Sermon, Year C, Reign of Christ, "Love in the particulars"

C Reign of Christ Pilg 2022

Luke 23:33-43

November 20, 2022

           In the time of Jesus, Augustus Caesar and Tiberius Caesar were the undisputed kings, sovereigns, rulers.  So it is a curious thing that we come to this time in the liturgical year, the end of the liturgical year, and reference it as Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday.  Jesus was certainly not the king in his time, made undeniably clear by his arrest, torture, and death. 

Common to the Jewish story was an uneasy relationship with even their own kings.  For God alone was king, ruler, sovereign.  As a result, claims to the throne immediately created a Jewish countercultural narrative where pharaohs, kings, and caesars were imagined as unseated for their cruel, wicked, and violent practices and replaced by a God of definitively different values.   Hebrew Scripture is replete with stories of how the Jewish people negotiated this reality—Moses before Pharaoh, Daniel in the lion’s den, Esther in the royal court, Jeremiah challenging the royal and religious elite—all risked their lives to speak with a strong voice and join hands with those laid low, those vanquished and conquered, or put under threat by the rulers of their time. 

Curious then, that in all three years of the Revised Common Lectionary, the Gospel passages chosen for Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday are uncharacteristic for those of a king.  In Matthew, in Year A, Jesus sits as judge over the nations and tells them they are only welcome in the kingdom as they met the needs of those who are naked, hungry, thirsty, and those thrown into prison.  This is the character of our king, not unlike the God who chose Hebrew slaves over Egyptian taskmasters, who cried like a fountain on behalf of the poor when the king had aggrandized the wealthy and powerful.  In Years B and C of the liturgical calendar, we read passages like Johnny read for us today.  They are the stories of Jesus’s betrayal and crucifixion. 

This is your king.  Much like 1.1 million Jews during his time, Jesus was tortured and executed through crucifixion.   What are we to make of that?  How are we to respond?

The apostle Paul, writing out of his context as a faithful Jew, responds by saying that he preaches not Christ triumphant, not Christ with power over, not Christ doing as Caesar does, but Christ crucified, Christ the defeated, Christ the vanquished.  In so doing, Paul remembers a long tradition that is not about ladder climbing, or grasping and clutching at power over others, or even “winning.”  Paul remembers a God who chooses Hebrew slaves over Egyptian taskmasters, the brave choices of Esther to protect a conquered people, and Hananiah, Misha'el, and Azariah who are better known by their Babylonian names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  Those three are bound and thrown into the fiery furnace for refusing to bow to the image of King Nebuchadnezzar II, king of all of Babylon.  They worshipped the king of a different character.

I want to make it clear that all of these pharaohs, kings, rulers, and caesars did not see themselves the way the Jews saw them.  They saw themselves as the protectors of their people, the Father to many nations, chosen by gods or God to rule.  In the Priene inscription at Actium, the military victory of Octavian Caesar is referred to as “the gospel.”  Octavian is referred to as Augustus, “the one to be worshipped” and, ten years before the birth of Jesus, Octavian is referenced as the savior, his birth heralding the beginning of all time.  Caesar Augustus was known as the son of god, the prince of peace, the kind and benevolent father of the fatherland. 

This is the way of cruel conquerors.  They make general allusions to their benevolence and charity to the masses, their love for their people.  Even their violence and war are characterized as loving and kind and just.  The prophets, meanwhile, call pharaohs, kings, and caesars into account by naming the specifics, remembering historical pain, unmasking hypocrisy, and speaking out of a particularity which does not allow the Powers-That-Be to get away with broad, inclusive, decorative language which ends up being empty.  When Paul preaches Christ crucified, he is not only calling people of faith to a different way of being but he is also indicting the cruelty and savagery of Caesar.  However difficult or uncomfortable, whatever trouble it might get him into, Paul wants the truth told about what is happening to the Jews in First Century Rome.  You are not the benevolent father of the fatherland.  You are the crucifier of the Jews, the one who rapes and pillages our people, the one who pales in comparison to the one Jews know sits on the throne, the King and Shepherd of Israel.

Particularity, when it comes to inclusion--love, and justice, matter.  We know this in our primary relationships.  My oldest, Jacob, knows that I love him when I try to learn the language of computer software and how he put his latest project and make a concerted effort to visit him and Consuela.  Abe knows I love him by my willingness to listen to his efforts in emotional intelligence and leadership and let him know that I see him when he is trying to be fair as he negotiates life between me and his mom.  Sophia knows I love her when I read her latest poem, listen to her favorite podcast, when I seek her out for play slapfights, and when I seek out long car rides with just the two of us.  I could say I love all of my kids.  But they are listening, wondering, knowing that I live out that love in my willingness to do hard work on our relationship—in particularity.

Churches can also do this.  We are notorious for it.  In my work as a Healthy Congregations Facilitator, I have historically tried to help congregations develop words and mission statements that distinguish their identity and work.  One congregation wanted to use the word “inclusive” believing that so many of the other churches in their area were the opposite of inclusive.  But when we turned to how all of those other churches defined themselves, one of the primary words they all used was “inclusive.”  They wouldn’t say inclusive of what but I asked the congregation to think about that.  Maybe these other congregations were inclusive of young families, different kinds of music, maybe even different cultures, all things the “inclusive” church struggled with, but seemingly, every church in a 60-mile radius thought of itself as inclusive—in a general kind of way. 

