Isaiah 66:10-16
Psalm 66
Galatians 6:1-10,14-18
Luke 10:1-12, 16-20
Jesus said to them. "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, . . . "
Ha! There, brothers, do ya hear it? "Carry no purse!" This is where Jesus condemns the drag queens! . . . And the good church ladies with big hair and bigger purses . . . And the priests who carry shoulder bags like file cabinets.
How easy it is to hear in Scripture what we need or want to hear. If you're afraid you might secretly be a drag queen or priest, it's easy to hear some part of the Bible as telling you not to do that. The Bible isn't a simple book. Just look at our readings for today: First we are told: "Bear one another's burdens" and then two sentences later: "All must carry their own loads."
So do we carry a purse or not?
Today as we begin our journey together as The Living Waters, what do we take with us? "I'm going on a trip and with me I'm taking . . . " Remember the game? Usually it goes alphabetically from person to person and each person has to recite the things already on the list and then add something.
Such is life. We go along picking up stuff from others and adding our own things to the list. We hardly get to the letter "B" before the purse seems really heavy. "B" I'm going on a trip and with I am taking "burdens" -- all the emotional baggage that seems to attach itself to us.
And "B" is for black sheep -- for those of us who are different. This Living Waters trip is a scary journey. Many of us have felt like "lambs among the wolves": We know that there are those who want to gobble us up or at least change us from our odd rainbow colors to look more like regulation the white sheep of the church.
People who are different carry wounds from both church & culture. We have more than our share of emotional baggage to haul around. For the most part, the church has not been very welcoming to gay and lesbian people or others who don't fit the standard mold. So why not just wipe off the dust and walk away from the church?
Failure to welcome those sent by God is a sin -- whether you're inside or outside the church. That inhospitality, rather than anything to do with homosexuality, is what Jesus here identifies as the real sin of Sodom and Gomorrah
When someone sins against you ... refuses to welcome you as the child of God that you are, Jesus says to us: Let it go; don't keep carrying around the hurt and anger about rejection and injustice; brush off even the little stuff that clings liked dust: the misunderstandings, the people's blindness to who you really are, the good intentions to change you into something else so you'll be really happy. Let it go. It is a burden to you. But that isn't all. Jesus still says to us "Go." Even as lambs among wolves.
Carry no purse or bag; leave all the burdensome baggage behind; let go of the hurts and anger... No sandals either. Leave behind all those extras we carry to protect ourselves. Or the purse gets too heavy and then you can't move at all.
Jesus says "travel light" but he doesn't send anyone out among the wolves empty handed. Instead of filling our purses with emotional baggage, our readings make some packing suggestions to fill our hearts. That's one way to begin to figure out the complexities of Scripture -- looking at several pieces together and looking at the big picture, the pattern the pieces make all together, instead of getting hung up on just one piece.
The first thing Jesus suggests we carry on our journey is peace: shalom. We are to greet everyone in their homes -- right where they are -- with peace. That's where we begin -- an offer of peace to those we meet. If it's refused, brush off the dust and move on.
Our reading from Galatians adds to the contents of our hearts: a spirit of gentleness for those who have hurt us. Can you approach the people you most fear in a spirit of gentleness? Not with defensiveness or harsh demands however just, but with lovingkindness; yes, with gentleness even when they, out of their own fear, are anything but gentle with you.
And Isaiah adds an image that shows us how to offer this peace & gentleness -- as a mother comforts her child. This is how God treats God's people. And it is the model we are asked to follow. Jesus sends us out not to give something from outside ourselves -- something external that we carry with us-- but to give as a mother does, of our very selves. Like mothering that kind of giving can be exhausting, and even painful. But self giving is life giving. That's what the cross tells us.
When we meet others this way -- whether or not they accept us -- Jesus tells us that "the kingdom of God has come near you!" The kingdom, the new creation -- that community of love that overcomes all the old divisions : circumcision or uncircumcision, jew or greek, slave or free, male or female, queer or straight, black or white or all the colors of the rainbow. In the new creation, all who serve Christ are free of the burdens that divide us free to be who God made each of us.
