Traveling Light
St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
June 14, 2026
Year A, Proper 6: The Third Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 19:2-8a
Psalm 100
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:23
One of the things about my job is that almost every day brings something unexpected.
At the start of each week, I draw up my to-do list and there are always recurring events – staff meeting, our weekday and Sunday services, I meet with the wardens every Monday – but there are things that never make it onto the list but always happen: an unexpected phone call or email or someone shows up at the office looking to talk.
I can’t say that I always welcome these interruptions – sometimes it means I don’t get started on my sermon until it’s uncomfortably close to Sunday morning – but over the years I’ve learned that these surprises are often holy – they are “holy interruptions.”
For example, last week I received a text from someone I had not heard from in more than a year.
I’ll call him “Mark.”
Mark is not a parishioner, but a parishioner had given him my name and number, suggesting that we should talk.
You see, Mark had been diagnosed with cancer, and he faced a grim prognosis.
We had a good phone conversation. We talked about life, death, family. I added him to our prayer list – he’s been on the long-term list ever since. I reached out a couple of times, and we texted a little bit. But fortunately, he was doing better and I didn’t hear from Mark again – until I received last week’s text.
He said his cancer was back and asked if we could meet and I said yes, of course.
On Thursday afternoon, while I waited for Mark to arrive, I kind of rehearsed in my mind what I thought he might want to talk about.
I imagined him asking that familiar but always very difficult question: why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?
Why is it, that it seems so often we lose kind and loving people, while people who do awful things, who even seem to enjoy hurting others, they just go on and on?
I know that this hard question has been on the minds of many in our community, especially lately.
Well, anyway, Mark arrived and he updated me on his health situation, which is very serious.
He told me about his struggles with faith and especially with the institutional church, which has disappointed and failed him, as it has so many others.
And then he told me that he had been going around having conversations with different people and asking them:
Why do you believe in God?
And that’s what he had come to ask me:
Why do you believe in God?
This was not the question I expected.
And I knew that I couldn’t fall back on my seminary education, or even my two decades of ordained ministry.
I knew Mark was looking for me to answer from my heart.
I breathed for a couple of beats and then I said that I don’t think “believing” in God – I don’t think of “faith” - as an intellectual exercise. Faith is not something that I can be talked into, not something that I can be convinced of.
Instead, for me, faith is trust – trust that there is Pure Love and Mercy behind the love and mercy that I’ve experienced in my life.
Faith is trust – not that my life will be free of mistakes or without suffering – but trust that I am being guided and nudged along the way. And that, even when everything seems to go wrong and all hope is lost, somehow Pure Love and Mercy offers new life.
And then I told him a story – a story that most of you have heard at least once.
I told him the story of how a teaching colleague invited me to come to her church sometime and how accepting her invitation and walking into St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, just a few blocks from our house in Jersey City, changed the course of my life, eventually leading me to be sitting across from Mark in my office here at St. Thomas’.
I told him how the rector of St. Paul’s came down the aisle and stretched out his hand and said, “I’m Dave. Welcome to St. Paul’s” – marking the start of a most unlikely and unexpected friendship, a brotherhood.
That Sunday morning at St. Paul’s, I knew that I had found “it,” although I had no idea what “it” really was.
But now, I believe “it” was God – “it” was Pure Love and Mercy behind the warmth of the welcome and the beauty of the service and the church – Pure Love and Mercy inviting me into new life.
Mark and I ended up talking for more than two hours – a very rich and meaningful conversation – a real gift for me and I hope for him, too.
There is a whole lot going on in today’s gospel lesson, the sending of the “twelve disciples” to continue the work of Jesus.
Jesus gives them many warnings and instructions, but I’m especially struck by how he tells them to travel light: “Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff.”
I’ve been imagining these first disciples – most of them uneducated, illiterate, no seminary education for these guys.
The first disciples, who we know were often thickheaded, unsteady, and unreliable - I’ve been imagining them heading out into the world, traveling light, with the daunting task of proclaiming the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near, curing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing the lepers, casting out demons.
We know that they were not always successful, but I bet they were most effective when they told stories, when they told their stories.
After all, that’s what Jesus did.
He told stories.
So, I imagine Matthew telling the story of how one day he was sitting at his tax booth, conducting his business as always, when Jesus called him to follow and he did and that changed everything.
I imagine the disciples telling the story of the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years and one day she touched the fringe of Jesus’ cloak and she was healed.
I imagine the disciples telling the story of how one day there were thousands of people gathered with only a little bit of bread and fish to go around and how Jesus told them that there would be enough and there was enough, there was more than enough.
I imagine the disciples saying I didn’t know what I was looking for but I found “it” in and through Jesus – that in this person (yes, he’s from Nazareth, believe it or not!) – in this person we experience love and mercy like we’ve never experienced before.
Like us, these disciples didn’t have the answer to every question, but I imagine them starting the church by traveling light, carrying only their stories.
And I imagine us traveling light, carrying only our stories.
I imagine us sharing our stories during all those holy interruptions.
I imagine us telling the story of how so many in our community have embraced the George Family with love and support during their time of tragedy and grief.
I imagine us telling the story of how, in a time of great division, we have mostly managed to stick together, definitely not agreeing about everything, but able to pray, love, and serve together.
I imagine us telling the story of a place where everyone is welcome, no matter if they can say the creed without a single doubt, or aren’t so sure about everything we say we believe – and, you know what, that’s OK.
I imagine us telling the story of welcoming strangers from a faraway land, the story of caring for children not our own, the story of making Thanksgiving and Christmas happen for families in need, the story of offering dignity to people lined up outside the Community Crisis Center, the story of remembering and honoring our brothers and sisters resting in the North Cemetery.
It’s through our stories that God – Pure Love and Mercy - offers healing and new life.
And who knows, maybe every once in a while, a couple of newcomers will wander in, hear our stories, and realize that they have found “it” – finally they have found the Pure Love and Mercy that sustains the world.
And the story begins again.
Amen.
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