.
In my work as Canon Missioner last Fall, I led a group of folks from the Diocese to Montgomery and Selma on pilgrimage to Civil Rights Sites. Part of my introducing myself to the group was to name one of the greatest gifts my maternal grandmother ever gave me was being openly racist until she died in 2008. There was no pretending, there was no covering, and my family had to choose to go along with it or stand up to it. My parents actively had to choose to hear the whispers of God’s belovedness of all people and then spent their college years working in the projects and ghettoized neighborhoods in Nashville to actively break the generational curse of white supremacy. Friends, we are in a collective season of what has been covered being uncovered, and it is deeply painful for so many, and for a lot of differing reasons.
But, know this–no matter how loud those who wish to remain in the dark with the covers over their head shout; no matter how deep the desire to remain blind to God’s encompassing and empowering love is; there is no one, no matter their position or place of power–no one can outpace the powerful whispers of the Holy Spirit which moves in our world. Not one soul in this world can outrun the unrelenting hope of the Cross. It is our task as disciples to pay attention to the whispers, to the places of darkness, and to climb up on every metaphorical rooftop we can and proclaim what has been made known to us in the quietness of the breaking of the bread. It is our role as the church to go out into this world, and remind those who are too weary to hope that darkness is not all that there is, that there is more to this world than fear and suspicion of our neighbor, there is a Way of Love, but it does cost us something. It costs us being willing to stand on the rooftop, to be willing to be uncomfortable to fight for love and justice, to choose the collective good over our individual concerns, and yes, it will even cost us to lose our lives as we know them. What better cost is there to pay than this for us to be able to walk together as Christ’s disciples, proclaiming the unrelenting hope of the Cross from every rooftop we can find, especially when we get to do it together.
A sermon delivered to the people of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Winchester, Kentucky on June 21, 2026 for Proper 7A on Matthew 10:24-39.
Becca Kello 