Let me give you another example.  In 2001, the United Methodist Church began a what it referred to as a welcome and a call with the identifying words:  “Open Hearts.  Open Minds.  Open Doors.”  But here was the problem.  Open to what?  Open to whom?  To my disappointment, the church that my uncle who led Chaddock Children’s School, was a part of, the church my mom belongs to, and the church so many of my best colleagues led out and are a part of, fractured not so long ago by the way some people defined those words.  Because while the whole church uses the welcome and call “Open Hearts.  Open Minds.  Open Doors” there are some members of that blessed church who did not believe that should include the LGBTQ+ community.  And for many years, the United Methodist Church had contentious fights that led to fracturing.  When inclusive means “bland vanilla,” it actually means nothing, has no teeth or bite, is really non-offensive, but then can intentionally and unintentionally leave many knowing outside of the circle knowing what the message is.

“Life is messy,” my Pastoral Care professor, Peggy Way used to say, “and church is coming to the table to talk about the impossible things.”  Because we are all held in the particular, detailed love of God for us.  Even now, God is recognizing that the little scar that you have right behind your ear, God loves that.

Any number of churches I have served, some that have chosen to walk the journey of “Open and Affirming, often want how that is phrased to signal something more than the LGBTQ+ community so some people will not be offended.  They would like a blanket, more general statement, which conveys inclusion for everyone.  But my concern, in using glittering generalities, is that when we say “all” what we really mean is that we want to avoid messy history, difficult conversations, the grit and grist of courageous leadership which calls us to be particular.

I often try to explain it in this way.  Tracy and I regular tell each other we love each other in hellos and goodbyes and sometimes throughout the day.  “I love you,” is her text to me.  “I love you too,” is my text back to her.  But when we really want to capture each other’s attention, there are words she says to me or I say to her that let each other know, “No, now I’m really serious.  Pay attention.”  Or . . . I could sweep and mop the house . . . which she knows is not a value of mine so it is something I do to bring her peace of mind.  I could say to her, “You know, TM (Tracy Marie), you are really, really beautiful.”  And she might smile back and say, “Thank you.”  But then what happens when I would say, “And you know, there are many beautiful women out there your age?”  Isn’t that wonderfully inclusive?  And could get me killed?  And she is really, really beautiful and the most beautiful woman I know.

Or I could say, “I love you,” in one of those texts, and say, inclusively, “But you know, as a pastor, I have to love everybody.”  My love for her now loses a grit, an indication of my devotion and solidarity for and with her.  And I would duck and run for cover after saying this. 

           Our love is not called to be bland and general and vanilla.  Our love, as the people of God, is meant to be spicy, and creative, and detailed and not tied to winning or advancing or power over.  Miriam and Moses knew that.  Esther knew that.  Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego knew that.  Paul knew that.  We should enjoy flavor.

           And all of that shows our intent to grow spiritually because we all know we are in process with these messy, uncomfortable things.  They show our direction, our intent to go and grow deeper.

           In the same way, the land and water acknowledgment made reminds us that our history has not been without its own violence and conflict.  And that we must repent of that, repair what we can, be on a different path to join hands with the conquered, too often vanquished, people who would be forgotten unless we intentionally remembered the particularity of our place.

           My hope then is that these things become so rote, so ordinary, that they get deep within us so that we cannot live life without the knowledge and wisdom of them. 

           There is one other thing I do every week because I want it to be a part of us.  And the absolutely wonderful things is that I have not only had children repeat it to their parents knowing what courageous thing they had to do at school but also had young couples repeat it in their wedding vows.  Whenever we have a children’s sermon, I say to them, “We will shout this out because we need to practice speaking with a strong voice, even when we are scared or shaking in our boots.  And, we need to stay connected, touch feet, to remember that we won’t make it alone.  We need each other.”  And children in churches I have served have said things to their mom like, “And then I remembered, when Josie, was being picked on by my friends, that I was supposed to speak with a strong voice.  Because Josie and I are connected.”

           And in one moment in time, the particularity of love issues forth, and some crazy thing I did in worship matters, even when we boringly repeat it thousands of times.  For that moment in time, what I do with you all doesn’t feel like it is wasted or useless but actually makes me believe that the reign of Christ might have a chance in our world.  Speak with a strong voice, Daniel, Esther.  Stay connected, Corinthians, Ephesians.  Maybe it has worth?  Amen. 

Sermon, Year C, Proper 28, "The rich people in Luke"

 

C Proper 28 33 Ord Col Paul 2025

Luke 21:1-24

November 23, 2025

(Play the O’Jay’s song, “For the Love of Money” on your phone) You may have heard that song and like me, only remember the chorus.  I remember grooving out to it during my funk days.  Does a pastor get to have musical funk days?  Yes, I think so.  Anyway, I had never remember hearing the verses, two of which go,

Money is the root of all evil
Do funny things to some people
Give me a nickel, brother, can you spare a dime?
Money can drive some people out of their minds

 

Don't do it
Save your soul, save your soul, don't sell it
For that mean, mean, mean, mean green.

Indeed.  The O’Jays seem to know our Scripture verses in the Gospel of Luke and Jesus’s critique of the rich men in story and encounter. 

