Our reading from Matthew’s gospel follows the beatitudes – Jesus’s recounting of those who are blessed though they seem everything but – and as it continues Jesus goes straight from preachin’ down into meddlin’, as my grandmother used to say. Remember He was on a low rolling hill opposite the construction of Tiberias, so named for the Roman Emperor and built from unfair taxation, conscripted labor, and standing as a challenge to Jerusalem as a center of power for the people of Judea.
You should also consider that just before preaching from the hills, Jesus had been preaching in various synagogues and healing the sick. That means the sermon on the mount was preceded by demonstrations of God’s grace and mercy and the constant call for repentance so that the people might enter the kingdom of God. Now he is describing what the social and political realities look like when we live in the Kingdom of God.
That may sound a little far fetched to you but, as I said last week, nothing in the Bible (including the sermon on the mount) is divorced from its political reality. I did not, however, say too much about ours. I’ll admit that I become more of a sheep than a shepherd when it comes to politics in the pulpit, and that’s probably because it tends to make the sheep scatter. The problem of it all is not that we would have a fight on our hands about who is right and who is wrong. The problem is that we, as a people, can’t even agree where the boundaries are for what is acceptable behavior, much less what is ethically good or even reasonable (and no I’m not talking about the Super Bowl halftime show).
Some of what divides us are generational. Some of it is socio-economic. Some of it is race-related. All of it, on some level, connects with power. Who has it? Who doesn’t? Who feels powerless and who really is and why? These are some of the base level questions that we are attempting to ask and answer in our collective fumbling for identity, meaning, and purpose in 2020 in these United States.
Our political reality includes an impeached president who was not removed from office, both actions taking place through due process. That same president used the national prayer breakfast – an event that is designed to be bi-partisan and reflective on the moral consciousness of our nation – as a chance to self-promote and condemn others. In fact, he followed up a reflection on the command of Christ to love our enemies with a rejection of God’s desire that we are merciful as a means of demonstrating the power and character of God.
It should come as no surprise then that those who testified against him are facing unprecedented retribution. Meanwhile, children and families are still being separated at our borders while an industry of privatized prisons grows, funded by our tax dollars, and safeguards for the protection of the earth, the elderly (especially veterans), and victims of sexual assault are being removed without our consent. I know that it’s a representative form of government, but if you think there are not lobbyists and special interest groups and heads of corporations that have had a say in all of this then you just aren’t paying attention.
Now, we can debate these things all day long, and (regardless of the antics of our newly impeached President) some of you may rightly ask, “Is it the government’s job to take care of the earth and those who are vulnerable?” To that, I would ask that we consider what life was like before child labor laws, civil rights, and the creation of the EPA to save us from our own smog covered cities and rivers strewn with old cars.
“OK, preacher man,” I can hear some of you thinking, “What are we supposed to do about it? Are you saying that it’s the church’s job to fix everything? I mean, I just want to sing Here I am Lord and be thankful for my salvation. Life isn't hard, I can’t help it if other people make bad choices!”
I hear that argument. I really do. I also see generations of people turning from the church because “Tiberias” is still being built on the backs of the poor, and we don’t seem to care. You may disagree with that, In fact, I disagree with that, but that is the perception shared by many who are disengaging with the Christian faith.
They don’t see the church the way that you and I do, or they would be here. I can see it from both sides, and I want to share a story about an experience that helped me understand where they’re coming from.
In January of 2000, when everyone expected the planes to fall from the sky and mass chaos to reign from crashing computers, Treva and I were in seminary and we went on a travel seminar to Ghana in West Africa. While we were there we toured a slave castle. Inside the castle, there was a church – a Reformed Christian Church. Most likely they would have used the Psalms as their hymnal. Behind the church was an open-air kitchen. On the floor was a hole covered by a steel grate, where food scraps were thrown. As we followed the tour we went into the dungeon where slaves were kept with no sanitation but a trench around the edges of the room. The light came in from a hole in the ceiling, which looked suspiciously like the one on the floor behind the kitchen.
First I realized how unsanitary and inhumane it was. Then I realized that the church was right on top of the dungeon. Then I realized that, while songs of lament and praise comforted parishioners and spilled out from foreign tongues in the worship of a God they did not know, these people were being terrorized and consumed by those same words. It made me wonder how we, the church of the comfortable, might be sitting on top of the dungeons of the outcast even here and even now.
Don’t just dismiss that without a thought. Don’t take that to mean that I think you are a jerk, either. The reality is that sometimes we are all jerks, but we have been called to be something more! Jesus calls to us again and again, through the word of God, to be a part of something more!
