Tag: sermon

Proclaiming Freedom

 8 The word came to Jeremiah from the Lord after King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim freedom for the slaves. 9 Everyone was to free their Hebrew slaves, both male and female; no one was to hold a fellow Hebrew in bondage. 10 So all the officials and people who entered into this covenant agreed that they would free their male and female slaves and no longer hold them in bondage. They agreed, and set them free. 11 But afterward they changed their minds and took back the slaves they had freed and enslaved them again. 12 Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: 13 “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I made a covenant with your ancestors when I brought them out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I said, 14 ‘Every seventh year each of you must free any fellow Hebrews who have sold themselves to you. After they have served you six years, you must let them go free.’ Your ancestors, however, did not listen to me or pay attention to me. 15 Recently you repented and did what is right in my sight: Each of you proclaimed freedom to your own people. You even made a covenant before me in the house that bears my Name. 16 But now you have turned around and profaned my name; each of you has taken back the male and female slaves you had set free to go where they wished. You have forced them to become your slaves again. 17 “Therefore this is what the Lord says: You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom to your own people. So I now proclaim ‘freedom’ for you, declares the Lord—‘freedom’ to fall by the sword, plague and famine. I will make you abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth. 18 Those who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces. 19 The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf, 20 I will deliver into the hands of their enemies who want to kill them. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals. 21 “I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah and his officials into the hands of their enemies who want to kill them, to the army of the king of Babylon, which has withdrawn from you. 22 I am going to give the order, declares the Lord, and I will bring them back to this city. They will fight against it, take it and burn it down. And I will lay waste the towns of Judah so no one can live there.” (Jeremiah 34:8-22)

Band at the 1900 Juneteenth celebration at Eastwoods Park

Introduction

One of the challenges of commemorating Juneteenth is the tendency to view it safely through the soft-filter of history. If we received the typical American miseducation than we’ve been left with a hazy recollection of those Civil War years and the decade following when formerly enslaved African Americans began building homes, families, schools, and business only to have, in the words of Carol Anderson, white rage respond in the form of Jim Crow laws, domestic terrorism, and mobocracy. Juneteenth, a day to remember the delayed proclamation of freedom, resonates with those former days, but does it resonate today?

According to the Center for Law and Justice, the USA imprisons more people than any other country: we have 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prisoners; we incarcerate 2.4 million people and POC represent 60% of those imprisoned; 1 in 8 black men in their 20’s are imprisoned; 13% are disenfranchised because of a record of incarceration; between 1997-2007 the number of women in prison increased by 832%. We spend almost 70 billion annually on prison, probation, parole, & detention. In 2015 the largest private prison corporation made 3.5 billion dollars. In 2017 the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency reportedly locked up close to 40,000 people, including some children and youth who’ve been separated from their families for months at a time. Most immigrant detention centers are run by private corporations, some of the largest which have direct ties to the current presidential administration and have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to its campaign.[1]

Unjust, state-sanctioned captivity which enriches shareholders and the politically connected is not a relic of our past; it is a reality that continues today. It manifests in racially unjust sentencing, in dehumanized migrants, in financial exploitation of the poor, and – if we’re willing to be very honest – the comfortable middle-class lives that many of us take for granted.

This sinful instinct to plunder someone’s body for my benefit is an ancient one. We see it in this passage from the prophet Jeremiah. God’s people had broken their covenant with God by refusing to free those who had sold themselves into slavery. Instead of setting them free as God had commanded, they kept them in captivity for their personal gain. And the response could not have been more direct: God condemned Israel’s leaders for breaking the covenant by enslaving their fellow Hebrews.

As we open our eyes to this nation – as we open our eyes to the wealth, middle-class stability, and global security built directly upon genocide and enslavement – as we open our eyes it is essential that we hear the voice of God with extreme clarity. God judges those who enslave. God condemns those who passively benefit from systems of exploitation and plunder. Or to say the same thing positively: God is on the side of the oppressed, the enslaved, the exploited, and the captives. God is a God of freedom, liberation, and salvation. And so today, as we do our best to position ourselves among the lineage of Juneteenth saints who commemorated a freedom that might be delayed but could never be denied, today the message for us is this: The liberating God sends us to confront every earthly captivity with divine freedom.

We are surrounded by situations of captivity. There remain enslavers around us for whom our fellow-image-bearers of God are nothing more than resources to exploit. So let the Word of God speak boldly today: The liberating God sends us to confront every earthly captivity with divine freedom. We see this mandate in our passage first through God’s intention, then through Israel’s failure, and finally through God’s intervention.

God’s Intention

12 If any of your people—Hebrew men or women—sell themselves to you and serve you six years, in the seventh year you must let them go free. 13 And when you release them, do not send them away empty-handed. 14 Supply them liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress. Give to them as the Lord your God has blessed you. 15 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you. – Deuteronomy 15:12-15

God’s covenant allowed for a kind of indentured servitude that benefited those who’d become indebted beyond relief. On the 7th year, the sabbatical year, the land was to rest and slaves went free. But not only did they go free, there were given material resources to decrease the likelihood that they’d return to slavery.

There were two important reminders within this covenant: God rescued you and God alone is sovereign. The people’s identities were no longer determined by someone who claimed ownership over their lives. They were children of God. And only God could claim power or authority over their lives.

In this country, slave owners generally tried to keep those they enslaved from learning to read. Practically this kept them from forging emancipation papers or following news of slave rebellions. But they also feared what would happen if these women and men began reading Scripture and encountered the God of freedom.

Denmark Vesey

They were right to be afraid. When enslaved people like Denmark Vesey learned to read, they began building coalitions to overthrow their enslavers. As Ibram X. Kendi writes in Staped from the Beginning, “Vesey likely spent time teaching, motivating, and encouraging fellow enslaved Blacks and challenging the racist ideas they had consumed, perhaps regularly reciting the biblical story of the Israelites’ deliverance from Egyptian bondage.”

Though his rebellion was betrayed, people like Vesey saw through the slave owners’ lies to the truth of God’s covenant. They were not slaves but image-bearers of God and those who claimed ownership over them were not their masters, but rebels defying the God of freedom.

Vesey and others knew God’s intention. If we are to be sent by the liberating God to confront captivity, we too must remember God’s intentions. The liberating God sends us to confront every earthly captivity with divine freedom.

Do you know God’s intentions for you? Who you really are? Who God is for you?

Both the marginalized and the privileged are confronted by this covenant. You are a child of God. No one but God is sovereign over your life.

Israel’s Failure (and ours)

Understanding God’s intention helps us to see the extent of Israel’s failure, and our own.

Jerusalem was besieged by Babylon. Soon the city would fall, it’s walls and temple razed and its people sent into exile.

But at this point there was a pause in the action. King Zedekiah had been desperate. He realized that his people had broken covenant by enslaving fellow Hebrew with no promise to release them. So he called the enslavers to temple for covenant and they agreed to set slaves free [34:10]. But then the siege stopped and the former slave owners, as though the ancient spirit of Pharaoh had possessed them, changed their minds [34:11]. They took their own people captive again.