Lawren Simmons, writing for The New York Times, recently shared,

The longest government shutdown in American history appears to be coming to an end, but there are two sets of images from these last few weeks that could endure well beyond it.  The first shows the lines snaking out of food pantries after the Trump Administration chose not to use available funds to keep full food stamp benefits flowing to millions of poor Americans this month, and fought the federal rulings requiring it to make full benefits available.  The second, released on social media by President Trump himself, shows his gleaming new bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom, renovated in gold fixtures and marble.[1]

Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, this is where we find ourselves.  Throughout our lectionary readings in the Gospel of Luke, I have shared Jesus’s teachings which have included stories about six rich men.  Each of these stories tells the reality of how the wealthy violently disrupt and destroy life, creating a huge chasm, the great gulf, between themselves and the rest of creation.  As Biblical scholar Ched Myers is want to say, “Repetition is the key to pedagogy.”  And Luke is repeating.

In our Scripture verse today, Jesus makes it clear that his critique is about a need to dismantle the current economic system.  He juxtaposes two scenes on display at the Temple.  Last week, Zacchaeus showed the way with the way he paid reparations and repatriation.  But the system still stands.  And Jesus sees the system crushing one of the very vulnerable groups Jewish story, mythology, and Law were to protect. 

Jesus goes to Jerusalem in chapter 19, he critiques the Scribal exploitation of widows’ estates in chapter 20, he laments over the war to come, that can be anticipated in chapter 19.  Today he once again critiques the rich in our Scripture verse.  He “cleanses” the Temple in chapter 19 and repudiates the marketplace economy in our Scripture verse before us.

Their policies, their presumptions, their plutocratic blindness.  It is plunderama.  The wealthy use the present system to gain more and more profit.  In Chuck Collins new book, Burned by Billionaires:  How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and the Planet, he talks about how we are caught in the “plutocracy doom loop.”  Wealth flows upward, it concentrates in fewer hands, the wealthy use their amassed fortunes and power to rig the rules to extract more wealth from the economy.  Collins believes that in the last 40 years we have been pulling apart, a great gulf, if you will, starting with wealth inequality.  And this gulf is created to grow wider.  Today the pace of wealth flowing upward has been like a money pump that is moving wealth upwards, faster and faster, to the top one-tenth of one percent.  There are 920 billionaires in the U.S. with a combined wealth of 8 trillion dollars today when just five years ago we had 850 billionaires with 3 trillion dollars.  Hear that?  That sound is unpaid wages being sucked upward.   It is a system that is now on autocratic auto pilot.[2]

“The greatest social disruption,” Collins believes, “is driven by households in the top one-tenth of the one percent—that is, those with more than 40 million dollars in assets.”[3]

And the wealthy know what this leads to.  They are scared.  Why would they need a vote in Congress condemning socialism if they didn’t see the reaction building to their plunder?  When over half of our members of Congress are millionaires?  When they have to build a war chest of economic resources to get elected?

What Luke turns to is what happens when this system takes hold, when the systemic inequality continues.  In Luke, chapter 19, Luke puts into the mouth of Jesus his lament over the city of Jerusalem and what happened to the people when Rome began its attack on the holy city of Jerusalem, “[W]hen your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side.  They will crush you to the ground, you and your children with you, and will not leave within you one stone upon another.”  Jesus believes this wealth accumulation leads to total destruction. 

The Roman Jewish historian, a contemporary of Luke, shares what Rome did to Jerusalem, “[He] wrote in agonizing detail about these events, including famine, whole families disappearing, and ‘the lanes of the city full of the dead bodies of the aged . . .’  A million people who had taken refuge in Jerusalem were killed and another 97,000 taken captive, and the city razed.”[4] 

Luke then has Jesus foretell what he saw in Jerusalem in chapter 21.  Jerusalem is surrounded by armies. Desolation has come near.  Do not go near Jerusalem.  Woe to those who are pregnant or nursing.  This will come as a great distress to the earth and wrath against the people. 

This is not God’s wrath.  This is what happens when a systemic exploitation, extraction, and wealth inequality become too much.  Jesus says that the rich bring hell to earth and wrath to its peoples, a desolation in chapter 21, verse 23.  The sea roars.  The people faint from fear. 

Ched Myers said that in the research for his book he found that, “Some sociologists 20 years ago did a study of wealth disparity in Luke’s world and compared it to wealth disparity in the United States and found that the wealth disparity today is worse than it was in 1^st Century Rome.”[5]

Culturally, we have to get past as a people the idea that wealth is somehow deserved, that the wealth accumulators deserve what they have, that they made it on their own. 

All wealth is created in community—with nature and people and workers.  No one can say, “I did it alone.” . . . No, you didn’t create your wealth alone.  We, as a society, helped create this wealth together through God’s gifts of creation, nature, and the fertile ground we build with our labor and taxpayer-funded investments.[6]

And the flip side is that we think, “Well, if I’m not rich, then there must be something wrong with me.”

           Jesus says that the rich bring hell to earth.  Chuck Collins details how that is happening through health care, climate change, and taxation, the pool for public services for all of us ending up in the hands of the very wealthy.  He goes on to relate how that is now happening in housing and even to pet care, many of us willing to go into debt to take care of our pets. 

           That hell even captures the very wealthy.  Beijing-based historian, Professor Jiang details how excessive amounts of wealth changes the chemistry of the brain, that the brain of a psychopath and the brain of a wealthy person are very similar.  You can’t appreciate the feelings of others.  You can’t relate to the feelings of other people[7]. 

