Matthew 11:28-30; 12:1-8 CEB
28 “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. 29 Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves. 30 My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.”
1 At that time Jesus went through the wheat fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry so they were picking heads of wheat and eating them. 2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are breaking the Sabbath law.”
3 But he said to them, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and those with him were hungry? 4 He went into God’s house and broke the law by eating the bread of the presence, which only the priests were allowed to eat. 5 Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple treat the Sabbath as any other day and are still innocent? 6 But I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. 7 If you had known what this means, I want mercy and not sacrifice, you wouldn’t have condemned the innocent. 8 The Human One is Lord of the Sabbath.”
Happy Portland Pride Church!
I love Portland Pride.
I love that so many people take public transit to watch the parade and attend the Pride Festival.
I love that so many different people show up, from Farmers to Drag Queens, to Bankers, showing the world that being LGBTQIA+ isn’t a just kinky lifestyle, it’s just life.
Every day, Queer folks: get up, go to work, pay their bills, kiss their spouses, pick their kids up from school, watch sports, go to the theater, pay taxes, and live with the existential dread that some politician on his or her 4th marriage will make same gender marriage illegal.
Or they wonder if the gender affirming healthcare that makes their life worth living will still be available and legal next time they turn on the news. Or if their next doctor or dentist will treat them with basic courtesy. Or will insist on mis-gendering and deadnaming them, “because we don’t do different names or pronouns here,” as the dentist’s office said to my foster young adult, who is Trans. That happened here in Portland. 2 years ago. It took us 2 more dentist’s offices to find one that would treat Them with the basic courtesy of using their correct name.
Sometimes people wonder why Pride?
Why call it pride?
Why celebrate who people love and how they identify?
Why Pride?
Because the opposite of pride is shame. LGBTQIA+ folks have historically been shamed just for existing. Shamed for just being who God made them to be.
Sometimes people were shamed to death – brutally murdered, like Matthew Shepherd, or gunned down at the Pulse nightclub. Murdered by the shame of angry young men who could not handle gay people existing.
During the first Trump administration, between 2017 and 2021, murders of Trans people nearly doubled, and while only 13% of the trans community is Black, Black Trans women accounted for nearly ¾’s of the known victims.
“In 2019, the American Medical Association recognized “an epidemic of violence against the transgender community,” who are over 2.5 times more likely than cisgender people — those whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were designated at birth — to experience violence, according to the Everytown report.
Shame also causes suicide.
“According to the National Center for Transgender Equality’s U.S. trans survey — the largest survey of transgender people to date, which was published in 2015 — 40% of trans youth reported attempting suicide in their lifetime. That’s nearly nine times the national average,” of all youth suicide.
(HMKP-118-JU00-20240321-SD011 PDF (www.congress.gov))
We call it pride because Pride is the opposite of shame and shame kills.
We mean Pride in the way parents are proud of their kids, or grandparents are proud of their grandkids, or when we are proud of ourselves for successfully adulting.
We mean Pride as in being proud of your friend who is celebrating 1 year of sobriety, or being so proud of you for still being here 1 year after a suicide attempt.
LGBTQ+ Pride does not mean arrogance, or haughtiness, or a lack of consideration of others.
LGBTQ+ Pride means celebrating that you’re Queer, you’re here and you’re finding ways to thrive with joy.
Today we also celebrate that we are a Reconciling United Methodist Congregation.
Reconciling, because we are a member of the Reconciling Ministries network, a coalition of United Methodists, and former United Methodists, who have worked for decades to help our Denomination and local congregations move from rejecting LGBTQIA+ folks, to affirming their belovedness and calls to ministry.
And we are still a United Methodist Congregation because of the tireless work of people like Rev Dr. Jeanne Knepper who persisted in standing up for inclusion long past the point where she lost the use of her legs, and thankfully lived to see the day that those who sought to exclude her left in frustration.
And even though the horrible exclusive language has been removed from the United Methodist Book of Discipline, it still matters that we are a Reconciling church. It matters because even though last May, General Conference voted to “remove mandated discrimination, the option to discriminate is still available.” https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f-bQNSE2U9ykwdTJWhLJnuM2Zr7RBSQTjwv1Sy2sh_I/edit?tab=t.0
Last week, while I was at Dakota Wesleyan University, doing some continuing education, I met the Pastor of the United Methodist Congregation where Rush Limbaugh’s family attends. We had a civil conversation over breakfast, where she insisted that the focus of her church is about being welcoming to everyone. I responded to her that while I agree that all people are welcome in Church, not all behaviors are welcome. Behaviors, including speech, that threatens, demeans, and excludes others, is “incompatible with Christian teaching” in my humble opinion.
I believe that speech matters because the Centers for Disease Control have collected multiple peer reviewed research studies that demonstrate that LGBTQ+ youth have higher rates of depression, and suicide, as a result of “increased experiences of discrimination and rejection.”
