Proper 8 Year C 2025: Luke 9:51-62

A 22-year-old Chicago White Sox fan was banned indefinitely from all Major League Baseball ballparks on Wednesday after he heckled Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte so cruelly that he brought Marte to tears, yelling derogatory comments about his mother who died in a car accident. News sources are not reporting on what, exactly, was said. Which is good. We don’t need a direct quote to know that his actions were unacceptable. Ketel Marte is 31 years old. He’s a grown man. He has been in the league for 11 years. So he’s been heckled. He’s heard trash talk. Especially in baseball, where there are quiet enough moments to make out a single voice from the crowd, you don’t make it that far if you don’t have some pretty thick skin. My heart breaks to think about how awful that fan must have been to bring him to tears.

Marte’s teammates and manager responded by showing their love for him. His manager told him, “I love you and I’m with you and we’re all together and you’re not alone.” The White Sox responded by ejecting the fan and banning him from their ballpark, a move which was expanded on by the League, who banned him from all Major League Baseball ballparks. The White Sox showed their support for Marte during the next game of their series with the Diamondbacks by displaying on board in the ballpark, “Baseball is Family” and “the White Sox community supports Ketel Marte.”

It would have been easy for any of these men in the Diamondbacks organization to go on a tirade. To have a fit about what happened. To rain down fire upon the heckler. But they chose a different way. They chose to love their hurting teammate, their hurting friend. They didn’t do nothing, but they didn’t go scorched earth. They chose to focus on their love for their friend instead of their anger at his tormentor.

This is what Jesus is teaching his disciples to do at both ends of this chapter in Luke. Today, we’re at the very end of chapter 9, but at the beginning of the chapter, Jesus gave the twelve disciples the power and authority to do the healing that Jesus himself has been doing, and sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. He said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money - not even an extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there. Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” (9:3-5)

On the other side of today’s text, in chapter 10, Jesus gives his disciples the same guidance: “whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.’” (10:10-11) That act of protest is deeper than it might seem on the surface. “Shake the dust off your feet” indicates complete separation from those who reject the disciples, and by their rejection of the disciples and their message they are rejecting Jesus. In Luke, it doesn’t specify the way in which the disciples are rejected, simply that they are - or in chapter 10, that they will be. In Acts, the next time we hear about shaking the dust off of feet, the high ranking people of the city stir up persecutions against Paul and Barnabas and drive them out of the region.

It’s never been easier to express our rejection of others with cruelty. We sit behind keyboards in the safety of our homes. I’ve received mean emails on Monday from people who smiled and shook my hand the previous Sunday. They’re hard to shake off. I’ve been known to imagine the metaphorical fire I’d like to command to come down from heaven and consume them, usually in the form of a witty and sharp retort. And the idea of responding by shaking the dust from my feet - even knowing the implied judgment held in that ritual - feels inadequate and unsatisfying.

I sometimes imagine responding like Paris Geller from Gilmore Girls when she told her friend’s cheating boyfriend that he “offer(s) nothing to women or the world in general” and that if he were to “fall off the face of the earth tomorrow, the only person that would miss (him) is (his) Porsche dealer.” But while watching Paris dress that man down on behalf of her hurting friend is satisfying, for most of the series she is a lonely girl. She has a lot of quick comebacks, but not a lot of friends.

I try to make a practice of not writing anything in an email that I wouldn’t say to the person’s face. I put emails in my “drafts” folder to sleep on them all the time, but especially when I can tell that I’ve written them in an emotionally heightened state. After all, to quote Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice, “angry people are not always wise” (253). I read a message board thread of people reflecting on the quote, “speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you’ll ever regret” where a commenter wrote, “Reminds me of my first big break up. I’ll never forget how much I obliterated that poor girl with my words. Went from pride to regret very quickly.”

At least the disciples learned their lesson as well. Later, in Acts, Paul and Barnabas are driven out of Antioch. “So they shook the dust off their feet in protest against them, and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” (13:51-52) I’d like to get some tips from them for how to let it go and move on, filled with joy - they moved on to Iconium, where the very next verse says, “the same thing occurred” to Paul and Barnabas (14:1).

Paul and Barnabas have the same advantage as you and I have: each other. Jesus never sends the disciples out alone - they’re always at least in pairs. It’s better to walk through life together. I am so fortunate to have different friends and colleagues that help me through different struggles, and to whom I can return the favor. I have a clergy group text that has been active since we did our chaplaincy internships together in 2018 where we lean on each other personally and professionally from things as simple as “how do I put this kind of service in the parish register?” to the more complicated “how can I respond to this person in love while not enabling them?” I have my undergraduate randomly assigned roommate, with whom I now have almost 20 years of shared support and friendship - and who keeps me grounded in the non-clergy, non-Episcopal world. I have the constant support of my spouse, who just last week reminded me that just because I like doing something doesn’t mean it isn’t work, and who makes me a better priest and a better mother and a better person in general. All of these connections didn’t happen overnight. We all built relationships and trust together, but we all make one another’s lives easier. We make one another’s loads lighter. And by being those safe spaces for one another, we make it far less likely that any of us are going to attempt to command fire down from heaven when what we are called to do is to shake the dust off of our feet.

Shaking the dust off of our feet doesn’t necessarily mean we then go back to the person who may have wronged us. It doesn’t mean that we continue to get mistreated. It means the opposite: that we remove ourselves from the situation. But it gives us a framework within which to do so where we can hold our heads high. Where we know that we are representing Christ in the world by building one another up in Christian communities of trust and kindness, where no fire is called from heaven and we shake the dust off our feet and go forward in our mission. Amen.