Today’s gospel lesson picks up right in the middle of a story.
Jesus is sending out his disciples to continue his mission.
They are to share the good news that the kingdom of God has come near to them,
            to heal the sick, and to cast out demons.
Jesus has been giving them instructions, such as, take no bag on your journey,
            and receive no payment.
He says, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves.
Not a very comforting image.
Not a great recruiting strategy.

Then we get to the verses assigned for today.
And the recruiting tactics get even worse.
I have come not to bring peace, but a sword.
Do not be afraid of those who can only kill your body.
Only?
What?
What kind of mission are you sending us on anyway, Jesus?

Matthew’s gospel was written for a group of early followers of Jesus
            who were, indeed, facing persecution.
Many of them suffered for what they believed and for living in the Way of Jesus Christ.
Many of them did lose relationships with family members when they chose to follow Jesus.
So the words of Jesus, as Matthew wrote them, are for those early Christians,
            as well as those first disciples whom Jesus sent out.
Jesus is realistic with those who would follow him.
It is hard to be a disciple.
Jesus has some expectations of those who would follow him –
            that they, too, bring good news to the poor and heal the sick and feed the hungry.
But he also offers words of assurance, to all disciples who will follow,
            into generations beyond Matthew’s imagining:

Do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid of losing what you have.
Do not be afraid of people who threaten you.
            Your lives and all you have belong to God.
Do not be afraid that you cannot do what I ask you to do.
            God knows you, and God loves you, and God will be with you always.

The key to this gospel story is mission –
            the mission of all followers of Jesus in all times and places
            to share God’s love in the world by our words and deeds.
That is the very reason the church exists –
            to be a part of God’s mission of love and reconciliation in the world.
Diana Butler Bass, who has studied and written about mainline churches for many years,
            maintains that one mark of a vibrant church is its sense of mission.
When we, in the church, become too turned in on ourselves,
too concerned about what is in it for us and whether that will still be here when we want it,           
we begin to lose our way.
When we come together to hear the stories, share the bread and wine, support one another,
            and then focus our attention on meeting the needs of a hurting world –
            that is when we, as church, thrive.

We are called together so that we may reach out to people –
            to people who are hurting, people who are hungry,
            people who are lost and people who have been told they are unloveable.

St Michael’s is in a time of struggle,
            a wilderness time,
            and it is all too easy at such a time to get turned in on ourselves.
Attendance is down a bit.
Giving is down a bit.
Anxiety is a bit high.
It is natural and expected to be struggling in a time of transition,
            but it is still hard.

I said something at an adult forum a few weeks ago,
            and a vestry member who is also on the stewardship and finance committees said, “Why don’t you say that from the pulpit?”
So I said Okay, I will.

If you have a friend who is going through something hard in his or her life,
            what do you do?
Do you back away, saying,
            “Call me again when your divorce is final and things are going better.”?

St Michael’s – your friends, your sisters and brothers in Christ who make up St Michael’s –
            needs your faithfulness and commitment right now.
This is not a time for “wait and see what happens.”
We have an excellent staff working hard to support our ministry, and a mortage on a beautiful new building.
The search for a new rector will cost money,
            even before we select and call the person who will eventually lead us.
We need each one of us to hang in there –
more than that,
            to re-double our efforts and commitment to this place and our ministry together.
Join a new ministry.
Make a pledge.
Attend worship even more.
Give a designated gift to something that excites you.
Offer your gifts and talents.
So that a year from now – 3 years from now – 10 years from now –
            St Michael’s will still be the thriving community we love.

The life of discipleship is not easy – it asks us to give of our time, talent and treasure.
Sometimes it asks us to step outside our comfort zones into places of need,
            places of uncertainty.
But the other side of the coin is this:
            this is what abundant life is all about.

Week after week, more than 30 people show up here to serve at the food pantry.
Not with a sense of drudgery and duty, but with joyful hearts and smiles.
They meet people they would not have met.
They help families that need help.
And they have formed a close-knit community of support and care for one another.

A teacher in our high school Sunday program told me last weekend, “I’m teaching again next year. I love it. And if you want me to get up and talk about it sometime in church –
I don’t love to get up in front of people, but I’d be glad to tell people that I get so much more out of it than I give.”

The second week of Camp Stoney just finished.
It’s a lot of hard work for a lot of volunteers.
But the rewards are immeasurable.
Kids praying together.
Reflecting on their God-given gifts and talents.
One day we stopped on a hike and asked “where do you see God in creation around you?   That day, it was all about the snake we’d met on the trail – what excitement!