To rightly understand the history of this country we must see the persistent theme of The one group of Christians enslaving another. Early one the debate was whether enslaved people could be baptized. The answer at first was obvious. No, for then they would have to be freed. But this was problematic since these were, after all, Christian slave owners. And so new possibilities were explored.

The Virginia House of Burgesses wrote in 1699 that, “The gross bestiality and rudeness of [Africans’] manners, the variety and strangeness of their languages, and weakness and shallowness of their minds, render it in a manner impossible to make any progress in their conversion.”

Cotton Mather

The well-known Cotton Mather, believing in rigid social hierarchy between slave and master, picked up a similar theme in his writings directed to enslaved Christians of African descent. “You are better fed and better clothed, and better managed by far, than you would be, if you were your own men.”

In order to justify enslaving fellow-Christians, white people developed a racial hierarchy based on an unchangeable racial construction. In so doing, white Christians gave more authority to the racial categories of their own making than the baptismal waters commanded by Christ.

And so the state of Virginia could legalize the racist and heretical claim that “the conferring of baptisme doth not ater the condition of the person as to his bondage.”

We’ve never repented of this history. Not really.

Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, writes,

[We] are very confused when we start talking about race in this country because we think that things are “of the past” because we don’t understand what these things really are, that narrative of racial difference that was created during slavery that resulted in terrorism and lynching, that humiliated, belittled and burdened African Americans throughout most of the 20th century. The same narrative of racial difference that got Michael Brown killed, got Eric Garner killed and got Tamir Rice killed. That got these thousands of others — of African Americans — wrongly accused, convicted and condemned. It is the same narrative that has denied opportunities and fair treatment to millions of people of color, and it is the same narrative that supported and led to the executions in Charleston.

Each of us would strongly agree about the wickedness of slavery, lynching, and mass incarceration. But consider again the statistics from the beginning of sermon. Do they not betray our ongoing belief in the narrative of racial difference?

In an op-ed in last week’s LA Times Jonathan Katz wrote about our current immigration crisis [2]:

Photos from a Border Patrol processing center in El Paso showed people herded so tightly into cells that they had to stand on toilets to breathe. Memos surfaced by journalist Ken Klippenstein revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s failure to provide medical care was responsible for suicides and other deaths of detainees. These followed another report that showed that thousands of detainees are being brutally held in isolation cells just for being transgender or mentally ill.

Also last week, the Trump administration cut funding for classes, recreation and legal aid at detention centers holding minors — which were likened to “summer camps” by a senior ICE official last year. And there was the revelation that months after being torn from their parents’ arms, 37 children were locked in vans for up to 39 hours in the parking lot of a detention center outside Port Isabel, Texas. In the last year, at least seven migrant children have died in federal custody.

The narrative of racial difference that allowed white enslavers to baptize the women and men in their possession remains at work today. Perhaps not in our intentions, but certainly in the outcomes we’ve all agreed are the reasonable collateral damage of our empire.

If God is a God of freedom than we must ask, Are we on the side of freedom?           

Whose captivity are we benefiting from? Whose exploitation props up our privilege? Whose enslavement are we willing to tolerate for our comfort?

Whose bodies are we willing to sacrifice to the demon of incarceration? Whose families are suitable to be torn apart by border walls? Upon whose vulnerable ancestral lands will we condone drone warfare, debilitating sanctions, and the first devastating impacts of climate change?

If we are to be sent by the liberating God to confront captivity with freedom, we must confess our failure to reflect God’s intentions.

God’s Intervention

If the crucifixion of the son of God reveals anything it is that God intervenes in situations of captivity and enslavement.

God’s wrath was poured out on the people who claimed his name while re-enslaving their fellow-Hebrews. This intervention feels like condemnation to the oppressor and like liberation to the captives.

It is the oppressor’s instinct to separate spiritual salvation from physical freedom. But the God encountered by those women and men who celebrated the first Juneteenth pronouncement made no such false distinction. Spiritual freedom was physical salvation.

Jesus said of himself, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” [John 8:36] We have been conditioned to imagine a kind of spiritual freedom when we hear this promise. And that’s true, it’s just that spiritual includes everything. After all, when we see God’s passion for liberation in Jeremiah 34, we have to conclude that Jesus, the Son of God, carried that same passion.

He was born into captivity. His families knew generations of exile and occupation (. He grew up among the lynched bodies of his countrymen hung from crosses along highways. He watched generational land taxed into the hands of foreigners, religious leaders in the pocket of the Empire’s representatives, and political leaders beholden to those whose fortunes came from the plunder of war.

So what did the outcasts and the marginalized hear when Jesus pronounced freedom?

Did they satisfy themselves with heavenly promises of a one-day salvation? Did they imagine a God who cared nothing for their suffering as long as their souls had been saved? Were spiritual songs and well-delivered sermons an adequate response to state-sanctioned murder and theft? Within a situation of captivity in which they were made the laughing-stock of the empire, was it enough to know that God loved them… spiritually?

Or did they hear something else when Jesus spoke of freedom and salvation?

Could it be that when Jesus said, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free, the Galilean peasants heard echoes of Jeremiah’s God? [John 8:32] The God who judged the enslaver; who refused to forget the Sabbath year of liberation and restoration, the God who pronounced Jubilee over captivity?

Might they have remembered their ancestors’ stories and songs of the God who spoke to Moses through a burning bush, who said to him: 7 “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. [Exodus 3:7-8]

Is it possible that when Jesus stood in the synagogue and proclaimed,  The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, those in the crowd who’d been made poor thought he was talking to them? And when he went on to claim that God, has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, those who’d been bound and bruised by the empire understood that their liberation was at hand? And when he concluded that he had come, to set the oppressed free,to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, the entire crowd woke up to that ancient vision of Jubilee, when no one was without land, home, or dignified work; where no one oppressed or exploited their neighbor? [Luke 4:18-19]

History records that after the Juneteenth pronouncement on that summer day in Galveston, TX in 1865, some of the enslavers tried to talk the women and men they’d exploited and abused into staying.

But when a captive people who’ve encountered the liberating God hear freedom pronounced, there is no confusion about what to do next. When a people who’ve been made captive understand their true identity as the children of God, understand that God alone is sovereign and no so-called slave master can claim actual power over your life, there is no confusion about what to do next. You get free! You live free!

Because God intervenes in situations of enslavement, we can confront every earthly captivity with divine freedom.

Conclusion

The liberating God sends us to confront every earthly captivity with divine freedom. We live between Christ’s resurrection and his return. We live between the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth Celebration. Victory has been won. Slavery and captivity have been abolished. And yet the spiritual forces of enslavement and captivity still plot their insurgencies, still coerce sinful exploitation and plunder.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. [Galatians 5:1] And yes Christ has set our souls free from the spiritual captivity to sin, but let us never reduce the liberating work of our Savior to the interior status of our souls. After all, he is the one who touched the lepers’ wounds, and rubbed healing mud on a blind man’s eyes, and offered fish and loaves to feed multitudes of hungry people. He’s the Savior who drew near to the outcasts, spoke words of life to the peasants who’d been driven from their land, and allowed his body to be rolled over by the bloody wheels of the empire… for us and our salvation.