           Tracy told me the other day how, in loneliness, people are reaching out to what are these AI, or artificial intelligence partners.  The problem?  The AI partners are a creation of the person themselves so that they don’t rub up against them in the right or wrong ways, don’t push on them, make growth a necessary part of their socialization.  So the relationship actually needed to stem their loneliness never occurs.  AI partners are a form of narcissism that never help us experience true partnership and the beginning of true community.

Several years ago an article ran in The Atlantic that detailed how power causes brain damage.  In studies spanning 20 years, it was found that those under the influence of power acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—more impulsive, less risk-aware, and less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view.   Other studies that looked at brains more than behavior, found that the powerful were missing a  specific neural activity called “mirroring” which is critical to empathy[8]

           Wealth is a disconnection drug.  There is a loneliness and alienation that accompanies it .  And the antidote is a connection, the vulnerability of reciprocity and neighborliness and community and interdependence. Instead Professor Jiang sees the very wealthy trying to build these huge survival bunkers, desperately trying to keep the world as it is, to survive all alone.  All alone.

           Remember what happens, Jesus says, when Zacchaeus makes reparation and repatriation?  He becomes part of the wider community, the huge family that is past, present, and future.  Jesus does not declare that in the synagogue.  So I would be lying to you if I thought the place to look for that community happening would be in the church.  Instead, I believe Jesus wants us to throw our doors open to the wider community.

           Two primary ways that Jesus addressed the systemic injustice of his day, the disparity in power and wealth.  First, he re-instituted neighborliness and found new and novel ways to build community.  He did that so often through table community and the sharing of food and drink that his enemies called him a glutton and a drunkard.  Jesus did not see this extended neighborliness as a burden but experienced it as a joy. 

           Second, Jesus counseled non-cooperation with the unjust system that drained the life from people.  Don’t let the system shame you into believing that you are less than.  Don’t rob each other of your livelihoods.  Don’t unfairly tax one another.  Remember your humanity, your value to God, how you are loved with the beauty of wildflowers in the field, how ever God cares for the birds in the air.  Don’t plug into their system.  Don’t buy their bread.  Don’t cooperate.  Don’t participate.  Sometimes have a sense of humor about it and practice it to build your spiritual muscle. 

           One of my parishioners at St. Paul’s UCC , Suzanne, recently gave me a book by Native biologist, Robin Wall Kimmerer, which asks us to live into what is called “the gift economy,” an economy that does not sound unlike what Jesus counseled for the people of his day.  Kimmerer writes that abundance happens naturally in the good earth.  But abundance is not something to be hoarded by the person who may have gathered it, hunted for it, collected it, but shared with the whole community.  An anthropologist might ask, “What are you going to do with this excess meat you have from your hunt—are you going to store it, dry it, or smoke it?”  And the hunter would look at the anthropologist in disbelief to say, “I store my meat in the belly of my brother.”  In gift economies, abundance and excess are based in gratitude and reciprocity.  And we can just remember Jesus standing with the small boy who offered his five loaves and two fish to feed the 5,000 to know this how Jesus helped fracturing communities in his day to not only survive but to thrive. 

There is a movement afoot to not participate in the sensalization of wealth that begins this next week with Black Friday.  And it is also about being conscious of how we might return wealth to our own communities.  We love our neighbor with how we participate as economic beings.  So we do both things that Jesus taught us to do so that we might find joy in our own humanity and glory in the gifts of this good earth.  Because, in reality, alternative community and mutual aid networks, and neighbors joining hands to defend neighbors are breaking out everywhere in our country.  We should be joining them. 

To get you started, I copied off a list from one of these “Blackout” movements and put them on the table (where we keep the worship bulletins/in the narthex).  I invite you to take one and start building your spiritual muscle to do both things Jesus taught:  weave together community and stop cooperating with the wealth-hoarders.  If you can just do one, do one of the recommended actions, you can start watching your freedom and your spiritual muscle grow.  I included a flyer from the largest UCC church, Trinity UCC in Chicago, so you can see how they are trying to protect and serve their community.  I did it so you would know you are not alone.

The uber wealthy are bringing hell on earth.  I watched the COP30 event from Brazil this past week as their lobbyists overran the event that was intended to help the world meet the challenge of climate change.  These representatives of the uber wealthy refused to let any real progress be made at the event.  But then . . . but then, indigenous people making the trek from the Amazonian rain forest moved on the event and got concessions from the Brazilian government nobody every would have expected. Alessandra Korap Munduruku, an indigenous environmental leader said,

So, what keeps me going are my people. My people keep me going, and my people keep me alive. The children, the territory, my family, it’s a collective struggle, and this is what keeps me alive.

Asked to speak directly to the camera, to tell people in the United States what she wanted them to know, she said:

You need to know, because we, here, we do not eat soy. We do not eat gold. We do not eat iron ore. We eat the fish, and we eat the fruits from the forest. And we need our forest standing. So, I ask you, please, monitor your corporation. Monitor your company. Monitor your governments. Watch your representatives. Be aware of what they’re doing. We need you to do this for us here in the forest. This is my message to you, from Alessandra Korap Munduruku.[9]

As people of faith, what keeps us going?  We are the Beloved Children of God, given to the task of walking in the way that Jesus walked, not believing the lies of a culture that would have us believe our value is tied up in our wealth and power over others. 

