The Third Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 6A-St. Mary's El Dorado

 The Rev. Canon Melanie Dickson Lemburg

The Third Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 6A

St. Mary’s El Dorado

June 14, 2026

 

       Good morning!  It is a delight to be with y’all on this third Sunday after Pentecost!  I’ve spent a good amount time with your wardens and your vestry, and let me tell you, y’all have got some excellent wardens--they are dedicated and hard-working and they love y’all and this congregation so much!  And y’all have got some really smart, faithful, and committed vestry people.  I have really appreciated working with all of them! You all are in steady hands.   

This past week, I loaded up my car and left my home and my family in Savannah to return to Little Rock, and as I pulled out of my driveway, I realized I didn’t know when I would be back or when I would see my family again.  Now let me be clear.  This sounds much more dramatic than it actually is. You see, we are in the process of trying to buy a house in Little Rock and sell the house in Savannah, and we may be about to get an offer on the Savannah house and we’re waiting to hear more on our offer in Little Rock.  So we do have a plan a and a plan b and a plan c of when we’ll next be together as a family, but it’s all still very fluid right now.

As a result, this week has felt coated in a residue of uncertainty for me. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t really appreciate uncertainty.  Oh, I try. Because I know that uncertainty is a part of life and being able to hold uncertainty is a key part of our spiritual development.  But I don’t like it.  

So this week, my spiritual practice has been to try to pay attention to the ways that I resist uncertainty.  I wonder how you feel about this?  Are you generally comfortable with uncertainty or do you have predictable ways that you try to manage or deal with uncertainty in your life?  Do you freeze in the face of uncertainty or withdraw?  Are you of the “don’t just stand there, do something!” in the face of uncertainty school?  This would look like getting busier and busier, both with things that matter and things that don’t.  Do you try to ignore the uncertainty and pretend everything is normal?  How do you normally engage with uncertainty in your life?  You’ve probably already guessed this about me, but I like to create multiple plans and then attempt to grab the uncertain area by the throat and wrestle it into one of my plans.  (Spoiler alert:  this often does not work well for me.) 

So this week, I’ve been trying to have my plans formulated but to also create space for the uncertainty in my life to dwell alongside me.  And it’s uncomfortable, which tells me that this is probably an area I need to continue to grow in.

The gospel reading and the Old Testament readings have been helpful companions for me this week in my discomfort with uncertainty.  In the story from Exodus, we see the Children of Israel are three months into their wandering in the wilderness.  They are just three months out from their miraculous escape from Egypt and Pharoah’s army, when they walked on the dry land between the parted waters of the Red Sea where God, through Moses, led them to safety.  They have tried to drink bitter water, which God (through Moses) has made sweet for them; they have been hungry and been taught how to gather the manna that God provides for them to eat.  They’ve even been attacked by the Amalekites and saved (again by God and Moses).  But the wandering and the uncertainty is starting to wear on them, and they are feeling the full impact of that way of life.  So God gives the people through Moses a word of encouragement in the form of a covenant:  “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”  

In these words, God is promising the people that just as God has taken care of them and has not let anything happen to them, God will continue to offer them God’s presence and God’s protection.  They are and continue to be treasured by God.  And because of this special relationship, the people have a responsibility to God also.  They are called by God to obedience to God and to keeping the covenant.   And in this call, this invitation, God is giving God’s people the tools to navigate the next 39 years and 9 months of wandering in the wilderness of uncertainty:  Trust God.  Obey God.  Be faithful to God. 

The gospel reading for today from Matthew shows how Jesus sends the disciples out to proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.  This sending out is a result of Jesus’ compassion; he sees that the people are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” so he sends out his disciples as missionaries of good news, telling them to “go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”  And then, Jesus gives the disciples further instruction on how to do this, and it is a master class in uncertainty, in vulnerability.  He tells them:  

“Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff... Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave… If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.” 

He tells them, you’re going to be handed over to the authorities, and when you are, prepare no defense, “for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”

Jesus is sending his disciples out with a call to wander in order to proclaim the good news.  He sends them out without a clear destination (that’s the definition of wandering) and his instructions make it clear that the call to wandering, the call to discipleship, involves a great deal of both vulnerability and uncertainty.  In fact, the call to wandering is, at its heart, a call to uncertainty. 

And again, he offers them the assurance that in the midst of their wandering and their uncertainty, they don’t have to worry because the Holy Spirit is with them, working in and through and around them.  The other key piece to Jesus’s call to the disciples to wander off into vulnerability and uncertainty is that there is a purpose to this uncertainty.  It is to spread the good news of the Kingdom of God and to offer healing and reconciliation in Jesus’s name to those who need it most as inspired by the Holy Spirit.  

So what does this mean for us?  That the call to discipleship, the call to following Jesus is a call to both vulnerability and uncertainty?  Just as I find myself in a season of uncertainty in my life, you at St. Mary’s may also be wandering around a bit in the wilderness of “what’s next?”.  Maybe this season is an important reminder for all of us that we cannot plan or control how or when the Holy Spirit shows up?  (And thank goodness for that because it is often so different/greater/better than our best laid plans!). 

God’s invitation to wander, to uncertainty is God’s invitation to us to trust God, to give our lives over to an unreasonable, unplannable and unplanned hope.  And then to see what sort of space opens up in our lives (of faith) when we live into God’s call to wander, to be uncertain, to be vulnerable, to be faithful, and to trust God—all for the sake of God’s purpose which is the spreading of the good news.  

Your invitation this week is to pay attention to how you encounter uncertainty in your life or in this church?  Pay attention to what is your general disposition toward uncertainty?  How is God calling you to wander, to step into uncertainty for the sake of the good news?  

I can’t wait to see how God’s Holy Spirit shows up and surprises us in our work here together!  May God give us all the power to trust God, to obey God, and to be faithful to God in this coming season.