It is for freedom that we have been set free. In a world that hasn’t heard of its emancipation, we are called to be a Juneteenth people. Among a people who assume their captivity to be final, we have been sent to proclaim freedom. To the enslavers, exploiters, kidnappers, and thieves, we are sent to brazenly and bravely announce the judgment of the God who sides with refugees and migrants, children who’ve been separated from their parents, and parents whose children have been snatched by state-sanctioned and politically-orchestrated violence.

The liberating God is looking for a generation of free people to proclaim freedom over every place of captivity. Will you go? Will you resist the tendency to so spiritualize your freedom that you pose no threat to enslavers and captains of empire? Will you proclaim the singular Lordship of Jesus Christ in response to every idol and ideology? Will you remember the chains that held you back- back from the God who created you, back from the flourishing future for which you were created? Will you remember, as the Scripture says, that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm?

The liberating God is proclaiming freedom over the desperate migrant and the landless refugee. Will we join him? The liberating God is proclaiming freedom over every child whose future is assumed to be written by underfunded schools and intentionally segregated neighborhoods. Will we join him? The liberating God is proclaiming freedom over the sisters and brothers whose ancestors built this nation’s wealth with their blood and bodies. We will join him? The liberating God is proclaiming freedom over every single place of captivity, over every single dehumanized image-bearer of the holy God. Today this God sings songs of salvation, freedom, and deliverance over this captive world. Will you join him?

[1] https://eji.org/news/private-prison-population-skyrockets; https://immigrantjustice.org/staff/blog/ice-released-its-most-comprehensive-immigration-detention-data-yet; http://www.cflj.org/programs/new-jim-crow/new-jim-crow-fact-sheet/; https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/us/migrant-families-contractors-campaign-contributions.html

[2] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-katz-immigrant-concentration-camps-20190609-story.html?fbclid=IwAR2NlZtTN1IVophhiTjel9N0cHJWrOU-Fi0ybS3wpg2EhFMueM207On0tkg

Of Monsters and Money

14 “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. 15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. 18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.” [Revelation 3:14-18]

11 “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore— 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves. 14 They will say, ‘The fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your luxury and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered.’” [Revelation 18:11-14]

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During Lent we remember Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness and the Israelite’s 40 years in the wilderness. The wilderness experience was a common experience for God’s people in the Old Testament, as was its corollary of exile. Exile, the experience of being sent or kept from one’s homeland, is something the early Christians experienced as well, something they anticipated from Jesus’ teaching and, later, from the Apostle Paul.

“You do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” [John 15:18] 

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. [Philippians 3:20]

Exile is a normal part of the Christian life. And how we engage with money in exile is incredibly important because, as we’ll see, money is a spiritual force that competes with God for our worship. Money, according to the Bible, is different than we tend to think of it, as a neutral object that we can use for good or ill. According to the French sociologist Jaques Ellul, money in the Bible is seen as “a power which tries to be like God, which makes itself our master and which has specific goals.”

The warped spiritual power of money is nowhere exhibited more strongly than within the context of empire and exile. If the Christian experience is one of regular exile in this life, then we need to pay special attention to the power that the empire’s money exerts over our desires and decisions. Otherwise we’ll think we are using money when we are being used by money.

Laodicea sat at the intersection of two major trade routes, had fertile grazing land, and became a center of banking and finance. It is of the church in this city of which God says, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. Why? The Laodicean church had forgotten their exile and thought of themselves as being comfortably a part of the empire. They saw themselves as citizens of the Roman Empire rather than exiles of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let’s look more closely at why this provoked such a fierce response from God.

The letter to the church in Laodicea is found in Revelation, a letter from the Apostle John to churches throughout the Roman Empire. Revelation was written to people who knew the particular exilic experience of one of the most powerful empire’s the world has known. The Emperor Domitian called himself “Lord God,” demanded worship, and brutally persecuted Jews and Christians who refused to do so, taking their property and executing them.

It’s important to remember that John’s letter to Laodicea is contained within Revelation, a letter written as apocalyptic literature. This form of literature is foreign to us but it had important characteristics that help us understand why God threatened to spit the Laodicean Christians out of his mouth. First, apocalyptic literature revealed the spiritual realities behind physical events, like pulling back a veil between the natural and spiritual worlds. Second, apocalyptic literature described current events through the use of symbolism. By using dense symbolism and metaphors, John was able to warn the churches about life in exile without antagonizing the wrath of the empire. In this way is less like gazing into a crystal ball to see the future and more like the spirituals sung by enslaved women and men in the American South, their songs serving as coded and subversive instructions for the long and dangerous journey to freedom.

God’s harsh words to the church in Laodicea were written in this strange, apocalyptic style. But we need to jump ahead a few chapters to understand how God’s anger with these Christians was connected to their relationship to money.

The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore. [18:11]

Who is the woman over whom the merchants are weeping? Between the letter to the Laodicean church in chapter three and the weeping merchants in chapter eighteen, Revelation tells us about three layers of evil that are violently opposed to God’s people. The first is God’s enemy, Satan, who is described as “an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns.” [12:3] The second is the beast, or monster, who is, as N.T. Wright puts it, “the dark power of pagan empire.” This monster derives its power from the dragon – Satan – and is the spirit of empire that violently chases God’s people into exile. The third layer of evil is the prostitute who is the particular expression of the monster, the spirit of empire expressed as the Roman Empire. Of his vision about the empire John writes:

3 Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. [17:3-4]

The image in Revelation of the prostitute is not of a person exploited or trafficked as we might think of prostitutes today. Rather, this is a person who derives power from the beast, from the spirit of empire, to lure people with glittering promises to their destruction.

As Wright notes, the prostitute, “in it of her own volition can dress up fine, can put on a great show, and (not least) can hold out a wonderful golden goblet as though she’s inviting you to a rich banquet. But the eye of faith, not merely of cynicism, recognizes that the goblet is full of urine, dung, and blood.” The language Wright uses is harsh, meant to offend our sensibilities and provoke our gag reflux. But it’s an accurate description of the wickedness inflicted upon God’s people by the empire: I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus. [17:6]

This personification of the Roman Empire is who the merchants mourn in chapter eighteen. They grieve because John’s vision looks ahead to the day when the Roman Empire would finally collapse. And now we’re getting closer to seeing how money is a spiritual power that competes with God for our worship. Those who’ve made their money from the empire will grieve over their losses, but John wants the church to remember that this empire gained its power – as all empires do – from the monstrous spirit, a spirit who receives its potency from Satan himself.

The monster of empire is drunk on the blood of God’s holy people. In fact, the entire system of empire is built upon the exploitation and destruction of human beings. The business people grieve over the long list of resources from which they will no longer be able to profit now that Rome has fallen – precious stones, fine linen, expensive spices – and at the end of the list of things they will no longer be able to profit from: human beings sold as slaves. The monster of empire – the demonic spirit which chases God’s people into exile – expresses itself by exploiting and destroying women and men.

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You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. [3:17]

It’s not just that the Laodicean church was depending on their wealth rather than on God, though they were. Their real problem was that they had built their security upon the exploitation of the weak and vulnerable, including other Christians whose blood cried out from the empire’s cup. Their financial security came from the very empire whose wicked power derived from the dragon, a power that fueled itself by treating image-bearing people as resources to extract, exploit, and eventually extinguish.

