PROPER 7 YEAR A June 19, 2005 Saint Mark’s Church, Saint Louis MO
We are almost at the end of the Flea Market and Barbecue weekend. It has been an interesting few weeks, as people have cleaned out their houses and brought things in and an interesting weekend watching people shop. One person’s junk is another person’s treasure. The tool belt or old purse or mixing bowls that you no longer have space or use for turn out to be the very treasure someone else has always wanted. As people worked this week, each of us discovered and staked out the things we wanted to buy at the preview sale, either for ourselves or as a gift for someone else, something that no one else wanted that seemed to US like just the perfect thing. It always seems to me that there is some kind of parable in a rummage sale, that what seems expendable to one person seems irresistible to another. And this is how we, all of us, seem to God: precious, treasured, irresistibly lovable.
Every culture treats some people as expendable: in some cultures it is daughters, who are so much less valuable than sons that new born girls are smothered or left on a hillside to die of exposure. In other cultures with strict caste systems, it is those of the lowest caste, the untouchables. In our culture, we could argue, it is homeless people or mentally ill people or very old or indigent people; people who, as a culture, we don’t care about. African American young men living in poverty are treated as expendables by the dominant culture: their street deaths barely make the news (unlike the demise of suburban white families in tragic minivan accidents or the abduction of white female teens), their high imprisonment rates are not deplored in editorials. But they are precious in the sight of God, God knows their names, weeps alongside their mothers and their girlfriends, rages with them when they are the victims of injustice. They may be out of sight and out of mind, but they are not expendables in the heart of God, even if they have made some poor choices. They are precious and lovable.
Some scholars who study Jesus in sociological and historical categories, see Jesus and most of those with whom he spent his time as expendable. Lepers were expendable, so were people possessed by demons and the woman with a flow of blood. But Jesus himself and his companions were, by the standards of a culture which valued landowning, expendables, landless peasants for whose welfare the culture was unconcerned. But Jesus touched such expendable people, Jesus gathered them for meals, Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God was in the midst of them.
So in today’s gospel, Jesus sends his disciples out into a hostile world, into a world that offers them no welcome, that gives their good news no hearing. He warns them of persecution, by the authorities and even by their own families. But he offers them courage by reminding them that in the eyes of God no one, no living creature, is expendable. They are as precious as the sparrows which sell for two a penny but God cares for what happens to each and every one of them. Even the hairs of their heads are numbered. Jesus encourages his disciples, throwaway people in the eyes of the dominant culture, by assuring them that God cares for each hair on their heads, for each sparrow that falls. We are none of us rummage, none of us expendable in the eyes of God, we are all God’s longed for, precious treasure, holy and beloved.
We are almost at the end of the Flea Market and Barbecue weekend. It has been an interesting few weeks, as people have cleaned out their houses and brought things in and an interesting weekend watching people shop. One person’s junk is another person’s treasure. The tool belt or old purse or mixing bowls that you no longer have space or use for turn out to be the very treasure someone else has always wanted. As people worked this week, each of us discovered and staked out the things we wanted to buy at the preview sale, either for ourselves or as a gift for someone else, something that no one else wanted that seemed to US like just the perfect thing. It always seems to me that there is some kind of parable in a rummage sale, that what seems expendable to one person seems irresistible to another. And this is how we, all of us, seem to God: precious, treasured, irresistibly lovable.
Every culture treats some people as expendable: in some cultures it is daughters, who are so much less valuable than sons that new born girls are smothered or left on a hillside to die of exposure. In other cultures with strict caste systems, it is those of the lowest caste, the untouchables. In our culture, we could argue, it is homeless people or mentally ill people or very old or indigent people; people who, as a culture, we don’t care about. African American young men living in poverty are treated as expendables by the dominant culture: their street deaths barely make the news (unlike the demise of suburban white families in tragic minivan accidents or the abduction of white female teens), their high imprisonment rates are not deplored in editorials. But they are precious in the sight of God, God knows their names, weeps alongside their mothers and their girlfriends, rages with them when they are the victims of injustice. They may be out of sight and out of mind, but they are not expendables in the heart of God, even if they have made some poor choices. They are precious and lovable.
Some scholars who study Jesus in sociological and historical categories, see Jesus and most of those with whom he spent his time as expendable. Lepers were expendable, so were people possessed by demons and the woman with a flow of blood. But Jesus himself and his companions were, by the standards of a culture which valued landowning, expendables, landless peasants for whose welfare the culture was unconcerned. But Jesus touched such expendable people, Jesus gathered them for meals, Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God was in the midst of them.
So in today’s gospel, Jesus sends his disciples out into a hostile world, into a world that offers them no welcome, that gives their good news no hearing. He warns them of persecution, by the authorities and even by their own families. But he offers them courage by reminding them that in the eyes of God no one, no living creature, is expendable. They are as precious as the sparrows which sell for two a penny but God cares for what happens to each and every one of them. Even the hairs of their heads are numbered. Jesus encourages his disciples, throwaway people in the eyes of the dominant culture, by assuring them that God cares for each hair on their heads, for each sparrow that falls. We are none of us rummage, none of us expendable in the eyes of God, we are all God’s longed for, precious treasure, holy and beloved.
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