The Good news is that “LGBTQ youth who report having at least one accepting adult were 40% less likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year.” https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/accepting-adults-reduce-suicide-attempts-among-lgbtq-youth/
I don’t know if the positive effect of multiple supportive people is cumulative, because I couldn’t find that research, but I do know from my personal Pastoral experience that churches and clergy who not only “welcome,” LGBTQ+ youth and adults, but affirm and celebrate their gifts and graces, create positive outcomes in Queer people’s lives.
As a Pastor.
As a mother of a lesbian daughter and a Trans/Genderfluid adult child.
As an ally.
I’m simultaneously afraid to watch the news, and afraid to not watch the news.
I feel like keeping up to date with the fresh horrors that each day brings is part of my pastoral responsibility.
I also feel like tuning out and taking a break is necessary for my sanity.
And I’m straight, and middle class, and educated, and white.
I can’t even imagine the levels of exhaustion and fear and stress, that Queer and Trans, and brown, and hispanic, and poor, and unstably employed and unstably housed, and people on Medicare, are feeling.
In moments like this when we feel like we’re doing everything we can and nothing’s working, we cry out to God.
What in the Kentucky-fried-Crisis, Jesus!
We just can’t take this anymore!
And Jesus responds to us in much the same way that God responded to Elijah and Isaiah and Jonah when they got so sad and mad that they just sat down under a bush waiting for their doom.
28 “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. 29 Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves. 30 My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.”
Come to me, all you who are struggling under the weight of the world.
Set that ish down because it is not ours to carry.
A yoke is a good thing because it redistributes the weight from the bags that cut off the circulation to your fingers, and puts it on your sturdy shoulders. A yoke also increases and limits how much weight you can carry because the yoke will break if you overload it.
Setting down all the everything we are trying to be responsible for and taking up the better balanced and lighter yoke load that is our calling makes life manageable.
It’s not our job to save the world, Jesus is already doing that!
It’s our job to carry the lighter, better balanced load of our calling, which includes space for Sabbath rest.
I don’t think that it’s accidental that the next story after this passage is Jesus teaching about Sabbath.
For an editor, trying to stitch together a collection of second hand memories about Jesus, the transition from, “I will give you rest,” to teaching about the Sabbath seems like a nice segway.
Because, just in case you didn’t know, nobody followed Jesus around and took notes while he was alive. The gospels were written after the original disciples had all died, so everything we know about Jesus was passed down orally, then collected and edited into a semi-chronological order. Which is to say, did Jesus actually go straight from offering a lighter load and rest to teaching about Sabbath? Ummmm…. We have no idea.
What I can tell you is that part of the religious trauma of second Temple Judaism was that when they rebuilt Jerusalem and the Temple, in Nehemiah chapter 13, Nehemiah enforced Sabbath by closing the city gates and posting armed guards to prevent any traders or sellers from entering the city during the Sabbath, and threatened the traders with violence for camping outside the wall. Nehemiah took the gentle gift of rest and turned it into a threat of violence.
At the same time the “prophet” Nehemiah demanded that all Jewish men who were married to foreign women, divorce their wives and reject their children. And if they refused, Nehemiah chased them out of the city. Here’s Nehemiah in his own words:
Nehemiah 13:25-27
So I scolded them and cursed them, and beat some of them, and pulled out their hair. I also made them swear a solemn pledge in the name of God, saying, “You won’t give your daughters to their sons in marriage, or take their daughters in marriage for your sons or yourselves. 26 Didn’t Israel’s King Solomon sin on account of such women?… 27 Should we then listen to you and do all this great evil, acting unfaithfully toward our God by marrying foreign women?”
From the beginning of the second Temple era Sabbath was linked with violence, threats, and families divided by deportation.
A lot of people, especially LGBTQ+ people, suffer from religious trauma, because leaders like Nehemiah were so focused on enforcing the law of love that they missed that the point of the law is love.
Rest. Sabbath rest and the rest that we find by accepting the lighter and more balanced load of our calling are meant to increase the love and thriving in our lives, not decrease it.
People should not be excluded for who they love.
People should not be excluded for practicing their faith a little differently, or bending the rules while maintaining the intent of love.
People should not be shamed for feeling overwhelmed or overburdened – they are not lacking faith, you are not lacking in faith, I am not lacking in faith! Mostly, we are surviving in a world that is experiencing a severe shortage of justice and compassion.
People should not be shamed or excluded, period.
We should all be able to find inclusion, affirmation, celebration, Grace, and people who are proud of us for just being who God made us to be.
Be gentle with yourself out there.
Be gentle with each other.
Most Merciful God,
We confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart.
We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We have not heard the cries of the needy,
and we have not responsibly stewarded your creation.
We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done and by what we have left undone.
Have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us, and lead us,
so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your holy name. Amen.
Hear the good news:
Christ came not to condemn, but that the whole world might be saved through him. (John 3:17)
In the name of Jesus the Christ we are forgiven!
In the name of Jesus the Christ, we are forgiven! Amen.