It’s not that they were intentionally profiting from the slave trade or had as part of their financial portfolio government bonds built on the bloody persecution of their fellow Christians. No, the problem was their tacit acceptance of the empire’s monetary regime of buying and selling everything, including people. The problem is how they embraced and benefited from a system of exploitation and death.

Do you know that thirty-five percent of mutual funds contain investments in a maker or retailer of guns and ammunition? Do you know that after the president’s election the stock price for two publicly traded for-profit prison and immigration detention corporations went through the roof? As one financial analyst said, The deportation crackdown is doing very good things for these companies. On a personal level, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth, but I guess business is business.

Like Rome, our American expression of the beast of empire assumes that exploitation and death are the reasonable collateral damages of our wealth. Indiscriminately imprisoning black women and men, massacring children with military-style weapons, building economic bubbles on the backs of the poor… all are the cost of doing business with the beast. I guess business is business.

The particular expression of any empire is always built on the monstrous spirit of empire and so the way the empire engages with money will never be neutral. Money, in the empire, will always be wielded as a spiritually oppressive power. The option to wash our hands of responsibility simply does not exist for those who have been exiled within the pagan empire… whether that empire is Rome in the early 100’s or America in the early 2000’s.

Of the Laodicean Christians, theologian Brian K. Blount writes that they “comprised a wealthy, self-sufficient community of faith. They believed that their wealth was an indication that they were recipients of God’s favor. John believed that their wealth was an indication that God did not favor them. Because one could only gather wealth in that Greco-Roman context by blending into the very culture that denied God’s lordship, wealth was a sign of accommodation.”

God was angry with the Laodicean Christians because the money and wealth in which they had put their trust came from the monster’s ravenous appetite for human flesh. Their comfortable homes, secure borders, respectable jobs, and secure bank accounts were evidence not of God’s favor but of their collusion with the demonic forces of empire, the same forces that had exiled members of their own Christian family at the knife’s edge of persecution unto death.

How could the Laodicean church miss it? How could they mistake wealth that was built on the backs of enslaved and exploited people as God’s blessing? How could they ignore that the same empire that had made them wealthy was literally killing their Christian family? And what about us? We miss the same thing those early Christians missed, that money is a spiritual power that the evil one exploits for his destructive purposes, purposes that are heightened and hidden within the machinations of the empire.

Once we understand the satanic power behind empire we can better understand the Laodicean church’s captivity to money, and perhaps our own as well. The Bible tells us two important things about God’s enemy, the red dragon of Revelation who animates the beast of empire. First, his desire is to destroy.  So of course the spirit of empire – whether the Roman empire of the past or the current expressions of empire that we experience today – of course empire will destroy human life. And not just as a matter of occasional policy, but as the fundamental rationale for its very existence. There is no way to profit from the empire without profiting from someone else’s exile; there is no way to take the empire’s money without being complicit with the empire’s bloodthirsty violence- human beings sold as slaves.

Second, Satan is a liar. The Laodiceans show us how the dragon who animates the monster of empire is a deceiver. Not only have they been blinded to how their wealth has been squeezed from the bodies of others, blood pooled in the prostitute’s cup; they’ve also become convinced that this wealth is a sign of God’s love for them, rather than proof of their complicity with the empire’s wicked agenda. Standing on the security of their money, the Laodicean church proclaims “we don’t need anything.” In fact, they are in danger of being spat from God’s mouth along with the other filth that has collected in the prostitute’s golden goblet.

Jesus warned his followers in similarly stark terms. “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” [Matthew 6:24] We are tempted to think of money as an object to be used. But Jesus warns us, as does John in Revelation, that money is a spiritual power that competes with God for our worship. The empire’s money is a spiritual power opposed to the Kingdom of God. If we choose to play by the rules of the empire we will never simply use money; money will always use us, and we will get used for the enemy’s deception and destruction. Or to put it slightly differently, when we get used by the empire’s money, someone else is guaranteed to be abused.

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Is there any hope for us? If exile is our experience until Christ’s return, is there any way we can stand against the monster of empire and its oppressive use of money? Each of us has been ensnared at some point by this monster. Many of us are like the complacent Laodiceans, mistaking our relative wealth and comfort for God’s favor when in fact we are reaping the rotten empire fruit of exploitation and dehumanization. Others of us today know genuine poverty. We’ve had money squeezed from our bodies in the form of payday loans; court and legal fees collected by justice system that privileges the wealthy and the white; Chicago water fees that are higher in black and brown neighborhoods; Chicago property taxes that are adjusted at higher rates in lower-income neighborhoods; and on and on it goes.

As much as we’d prefer to think of ourselves as the masters of our money, if we can stomach the truth than we must admit that the Biblical view of money as a spiritual power that demands our worship and brokers no rivals is a far more accurate description of reality.

Is there any hope for an exiled people?

18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. [3:18] God urges the Laodiceans to repent, to turn from the Mammon of the empire and worship the God who is the only source of true wealth. If there is hope for them, there must be hope for us too.

There is hope for us, even in a place of exile, even as our world groans under the oppressive regime of the monster and its dragon. There is hope because God did not abandon us to the empire.

The God of grace subjected himself to the monster’s regime of buying and selling, of exploitation and greed; the Son of God took on the flesh of our frail and vulnerable humanity and subjected himself to an empire where everything was commodified, including the very creatures created in his image.

The God whose character it is to give, to forgive and then to forgive again; the God who cancels debts and liberates captives; the God who makes covenant with his people and then agrees to uphold both ends of the promise; the God who came to proclaim good news to the poor; the God who came to to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for blind Laodicean and American eyes; the God who came to set the oppressed free… this God – the very definition of grace and gift – this God subjected himself to the greedy empire and this God – for us and our salvation – allowed himself to be sold for thirty pieces of silver.

There is hope for exiles like us whose minds have been colonized by a greedy empire because this God allowed the monster to crush him; allowed the beast to display his cheaply purchased body from Calvary’s tree.

There is hope for the exiles who have forgotten that we are exiles; who have acculturated ourselves to the pleasures and luxuries of the monstrous empire. And there is hope for the exiles who are this empire’s scorn, the ones whose blood and bodies have long sustained the crops of America’s ill-gotten cash. Despite the dragon’s power behind this ravenous monster, there is hope for the exiles because though he subjected himself to the empire’s marketplace, Jesus would not be bought. Though he allowed his body to be purchased, Jesus would not be owned. Though he subjected himself to the enslavers, Jesus would not be captured. Though he allowed the spirit of money to lay claim on his life, Jesus would not be commodified.

The Son of God was sold, but he could not be bought. And so in God’s divine reversal, the purchased Son of God gave himself away and with his death freely given he purchased our salvation.

There is hope for us because the One who subjected himself to our exile is now leading our exodus from the empire. The one who allowed the monster to crush him has defeated the dragon.

Money is a spiritual force that competes with God for our worship. This power is amplified within the empire, causing some of us to forget our exile and others of us to suffer greatly under its destructive power. But Jesus, by allowing himself to be purchased, has opened the way for our salvation; he has exposed the ultimate powerlessness of the empire’s money. In a nation that buys and sells everything and everyone, Jesus has made us free.