           Good people, join the movement.  Show your freedom.  Build your spiritual muscle.  Amen.

          

          

---

[1] Lawren Simmons, “On Politics,” The New York Times, November 12, 2025.

[2] Chuck Collins, “Scholar Activist Encounter 28: - Ched Myers & Chuck Collins - November 13, 2025,” CBSJ, November 13, 2025, https://vimeo.com/1137040314.

[3] Interview with Chuck Collins, “The Wealth Extractors:  Billionaires are upending our lives and our economy.  Author Church Collins on how we fight back and rebuild, “ Sojourners, December, p. 24.

[4] Ched Myers, “Jesus’ Final Warning: The Rich Bring Hell upon the World,” Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, https://bcmonline.org/2025/11/14/jesus-final-warning-the-rich-bring-hell-upon-the-world/.

[5] Ched Myers, “Scholar-Activist Encounter.”

[6] Collins, “The Wealth Extractors.,” p. 27.

[7] "Money Causes Brain Damage" (Why Elites Are Psychopaths) | Prof. Jiang Insights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MBLppxIFlI.

[8] Jerry Useem, “Power causes brain damage,” The Atlantic,  July/August 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power-causes-brain-damage/528711/

[9] “We Need to Be Heard”: Indigenous Amazon Defender Alessandra Korap Munduruku on COP30 Protest

!,” Democracy Now!, November 21, 2025, https://www.democracynow.org/2025/11/21/indigenous_leader_alessandra_korap_munduruku.

Sermon, Year C, All Souls', "We are not alone"

 

C All Souls OL Col Paul 2025

Hebrews 12:1-2, 12-13

November 2, 2025

           Several years ago, my good buddy, Rev. Andy DeBraber, came to visit us for an overnight on his way to a speaking engagement he had in northern Indiana.  Andy and I both process life through physical exertion so we took a long hike around Tower Hill and talked at length about saving the world. 

Andy had just come off his sabbatical so I asked him about the most meaningful experiences he had out on his own, hiking and camping in the wilderness.  He shared a conversation he had with an Ojibway Elder, how many Native American peoples will talk about the seventh generation into the future as a way of caring for the earth to make sure the goodness provided for by Creator was still around for future generations.  But this Elder also spoke of how his people were to remember the seventh generation out into the past as a way of knowing their ancestors.  Then, to Andy’s surprise, this Ojibway Elder shared his history back through seven generations. 

He knew them all.  He knew every generation.  He could talk with wisdom about the lives of his ancestors to the seventh generation.

           We both marveled.  I can remember my family back through my grandparents, know something of their lives, but could not begin to tell you the lives of my great-great grandparents.  And whether we realize it, that’s important.  For most indigenous peoples and the peoples of the ancient world that was the Bible, they can trace those generations back in detail.   In the Bible, time is not linear.  It is cyclical.  Particularly when it came to holy and sacred moments in a community’s life, past, present, and future could collapse into one another so that we could readily not only expect our great-great-great grandchildren to show up and thank us for being good ancestors but also our ancestors might show up wondering if we have kept the path, followed in the trail they blazed.   

           I am reminded of a presentation made by Native American psychologist, Dr. Eduardo Duran, some years ago.  Eduardo was considered an expert in Native psychology, sought after by many who were active in trying to improve Native mental, emotional, and social health.  Duran was also strongly tied to the Bozeman UCC Church in Bozeman, Montana.  On a late summer’s day, Eduardo Duran shared with those gathered that when you come to regular recovery meetings, attend to your own mindfulness in sweat lodge, or remember your own community by celebrating Pow Wow, your ancestors come with you, looking for their own healing.  I saw so many of my friends nod their own heads knowing and understanding in that moment the truth of intergenerational trauma.   You are not alone. 

           I remembered that moment because my best friend from Billings, Josiah Hugs, who is a superstar in the Native Wellbriety movement, just received another honor by being asked to be on the Recovery Friendly Montana Advisory Board.  Josiah has been the Native American Liaison for the major health clinic in the largest city in Montana.  We Zoom every so often to catch up.  And I asked him, what was it like the first time he started at the health clinic, just starting to get recognition for his work.

           As I said, Josiah is an incredible healer and has been responsible for so many lives redeemed from the grips of chemical dependency.  I can remember a time when he came into my office and told me that the evangelical Christianity of his youth had preached to him that remembering his ancestors was idol worship.   The consistent message was to be Native and practice Native faith was to be an infidel, a pagan, unfaithful.  Josiah had broken from that to now say to people who remained outside recovery, “Your ancestors seek your healing.  Be a good ancestor.” 

           In his first presentation at the hospital, he was nervous, he told me.  All these white folk were going to look to him for how to understand his people, to accompany them in their healing and health through one of the two major hospital systems in the largest city of Montana.  “How did it go?”  I asked.  “Akbaatidia (the Crow name for Creator) was good,” he said, “I remembered when I walked in there that all the ancestors came with me.  I was not alone.”  He was not alone. 

