I think most of you know that Jesus’s disciples called him “Rabbi,” which is a Hebrew word which means “teacher.”
That’s how Jesus’s students saw him: as their teacher.
Jesus was teaching them a new way of living, a new of loving and serving and being.
And, as we just heard in today’s gospel message, Jesus sends his students off (two-by-two) into foreign lands to share these teachings with others.
Learning is part of the spiritual life.
And, many of us who grew up in the Christian Church, received our religious education in Sunday School.
It was there that we first learned about God and about our faith.
Sadly, though, I’ve discovered that many adult Christians never really graduated from Sunday School. Their religious education kind of stopped there.
Therefore, their concepts of God and Heaven and Hell haven’t really matured.
They still see God as an old, judgmental man up in the clouds who punishes people for their sins. They see the Devil as some red guy with horns and a pitchfork who lives in a fiery place below the earth.
In the Bible it says: “When I was a child, I thought and reasoned like a child. But, when I became a man, I put away childish thinking.”
So, a big part of our ongoing spiritual education involves not just learning, but sometimes “unlearning” the things we were taught as children.
One of those things I think we need to “unlearn” is the concept of “salvation.”
We hear about “salvation” in the Bible, and most of us growing up in the church were mistakenly taught that “salvation” meant “ensuring our place in heaven.”
That if we were “saved” (by professing our life to Jesus) then we would experience salvation in the next life.
But, that’s not what “salvation” in the Bible means.
It has nothing to do with the next life, and everything to do with this life.
When Jesus spoke of “salvation,” he meant “liberation”…freedom!
That following his way of life would liberate and free us! Not in the next life, but in this one. That following his teachings would set us free from chains that bind us. Free from fear and anger, prejudice and greed.
Jesus sent his disciples out (far and wide) to share these teachings, because was trying to establish a new Kingdom here on Earth…one in which all people would live a life of freedom and oneness.
And, I share this with you today, my friends, because we are celebrating July 4th weekend.
It’s not just about fireworks and barbeques and parades. We’re remembering that our country was founded on those principles of Liberty, Freedom, and Oneness.
In the Declaration of Independence, we hear that all people are created equal and are endowed by the Creator with certain, unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That means people are free to live how they want to live; to love how they want to love; to worship how they want to worship. To pursue whatever is that makes them happy.
We haven’t, of course, always lived up to those ideals, but we’ve always continued to fight for those freedoms.
Just in our lifetimes alone, we have made great progress.
Some of you here today were alive when Black people in our country had to drink from separate water fountains and sit at the back of the bus.
Some of you here today were alive when women in our country couldn’t have a credit card without their father or husband’s permissions.
Just in our lifetime alone, we have seen Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Marriage Equality. More and more people have been afforded those rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I know we have a long way to go, but I believe as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King once famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
And, we, of course, are called to be the “arc benders.”
2,000 years ago, Jesus sent the disciples out to share the “good news” of love and justice and Oneness, but he knew that there would be many people who would refuse to hear this message.
And so he tells the disciples in today’s gospel reading, “If you are refused, shake the dust off your feet in protest and keep moving forward.”
In other words, don’t be discouraged and don’t give up!
In the Jewish Scripture (which Jesus would have studied), it says, “You are not required to finish the work, but neither are free to abandon it.”
My friends, we as both Americans and as Christians, are called to continue to do the work of love and justice…and to build a land where all people truly are free and truly are One.
E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, One. When we know the Truth of our Oneness, then and only then will we be set free.
May it be so. Amen.