We are free to confess how we have suffered the monster’s lies: the shame we have been made to feel by our financial poverty; the false sense of blessing we have been made to feel by our wealth.

We are free to sell our stuff to provide for the poor.

We are free to give generously from whatever abundance God has provided.

We are free to admit our financial addictions without shame to those who will walk with us, holding us accountable, cutting up those unnecessary credit cards.

We are free to tell our community that we don’t have enough to pay the rent this month. And we are free to tell our community that we have too much money and that we need help giving it away.

We are free, in other words, to reject the false god of money, to scoff at its weak power, and to worship instead the God of Grace.

The Laodiceans thought they were wealthy, not realizing they were wretched; thought they were powerful, not realizing they were pitiful; they misunderstood their poverty for wealth, their blindness for sight, their nakedness for luxurious cloth. May it not be so for us. May we see through the destruction and deception of the monster and its dragon, so that we might know the freedom that is ours in Christ Jesus, whose body and blood freely given forever purchased our freedom.

Photo credit: vonderauvisuals.

The Way Out of Trouble

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. [Matthew 1:18-25]

Much of our lives involves finding a way out of trouble. Some of our troubles are self-inflicted, resulting from selfish decisions, besetting sin, or addictions revisited. Other trouble afflicts us simply because our circumstances, by our place within a world wracked by evil and injustice. This is the sort of trouble Joseph finds himself in when Mary, his fiancé, is found to be pregnant.

Joseph is caught between two competing instincts. Matthew tells us that he was faithful to the law, and so he would have been required to divorce Mary. But we also learn that he is a good man with sincere feelings of compassion and love for Mary: “He didn’t want to expose her to public disgrace.” Like us, Joseph needed a way out of trouble. And he finds a good enough way in his decision to divorce her quietly. In a small ceremony, with two or three witnesses, Joseph could fulfill the requirements of the law while still looking out for Mary’s wellbeing. It remained a heartbreaking situation, but the way out of trouble that Joseph settled on was good enough.

But then God intervened and suddenly Joseph’s good enough way out was no longer good enough. Joseph is visited by an angel who tells him that the Holy Spirit is behind Mary’s pregnancy and immediately his view of the situation and its associated trouble changes. Previously, he had two inputs into his impossible situation: following the law and caring for Mary. But now the angel opens up his vision and he sees beyond his immediate circumstances. He learns that the child Mary carries is a miracle of God and that he has been called by God to care for this child and his fiancé.

Everything changes. What had seemed like a good way out of his trouble now pales in comparison to the options that open up before him. Of course he won’t divorce Mary quietly. Of course he will take Mary as his wife and this child as his son. Why? Because when God opens our troubled eyes to his presence we see options where there had only been dead ends; we see open doors where there had only been brick walls; we see ways out of trouble that are genuinely good rather than just the best bad choice.

Now, we might think that the way out that God provides will be the easiest, the most painless option. But look at what happens to Joseph. After the vision, he takes Mary home to be his wife. So, in the eyes of his small community, Joseph is either a law-breaker because he didn’t divorce his adulterous fiancé, or Joseph himself is the father of Mary’s out-of-wedlock child. Either way, Joseph’s reputation is shot. He has brought shame onto himself and his family. This is now how he will now be defined in the eyes of his family and neighbors.

And then, one chapter later, after Jesus is born, Joseph is forced to lead his young, vulnerable family as refugees into Egypt. King Herod has heard about the baby king born in Bethlehem and he orders him killed. Joseph goes from being a laborer in a small, quiet town – minding his own business and trying to live a life pleasing to God – to a man on the run, pursued by the most powerful, violent tyrant in the region, living as a refugee in another country.

It’s true that God will always provide a way out of our trouble. And his way out will always be better than ours, will always open our eyes to miraculous possibilities beyond our imaginations. But we must not confuse God’s way out for the easy way out, the painless way out, the cheap way out. In a world that shames young, single mothers, God’s way out will at times seem shameful. In a world that fosters violence and upheaval in one nation and then slams shuts the doors to refugees in other nations, God’s way out will at times seem impossible.

What is it that keeps Joseph and Mary faithful to God’s way out of their trouble? Why, given the shame and violence that has come their way, do they not settle for their own good enough way out?

When the angel came to Joseph, he told him that the unborn child would be named Jesus, a very common Jewish name with an uncommon meaning: God saves. He will save his people from their sins. And then Matthew adds an editorial detail: “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means “God with us”).”

God saves. God with us.

Mary and Joseph are the first to experience the shock of God’s rescue. Through the birth of their son they discovered that God’s plan – a plan the prophets had been pointing to for centuries, a plan so unexpected that no one was looking for it – they discovered that God’s plan was for God to save his people through coming to be with his people.

God saves. God with us. Jesus.

It’s when we believe that God has come to be with us, to live with us, to suffer with us, to die for us – it’s then that see that God’s way out, despite the cost, is the way of salvation. Jesus’ story did not end with the shame of Bethlehem. His story did not end with the terror of Egypt. His story did not even end with the suffering and abandoned death on a Roman cross. Through all of this, God’s way out was being accomplished. His way out of sin; his way out of rebellion; his way out of injustice; his way out of evil and death. God’s way out was accomplished through Jesus, and Joseph had just enough faith to see it on that night in Bethlehem. Just enough faith to set aside his good-enough way out of trouble and choose God’s way out.

May we do the same. We’ve schemed and planned and strategized our way out of trouble- out of sin, out of pain, out of debt, out of relational dysfunction. We’ve settled for the good-enough way out of trouble. It’s time to follow Joseph’s example. Set down your good-enough plans for a way out of your troubles. Ask the God who saves, the God who is with you, to open your eyes to his way out. It will not be the easiest way. It will not be a painless way. But along this way you will be joined by Immanuel – God with you – who will lead you his salvation.

Daylight in Darkness

11 And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. [Romans 13:11-14]

Our Advent readings remind us that for ancient Israel, God was the world’s judge:

“He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. [Isaiah 2:3-4]

There stand the thrones for judgment, the thrones of the house of David. [Psalm 122:5]

When they sinned against God, they knew God was their judge. And when they were sinned against, they knew God was their judge. For the Israelites, God was the one who righteously judged their sins of idolatry and injustice, and he was also the one to whom they appealed for judgment against their enemies.

Of course, thinking of God as a judge is not limited to the Israelites. To claim that there is a creator god is to acknowledge that there is a cosmic judge. All that has been created by the creator derives its function and purpose from that creator. The creation looks to the creator for the way of life that leads to flourishing, but we humans consistently look away from the creator and to ourselves. We develop our own ways of living, patterns that ignore our creator, exploit the creation, and take advantage of our neighbors. Sin has corrupted our hearts, turned us away from God and twisted us into ourselves.  We image-bearers of God deserve his correction, instruction, and, ultimately, his judgment.

Like the Israelites, the early church understood that God’s judgment was real. They also believed that it had been expressed perfectly on the cross. It was there that God himself stood in for the judgment our sins deserved while allowing the injustice of this world to come crashing down onto his own body.

