This homily was based on Galatians 6: 7-16 and Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20.
On this holiday weekend we celebrate the beginning of the
creation of our form of government. We broke away from a colonial system and
tried something new. Enlightened men with property thought they could make
better decisions about how to govern themselves than a distant monarch and a
parliament in which they had no voice. We have broadened the franchise over
these past 240 years to make this country one which allows a diversity of
voices to govern. Yet it becomes clear,
as we listen to the political rhetoric of this election season, that we have a
ways to go yet in creating a “more perfect union” to secure “life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness” for all people in our country.
As we hear the readings today from Paul’s letter to the
Galatians and Luke’s gospel, we might well ask what could they possibly say to
us in our world today. Do we think much about circumcision or lack of it? How
about corrupted flesh? Does being able to tread on snakes and scorpions sound
like something we’d be interested in? Do we understand salvation as our names
being written in heaven?
To find
out what we need to gain from our scripture readings today in 21st
century America, I believe we need to go in more deeply--past the issues and
imagery of 1st century Palestine and the early church.
Both Paul and Luke view the good news of Jesus Christ as
inclusive and expansive. When Paul spoke about “a new creation,” I believe he
saw the Jesus movement as making irrelevant previous religious differences that
kept people apart. If these differences no longer matter since Jesus has come
among us, we can be reconciled with one another. We no longer need to see
ourselves as superior to any other person. We can be reconciled to who we
really are—beloved by God. Then in this reconciled state we can be open to seeing
God’s work in our lives and in the world.
But you might say, how real can this reconciliation when
there seem to be people who continue to point out others as different and bad.
For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center recently collected 5,000 comments
from educators as part of their Teaching Tolerance project. Two-thirds of the
teachers report that students who are immigrants, children of immigrants, and
Muslim, have expressed fears or concerns about what may happen to them or their
families after the election in November. The rhetoric of hate in our political
campaign has caused these children to suffer.
There’s an expression to describe the presence, yet
absence, of this new creation: “already, not yet.” By his life, death and resurrection
and through his teaching, Jesus established that new creation some call the
reign or kingdom of God. That’s the “already.” But in Luke’s gospel we see Jesus
prepared the seventy followers he sent out to expect rejection when they sought
to proclaim God’s reign of peace and healing.
That’s the “not yet” part. In the end as followers of Jesus we believe
that God’s love will win and God’s peace with justice will triumph in the fully
realized “new creation”—just not yet.
Our country is a bit like that as well. At the very
beginning our founders held out the ideal of “life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness” protected by citizens participating in a representative form of
government. But the reality of our political process and the lives of many of us
stray far from the ideal. Nevertheless, we do not give up hope. As Martin
Luther King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward
justice.” As Episcopalians we pledge to
participate in that “bending.” When we renew our baptismal vows, we promise to
“strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of
every human being.”
As we look more deeply into how Luke set the story of the
mission of the seventy, we again see inclusiveness and expansiveness. Luke puts
this story in the midst of a travel narrative when Jesus is traveling through
Samaria toward Jerusalem. He sent the seventy in pairs to all the towns where
he planned to go. He didn’t only send them to a few friendly places, but he sent
them to many places, even where they might encounter opposition. They were to
take the message of God’s peace everywhere they traveled. When they found a
place that welcomed their message and the healing they performed, they were not
to try to improve their accommodations, but to accept what they were offered. Their
trust in God and their humble approach to their mission enabled them to reveal the
in-breaking of God’s reign.
As we celebrate our country’s founding this weekend, let
us remember that the ideals expressed by the Declaration of Independence continue
to be a work in progress. Our commitment as citizens to those ideals and our
commitment as Christians to work toward God’s reign of peace with justice may
well overlap. In both commitments we should live and act with a humility that
comes from trusting that God’s reign of peace with justice will indeed result in
all creation—including sinful humanity—being reconciled and thus becoming “new.”
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