           As a person who has worked in immigration justice issues almost my whole adult life, I often hear people wonder why there is such white hatred for immigrants.  One of my longtime friends in the campaign for a more humane immigration practice and policy once told me, “It is because we have buried our intergenerational trauma.  We white people intentionally or unintentionally don’t remember all the pain and suffering it took to leave a land many of us loved, to arrive and scratch and scrape to get by in a new place, all the struggle to assimilate in a place that is not our own.  So we’re angry, hurt, traumatized, and we’re not sure why.  We don’t remember.  We’ve buried it.”  Yes, I thought, we don’t remember our ancestors.  As a result, sometimes we get caught up thinking we are all alone.  But our faith tradition forever wants us to remember, we are not alone. 

           I think that was one of the most painful ways that the pandemic affected many of us.  The pandemic isolated us and made us believe that we are alone.  We rebel in odd ways and talk about “freedom” and our right to choose—pretending we can make it on our own.  Our very best days during the pandemic were not when we cavalierly forgot one another to refuse to do protocols. Our very best days were when we remembered how to take care of one another through Mutual Aid Networks which delivered food or provided transportation, made the extra phone call, cared for “essential workers” or hospital staff, remembered those protocols to get vaccinated, kept our distance, wore our masks.  To essentially say, our ancestors have been through plague and pandemic before, and we want to learn from them to find healing.  And then, to be good ancestors ourselves.  We are not alone. 

           At a time of incredible chaos, trauma, loss, and collapse for the Jewish people in the Biblical setting for our Scripture verse today, the writer of the epistle in Hebrews speaks of a cloud of witnesses.  In the preceding chapter, chapter 11, the writer speaks of the ancestors, those people who have gone before who were willing to risk by venturing out, enduring the hardships of each age, running the race with perseverance.  All of these ancestors went forward never having seen the completion of God’s work in their lifetime.  But they risked.  They ran the race.  And it is a reminder that this summarizes the life of Jesus, the one we call the Messiah, the Christ.  He ventured out, he ran the race, but the completion of God’s promise did not happen in his lifetime.  The teacher of Hebrews wants us to know.  You are not alone.  Do not think the trauma, the loss, the chaos you see all around you is any different than any other time when this cloud of witnesses decided to risk, venture out, run the race.   The writer of Hebrews uses the crucifixion to remind the present generation of the very real violence and hatred, the hostility Jesus faced, risked with, endured in, and persevered through.

           The teaching ends with these words, “¹² Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees ¹³ and make straight paths for your feet, so that these times don’t get you bent out of shape but rather be healed.”  Put in the frame of an athletic competition, the teacher of Hebrews reminds the saints of his time:  Risk!  Endure!  Persevere!  Do you not see the whole lot of saints that surround you in this time, who join hands with you to say, just as in our time, in your time? You are not alone! 

           And this is the final understanding of the seven generations of Native theology.  That we are not only aware of the ancestors that go before us but the people who will follow us.  We then are the good ancestors who make the way for generations yet unborn.  We persevere as the cloud of witnesses that remind them that things were tough for us too.  And yet, we did not give up and give in to a violent world that would have us push down our pain to not know our own healing. 

In mutual love, we remember the words of Joan Maruskin, the one-time Executive Director of Church World Service, who wrote, “The Bible was written by, for, and about migrants, immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.”[1]  These are our faith ancestors.  How shall we then be good ancestors to the seventh generation, that they might remember us as faithful?  Will we be the people who are caught up in the violence and hatred of this age?  Or the people who endure providing sanctuary, a safe place, a hiding place, a refuge, for yet another generation?  We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, the Scripture says.

Clouds throughout Scripture are always a sign of God’s presence and protection, a manifestation of divine power.  The God of the Hebrews was known as a “cloud rider” and appeared to lead the people out of Egypt by day as a cloud pillar.[2]  Our scripture says, “Because we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, these faith ancestors, we can persevere to run the race.”  This is what the historical ancestors provide for us.  We are not alone. 

Who shall we be?  How shall we be the presence and protection, that cloud, the manifestation of God’s power for future generations?  Risk.  Endure.  Persevere.   And in this sacred moment in time, the past, present, and future collapse to see the faithful in our age joining hands to once again bring about joy, healing, and sanctuary for God’s good earth.  You, you . . . you are a part of a cloud of witnesses, a communion of saints, just by being on the path.  Be a good ancestor.  Amen. 

          

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[1] Joan M. Maruskin, Immigration and the Bible:  A guide for Radical Welcome, August 29, 2012.

[2] “clouds,” HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, https://www.bibleodyssey.org/HarperCollinsBibleDictionary/c/clouds.

Sermon, Year C, Proper 26, "Stopped in our tracks"

 

C Proper 27 32 (OL 26 31) Col Paul 2025

Luke 19:1-10

November 9, 2025

           Common practice among the writers and makers of TV shows and movies these days, creating a cult following for many, are putting what are called “Easter eggs” in episodes that regular viewers delight in finding and then explaining to simpletons like me.  Filmdaft describes an Easter egg as “a hidden detail, reference, or message purposely placed by film or series makers for eagle-eyed movie or series buffs and fans to find. These eggs can nod to other works, inside jokes, or future projects, enriching the viewing experience for those who catch them.”[1]

For example, the Indiana Jones series, sharing the creative genius of George Lucas, had regular Star Wars references sprinkled into its making.  In the Raiders of the Lost Ark Well of Souls scene, hieroglyphs depicting the famous droids from “Star Wars”, R2-D2 and C-3PO can be seen on a pillar.  We can imagine that ancient aliens put those there, right? 