There can be a perception among some Christians that the God we see in the Old Testament is the God of judgment while the God revealed by Jesus in the New Testament is the God of grace and mercy. But this is to miss the severity of the cross. Here we see the extent to which God is a judge- that personal sin and societal oppression must be dealt with justly, even if it costs God’s own life.

This advent seasons reminds us that we await the world’s righteous judge. But what about now, while we wait? Those early Roman Christians who looked to the cross for the summation of God’s judgment might have wondered how were they to live in a world that thought the cross was foolish at best, offensive at worst. What did it mean that their neighbors looked at the cross of Jesus and saw one criminal among three receiving his deserved judgment while the church looked at the same cross and saw God’s justice accomplished? What did it mean that God’s justice had been accomplished on the cross – that justification was available to all through Christ’s atoning death – but that evil and sin still exerted their destructive influence?

What does the despair in Syria mean on this side of the cross? What do the three police-involved shootings in our city this week mean on this side of the cross? What does our besetting sin, our silent addition, our culturally-acceptable idolatry mean on this side of the cross?

These were their questions and, if we’re awake, they’re similar to ours.  What does the despair in Syria mean on this side of the cross? What do the three police-involved shootings in our city this week mean on this side of the cross? What does our besetting sin, our silent addition, our culturally-acceptable idolatry mean on this side of the cross?  How are we to live on this side of God’s cruciform judgment when there remains so much evil – out there, and in here – that demands God’s justice?

These are questions asked by in-between people, by people who live after the justification of Christ’s cross but before the final judgment of Christ’s return, by people who live between the angels announcing the empty grave and the creation announcing its creator’s return, by people who live in darkness by the promise of daylight. And it’s to these kinds of in-between people who Paul instructs in these verses in Romans 13. There are three things for us in-between, waiting for the righteous judge, kind of people to notice.

Understand the present time

This seems obvious- of course we understand the present time. But, as Paul points out, we’re prone to slumber. So what might it mean to understand the present time? On one level it simply means that we are aware and awake to our circumstances. We push against the societal default of “this is just how things are.”

And Paul has another level of understanding the present moment in mind. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. [13:12] He uses the metaphor of night throughout these verses- that the time before Christ’s return is like the last hours of the night before day breaks. It’s dark and seems as though the darkness will last indefinitely.

Understanding the present time requires faith that the night will end, that the impenetrable shadows will fade, and that the daylight will come. This means that we look at our present circumstances through eyes of faith, through eyes that understand that the darkness – in light of God’s eternity – is fleeting and mortal. It’s as though Paul is saying that in the midst of the deepest night, Christians have been given night-vision. It’s our super-power.

Does this mean we’re immune to suffering and tragedies? Does this mean that we answer every grief and lament with a spiritual cliché? No! Remember, understanding our present time includes being unflinchingly awake to the harsh realities of our circumstances and the pain of this world. But along with this, Christians also see the daylight infiltrating the darkness. How? We view each of our moments and this word’s events through the cross – through the moment of greatest despair and suffering, the moment of greatest injustice and inhumanity, the moment of greatest doubt and cynicisms – and we see through this crucifixion moment to the crucified Savior ruling in glory from heaven, we see through this moment to our salvation and reconciliation, we see through this moment to “a living hope… into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.” [1 Peter 1:3-4]

But Paul doesn’t stop with understanding, his focus moves to action. Living before our just God in the midst of unjust times requires more than our understanding- we’re expected to live differently.

Put aside deeds of darkness

There is a way of living that makes sense in the darkness. Verse 13 fills this in: carousing, drunkenness, sexual immorality, and debauchery. Paul isn’t providing an extensive list; it’s an imaginative scene of those who use the cover of night to indulge their self-centered desires. We don’t need to linger on each of these deeds of darkness, but it’s worth asking how we succumb to these or similar sinful acts. The self-centered nature of our self-gratifying sins can be justified if night is all there is, all there will ever be. But those of us who look for daylight will understand that our lives point to a God whose generosity is the opposite of these deeds of darkness. He is sacrificial, gracious, merciful, and just and our lives – even in the darkest night – are meant to illuminate his extravagant generosity.

We who have experienced the blazing light of God’s grace can never succumb to the old, self-centered logic of the darkness.

This personal holiness is serious business for Paul. In 13:14 he writes, “Do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.” Darkness tempts us to believe that private actions are without consequences. But again, for those shaped by God’s judgment on the cross at Calvary, there can be no equivocation about this. The cross is God’s forever evidence that our humanity matters – that all of who we are, what we think, what we love, what we do – that all of this matters enough for God to offer himself in our place of judgment. This is how highly our Creator esteems us- that a judgment that should have overcome us was instead taken onto himself.  We who have experienced the blazing light of God’s grace can never succumb to the old, self-centered logic of the darkness.

And then the nighttime metaphor sputters out and Paul includes two additional deeds of darkness: dissension and jealousy. While the others have more to do with self-centered actions, here Paul reminds the community that our life together is evidence of the coming daylight. We cannot accept the petty divisions that are normal elsewhere. In place of dissension, we are to pursue reconciliation that honors our distinctions. In place of jealously we exhibit kindness and sympathy- we think the best of one another. We mourn with one another when things are bad and we rejoice together when things are good.

We understand the present moment through eyes of faith. We set aside the old sinful logic of the night. And finally…

Put on armor of light

In a nighttime world that groans under the weight of evil and injustice, within bodies that still desire sin and minds that bend toward idolatry…we need armor as we wait for our righteous Savior’s return. In Ephesians 6 Paul writes that we need this spiritual armor to defend ourselves from the devil’s schemes and from the spiritual forces of evil. We need armor that protects against despair; against hatred; against envy. We need an armor strong enough to defend us from attacks against our humanity, our race, our accent, our gender, our names. We need an armor that insulates us from these times of sarcasm, cynicisms, and deception. We need an armor that is spacious enough for our hope, for our courage, for our divinely-inspired dreams and vision. We need an armor that is not overcome by the darkness, that stands firm in the darkness, that moves forward with each of our halting steps of faith through the darkness. We need, as Paul puts it, an armor made of light.

What does this look like? Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ. [13:14] This is our armor of light! It is Christ Jesus himself. We clothe ourselves, we cover ourselves, we armor ourselves with the one of whom John wrote, The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. [John 1:5]. The one whom the psalmist describes as wrapping “himself in light as like a garment” is our armor. [Psalm 104:2] You see, it’s not simply that we see through the present darkness through night vision goggles of faith… it’s that we are covered with light itself, a light that could not be overcome even by the darkness of the grave!

And this Light, is also this world’s judge, our judge.

On that day evil itself will be put on trial, sin will sentenced to its mortal end, and death will stand condemned.

The one who accomplished God’s perfect judgment on the cross for our salvation, will one day return in glory to judge the world for its liberation. On that day, all that has been hidden in darkness will be revealed; each instance of injustice and idolatry that was rationalized in the night, will be exposed in the unrelenting brightness of day; each sin – the private ones we held close and the structural ones we barely notice anymore – will be leached of the power we granted them. On that day evil itself will be put on trial, sin will sentenced to its mortal end, death will stand condemned, and our ancient enemy will be cast down to hell. Our Lord’s righteous judgment will be proclaimed and accomplished.

