Based on Matthew 10: 16-23
What kinds of reactions do we tend to have when someone delivers to us a message from someone else? Do we question the attitude of the message sender? Do we wonder if the one who delivered the message is just doing their job or a good deed for the day? Most of the time, we do not know what the intent of a message and messenger is until we actually read the message.
It can happen that someone will use a messenger as an act of passive aggression. Someone has an issue with someone else. Rather than face that individual with a sense of courage and concern for the other person, someone with a passive aggression problem will send a negative message through someone else. Another method that is all too common is to constantly hit someone verbally over the head with rhetoric and conversation that is designed to stigmatize that person or group of people. Many Religious fundamentalists do this with any number of issues. They will pick a particular group of people such as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered community and use the media, political campaigns, tracts, scare tactics and even hate speech to try to tell us that our "choices" need to change, or we will go to hell.
In today's Gospel we continue with the story of how Jesus is sending his Disciples into the community around them to share the good news of Salvation. Jesus warns them that their messages will not necessarily be well received. They will bring the message of inclusion, hope and salvation to people who have been alienated from the community. To those who feel lost, they will find a sense of purpose. To others who have been thought of as useless or out of place within their society, they will be told that God has a place for them in the kingdom. However, like the LGBT community and other marginalized people calling for equality, justice, compassion and understanding, the Apostles will find resistance, hate, discouragement and even persecution. The worst critics of those who are different are often within our own families, communities and churches. "Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child and children will rise against parents and have them put to death." (Matthew 10:21). How many LGBT individuals when coming out to their families are thrown out of the home, told to never come back? How many brothers and sisters have tattled on their LGBT brother or sister only to see them stigmatized by their own families, friends and churches?
LGBT individuals bring a message of love. Love in the way God created and redeemed us as we are. We too are sinners who have been saved through the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ in our Baptism. We share Christ's Presence in the Eucharist just like anyone else. We bleed, we hurt, we rejoice and we celebrate like anyone else. Yet, why is it that many in the church rejects us? It is because of the message we bring is the message of Christ in the Gospel, to love those different than ourselves. We live the message of the Father of Jesus Christ, when we call Christians and other people of good will to look upon individuals thrown to the side by society, political and religious institutions and see them as children of God to be loved, as well as to love in the way God created us to love. Yet those who claim to be closest to Christ those being fundamentalists, constantly use God's word of love and salvation as a weapon to shame LGBT people. They want us committed to ex-gay ministries like Exodus and Courage so that they can continue the acts of spiritual violence against us, calling on us to do further violence to ourselves. Such individuals echo what is written in the first chapter of St. John's Gospel. "He (Jesus) was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him." (1:10,11) This part of St. John's Gospel suggests that God often comes to God's people in ways unfamiliar, and even God's closest do not accept the Lord. But St. John continues: "But to all who received him (Jesus), who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God." (1:12)
This is such great news for all people including LGBT individuals. This means that yes even we can recognize in Jesus the presence of God. We can celebrate Jesus in the Gospel, and in the Eucharist and we can become daughters and sons of God through accepting God who accepts and loves us. This is the message we can hold on to, and this is the message we can share through our life, work, loving and even our activist work. God who created human history, wants to interact with all of God's creation, so that everyone knows that they are loved and are recipients and participants in God's saving work. God wants all of God's children to participate in the work of salvation and redemption through Christ by participating in the work and mission of the Church. Everyone through their gifts, their families and their loving participation can be part of God's kingdom, and no one needs to feel that they are excluded.
A prayer for today taken from "Forward Day by Day"
O God: Give me strength to live another day; Let me not turn coward before its difficulties or prove recreant to its duties; Let me not loose faith in other people; Keep me sweet and sound of heart, in spite of ingratitude, treachery, or meanness; Preserve me from minding little stings or giving them; Help me to keep my heart clean, and to live so honestly and fearlessly that no outward failure can dishearten me or take away the joy of conscious integrity; Open wise the eyes of my soul that I may see good in all things; Grant me this day some new vision of thy truth; Inspire me with the spirit of joy and gladness; and make me the cup of strength to suffering souls; in the name of the strong Deliverer, our only Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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