In Pixar films, placement of “A113” is regularly featured.  “A113” shows up in Pixar movies unceremoniously placed on license plates, model numbers, and walls.  “A113” is a reference to the California Institute of the Arts classroom where many Pixar animators studied. 

So too the Bible.  The author of the Gospel of Luke is a matrix of hidden and no-so-hidden references to Hebrew Bible stories and to links across stories within the gospel of Luke itself.  A regular theme in the Gospel of Luke is economic inequality.  And so we end up with a number of stories and teachings that involve a “rich man” who Jesus invites to transformation.  The Biblical assumption is that if you are rich, you are not self-made, but that your wealth was obtained through ill-gotten means.  That Biblical assumption is a strong critique of our modern-day, capitalist system that is constantly telling us that the wealthy our somehow morally superior.

The story before us today, domesticated through the “wee little man Zacchaeus” camp diddy many of us have sung, makes clear that we are dealing with another rich man.  This is now the sixth story in the Gospel of Luke about a rich man—an indication that economic inequity is pervasive in the time of Jesus.  And their frequent appearance unable to do what Jesus asks of them . . . with yet another story, shows that Jesus . . . he ain’t giving up. 

Today’s  story is followed up by another story of a rich man, a nobleman, who sends his underlings to and fro in his service.  They are to grow his money, use the system that devours the lives of others so that when I return, I have even more ill-gotten gain.  Those who do not do the nobleman the requisite service, increase his profits, he wants them brought before him, so he can slaughter them.  Jesus makes it very clear that these rich men are regularly about violence against the local populace.  In bringing up regular rich men, Jesus is telling us that this is not about a few bad apples.  The economic inequity and its violence are structural and systemic. 

The other Easter egg comes from the story just before Zacchaeus climbing up a mulberry tree to “see” Jesus in Luke, chapter 18.  A blind man is sitting not on the road but alongside the road and learns that Jesus is passing by.  The blind man is not unlike the bent-over woman earlier in Luke’s Gospel, Luke, chapter 13.  Both bent-over woman and  blind man are dehumanized by the existing economic disparity, both made whole by being seen so that they may then follow in the Way as disciples of Jesus.

Again, to get to that healing, the blind man shouts out to Jesus.  And like many people who are not on the road but alongside the road, his cries make the church people uncomfortable.   The people around the blind man tell him to shut up, don’t inconvenience the mission and ministry.  The blind man shouts even more loudly.  Jesus stops . . . in . . . his . . . tracks . . .  to ask the man what he wants.  Healing is about to take place.

Like Zacchaeus in the story that follows on into Luke, chapter 19, this poor, blind man wants to see, though the blind man and Zacchaeus inhabit different ends of the economic and political spectrum.  Jesus makes it clear that loyalty to the way of Jesus and an unwillingness to be silenced, a willingness to be seen, are the prerequisites to healing.  The blind man’s willingness to disturb and his willingness to walk the road, his faith, have liberated or saved him.   He can now see and is now following with Jesus and all the rest of his homeless cohort.

Another Easter egg.  Before Zacchaeus, or Zack, announces his repentance and reparations, Luke says that Zack stops in his tracks, like Jesus did before salvation of the one who once was blind.  Easter egg.  Stops in his tracks.  Remember, healing is about to take place.

I want to make it clear who Zacchaeus was.  He was not one of these low level tax collectors that belonged to Jesus’s disciples.  Biblical scholar, Ched Myers describes who Zack was in detail:

Tax collectors referred to in the New Testament were local Jews employed by the colonial occupiers to do something called “tax farming.” In this system, the [tax] farmer paid Rome its money in advance, then made it up by exacting commissions on enforcing taxes, tolls and customs (on land, on products and on persons). Since the taxed had no idea what sort of financial arrangement had been negotiated by the [tax] farmer, they were at the mercy of whatever he charged. Due to their extortion as agents of Rome, these collectors were socially rejected, religiously excommunicated and viewed as political traitors.” But street-level tax collectors . . . —the ones doing the street level dirty work—were rarely socially powerful, since their profits flowed up the hierarchical ladder. The chief tax collector, however, would have been the richest and thus the most rapacious and despised.[2]

 

           Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector who climbs up, ready for another Easter egg?, a mulberry tree, to see Jesus.  Remember our Scripture passage from a few weeks ago?  Jesus says that all you need is the faith of a mustard seed and you can remove the mulberry tree, that symbol of oppression and occupation, into the sea.  And all of Rome was thrown into the sea in Revelation.  Zack may climb the mulberry tree to see Jesus but now he has to do downward mobility, get to ground level, to encounter and engage Jesus. 

           Zack greets and welcomes Jesus joyfully to his home for tea and muffins.  And by welcoming Jesus, Zack welcomes the whole posse of Jesus which now includes the poor, blind man, who has become a follower in chapter 18.  So, if we can imagine, in contrast to the wide chasm created by the rich man in the Lazarus story in Luke, here is a rich man taking this rag-tag group of people to his opulent, well-appointed crib in the finest Jericho subdivision.  I imagine that every rule in the HOA is broken as the group follows Jesus to Zack’s home.   Zack bridges the divide, crosses the chasm, the chasm he himself helped to create.