There had to have been all kinds of people in that crowd,(Jews, Greeks, Samaritans; people from all over Gallilee) but he spoke to them all as if they were God’s chosen ones – because they were! He claimed them all, right there and then, in the biggest “all y’all” anyone had ever seen. He said, “All y’all are blessed. All y’all have agency – the ability to affect change. There are no innocent bystanders.”
He gave them an identity and told them not to squander it by comparing them to salt. Salt that has lost its saltiness is good for nothing but the street. By the way, the salt of his day was pretty impure. Humidity or rain could dissolve or dilute it and leave a white residue that looked like salt but could do nothing but destroy vegetation. It had to go in the street, where you throw out excrement and other unsavory things. On the other hand, salt that is used well seasons, preserves, and makes food worth eating and makes life worth living!
In other words, if you aren’t living in a way that impacts your world for the good, then you’ve lost your sense of purpose and meaning. The same thing goes with the type of open flame lamps they would have used. Who lights a lamp and puts a cover on it? That’s ridiculous! No one does that. So it is with you and me. We are part of the “all y’all” that Jesus named and claimed as light impacting the darkness all around us.
That doesn’t mean that you have to lead a revolution. It means that following Jesus is revolutionary, even in a culture that claims to follow him while blessing slavery, fascism, and genocide (these have all been done under the guise of Christendom). It also means that following him helps us to see the revolutionary opportunities to care for one another, and it means that our eyes are open to the city-load full of oppression that is just beyond the horizon and not really part of our daily lives.
Resist it or deny it all you want, but somehow injustice seems to be a part of the human experience and God seems to want us to do something about it. Whether it is Micah calling for justice, mercy, and humility or Isaiah calling for a fast on injustice because apparently, we eat it up, God wants us to realize that we are the ones who must remove the barriers between us so that our light may shine!
Now, I realize that’s a lot to put on you, but the reality is that we are not alone in this project. In all of these things, we are called as a people to glorify God. We aren’t perfect but neither are we finished becoming what God has called us to do and to be. I was reminded of that last Wednesday when I had the privilege of touring ULL with some high school students from France who are staying with families from Lafayette High this week.
One of the students asked me why I had come to Lafayette. I said that I felt called by God to come here because of the warmth of this congregation. When you are here, you’re family. This church also cares for others, and I think that’s one of the main reasons I still feel called to be here. Then I told him that the way we care for others has led us to welcome strangers, especially those that others turn away. In fact, that led our Session to adopt a statement of inclusion for those who are LGBTQIA. I wish that we did not need statements like that, but since so many Christians have expressed exclusion we have to have some way of saying that we don’t do that.
Anyway, that opened up the door to talking about a concern for justice. Then he asked what the issues of injustice were in Lafayette. So, I told him about the gap between the rich and the poor, concentration of poverty in black neighborhoods (we didn’t even get into the issue of generational poverty), and the lack of access to healthy food and health care that also falls along racial and economic lines.
I told him that knowing about those things doesn’t mean that we are expecting the church to fix them all. It means that there are some things we can do – like Meals on Wheels and collecting peanut butter for the United Christian Outreach – and there are other things that we need to stay aware of when elections come around or when the city council passes ordinances.
Like I said earlier, I know that having a social witness is a lot of work, but I bet that is the same thing that people in the crowd thought when they heard Jesus say that he did not come to abolish the law (which was oppressive in its own way) but rather to fulfill it. In fact, he said that not even a letter or a stroke of a letter would be invalidated as long as the foundations of the earth held firm, and that means that we have to be even more righteous than the keepers of the law.
Jesus did not mean that we have to be more technically correct in our legal obligation to God. That would be like a cartoon I saw recently with a person dying in the desert screaming, “Help! I’ve been bitten by a poisonous snake!” In the next frame, a superhero called Technically Correct Man swoops in and says, “Actually poison means deadly to eat or touch. You were bitten by a venomous snake.” The victim says, “Thanks!” and promptly dies.
God doesn’t want us to be technically correct. God wants us to actually see the suffering of others and not turn away. That is what Jesus meant by the fulfillment of the law and by the command to “exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees.”
It means that we move away from the assumption that we are right and that God is with us, and we move toward the hope that we can make things right because God has called us to do so. Be righteous. Be salt. Be light. Don’t hide from who you are as God’s chosen, beloved one or as God’s chosen, beloved people.
