Year A
 Genesis 18:1-15
 Psalm 116:1, 10-17
 Romans 5:1-8
 Matthew 9:35-10:8

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

Our reading from Genesis…  is about hospitality…  God came as three men…  three angels…  in the heat of the day…  when there was no air conditioning…  when heat indices were no less real than they are today…  but couldn’t be measured…  when to not receive hospitality…  for mortals at least…  might mean heat stroke…  or worse…  and Abraham pretty much rolled out the red carpet…  with fresh bread…  and curds and milk…  and a freshly killed and prepared young calf…  which…  by the way…   would not have been a kosher meal…  those dietary laws came later…  and Abraham stood by…   under the oak trees while they ate…  perhaps in case his guests wanted something more… 

And it seems that what they wanted…  it seems that why they were there in the first place…  was to share the good news that even at ninety-years-old…  that Sarah would bear a son…  that the covenant that God made with Abram would finally be fulfilled through his offspring…  and that the lament Abraham expressed for close to twenty-five years would be resolved…  and you can imagine…  that when she overheard this implausible claim…  this audacious promise…  the craziness of it crashed right into the hope of it that she held on to so tightly…  and it fell right out of Sarah’s mouth as thrilled and irrepressible laughter…  what a reason to celebrate… 

Most of you know…  that the LGBTQ+ community…  celebrates June as PRIDE month…  celebrating our lives…  our diversity…  and our belovedness of God…  yesterday clergy from several different denominations gathered at the Blessed at PRIDEfest booth…  the idea was simple…  to anoint with glitter and bless those who wanted to receive a message of unconditional positive regard from their Ground of Being…  however they conceived of it…  and there were tears from some of those who could never have imagined the craziness of the idea that any clergy person could bless them…  they who the church said were so broken that not only could God not fix them…  but that God didn’t even want to try…  we’re still striving towards a world where every member of the LGBTQ+ family has the freedom to live their truth without fear…  and with equality under the law…  ]  yet according to the Human Rights Campaign…  an organization which helps mobilize its members against attacks on our marginalized community…  reports that for the first five months this year…  a record 520 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures…  more than 220 of which specifically target transgender and non-binary people…  have been introduced too…  also a record…  and other efforts which make it easier to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity…  ban books… and prohibit drag story hours…  have become law as well…

And most of you know that tomorrow is Juneteenth…  that after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863…  it took two more years for the news to travel to Louisiana and Texas…  when…  on June 19th…  and according to the best records from that time…  the last of the slaves were set free… ]  slaves who didn’t have to be slaves for one day more…  but were for almost two more years…  but even these many years later…  far too many people of color find it crazy that they’re still not being treated as equal to whites… 

Now…  when Jesus saw the crowds…  harassed and helpless…  troubled and abandoned…  discriminated against and diminished…  he lamented…  and his heart went out to them…  because they were like sheep without a shepherd to care for them…  like Israel without a prophet or king to look after them and protect them…   or to lead their oppressors in a Godly way… 

I don’t know about all of us…  but most of us share the prophet’s lament…  the profound grief at the suffering of God’s good creation…  a gut-wrenching sense that what Jesus sees going on in the world around him…  just shouldn’t be…  and what we are seeing going on in the world around us…  just shouldn’t be either…  we find ourselves caught in the space between what could be…  God’s good always trying to birth itself…  and how we miss those marks…  but this theology speaks of God’s hospitality…  God’s welcome to everyone…  the marginalized and the Pharisee…  and whatever categories we might name…  so that we can not only be welcomed…  but transformed too…

So what’s the hold-up…  there are some people who think the world is going to hell because we’ve become far too welcoming and inclusive and that this is God’s punishment…  and others who think the world is going to hell because we haven’t become welcoming and inclusive enough…  but if we read…  mark…  learn…   and inwardly digest Jesus’ words…  and the undeniable truths they convey…  we understand that Jesus leans towards the latter…  and he asks us to love God with all our heart…  soul…  mind…  and strength…  and asks us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves…

We are beloved of God…  each and every one of us…  but we did not earn this status…  there’s nothing we could do to earn it…  our belovedness is God’s grace-filled gift… 

but since all attempts to change the world are long-term projects of both success and failure…   the heart that created the desire…   will also have to sustain that desire…  and God needs more laborers… because there’s so much low-hanging fruit that’s being ignored… because there’s still so much work to be done… so as we slog our way through this new time… through this new landscape… let’s be aware of the countless opportunities to listen… 

In his book How We Came Apart ★ How We Come Together…  Van Jones writes…  if we seriously want to solve any of the mounting problems we face…  or even just be better partisans…  we need some spaces where we listen to one another…   and show up humble enough to accept the fact that we might have something to learn…  we need to have conversations that proceed according to a different set of operating instructions…  the unspoken imperative should be this: I want to understand you. And I want you to understand me –– whether or not we ever agree. Big disagreements are fine…  it’s how we disagree with our big egos…  our big agendas…   and our big attachments to smashing the other side to bits…   that is ruining American politics…  we can disagree with each other…  but we must stop disrespecting each other…

This will make it easier to say I was wrong…  to say I’m sorry…  to ask for forgiveness… and to heal… so we can welcome and be hospitable to all people… and to live into… and to implement…  the justice which God yearns for everyone… and spoke through the prophets… and to finally let what seems so crazy…   not be so crazy at all…  so we can not only truly mean it…  but embody it…  when we say… Everything the Lord has spoken… we will do…