This judge is also the light who covers us now, between the times, through the night. So we look forward to the return of our righteous Lord who is also our judge because even now his judgment has been applied to our sin for our salvation; even now he fights for us, prays for us, and prepares the future for us. Even now, his Holy Spirit advocates for us.

Daylight in darkness.

This life can seem like a perpetual night. The darkness seems to cover everything. But our hope is with the one who has overcome the night and who will bring about a new, righteous day when all is made new.

He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. [Isaiah 2:4]

But the promise is greater than this. Our well-placed hope is not just for one day, when our judge returns.

Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord. [Isaiah 2:5]

What darkness are you facing? What sin seems too great? What injustice too overwhelming? Your righteous judge will come. And until he does, until the world is set free from the endless night, you have been armored in the light that has overcome the darkness. So step bravely into the darkness. Sing into the darkness. Dance into the darkness. The daylight follows you into the darkness.

Be Alert! (Or, Get Woke. Stay Woke.)

What is this passage about? Some think it’s about Jesus’ return. This is a hugely important theme throughout the New Testament and fundamental for our faith. But I understand this passage as having something more immediate in mind. Jesus tells his disciples to flee the Jerusalem from the coming destruction. He tells them that this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. It sounds like Jesus has a particular, not-so-distant event in mind. This means the event this passage describes is a long way in the past. Yet we will find that the instructions Jesus gave his disciples about a specific time of traumatic suffering are relevant to us, especially in the midst of this season of very public trauma that we’re now experiencing.

Look Teacher!

The passage begins with the disciples pointing out the magnificent temple. Not long before, Jesus had forcibly cleared the temple. At his trial he will be accused of threatening to the destroy this temple made with human hands. When Jesus looks at the Temple he sees that the time has come for God to fulfill Israel’s vocation. He sees that his time has come, when his body will be the sacrifice; when he will be the bridge between heaven and earth. He sees the continuity of God’s promises through Israel to bless the world, a promise that God keeps through his crucified and resurrected body. But what do the disciples see when they look at the temple?

The disciples are impressed. Herod the Great began work on this building and it was the largest structure for hundreds of miles. Many considered it the most beautiful building in the world. The stones admired by the disciples were huge. The largest that has been found weighs roughly 600 tons. It makes sense for the disciples to focus on the temple. Except that Jesus has been telling them that when they arrive in Jerusalem he will be arrested and executed. Since they’ve been in Jerusalem the tension has been thick with attacks from the civil and religious authorities. The earlier events in the temple should have been enough to terrify the disciples, as Jesus confronted the powerful leaders.

But here there are, following their teacher who has repeatedly claimed to represent a new kingdom, surrounded by religious pilgrims – many of them zealots ready to go at it with the Romans at the drop of a hat, standing in the center of religious and political powers… and they’re talking about the size of the temple stones! They are completely distracted. But it’s worse than that. Herod’s temple is having its intended effect on the disciples.

The puppet king who was kept in place by Israel’s oppressor, who killed his Jewish subjects and defiled their religion, who sold their fields to foreign landowners making them tenant farmers, who used brutal and terrorizing tactics to keep people in line… this king built a huge temple – one of the wonders of the world – as an intentional tactic to keep his people distracted and occupied. And it worked. The disciples, despite everything Jesus taught them, fell for it.

What massive stones! What magnificent buildings! Do we do this?   What a great home! What a highly rated school district! What a well-paying job! What a status-creating grad school! What a beautiful downtown! What amazing high rise development! What fantastic cultural festivals! What a beautiful pair of shoes! What a perfectly designed car! What an amazing, binge-watch worthy show!

The Temple was beautiful and impressive. It makes sense that the disciples would notice it. And it makes perfect, logical sense that we give our time, energy, affections, and allegiances to the the things we do. But the disciples weren’t simply looking at the temple; they were distracted by it. And their distraction was by design. But Jesus has spent too much time with these disciples to let this slide.

Watch out that no one deceives you.

In this passage Jesus looks ahead 40 years to the fall of Jerusalem. During a time of great turmoil in the Roman Empire, Titus marched into Jerusalem to put down a rebellion. He burned the Temple, destroyed the city, and crucified thousands. If the language Jesus uses to describe this future event sounds hyperbolic, consider that secular historians of the time described parents resorting to cannibalizing their own children. Jesus tries to show the disciples that the thing that has grabbed their attention will not last. And if they’re not careful, they will be so distracted by Herod’s Temple that they will completely miss the coming destruction. It’s as though Jesus were saying, Your oppressors are using this Temple to distract you until they can destroy you.

On Tuesday, Alton Sterling was murdered by police officers in Baton Rouge. On Wednesday Philando Castile was murdered by police in Minneapolis. I won’t rehearse the demonic details of their deaths. If you don’t know already, it’s on you to go home and learn. But the truth is that many of you are very familiar with these stories and you don’t need me to rehearse the trauma again.

(Before we go on, let me mention two things parenthetically. First: we had time of lament on sharing on Thursday. If you were unable to attend, please reach out if you need to talk. Second: on Thursday night Dallas police officers Brent Thompson, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Smith, and Lorne Ahrens were murdered during a protest. We have current and former officers in our church so this evil hit close to home for us. It is not hard for us to clearly state how horrible these murders were and to affirm the immensely challenging job our law enforcement officers have. This is basic for us. What gets more complicated is when our society equates the the murders of Sterling and Castile with the murders of these officers. They are both unequivocally wrong, but they are different. In this country and this city, the lives of police officers are highly valued. This is true whether or not the officers have integrity or are corrupt. There is not question about whether the lives of the Dallas officers matter? We know they do and they should. The murders of Sterling and Castile – and Sandra Bland, Laquan MacDonald, etc. – are categorically different for the simple reason that Black lives have not mattered to the perspective and practice of this country’s powers and authorities. So we will grieve the murders in Dallas, but we will also think and talk about them very differently than we do the endless stream of those Black and Brown women and men whose lives have been stolen by this country.)

Jesus turned his disciples’ gaze away from the Temple and toward the coming destruction.  Isn’t it likely that today Jesus would force our eyes off of all the glittering objects and desires placed in front of us by our society and turn our attention to these young men and their families? Can’t we safely assume that, like with the disciples, he would command us to: watch out! Be on your guard! Be alert! Keep watch!

Yesterday, Michelle Alexander wrote, I think we all know, deep down, that something more is required of us now. This truth is difficult to face because it’s inconvenient and deeply unsettling. And yet silence isn’t an option. On any given day, there’s always something I’d rather be doing than facing the ugly, racist underbelly of America. There’s always something each of us would rather be doing. The disciples would have rather marveled at the magnificent Temple, with it’s promise of glory and power. They’d have rather this than take seriously the way of discipleship as described by Jesus- a way that requires them to leave behind every empty but soothing promise made by those in power; a way that required them to give up their ambition for power; a way that was ambivalent about the Empire’s currency; a way that prioritized the marginalized and dispossessed; a way that will find the center of the universe not in the temple, not in Rome, but at the cross on Calvary.