Isaiah says to loosen the bonds that keep people enslaved and to care for those that have been used and abused by the powers that be. He doesn’t tell us to ask for their country of origin, their drug test results, or their bank statements. Likewise, Paul tells a community of believers made up of a mixed bag of socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds that they should not overthink things. Just proclaim Christ, and him crucified, as the one whom we follow. The same goes for us.
This Jesus is the one who names us, claims us, and compels us to believe that our light, our proclamation, and our public witness – no matter how small – is every bit as undeniable as a whole city-load full of injustice. Be salt. Be light. Be loved, and be loving. There is really no other choice if we are being true to who we are and whose we are. Being salt and light is what we do. It’s who we are, and that is something – regardless of politics – that we can all agree on. Amen.
Some of what divides us are generational. Some of it is socio-economic. Some of it is race-related. All of it, on some level, connects with power. Who has it? Who doesn’t? Who feels powerless and who really is and why? These are some of the base level questions that we are attempting to ask and answer in our collective fumbling for identity, meaning, and purpose in 2020 in these United States.
Our political reality includes an impeached president who was not removed from office, both actions taking place through due process. That same president used the national prayer breakfast – an event that is designed to be bi-partisan and reflective on the moral consciousness of our nation – as a chance to self-promote and condemn others. In fact, he followed up a reflection on the command of Christ to love our enemies with a rejection of God’s desire that we are merciful as a means of demonstrating the power and character of God.
It should come as no surprise then that those who testified against him are facing unprecedented retribution. Meanwhile, children and families are still being separated at our borders while an industry of privatized prisons grows, funded by our tax dollars, and safeguards for the protection of the earth, the elderly (especially veterans), and victims of sexual assault are being removed without our consent. I know that it’s a representative form of government, but if you think there are not lobbyists and special interest groups and heads of corporations that have had a say in all of this then you just aren’t paying attention.
Now, we can debate these things all day long, and (regardless of the antics of our newly impeached President) some of you may rightly ask, “Is it the government’s job to take care of the earth and those who are vulnerable?” To that, I would ask that we consider what life was like before child labor laws, civil rights, and the creation of the EPA to save us from our own smog covered cities and rivers strewn with old cars.
“OK, preacher man,” I can hear some of you thinking, “What are we supposed to do about it? Are you saying that it’s the church’s job to fix everything? I mean, I just want to sing Here I am Lord and be thankful for my salvation. Life isn't hard, I can’t help it if other people make bad choices!”
I hear that argument. I really do. I also see generations of people turning from the church because “Tiberias” is still being built on the backs of the poor, and we don’t seem to care. You may disagree with that, In fact, I disagree with that, but that is the perception shared by many who are disengaging with the Christian faith.
They don’t see the church the way that you and I do, or they would be here. I can see it from both sides, and I want to share a story about an experience that helped me understand where they’re coming from.
In January of 2000, when everyone expected the planes to fall from the sky and mass chaos to reign from crashing computers, Treva and I were in seminary and we went on a travel seminar to Ghana in West Africa. While we were there we toured a slave castle. Inside the castle, there was a church – a Reformed Christian Church. Most likely they would have used the Psalms as their hymnal. Behind the church was an open-air kitchen. On the floor was a hole covered by a steel grate, where food scraps were thrown. As we followed the tour we went into the dungeon where slaves were kept with no sanitation but a trench around the edges of the room. The light came in from a hole in the ceiling, which looked suspiciously like the one on the floor behind the kitchen.
First I realized how unsanitary and inhumane it was. Then I realized that the church was right on top of the dungeon. Then I realized that, while songs of lament and praise comforted parishioners and spilled out from foreign tongues in the worship of a God they did not know, these people were being terrorized and consumed by those same words. It made me wonder how we, the church of the comfortable, might be sitting on top of the dungeons of the outcast even here and even now.
Don’t just dismiss that without a thought. Don’t take that to mean that I think you are a jerk, either. The reality is that sometimes we are all jerks, but we have been called to be something more! Jesus calls to us again and again, through the word of God, to be a part of something more!
There had to have been all kinds of people in that crowd,(Jews, Greeks, Samaritans; people from all over Gallilee) but he spoke to them all as if they were God’s chosen ones – because they were! He claimed them all, right there and then, in the biggest “all y’all” anyone had ever seen. He said, “All y’all are blessed. All y’all have agency – the ability to affect change. There are no innocent bystanders.”
He gave them an identity and told them not to squander it by comparing them to salt. Salt that has lost its saltiness is good for nothing but the street. By the way, the salt of his day was pretty impure. Humidity or rain could dissolve or dilute it and leave a white residue that looked like salt but could do nothing but destroy vegetation. It had to go in the street, where you throw out excrement and other unsavory things. On the other hand, salt that is used well seasons, preserves, and makes food worth eating and makes life worth living!