The new creation is the real independence day.
So, what does Jesus say to drag queens? The same thing he says to church ladies with big hair and to priests with heavy shoulder bags:
"Don't carry all that old stuff around with you; just brush it all off. It's nothing compared to the new creation. Let me fill you instead with peace and a spirit of gentleness. Then you will be free."
God can set us free. You only need to ask.
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Psalm 25
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
That's Jesus's summary of the Law as quoted in our prayer book. And as the lawyer in today's gospel knows, it's the good Jewish Law for good Jews. So here's the lawyer's question: "Who is my neighbor?"
He's a good Jew and a good lawyer. He wants the details from Jesus, the good Jewish teacher. He wants the details so he can prove what a good Jew he is. The lawyer knows that Jewish Law -- the Ten Commandments and all the details -- applied only to Jews. For example: "Thou shalt not kill" meant "Thou shalt not kill another Jew -- everyone else is fair game." "Loving your neighbor" meant loving other Jews, loving those who were just like you. The lawyer knew that. The priest and the Levite knew that. So none of them would have had anything to do with any foreign Samaritan, good, bad, or otherwise.
Behind the story that Jesus tells, there are two simple rules that any good Jew, especially a Jewish lawyer or a pharisee or rabbi, would know: (1) Don't touch someone else's hurt. And (2) Samaritans are wrong. The first because when you touch someone's hurt, the blood will make you unclean. You will not be pure enough for your prayers. Especially a priest or a Levite (who was of the priestly family) needs to stay clean. The second because Samaritans, though they are also children of Abraham, have interpreted Our Hebrew Scripture all wrong. They are completely misguided in their faith and mistaken in their understanding of God. That makes them worse than the scum of the earth.
So all the good Jews hearing Jesus' story shared two basic assumptions: (1) Don't mess up your life because some stranger has a problem. (2) Don't look for good things anywhere new. From this perspective then, the priest and the Levite did the right thing: They kept themselves clean and pure for God. They didn't stop for the stranger in the ditch whose blood would have made them unclean.
Then along comes the Samaritan. (Of course he's not "the Good Samaritan" -- as far as the Jews are concerned, there's nothing "good" about any Samaritan. "The Good Samaritan" is the name we add later, not what the Bible calls him.) The Samaritan doesn't follow the rules. The Samaritan is "moved with pity." The Samaritan follows love instead of rules.
Remember today's reading from Deueronomy? The Samaritans read Deuteronomy too: "Surely this commandment is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away ... the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe."
God's "word" is God's law and it is in our hearts. The Samaritan's heart is full of pity and love; that is, full of God's commandment to love. The "great commandment" is not crowded out by the those details of the law that are so precious to lawyers and literalists.
The Good Samaritan acts on the law of love. And here we are today. The Good Samaritan today acts on the law of love. This parish is living up to its name. There are details of biblical law and contemporary culture that could be interpreted to say that our community of worship, The Living Waters, is as unclean as the man in the ditch and as wrong as the Samaritans. But the people of this parish didn't condemn us or avoid us, they loved us. They followed the greater commandment of love. They are today's Good Samaritans.
We are "out" about this congregation of The Living Waters being a safe, welcoming, and healing place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people; a safe, welcoming, and healing place for others alienated from the church for whatever reason; and a safe, welcoming, and healing place for regulation, standard-issue, familiar Christians. This church is a place where the stranger is not required to become "just like us" to be our neighbor. a place where our differences are celebrated; a place where love rules.
Love rules!
" On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." Love of God and love of neighbor come first. Any rule that doesn't "hang from" love needs to be reconsidered. And Jesus tells us that "neighbor" means more than those familiar folk nearby who are just like us. "Neighbor" includes strangers, hurting and needy people, and even those who are just plain wrong.
Jesus not only asks us to love these people -- the unclean and the Samaritans of our day -- but to learn from them, even to see Christ in them. Because it is often in the place we least expect it that God shows us love.
May our lives all be places where love rules.