A homily for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 3, 2022
Is 66:10-14c, Gal 6:14-18, Lk 10:1-12, 17-20
In my Boy Scout days — back when I wore the uniform and attended meetings, not my current ongoing demeanor — Lincroft Troop 110 would spend two weeks each summer at Forestburg Scout Camp, somewhere in New York state between Port Jervis and Monticello, as I recall.
The younger scouts would stay in cabin tents at Central Camp, famed or infamous for its dining hall, Army-style chow and “bug juice,” a Kool-Aid knockoff usually lukewarm and red.
More experienced scouts bunked at the Dan Beard Camp (I never looked up who Mr. Beard was and I still haven’t), where small groups of us did our own cooking and cleaning. We still had bug juice to drink.
The rain-soaked highlight/lowlight of each week was the overnight hike, where everyone was supposed to rough it, with only a blanket and poncho and a basic mess kit to spend the night.
Packing light, in other words.
The lessons we were supposed to take away from the experience (there’s always a lesson or three) centered on identifying what was absolutely necessary to live out in the woods and on augmenting what little we brought with whatever we could find in a particular location.
Some of us didn’t bring enough of the basics, the absolute necessities, and so we learned another valuable lesson: Proper planning prevents poor performance. Others packed heavy, enduring a more difficult hike to achieve more comfort at night. A lesson in tradeoffs.
A lesson for living a good life.
So what exactly in life are we supposed to get by on? The bare minimum?
Are this weekend’s Scripture selections telling us that Jesus, the disciples and the prophets really want us to live with nearly nothing? How can that be?
And, frankly, doesn’t it seem as if this weekend’s passages from Scripture are giving us a mixed message, with descriptions of extreme abundance in the selection from Isaiah but descriptions of meager existence in the verses from Luke?
It all comes down to priorities.
We need to list our priorities.
We need to get our priorities straight.
We need to make obedience to the Two Great Commandments our Job One.
Now, regarding the first commandment, the one about loving God fully, Psalm 95, verse 3, reminds us
For the Lord is the great God,
the great king over all gods
Which, in the 21st century, has little to do with worshiping golden idols and mostly to do with worshiping gold. Or its equivalents: excess wealth, undeserved power and influence, all kinds of worldly distractions. The things some modern people have come to idolize.
By stripping down the disciples to bare necessities before dispatching them, Jesus forced them to focus on the mission at hand, to prepare the Way of the Lord. To show the people of the first century that they, too, could represent Christ, could be Christ to others.
To show us the exact same thing.
To dispatch us on the exact same mission.
To empower us to obey the second commandment with every word and action of everyday life.
These days, as in the first century, there will be times when our words on behalf of our Savior will be ignored or outright rejected, and we have the right and even the obligation to figuratively shake off the road dust in the direction of those who want nothing to do with us. The Gospels give us plenty of parables about planting the seeds of wisdom where they will grow and not wasting them where they will not.
And yet, Christian charity compels us to care for the deniers nonetheless. Not necessarily because we’re trying just one more time to get the message through, but because we are called to love and care and feed and heal and shelter our fellow children of God with no strings attached. And because we believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to persuade.
So, yes, it can be said that we’re supposed to travel light through our journey toward God’s kingdom, and — bumper sticker theology time — if we live simply so that others may simply live, then we’ve done a good job of prioritizing.
And with our priorities set, and with Christ as our constant companion, it’s time for us to prepare the Way of the Lord.
Let’s get going.
