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There is a lot to say this week,
and I want to say it before Sunday, because I think it belongs in your hands
before you come to Mass rather than after.
Last Saturday, June 27, Saint
Francis Parish and Outreach was at Augusta Pride 2026 at the Augusta Exchange
Club Fairgrounds. We had a booth. We had materials. We had people. And what
happened in that space was, without question, one of the most significant days
in the life of this community.
I want to tell you what we did.
And then I want to tell you what Sunday’s readings say about the people we did
it for.
What
We Did at Augusta Pride
In a few hours at a booth in the
middle of Augusta Pride, this community:
16 people
signed up for our parish newsletter
200+ pamphlets
distributed about scripture verses used against LGBTQIA+ people and why they
are wrong
~200 Know
Your Rights cards distributed
Hundreds of
pronoun lanyards, pronoun pins, and LGBTQIA+ flags distributed
I want to dwell on those numbers
for a moment, because behind each one of them is a person.
The sixteen people who signed up
for the newsletter did not just give us an email address. They said: I want to
know more about this. I want to stay connected with a community that showed up
here and said what you said. Those are people who have been, in many cases,
told that the Church has no place for them. And they are now on a mailing list
that will send them a message every week saying otherwise.
The two hundred people who took
a pamphlet about the scripture verses used against the LGBTQIA+ community are
now holding a document that does something the Church has too rarely done: it
takes the weaponized texts seriously, engages them honestly, and explains why
they do not say what people have been told they say. That matters. Bad theology
does real damage. Good theology, offered at a Pride festival with no strings
attached, repairs some of it.
The two hundred people who took
a Know Your Rights card are people who live in a country where knowing your
rights is not a legal abstraction. It is survival information. The fact that a
church was handing it out says something about what kind of church we are
trying to be.
And every person who took a
pronoun lanyard, a pin, or a flag received a small but specific message: you
were seen here, by name, or by the name you have chosen for yourself, and that
matters to us.
Thank you to everyone who
donated to make this possible. Thank you to everyone who came to the booth and
stood with us. You did that. We did that together.
“Come to
me, all you who labor and have been burdened, and I will refresh you.” (Matthew 11:28, CPDV)
What
This Sunday’s Gospel Says
This Sunday we are in week four
of our series The Kingdom Worth Everything: Costly Discipleship in Ordinary
Time. The series word is YOKE.
The Gospel reading is Matthew
11:25-30, and it contains one of the most important sentences Jesus ever spoke.
You have probably heard it so many times that you may have stopped hearing it.
I want you to hear it fresh this week, in light of what happened at Augusta
Pride.
Jesus says: Come to me, all you
who labor and have been burdened, and I will refresh you.
All you who labor and have been
burdened. That phrase is not a spiritual generality. In the context of Matthew
11, it is a specific description of people who have been crushed under
religious obligation, under rules that were supposed to bring them closer to
God but had been weaponized into walls that kept them out. The religious
leaders of Jesus’ time were putting heavy burdens on people who could not bear
them and refusing to lift a finger to help.
That is the context in which
Jesus offers the yoke. Not as an additional burden. As the alternative to the
burden that has been placed on them without mercy.
I could not stop thinking about
that sentence while we were at Pride last Saturday. The people who came to our
booth were, many of them, people who have been burdened. Burdened by bad
theology presented as the word of God. Burdened by communities that used
scripture as a weapon. Burdened by families that chose doctrine over their
child. Burdened by years of being told that the God who made them does not want
them.
That is the burden Jesus is
naming. And what he offers instead is a yoke that is sweet and a burden that is
light. Not the absence of all weight. The presence of the right weight, carried
alongside the one who says: learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.
The pamphlets we handed out at
Pride are a small act of lifting a burden that should never have been placed.
The pronoun lanyards are a small act of seeing a person the way God sees them.
The sixteen newsletter signups are sixteen people who found out that a
community exists where the yoke is actually sweet.
Come to Mass this Sunday and
hear the full sermon. The word is YOKE, and this week it has more content than
it usually does.
Sunday’s Mass is at 3:00 PM ET,
in person at 557 Greene Street in Augusta, Georgia, and live online. If you
know someone who was at Pride last Saturday and picked up our materials, tell
them about Sunday. Tell them the table is still open. Tell them the yoke is
sweet.
We will see you there.
Pax
et Bonum,
Bishop Greer
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Join us every Sunday at 3:00 PM at 557 Greene Street in Augusta, Georgia in the sanctuary of the MCC of Our Redeemer. Rosary starts at 2:25 PM every Sunday.
For the St. George family; Dana Godsey, Fr. Bryan Wolf; Mary Nehls; James (Cancer); Jacob (Cancer); James Long (Cancer); Mickey; Jacob Williams; Brittney (Cancer); Jennifer (DV Survivor, Homeless); Bishop James Long; David; John; Bishop Ben and Darlene Williams; Ralph Wilkins; Dillan; Wolfie; Misa; Kellsie; Ember; Chris Thompson; Killa Nova (Cancer); Helena; Beth; Thomas; Katelyn McConnell; Guillaumette's mother; Katerina; Mcam; Antonio; Edmah Osoro; Ethan Wolf; David Lawrence; Dustin; Malachi (Cancer); Janelle (Cancer); Ashley; Christy Ann (Tendons); Barb (Cancer); Barbara; growth for our parish family; all those in the path of severe weather, end of hostilities in Ukraine and the Middle East; for an end to gun violence.
