Sermon: Pentecost 4 - Year B

That is why we are going to Mexico, to open our eyes to see hurt, to love people for who they are and not just as objects – “the poor” – we can help. We want to see the world more broadly, to see how others live, to be more sensitive to people’s suffering and to experience their joys. To reflect upon how Jesus asks us to respond to hurting people. To say to with Jesus to all who suffer “Talitha Cum” - get up and walk.

The photographer who took the picture of the starving child walked away; he received his Pulitzer Prize, only to commit suicide a few months later, collapsing under the weight of his guilt. Instead of us walking away, Jesus is asking us to walk TOWARD those who suffer, so that we can be his healing agents in a fractured and hurting world, and maybe in return, be healed ourselves. Healed of diseases that we might not even know we have; diseases of indifference, diseases of prejudice, diseases of “affluenza” as one writer puts it, the disease of wanting stuff more than loving people. Maybe we’ll find we can teach folks something, but my guess is we’ll realize that there’s so much we need to be taught ourselves.

We’re going south to see and to observe, to listen and to discover, to ask questions, to experience a life quite different from our own and to be transformed. And we will come back maybe with more questions, and more aware of peoples’ struggles in our own families and communities.

So I ask you, people of Good Shepherd, to pray for us, that God will open our hearts, will soften us towards people’s struggles, to act contrary to indifference. I ask you to ask God to bless the people we encounter, and to help us explore and live God’s justice as we build new relationships....

(the whole thing here)