In other words, if you aren’t living in a way that impacts your world for the good, then you’ve lost your sense of purpose and meaning. The same thing goes with the type of open flame lamps they would have used. Who lights a lamp and puts a cover on it? That’s ridiculous! No one does that. So it is with you and me. We are part of the “all y’all” that Jesus named and claimed as light impacting the darkness all around us.
That doesn’t mean that you have to lead a revolution. It means that following Jesus is revolutionary, even in a culture that claims to follow him while blessing slavery, fascism, and genocide (these have all been done under the guise of Christendom). It also means that following him helps us to see the revolutionary opportunities to care for one another, and it means that our eyes are open to the city-load full of oppression that is just beyond the horizon and not really part of our daily lives.
Resist it or deny it all you want, but somehow injustice seems to be a part of the human experience and God seems to want us to do something about it. Whether it is Micah calling for justice, mercy, and humility or Isaiah calling for a fast on injustice because apparently, we eat it up, God wants us to realize that we are the ones who must remove the barriers between us so that our light may shine!
Now, I realize that’s a lot to put on you, but the reality is that we are not alone in this project. In all of these things, we are called as a people to glorify God. We aren’t perfect but neither are we finished becoming what God has called us to do and to be. I was reminded of that last Wednesday when I had the privilege of touring ULL with some high school students from France who are staying with families from Lafayette High this week.
One of the students asked me why I had come to Lafayette. I said that I felt called by God to come here because of the warmth of this congregation. When you are here, you’re family. This church also cares for others, and I think that’s one of the main reasons I still feel called to be here. Then I told him that the way we care for others has led us to welcome strangers, especially those that others turn away. In fact, that led our Session to adopt a statement of inclusion for those who are LGBTQIA. I wish that we did not need statements like that, but since so many Christians have expressed exclusion we have to have some way of saying that we don’t do that.
Anyway, that opened up the door to talking about a concern for justice. Then he asked what the issues of injustice were in Lafayette. So, I told him about the gap between the rich and the poor, concentration of poverty in black neighborhoods (we didn’t even get into the issue of generational poverty), and the lack of access to healthy food and health care that also falls along racial and economic lines.
I told him that knowing about those things doesn’t mean that we are expecting the church to fix them all. It means that there are some things we can do – like Meals on Wheels and collecting peanut butter for the United Christian Outreach – and there are other things that we need to stay aware of when elections come around or when the city council passes ordinances.
Like I said earlier, I know that having a social witness is a lot of work, but I bet that is the same thing that people in the crowd thought when they heard Jesus say that he did not come to abolish the law (which was oppressive in its own way) but rather to fulfill it. In fact, he said that not even a letter or a stroke of a letter would be invalidated as long as the foundations of the earth held firm, and that means that we have to be even more righteous than the keepers of the law.
Jesus did not mean that we have to be more technically correct in our legal obligation to God. That would be like a cartoon I saw recently with a person dying in the desert screaming, “Help! I’ve been bitten by a poisonous snake!” In the next frame, a superhero called Technically Correct Man swoops in and says, “Actually poison means deadly to eat or touch. You were bitten by a venomous snake.” The victim says, “Thanks!” and promptly dies.
God doesn’t want us to be technically correct. God wants us to actually see the suffering of others and not turn away. That is what Jesus meant by the fulfillment of the law and by the command to “exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees.”
It means that we move away from the assumption that we are right and that God is with us, and we move toward the hope that we can make things right because God has called us to do so. Be righteous. Be salt. Be light. Don’t hide from who you are as God’s chosen, beloved one or as God’s chosen, beloved people.
Isaiah says to loosen the bonds that keep people enslaved and to care for those that have been used and abused by the powers that be. He doesn’t tell us to ask for their country of origin, their drug test results, or their bank statements. Likewise, Paul tells a community of believers made up of a mixed bag of socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds that they should not overthink things. Just proclaim Christ, and him crucified, as the one whom we follow. The same goes for us.
This Jesus is the one who names us, claims us, and compels us to believe that our light, our proclamation, and our public witness – no matter how small – is every bit as undeniable as a whole city-load full of injustice. Be salt. Be light. Be loved, and be loving. There is really no other choice if we are being true to who we are and whose we are. Being salt and light is what we do. It’s who we are, and that is something – regardless of politics – that we can all agree on. Amen.
Comments