My youngest son Micah was at camp, but never paid much attention during worship.
He was usually wandering around at the edges, playing with a stick or something.
But one afternoon during Siesta he was playing with his toys, and as he set up the pirates and skeletons for battle, he sang,
            “Father, I adore you. Lay my life before you. How I love you”

What we share here together is something beautiful and valuable.
Beautiful liturgy.
Excellent music.
A warm and inviting community which seeks to celebrate difference and diversity.

Most important, we come here to seek a relationship with God –
            with the Living God, the creator of heaven and earth,
            Mystery beyond all knowing,
who still cares for us so deeply that the hairs on our heads are counted.

Sometimes we walk in darkness, struggling to see where our next steps will take us.
But God is with us.
When we commit ourselves to God’s mission of loving a hurting world,
            Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to strengthen and guide us.
What more could we ask?

A few weeks ago at the Pride service, David Martin reminded us of a beloved prayer,
            known as the Prayer of St Francis.
In that prayer, we pray that we may seek to console and understand and love others,
            even more than we seek to be consoled, understood and loved.
We come together to learn to console, to understand, and to love
-       to see and serve Christ in the faces of one another.
We come to be led by the one who gave himself, in ultimate love, for all of us.
We come to be fed, and then sent out into the world renewed in love and grace.

Please turn to page 833 in the Book of Common Prayer and pray with me:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

When I was asked to preach at this Pride Service and I was told the central theme was marriage equality, I figured I would base my sermon on one of my many guilty pleasures, the daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives.  You see, there is a young male couple on the program now, Sonny and Will, and they just got married.  Fictional Salem is in Illinois, so it could happen.  My point would be that their wedding wasn’t a typical soap opera wedding…and not just because there were two grooms.  There was no villain interrupting the wedding at the Objection question.  There was no “back-from-the-dead” spouse to call off the nuptials.  There was no natural disaster decimating the wedding venue leaving a cliffhanger of what happened to the guests.  No, it was an hour-long episode full of love, family, joy, and tears…just like any couple would want on their wedding day.

And while I could regale you with soap opera stories until the cows come home, I think a better use of our time would be to look at the readings which were selected for tonight’s service. I want to look at where we’ve been – where we are – and where we are headed.  Most importantly, I want to talk about what we are called to do as part of our Christian faith to promote equality for every human being.

The reading from Ecclesiastes reminds us there is a time for everything.  A time to break down and a time to build up.  A time to cry, and a time to laugh.  A time to mourn and a time to dance.  The issue we have to deal with is that God’s time and our time don’t often coincide.  We are impatient humans.  We want what we want and we want it RIGHT NOW!  Even when our desires and just and right, we must remember that there is indeed a time for everything.

The Abolitionist Movement to abolish slavery began in the United States in 1780.  Our Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865.  The Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863.  The Civil Rights Act which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and ended racial segregation in schools, workplaces and public accommodation was signed into law until 1964!  I am no math wizard but by my calculations that took 184 years to achieve.  And I doubt anyone here this evening would argue with me that racism is unfortunately still alive and well in the United States today.

I am not directly comparing the fight for civil rights for people of color to the gay rights movement, but there are many similarities.  Let us consider how fast the push for equality for the LGBTQ community has moved forward.  The Stonewall Riots are commonly acknowledged as the beginning to the Gay Liberation Movement.  Those occurred 45 years ago this month – June 1969.

Only 35 years after that event, in 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize marriage equality.  10 years have passed and now 19 states have legal marriage equality.  45 years since the Stonewall Riots sounds like a long time.  It’s about half a lifetime.  But compared to 184 years for a civil rights act, I think society is moving at a better pace than in the past.

In July 2012, the National Episcopal Church approved the blessing of same-sex relationships.  It seems at the next national convention in July of 2015 the odds are good the church will approve the marriage of same-sex couples in the church.  I’ll address the elephant in our sanctuary.  Would I prefer that our bishop gave the go-ahead for same-sex marriage in our diocese sooner than next summer?  Of course I would.  But I understand and I hope we all understand that the Diocese of the Rio Grande is made up of a lot more congregations that the four or five progressive parishes in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

In just a little while, we will all pray the Prayer of St. Francis.  It is a prayer so familiar to us that I sometime think we forget what it actually says.  We will prayer that we want to understand someone else MORE THAN we want them to understand us.  Let us prayer that with honesty.  Let us really mean those words.

I’m not making excuses.

But I am 52.  It’s not my place to reveal my husband’s age.  Neither of us thought we would ever see marriage equality in our lifetime.  But in the past year we have had our relationship blessed in our church and we have been married in California, slightly before New Mexico passed marriage equality.  I think that is an amazing advance.  I don’t want to wait another 15 month for priests in our diocese to be able to sign legal marriage certificates.  I am an impatient human and I want what I want and I want it right now!

