The Very Rev. Dr. Sylvia Sweeney Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Altadena, CA 6/18/17 Proper 6: Matthew 9:35-10:23

“As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.”

Okay, I must admit that as I read this Gospel passage today, for just a moment my mind flashed to an image of Jesus dancing to “Shake It Off” with Taylor Swift. Can you see it? And I have to say that whether you are yourself a Taylor Swift fan or not, I think she and Jesus are on the same page on this one.

For both of them, this passage is about what you do with rejection, with hurt, with insult, and with slander. What do you do when you put it all out there, bare your soul, and give from the deepest places in your heart, only to have what you offered be rejected?

Sometimes it’s in the small things like when you spend all afternoon working on a special dinner for your family or your guests only to hear that they really would have much rather had carry out pizza. Other times it’s a bigger deal. Not getting into the school you applied to.

Being looked over and ignored in a job interview because of your skin color or your age or your gender. Getting pulled over by a cop for driving while black. Writing a huge proposal for work that gets thrown in the garbage can before it’s even read. Rejections, big ones and small ones hurt. Some we manage to get over quickly. Others we can’t shake off. Some have the power to haunt us the rest of our lives.

I recently read a book about forgiveness by a forgiveness scientist named Everett Worthington. (And yes, there really is such a thing as a forgiveness scientist.) In the book Worthington talks about the difference between being able to shake it off—and not. He says that unforgiveness sets in in our hearts in those moments when we cannot or feel we dare not let go of what has happened to us. We just keep holding on and reimagining the moment and stewing and fretting, maybe wondering what we could have, should have done differently, and wondering why this person did not understand who we are and what we were trying to say or do. To use Worthington’s term, we ruminate and the more we cook in our own juices of anger, resentment, self-reproach, or hurt: The more we ruminate; the deeper into our bodies, minds, and souls the pain travels, and the harder it becomes to forgive, to let go, and to heal.

Did you notice what Jesus says here? “If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you.” What? If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Jesus had never been hurt or rejected in his life, because the last thing I feel in the midst of rejection is peace. But we know that Jesus does know what rejection feels like. He knows what it feels like to be maligned by neighbors and family. He knows what it feels like to be chased out of town; to have an angry mob pursuing you for what you have said. And Matthew knows this all too well as well. Matthew acknowledges that when Jesus sends the disciples out, (when he sends us out!) we are being sent out like sheep in the midst of wolves.

And knowing this, Jesus still says, ….“let your peace return to you”?

What peace Jesus? What peace?

Sometimes we encounter people in our lives who seem not to let pain and hurt touch them. They live as if there was no real suffering in the world, no need of forgiveness, no need of healing—as if everyone could have the good life if only they were willing to work hard enough for it or just wait patiently for it to find them. When they tell you to “shake it off” they have no idea what they are asking of you.

But that’s not Jesus. Jesus knew exactly what he was asking; and he had to have known it was possible to ask that of someone only because he had learned for himself that life’s deepest rejections are only healed when we can open our clenched fists

and finally, finally let go of that moment of pain!

So that peace can return to us and all the dirt and crud that’s attached to our hearts, not just our shoes, can be dislodged from within us.

I want you to think for a moment about all the horrible, hurtful nasty things you have witnessed in the last year. I don’t want you to stew on them, but I want you to let them flash through your mind. For some of us they will be cosmic or global. For others they will be very very personal and intimate. Think of all the things in our world that need healing, restoring, and forgiving. Think of all those places and people that seem to stand in direct and complete opposition to everything that

God has taught us to be. It was in just such a world with all its pain, all its sorrow, and all its rejections that Jesus invited his disciples into a life of forgiveness and peace. Not in any kind of Pollyanna way, as if our hurts could just be tossed aside. No, he said, “when they come, when the hurts come as they inevitably will; find the courage and the resoluteness and the integrity and the faith to” “SHAKE IT OFF!”

Shake it off, and keep going. Re-find your peace. Plumb the depths of your own capacities to forgive and move on from this awful moment!

Spread peace, because that is our only way forward. Let go as soon as you can, as best you can, because on the other side of that town that has rejected you and everything you stand for: there may be another town waiting to greet you with open arms. But you’ll only be ready to go there after you have shaken the dust of this cold hard place off your feet.

“And the players gonna play, play, play, play, play

And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate

And I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake

Shake it off! Shake it off!”