Simon, Andrew, James…Martin…You! – Matthew 10:1-8 (A Father’s Day Sermon for My Dad)

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Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse lepers. Drive out demons.

Nobody told me that in Confirmation Class.

In the church I grew up in, those words — provocative, dangerous, alive — had been quietly traded in for something far more manageable: go to church, use your pledge envelopes, and keep your nose clean.

Somewhere between Jesus and the institution, the instruction manual got changed.

Let me ask you: How many of you go to church, use your pledge envelopes, and keep your nose — well, pretty much keep your nose clean?

And how many of you heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and drive out demons?

See what I mean?

And the strange thing is — we are wired for adventure. When I go to the movies, I don’t choose a film about pledge envelopes. I go see Indiana Jones. When you think about it, Indiana Jones is essentially about healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, and driving out demons — plus explosions. We love that. We want that. We were made for that.

But then we walk into church, and something shuts off, and we become the most cautious, careful, colorless people who ever drew breath.

Don’t sit in someone else’s pew. Don’t be too friendly. Don’t think too hard. And whatever you do, don’t tap your toe.

The hymn practically writes itself — sung to “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad”:

I want a church just like the church that I was brought up in!
Oh, I loved it so — good ol’ status quo, where action was a sin!
A good old-fashioned church with fellowship!
The Easter crowds we had would make you sick!
Oh, I want a church just like the church that I was brought up in!

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Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse lepers. Drive out demons. That is emphatically not the church I was brought up in.

Why do we retreat from the adventure of faith? Why do we choose a religion of essential meaninglessness over one with the highest possible stakes?

I think it has something to do with self-doubt.

When I read this passage, my first instinct is to say: Well, of course Jesus is talking to Peter, James, and John. The Apostles. The All-Star Team. They walked with him. They learned from the Master himself. They’re the proud, the few, the capital-A Apostles — and I’m just me.

And honestly, I have a hard enough time going to church, using my pledge envelopes, and keeping my nose clean, let alone healing anybody.

But here is the thing Matthew does that stops me cold. He lists their names. Simon. Andrew. James. John. Philip. Bartholomew. Thomas. Matthew the tax collector. James the son of Alphaeus. Simon the Zealot. Judas Iscariot.

He didn’t have to do that. He could have simply said Jesus sent out the twelveand moved on. But he named them. And when I ask myself why, I begin to understand that the naming is the whole point.

These are not heroes. These are people. Ordinary, confused, frequently faithless people who argued about who was Jesus’ favorite, repeatedly admitted they didn’t understand his teaching, and — when the moment of truth arrived — ran away. Every last one of them. This is not the A-Team. This is barely the XYZ-Team.

Matthew names them so that we can do one simple thing: add our own name to the list.

Simon, Andrew, James, John… add your name here.

I’ve added one in the sermon title today. Martin. My father. And if ever there was a frail, ordinary, magnificently flawed human being, it was Martin Singley.

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My dad grew up in a small town in western Massachusetts, in a hard home with a difficult childhood. They say he was a gifted athlete as a boy, but he never got to play competitive ball — he had to work to help support his family. Then came the war, and at 18 he found himself on the islands of Guam and Okinawa.

After the war, he married my mom, his high school sweetheart. Three kids. A career in accounting. A life that, on paper, looked pretty solid. But he carried some personal demons — not least a volcanic temper that could go off like a summer storm.

When we kids came along, Dad finally found his outlet. He became our coach. He was good at it — genuinely good. He taught fundamentals. He spent hours with me in the street in front of our house, trying to teach me how to throw a curveball. And one day I finally threw one that actually broke — right through the windshield of his car. But he was okay with that, because the ball curved.

Competitiveness was his religion. He hated losing with a passion that alarmed umpires. I believe he holds the all-time record for being ejected from games across the most number of sports in recorded history.

His faith, in those years, was exactly the faith we’ve been talking about. Go to church. Use your pledge envelopes. Keep your nose clean. That was it.

And then one weekend, a Faith at Work conference came to our church. I don’t know the details of what happened. What I know is that God’s grace caught up with my father, and Jesus became real to him, and his life began — slowly, imperfectly, genuinely — to change.

He still got thrown out of games. But now he’d call the umpire that night and apologize. He still hated losing. But when his team was safely ahead, he stopped squeezing out bunt singles just to grind the other team into the dirt. Something was different.

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That fall, a fifteen-year-old named David — the star pitcher on my dad’s team — suffered a terrible accident. He and some friends tried to hop a moving train. David missed. His leg was severed just above the ankle.

My dad visited him in the hospital. What do you say to a fifteen-year-old in that moment? Dad told David about God. He brought inspirational books. He held out hope. David wasn’t buying it.

“Yeah, I have a future,” David said. “But I’ll never pitch again.”

My dad didn’t have a speech prepared. He just said what came to him. “David — when you’ve got your prosthetic foot and you’ve finished your rehab and you feel ready, you put on your uniform and you come to the field. You’re still my number one pitcher.”

Days passed. Weeks. Months. A new baseball season came. My dad’s team was in its usual position: in the hunt for first place, every game mattering. Then, on the night of the biggest game of the year, David came limping across the parking lot. He had his glove. He was wearing his uniform. The other kids ran out to meet him.

My dad looked like he’d seen a ghost.

He and David looked at each other for a long moment. Then my dad reached into the ball bag and pulled out the game ball.

“Go warm up,” he said.

Now — those of you who know baseball know that everything in pitching starts in your legs. David’s legs weren’t there yet. Things did not go well. I believe the other team scored somewhere in the range of five hundred runs. The look on my father’s face was something I will never forget. Several times, his eyes drifted toward the bullpen. I could see the competitive instinct rising in him like a tide.

He never made the call.

They lost the game. And from the look on David’s face, the boy had won something that no scoreboard could measure.

And my father? On the day he lost, my father truly won.

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Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse lepers. Drive out demons.

I don’t know if you’ve ever witnessed those things in their biblical form. But I watched them all happen that evening in the life of one fifteen-year-old boy — because one ordinary, flawed, still-becoming man refused to let his fear be bigger than his faith.

That is the calling. Not to greatness. Not to spectacular holiness. Just to this: when you encounter someone in whose life there is brokenness, or death, or exile, or the weight of some dark and grinding force — refuse to reduce the faith to pledge envelopes and clean noses. Take the daring step. Make the daring promise. Hand over the game ball.

And you will find, as my dad found, that your name was always in that list.

Simon, Andrew, James, John… Martin… you.

Go heal the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse the lepers. Drive out demons.

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Happy Father’s Day, Dad!