Losing a bad taste

Matthew 10:34-11:1

            This doesn't sound to friendly does it? Families set against each other?  Disrupted households?  A willingness to give up everything that we know and hold sacred, families, life itself?

          It reminds me very much of what a gay person goes through when they are coming to terms with their sexuality and the risk they undertake when telling family and friends. It isn't always a story book ending. Parents can be less than understanding. Families have been known to disown children. Announcing you are gay takes a great deal of guts. But to be yourself, to acknowledge who you are, to own up to it, say it and to love yourself, it's a risk you have to take. Life in a closet is not a life. It certainly is not how God intended us to live. Out and proud. Amen.

         This is how we have to love God as well. Put everything at risk for God. We don't own anyone. They don't own us. Parents do not own kids and kids do not own their parents. We are graced with the presence of others and graced with the privilege to love and serve each other. But thee most important thing is God. We start with God and we will return to God. This world is transient and to follow God we should be willing to risk it all. The same as a gay person risks it all to be who they are. They go hand in hand when you think about it. To love yourself, the way God made you is to love God. So the risk is worth it.

           The amazing thing, and my life will bear this out, is that if your family turns it's back on you or if there are friends that turn your back on you ( for being gay or for loving God ), there are a whole host of other people who will fill that void.  People will step up that you didn't realize would support you. People will step up that never knew you before and will become more important that your so called 'real' family. This is consistent with scripture and this passage.

            Whoever accepts you is accepting God and that includes yourself. Accept yourself for who you are. Accept yourself for who God made you to be. You honor God in the process.  You may lose what you thought was importnat but gain the world.

‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.’ 

Now when Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and proclaim his message in their cities.