From Me to You
Genesis 22: 1-14
Matthew 10: 24-39
JUNE 21, 2026 – FATHERS’ DAY
In his essay, “Down at the Cross,” author James Baldwin shares with his readers challenges from his life. He writes about experiences as a 14-year-old that might be reflective of most of us … telling readers how he was “[1]born in a Christian nation” and he wrote that he “supposed that God only existed within the walls of the church. I also supposed that God and safety were synonymous.” And then Baldwin, like many of us travelled out into the world … keeping God entrenched inside those buildings called church …. Shouting out a notion of a Christian nation or perhaps a Christian community … or even a Christian home where Bibles like this one lay dusty and Christ’s teaching the derivative of God’s clear expectations placed neatly into a convenient let’s go to the walls of church on Sunday. Baldwin writes of his transformation into life as he discovered folks from church out in the real world … writing that “[2]the wages of sin were visible everywhere, in every wine-stained hallway, in every scar on the faces, newborn babies brought into the world in danger.”
The essay is a powerful read … the impact of life on an innocent child but on this Father’s Day … on a day when good dads who have good relationships with their children or their grandchildren are rewarded with cards, gifts, and meals out. Dax is all excited they are taking his dad to an ESCAPE ROOM and have bought him STAR WARS things … as he told me last night on the phone. Father’s Day … a day when those of us who have become dads through the birth of children, adoption of children, the fostering of children or in just being good men who have mentored children can pause to consider our passing on of life values maybe of faith too … FROM ME TO YOU KIDS … FROM ME TO YOU.
But Baldwin’s essay sort of tugged at me again when it was featured in a book I am reading, ’44 Poems on Being with Each Other,’ because that book’s author mentioning of Baldwin took me back to that challenging essay I have read more than once in my life. An essay that has me wondering this morning … actually has had me wondering most of the week … church it’s both a good thing and not so good thing to get me wondering but here I am on a Sunday morning I’m wondering once again … his essay begins with a Rudyard Kipling poem and the words of a hymn.
Church … do you wonder? Do you wonder about where you travel with God? Seriously, church … is God part of your journey? Do you often think O GOD … I call on Your Holy Spirit … a message from ME TO YOU my GOD? Do you wonder where God is when your Bible is collecting dust … do you wonder when the world within your reach is alienated from the lessons of the Gospels … do you say anything quoting our Lord holding your Bibles up in love? Oh church do you wonder in this year 2026 why your boldness in faith … your invitations to church … your taking small steps in mission in the name of Jesus Christ … fall silent on the masses in your corner of this world? Are you wondering this morning … on this Father’s Day … wondering if the children are going to come to VBS because you have offered to drive them … because you have invited them and their parents … because you love them? Do you wonder if folks have discovered that your God; our God … is more than a carefully crafted connection for Sunday morning hours in weeks filled with 167 other hours when the message from ME TO YOU … is not about your God connection but about you and the world.
Baldwin quotes Kipling’s words, “By all ye cry and whisper, by all ye leave or do, the silent sullen peoples shall weigh your Gods and you” before immediately quoting the great hymn of the church “Down at the cross where my Savior died, Down where for cleansing from sin I cried, there to my heart was the blood applied. Singing GLORY TO HIS NAME.” And I wonder … silent sullen people weighing the choice God or the world.
We are all about singing GLORY TO HIS NAME … right church? I wonder.
You heard Carla read the words of Jesus Christ this morning … about God’s love for the sparrow … I hope that you have sung “His Eye is on the Sparrow” or if you have been truly blessed, you have heard some amazing voice like Whitney Houston … oh I so recommend that you go to your music stream or YouTube and play Whitney’s version … can’t you hear those words … “I sing because I’m happy; I sing because I’m free. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.” It was written by Civilla Martin and Charles Gabriel … not the Angel Gabriel although I can swear when I hear it sung …it’s like the angels singing … GLORY TO HIS NAME right church?
