On this first Sunday of our new program year together, as we gather together to hear God's Word and be fed with God's real presence among us, both in worship and our first- annual-opening-program-day barbecue, Isaiah and Jesus and James all provoke us to ask, what important things do we need to hear from those around us - from those we work with, from those we love, from our neighbor - if our religion is not to be judged worthless?  Who do we need to bring with us into this community to find healing and wholeness in a world that sees them as broken and infirm and of little use? 

What laws are we to follow? - (and on this Labor Day weekend I want to talk primarily about laws about work.) How are we to live our lives in praise of God? What laws are ok to break - whether they are Biblical rules or local ordinances? Are there any laws you always have to follow, no matter what? Are there any laws you always have to break?

I think that some of the "purity laws" of our culture are rules that need to be broken by people of faith, as Jesus broke the rules of his.

So Jesus asked the Twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life"....The readings today have a few things in common, but one I want to highlight is loyalty - he kind of loyalty that changes you, even breaks you. But like breaking bread and pouring out wine, it is a transformation that gives life. All the undoing and rearranging that happens when we pledge ourselves to Jesus' way of living and being yields a well-being that makes it worth it. The choice is ours, and the choice is worth it.

Thirty years later I came here to St. Thomas and I began to hear already in my first summer about Jonathan Daniels....Jonathan Daniels has been named a modern day saint in the Episcopal Church....Jon devoted many of his Sundays in Selma to bringing small groups of Negroes, mostly high school students, to church with him in an effort to integrate the local Episcopal church. They were seated but scowled at. Many parishioners openly resented their presence, and put their pastor squarely in the middle.