Watch out that no one deceives you. How have we have been deceived? In the same way the disciples were susceptible to Herod’s lies, we struggle to see the way of Jesus within a nation whose self-described reason for existence is built on half-truths and offensive lies. And so, rather than giving ourselves to God’s work of shalom and justice, we are captivated by the shiny objects and glittering promises made by this nation and its many spokespeople.

Jesus told his disciples that a day would come that would be dreadful for pregnant women and nursing mothers. But in this country this has always been that day for Black women and mothers. Diamond Reynolds, recording her beloved’s death while comforting her 4-year-old daughter is only the latest, heart-rending evidence of this dreadful state of affairs.

But how long until we forget? How long until massive stones and magnificent buildings distract us, woo our attention away? How long until the names of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are crowded from our minds by the characters and storylines from Game of Thrones? How long until the conviction and commitment we felt this week are replaced with the energy required by the side hustle we need to pay for our addiction to consumer capitalism? We forget, because like the disciples, we succumb to Herod’s distractions.

We forget that our police forces descend from enforcers of the fugitive slave act. We forget that our prisons are traded on the stock market; their value rise as they find more reasons to plunder Black and Brown bodies, to warehouse men and women more cheaply. We forget that our cities are intentionally segregated; Black and Brown neighborhoods and schools are systematically defunded and isolated. We forget that our assimilation process forces immigrants to shed their history, the specifics of ethnicity; we will allow you honorary whiteness of a certain degree as long as you join agree to the anti-black racism that is this country’s currency. We forget that women of color are daily made to choose between the priorities of your people and your gender. We forget that white people who choose to tell the simple truths about this place are easily sidelined, made into a predictable punchline for this nation’s crude humor.

And let me says this gently but directly: None of us is immune to these deceptive ways. Watch out that no one deceives you. Jesus warned all of his disciples- some who had known the privileges of the empire and others who had known only its oppressions. Jesus seemed to think that all of them – perhaps for different reasons – were vulnerable to believing the empire’s lies; to become so infatuated with Herod’s temple that they missed the mustards seeds of God’s coming kingdom.

Harriet Tubman lamented that she could have freed more enslaved people had they only recognized their slavery. Despite their shared passion to end lynching, W. E. B. Dubois often ignored the work of his female counterpart, Ida B. Wells, writing her out of the founding of the NAACP. Watch out that no one deceives you! In his latest book, Ta-Nehesi Coates writes about white people as the dreamers, as those who have succumbed to this country’s racialized hallucination. But the fact that Jesus makes so emphatically clear is that the principalities and powers of this world will use the tools of this world to distract everyone of us from the truth.

Again, let me be gentle but direct: The fact that your race, ethnicity, or gender marks you for marginalization by our world does not mean you are not also susceptible to this country’s lies. The disciples were so enamored with the gold and brass of the temple that they forgot that it was their own oppression that made for it! For some of us – white people especially, Asian Americans at times – the deception will feel like freedom, like possibility, like blissful ignorance. For others of us, the deception will register as pronounced insecurity, anxiety, and self-hatred. The deception is spread like pollen in this country’s air, so that when you breath in the toxins you are made to think that something is wrong with you, rather than the one who is purposefully poisoning your lungs.

And our faith will make all of this seem harder at times. There is a belief that is common to hear from some Christian leaders and preachers, that our faith in Jesus will keep us from this deceptive world’s destruction. But such a belief would surely surprise the Jesus who said On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them, and, Everyone will hate you because of me.

Within these hard words are two incredibly important assumptions. First: Christians who represent Jesus and the ethics of his kingdom will necessarily find themselves opposed by a world that does not recognize our King or his justice agenda. This means that during weeks like this one, Christians should expect to suffer more than others because our allegiance to Jesus requires that we stand against state-sponsored violence and terror. And second: Christians will recognize this world’s lies and identify with those who suffer from them.This means that Christians should be the wokest people in this country. This means that we don’t debate blue lives VS black lives because blue is a job and black is an image-bearing, immortal, beloved by the Creator woman or man. This means that we know the issue isn’t so-called black on black crime, the issue is government policies of segregation, isolation, and enforced poverty; we know the issue isn’t an epidemic of fatherlessness, but a decision by our country and city to lock up our Black men at rates much higher than any demographic.

Our discipleship to Jesus make us more sensitive to this world’s deceptive violence and thus more susceptible to it.

At that time people will see the Son of Man.

This world’s impressive and imposing temples will do everything possible to capture our attention and affections. They will seek to distract us even as they work to destroy us. Into this reality Jesus commands us to be alert! To watch! He clarifies our gaze so that we see through the deceptive promises and to their destructive intentions.

But Jesus does not leave us here, staring at the source of our calamity and suffering. And even today, as we lament and grieve, as we get in touch with the trauma that has been once again inflicted upon us, even now we need our eyes to see beyond the source of our pain to the source of our salvation, our liberation, our restoration, and healing.

24 “But in those days, following that distress, “‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; 25 the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ 26 “At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

To describe the painful days ahead, Jesus borrows language from the prophet Isaiah who used these sentences to prophesy the fall of Babylon, the empire which Israel was then in captivity to. In these verses Jesus takes nothing away from the actual suffering of his followers. He does not spiritualize it. Instead, he paints a picture where he, the Son of Man is coming to his throne. The crucified, supposedly-failed Messiah, now coming in great power and glory, attended to by angels and the saints, the entire universe at his command. It is as though Jesus were saying: This temple will fall, but I will still reign. Rome, like Babylon before it, will fall, but I will still reign.

I struggled to know how to end this sermon after the week we just had. What room is there for hope in the midst of such trauma? And then I thought of the saints who came before us. The suffering saints of generations past knew this traumatic reality. In the face of suffering and oppression they turned their gaze not to glittering temples but to the glorious Son of Man.

They could look to their Savior who came to his eternal glory and power by way of suffering and death and know that Rome would pass away, Babylon would pass away, America would pass away, but that Jesus and his Word would never pass away. In their suffering they could proclaim that their weeping would last but for a night and that their eternal joy would come in the everlasting morning. In their pain they could know that their suffering would not be in vain.

Do not misunderstand. By looking to the Son of Man in glory, we are not resigned to this evil world. No! By looking forward to God’s future and eternal justice our eyes re opened to his in-breaking Kingdom. By placing our faith in the one who conquered sin, death, and evil we were more alert not less. By being freed from the fear of death, we are more courageous; we tell the truth more clearly; we resist evil with more commitment; we build reconciled and just community we greater passion.

So with their eyes fixed on the glorious Son of Man, they sang: I have trials here below but I’m bound for Canaan land. They could stand in the pain, not deceived by this world and they sang: If you get there before I do; Babylon’s falling to rise no more; Tell all my friends I’m coming too. They could resist the impressive temples and their subtle oppressions and they sang: One of these mornings bright and fair; I want to cross over to see my Lord; Going to take my wings and fly the air; I want to cross over to see my Lord. They could look to the Son of Man in power and glory and see clearly the world around them, taking their stand against deception and injustice, and they sang: Like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved; when my burden’s heavy, I shall not be moved; if my friends forsake me, I shall not be moved; don’t let the world deceive you, I shall not be moved.

May their alert minds, hopeful hearts, and strong voices then, be joined by ours now.