A reading from the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, as you go, make this announcement. The reign of God is at hand. Cure the sick, raise up the dead, heal the leprous, expel demons. The gift you have received, give as a gift.
Provide yourselves with neither gold nor silver nor copper in your belts. No traveling bag, not even a change of shirt, no sandals, no walking staff. The workman, after all, is worth his hire. Look for a worthy citizen in every town and village that you come to, and then stay with him until you leave. As you enter his house, bless it.
If the home is deserving, your blessing will descend upon it. If it is not, your blessing will return to you. If anyone does not receive you or listen to what you have to say, leave that house or town, and once outside of it, shake off its dust from your feet. I assure you, it will go easier for the region of Sodom and of Gomorrah on the day of judgment than it will for that town. And this is the gospel of the lord.
Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Francis Thompson wrote a famous poem called the hound of heaven. People were shocked at the title that anyone could refer, to God as a as a dog, as a hound.
One of the curious things about that curious poem is that throughout the short poem, that phrase never occurs. It's only in the title. But the thought is very clear that we are running away from god, but god is on our tail all the time, all the time. When you come to our blessed lord now, this is not the only time. Remember that very severe phrase where he says, don't throw your pearls before swine.
Our lord said that. Don't throw your pearls before swine. Now in today's reading, we have another reference to exactly the same truth. Our lord is telling his these are the the handful that he sent, the apostles, those who are sent. He says, go out.
Notice he says this this amazes me there. Don't even wear sandals. Now I've walked around those roads over there. Try walking around on them without a shoe. So there must be some meaning here, you know, that the because it's almost impossible to do it.
But our blessed Lord is saying very clearly, his message is, look. I'm sending you out, and you get your keep from those you're going to serve. You're going to bring them the good news, and you have a right to be fed and housed and clothed and so forth by them. That's what our lord is saying. And he's saying, give your gift as a gift.
He's emphatic about that. Remember, we're all called to do this. We're all Lucifer's. We are all carriers of the light. It happened at your baptism when they gave you that candle or your godparent, that candle.
You are carriers of the light, all of us. We are all we all have that same vocation. We are all sent. We are all commanded by Christ to give as a gift what has been given to us as absolutely a gift. We do not earn it.
We do not earn it. There's no quid pro quo with god almighty. Having said all of this, notice how our blessed lord speaks very, very cruelly almost. He says, if they won't receive you, get out and shake the dust off your feet. Have nothing more to do with them.
See, we take all of this so much in stride. We've heard it, we've heard it, and we've heard it. It doesn't impress us, but these are cruel words. Because first of all, as we would say with our modern psychology, well, first of all, why should villagers believe anything that this this gang of of tramps come in and tell us about? You take Garrett Park in the year of our Lord 1983, July 7.
Supposing we have a someone comes in here practically unclothed, walking in bare feet, kind of imagine how dirty they would be walking around in dust. They weren't working on asphalt over there, you know. And it's hot. They would be stinking. And they tell us, we have the good news for you.
I wanna come and live in your home. What would you do? What would you do? Here I think of Saint Labarre. What would you do?
So, you see you see, well, these poor villagers, they didn't mean to close their ears. They didn't mean to close their eyes. After all, they were in good faith, and after all, they were sincere. That beautiful word. And the second word I must add is compassionate.
They were all of these things. And what does Christ say? Shake their dust from your feet. Don't waste your time. Don't waste your effort.
You've tried. Give up. Surrender. Get out. Go elsewhere.
That's what our lord says. See, they're they're pretty pretty strong. That's strong language. And yet that's what Christ says. Christ was benign.
He was benevolent, he was generous, he was forgiving, but he could be stern. Because, you see, Christ is God. And Christ had a grasp of truth, of truth which today we've lost or today which we which we explicit re explicitly reject. Reject. Why is an Aristotelian today condemned so violently?
I mean violently. Today, it's happened to me. Coarse language issues. Why? Because Aristotle stood for something absolute.
And, of course, we know in our day there are no absolute. Of course not. There is there is no black and white. There's just gray. It it things are not either either true or false.
Oh, no. To you, they may seem true. Fine. If they work for you, good. Use them.
But if it doesn't work for me, it's false for me. Don't use it. So let's just sit down now and have a good drink because we must love each other. We mustn't be pulled apart by differences. This is the stuff of today, and it's you see, what it is, it's a rejection of God's truth.
It's a rejection that there is in this world something absolute. And Christ says, if they won't listen to you, shake their dust off your feet when you leave the place. Don't even have the dust I know. Don't throw your pearls before swine. You know what'll happen to them.
Think of throwing pearls in a pigpen. Trouble with too many people today haven't seen a pigpen, so that the figure of speech doesn't mean much. Even if I think of the days when on a hot August afternoon, barefoot, we'd be walking down a dusty road when you'd put your foot on it and clouds of dust would rise from your foot. It was soft. It was good feeling, but it was dust.
When you'd come back, legs up to your knees would be caked with dust. We don't know these things today. But our lord says, when you go into a town like that and they won't listen to you, when you leave, get even their dust off your shins. Wash them. Get rid of even their dust.
They're hopeless. Notice he doesn't say a thing about sincerity, doesn't think about say a thing about knowledge, he doesn't think say a thing about whether they were had good intentions. Nothing. Shake their dust off your feet. There's an absolute in the world.
There is such a thing as an absolute truth and absolute good and absolute beauty in God himself. And, of course, we can't comprehend it. That's not agnosticism to say I can't comprehend the incomprehensible. But because I can't stand the complete fire and heat of the sun, doesn't mean I can't see a little bit of the sun. And so today, this message is not what the world likes to hear, but it's the words of Jesus Christ.
When you go into the villages and they won't listen to you, when they don't want the good news, when they shut their ears, leave it, get out, shake their dust off your feet. In the name of the father, the son, holy spirit. Amen.