Empty Nests

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 21, 2020 Year A
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church
The Reverend Canon Michael J. Horvath
Gospel: Matthew 10: 24-39

About a month ago when spring was really at its height, I was walking down the bike path with Henry, my dog.  Suddenly, Henry was on a scent and tugging on the leash.  This is something Henry does with any scent, so I just pulled him back in line and proceeded on.  But he was really insistent to go back and kept pulling on the leash.  When I turned around, I noticed a little chick  scurrying around the short grass.  The next thing I knew, another chick fell right next to it.  When I looked up, I saw in the tree branches what was presumably their mother, looking down on me and squawking her head off.  Before he was able to consume the chicks for lunch, I pulled Henry back and off we went, leaving the agitated mother and her chick.  A friend later told me that it was likely that the mother was pushing a few of chicks out into the world.  She was done and wanted to be on her way to being a real “empty nester”.  She probably had been trying to entice them to leave the nest for a few days now.  They needed to figure out how to fly, to get food, to avoid predators. Ultimately, how to be birds.  As scary and traumatic as that separation from their nest seems to us, they needed to live out the life they were created for.
           
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth”, Jesus says today.  “I have not come to bring peace but a sword.” This passage is one that makes folks usually squirm in their seats, uncomfortable, perhaps confused.  “Well, that doesn’t sound very, Christian!”, one man said in a bible study class I led a few years ago.  And it gets worse from there, “I come to set man against his father, daughter against her mother, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law”, Jesus says.  Happy Father’s day, by the way!
           
I can still hear that man in my bible class so clearly, “Well, that doesn’t sound very Christian!”  And he was right, it doesn’t sound Christian.  It sounds like Jesus.  Before we all succumb to the urge to become biblical literalist, we need to dig deeper into what Jesus is saying here.  Otherwise, it can be a depressing, anxiety-producing piece of scripture.
           
And I want to focus on the sword that Jesus is wielding.  “I have come not to bring peace, but a sword.”  What is Jesus doing with that sword?  He’s cutting things apart; he is separating existing structures.  Jesus wants that son to be set against the father if the father is a hindrance to the son following Christ.  Jesus wants the daughter to cut off from her mother, if her mother is an obstacle to the daughter following Christ.  They are impediments, distractions, if the son or daughter are unable to take up the cross and follow Christ.  Jesus isn’t trying to do away with healthy relationships, or family structures.  He’s making clear that whenever you think there is a choice to be made between God and another person, or thing, or feeling, there isn't a choice. Ever. Period.  Serving God and God in others, must be our only concern.
           
But think about the things in our lives that plague us and keep us separated from God and from living as Christ in this world.  Bad relationships, addictions, an inability to forgive and reconcile, bad theology, huge egos, and all the -isms (racism, sexism, etc.).  We create structures and narratives that protect our little egos and we only feel safe in our little nests.  We’ve become so good at drowning out God’s voice with our own.  We shield our eyes from the truth of God such that we become blinded to the falsity of our lives.
           
But what Jesus is saying today is that he and his love can free you from whatever is keeping you back, keeping you down, and keeping you from fully expressing yourself as God’s beloved.  You see, what happens when we allow ourselves to be freed from narrow viewpoints, prejudices, and biases, is that we can create distance from all the distractions that we think are so important or support our ego, and focus in on how God is speaking to us.  And when we are pushed from our nests, we can hear God clearly, and we are able to fly, soaring above the world in a way that gives us a clear view of what the world really looks like.  When we hear God clearly, unattached and unencumbered by our own prejudices and assumptions of how we want the world to look or be like, then we can start to do God’s work in this world.
           
The month of June is traditionally Pride Month and was originally a time to commemorate the Stonewall Riots of June 1969, which ushered in the LGBT rights movement. It has also become a time to celebrate the influence and contributions that our LGBT sisters and brothers have made, and continue to make, in our world.  Pride Month in 2015 was especially meaningful for the LGBT community because the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling requiring all states to grant same-sex marriages and recognize same-sex marriages granted in other states. This year is just as meaningful thanks to the Supremes, who last week ruled that the protections provided by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are also extended to LGBT individuals, thereby making it illegal for workplaces to discriminate against employees on the basis of sexuality or gender identity.
           
Those rulings were not just the work of nine justices, they represented the blood, sweat, tears and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people around the country.  For the folks who knew from the get-go, that these were the right things to do, the rulings simply affirmed that we LGBT people are worthy of place and love because we are made in the image of God and God claims us as his beloved as much as he claims straight folk. But I like to think about people for whom it was a struggle to accept what these rulings meant.  I think about how Jesus cut them loose from their old, perhaps homophobic ways of thinking, and brought them to a new understanding that lifted and recognized the dignity of every human being – a spark of hope in dark times.  That is what it means to be alive to God in Jesus Christ.  We experience the transcendent love of God by living as Christ in this world.

If you are really free, then you will see clearly what God asks of you just by opening your eyes and heart to the brokenness and suffering of this world.  And if you are really free, God asks only one thing of you – that you be God’s hands and feet in this world.  Freedom is God’s gift, but God’s peace is something we have to work for, and it is hard work, as we have seen.

And it doesn’t get any easier, even with Supreme Court rulings. Jesus calls us to pick up his cross and follow him. And we will try, and we will fail.  We will speak and we will be misunderstood, or we will misunderstand.  We will hurt others and others will hurt us.

And each time, Jesus stands ready with the sword to free us again and again from that failure, misunderstanding and pain so that we can continue to walk in the newness of life, as Paul calls it.  So let God push us out of our comfortable nests to live the life we were created for, as scary and traumatic as that may seem. Let Jesus wield his sword to free us and send us out into the world to love and serve him with gladness and singleness of heart.

“I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  It’s not very Christian, but it is very Jesus. Thanks be to God.

Amen.