But can I wait 15 months for it to happen.  Yes I can.  And I will spend each and every day of those months promoting equality for all people.  And when it happens that the priests in every Episcopal parish in this country can marry couples of all sexual identities, I will throw the biggest party in this church has ever seen.

There is a time and purpose for everything under Heaven.

In today’s opening collect, my favorite prayer in our prayer book, we pray these words:  “let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new.”   Things are happening.

In the New Testament lesson John had a revelation in which he saw “a new heaven and a new earth.”  And the one who was seated on the throne told him “See, I am making all things new!”

The Stonewall Riots kicked off the march for equality in 1969.

Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) was formed in 1972 when parents and families discovered how shamefully their LGBTQ children were being treated.

The AIDS crisis which began in the early 1980’s galvanized and strengthened the LGBTQ community when the government refused to act on an epidemic that was affecting “that kind of people.”

Matthew Shepherd’s murder in 1998 brought gay bashing to the national arena.  Hate crime legislation has been passed throughout the country after that horrific event.

Also in 1998 the Trevor Project was founded.  It is a national organization focused on suicide prevention of LGBTQ youth.  A rash of suicides in 2009 and 2010 committed by LGBTQ teenagers who had been bullied prompted the start of the It Gets Better Project to help young people know they are not alone.  Schools and organizations have begun anti-bullying campaigns.

And a new charity has just begun right here in Albuquerque.  CasaQ will provide housing for LGBTQ teens who have nowhere to go after having been disowned or thrown out of their homes for admitting their true selves.

A lot of good work has been accomplished in the past 45 years.  Things are being raised up and things are being made new!

But there is still a lot of work to be done.

Which brings us to the Gospel reading chosen for this evening.  And frankly, it’s a tough one to hear.  Jesus clearly states that if you want to be his follower you must take up your cross daily and follow him.  If you want to save your life, you’ll lose it.  But if you lose your life for the sake of Jesus and his teaching, then you will save your life!

I think a practical way to interpret this lesson for us today is to realize we cannot become comfortable or complacent.  Every single day we must live our lives to the best of our abilities to show the world we believe in Jesus teaching.  We must take up our cross and show that cross to the entire world.  We are called to give up our comfortable, rut-filled lives, our day to day same ol’ same ol’ and shake things up.  We are called to give up that life.

I have recently had several opportunities to offer pastoral care with parishioners in different churches as part of my postulant duties.  Most of these encounters have gone very well.  One situation did not turn out as I hoped it would.  I felt like a failure and talked with several clergy members about how one deals with such a situation.  The most helpful advice I received was that sometimes all you can do is witness to someone.  Witness your truth.

I am often asked why I am pursuing ordination.   I have an answer that is truthful. 

Reason #1:  I know what being a part of a loving, supportive, spiritual community has done for me in my life.  I want everyone to know that is possible for them as well.

But there is a second reason that I have only lately been able to put into words.  I have shared it with our bishop, with the Commission on Ministry of the Baptized, and with the faculty of my aspirancy retreats.  I want to share it with you this evening.

Reason #2:  I want to wear a collar and stand in front of the world and say “I am a Christian.  I am an out, proud, married gay man.  I am also HIV positive.  The Episcopal Church has found me perfectly acceptable for ordination and to have me to represent them as a member of the clergy.  Therefore, no matter who you are, no matter where you are on your life’s journey, no matter how you identity yourself, you are certainly welcome here.”

That is the cross I’m going to pick up each day and follow Jesus.  I invite all of you to find your cross as well.

It’s clear to me – probably to all of us – that the world isn’t perfect.  Or country, our society, our state, our town – they aren’t perfect.  Our church isn’t perfect.  Of course not.  We are all human.  We are not perfect.

But as God’s children, as followers of Jesus we must strive to make our world the best possible place it can be.    We are not called to sit back and whine and complain and rant and tweet about the injustices of the world.   We are called to work!  We must not only let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up and things that had grown old are being made new. 

No!  We must also help raise up those things which had been cast down.  We must help make new those things which had grown old.  We must help build that new heaven and that new earth.  We will help the person sitting on the throne make all things new.  We will do this by picking up our cross – whatever that cross might be – and following Jesus and his teachings.

They may shoot us with their words,

They may cut us with their eyes,

They may kill us with their hatefulness,

But still, like air, we will rise.

We will raise up the things which have been cast down.  We will make new the things which had grown old.