Do you wonder or do you feel like praising God this morning … can I hear some roof shaking calls GLORY TO HIS NAME … GLORY TO HIS NAME … God’s name, God’s reality, God’s love for each and every human is worthy of our praise. The psalmist whose words are the very last words in Psalms … you can look it up right now in your Bibles if you want to … I’ll give you that pause to turn to the page … PSALM 150 right there in the middle … do you see the words … experience the Spirit … “LET EVERY LIVING THING PRAISE THE LORD!!” And for reemphasis … for a crescendo since the author already said PRAISE GOD WITH LOUD CYMBALS … PRAISE GOD with CLASHING CYMBALS for all metal heads … the AUTHOR has one more space on that parchment … to write PRAISE THE LORD … FRIENDS … GLORY TO THE NAME OF OUR GOD …. PRAISE TO THE LORD … from me … this fractured, troubled, sin-filled man with a laundry list of faults … from ME TO YOU GOD … I offer praise and love and desperately seek to walk humbly in love with You each day … guided by Your Holy Spirit! Are those your words to … you call as you think from ME TO YOU, GOD.
It’s not all that hard is it … We can praise God’s name … we can cherish Jesus Christ and if we choose, we can embrace ourselves in the Holy Spirit knowing that God has everything that we want … God’s heart that’s oh so true … God’s just waiting for us to call on Him and God will send a peace that goes beyond all understanding smiling in heaven and saying, “with love from me to you.”
My wake up call this morning … my first internet interaction was surprisingly not God’s Minute because I was sort of shaken up last night with an extremely rare nightmare moment that I had to sit up to push aside so I opened my phone to discover from the Episcopal Church a simple meme … it said MATTHEW 9:29. I reached for my glasses … it was 3:17 in the morning … found a Bible handy and read, “Then Jesus touched their eyes and said, “It will happen for you just as you have believed.”
I tried to find that meme again when my alarm went off but it’s lost in the internet fog, but God’s Word is never lost from us … I think there was a message for me and for this morning because we need to sense God’s love … God’s reminder that love comes from God to all of us. In Matthew 29 before that verse that took me away from a nightmare, we read of two blind men who had kept moving towards Jesus following him … BLIND but knowing they needed Jesus. Jesus came to another house to rest from His travels and it was there that the blind men approached Jesus and Jesus asked, DO YOU BELIEVE … DO YOU BELIEVE … together they replied YES LORD and He touched them … he healed them … God’s love for them … God’s love for us it is a healing love … it comes down to whether we believe … Jesus said, IT WILL HAPPEN FOR YOU … JUST as you have believed.”
That’s the question that has had me wondering this week … I needed last night’s nightmare and lack of sleep to open my phone to see that meme to read that Scripture it’s as if it was a dream, but our healing will happen JUST AS WE HAVE BELIEVED … I keep wondering but I once again read today’s Gospel message … actually read it a couple of times and maybe when you go home today you can read this simple passage a couple of times too.
Jesus said, “Disciples ARE NOT greater than their teacher …”Jesus said, “DO NOT BE AFRAID of THOSE PEOPLE … what I say to you in the darkness … Baldwin in his essay refers to the darkness of the world, friends that’s where we live in darkness and Jesus is reaching out to us in the darkness of our times and our world declaring “what I say to you in the darkness TELL in the LIGHT and what you hear whispered ANNOUNCE from the ROOFTOPS!”
Jesus was talking to us … His message God’s message and just a little earlier in that same Gospel Jesus had said, “It, God’s healing, will happen for you just as you have believed.” He goes on in the message we heard today … that the Father in heaven already knows about the sparrows and that the hairs on your head are counted .. well that’s easy for some of us …
The key … the essential reminder this morning … from Jesus to us .. “Therefore, EVERYONE WHO ACKNOWLEDGES ME BEFORE PEOPLE … I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. But everyone who denies me before people, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.”
It always comes down to a choice … our choice … we are fortunate enough to have at least heard that God has arms that long to hold us and to keep us by God’s side. If we believe and live through our faith in God and Christ we will be satisfied with God’s peace, which heals our souls. Just call on God … and God’s ready to send God’s salvation to us with love from God to you. AMEN