Jesus’s followers are unsettled.  Smartly so.  They do not like that Jesus is going to dinner at the home of one of the oppressors.  The Scripture says that they grumbled.  And table fellowship is one of those things that told everyone who they were in the world.  The poor and dispossessed dined with their own but certainly not with someone who made their lives ever more miserable--like a chief tax collector.  The rich, powerful, and the elite dined with their own, the most rich, powerful, and elite sitting at the head of the table.  So you can imagine as Jesus and his lot cross the threshold of Zack’s home, how all Zack’s servants must have made sure that the fine china and silverware are on lockdown.  The neighbors in the subdivision are peering out from behind the curtains and locking their doors.

A few weeks back I quoted the great Wendell Berry who said, “The great obstacle is simply this:  the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong.  But that is the addict’s excuse.  And we know that it will not do.”  The chief tax collector’s whole life depends on an unjust system that regularly harms the lives of his neighbors . . . but enriches him.  Will he now take the step, according to the tradition of his people, to fully traverse the great chasm he has created?

Again, as Jesus did in his pronouncing the healing of the blind man, Zacchaeus stops dead in his tracks.  Healing is about to be accomplished.  “The addicts excuse will not do.  Not for climate crisis; not for racialized disparities; not for genocidal militarism.”[3]

        Zacchaeus does not indulge in a pious lament about inequality, or a ritual apology in front of the press, or a call for a high-level commission to study the problem, or a rant about government policies. Rather, he commits to redistributing his wealth–half of it, not a 10% tithe (per the Pharisee [earlier in Luke’s gospel]). Huparchonton, [the Greek word used],  is best translated as “properties,” not just possessions or surplus cash. [Zack will give it] to the poor, not to the nonprofit industrial complex. Let us be clear: what Luke’s character is proposing here is not charity, nor white saviorism, nor guilt-money, nor donations with strings attached, or any of the other strategies that lock the privileged into splendid insulation. It is restitution and repatriation, according to the teaching of Torah. [Now the Easter eggs from Hebrew Scripture or more commonly known as the Old Testament begin] Exodus 22 says that one who has stolen from another must restore equity and then some—4 or 5 fold—in order to make up for breach of trust, aggravation and injustice.  Zack is doing nothing more or less than recovering the Sabbath Economics teachings of his ancestors.

        Leviticus 6, in turn, indicts defrauding—and deception, robbery, lying and swearing falsely—which frankly reads like an annotated history of how the rich have always exploited the poor. Breaking faith and relationship requires restitution of what was expropriated plus 20%, a commitment that is adjudicated through elaborate rituals of accountability. [We can imagine] Zack entertaining the prospect that [he is willing to give back “if]” he may have defrauded some folks; [at which point] one can imagine Jesus raising an eyebrow and saying, “If???” Zack, [then in response] goes well beyond Torah’s 20%. He is not just making restitution; he is making reparations. The [Greek] verb apodidomi is an intensification of the verb “to give,” and means “payback.”[4]

In contrast to all the other rich men in Luke’s stories, Zacchaeus makes right.  Gets square.  This is an actual redistribution of wealth, a break from the system.  One might say this is a form of Land Back to all these peasant farmers whose debt left them high and dry as sharecroppers on their own land.

You can’t heal people if they don’t know that they’re sick.  The story ends with a reminder that the Human One came to save the lost.  Zack knows, knew that he was lost.  Zack was hopelessly addicted to privilege and power.  Does he want his salvation, restoration back into the family, or did Zacchaeus depend too much on a system that exploited his neighbors and made him a pariah in his community?

When this homeless, rag-tag lot crossed the great chasm, they carried with them God’s salvation.  So now Jesus, with God’s eyes, announces what he sees,  “Salvation has come to this house.” Jesus then speaks of Zack’s restoration to the ancestral family, he is returned to being a son of Abraham, much like he did for the bent-over woman.  Upon her healing, standing up straight, she was acknowledged as a daughter of Abraham. 

Easter egg!  Remember the rich man who created the chasm between himself and Lazarus the poor man at his gate in Luke, chapter 16?  Who stood with Lazarus, rocked Lazarus within his bosom, to tell the rich man of his fate and the fate of his family?  It was Abraham.  All of these Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the Gospel of Luke now come to their culmination in the transformation of Zacchaeus.  Before Zacchaeus, the rich men cannot find their way to salvation.  Jesus keeps inviting them to transformation.  And it is only Zacchaeus who finds his way home.  Justice and kindness and healing for everyone are accomplished.

Here is the rub though, the conflict that is to follow.  The chief tax collector will have to report his transformation to the higher-ups.  They will be expecting their pound of flesh.  What will happen when Zacchaeus has removed himself from their extractive system?  Jesus follows the transformation of Zacchaeus with the story of a nobleman who will slaughter those who do not abide by the extractive system.  The cost of discipleship is real, even scary, and Zacchaeus will have to figure out how to negotiate that reality into the future.  That story seems to be a warning to Zacchaeus that Jesus knows all to well the price he has paid in reparations. 

Ched Myers summarizes what we have learned about the ministry and teaching of Jesus through these three stories:  the poor blind man, the rich chief tax collector, and the violent nobleman.

Jesus pays attention to the marginalized, and empowers their recovery of a full humanity: “Your faith has liberated you” he says to the poor blind man.

He also invites the powerful to change, by emphasizing that reparations are the only way to recover kinship that has been shattered by social and economic disparity.

And he is realistic about resisting the Domination system, which is why he called his followers to a discipleship of the cross.[5]

Ah, dear listeners.  This is when the Bible now reads us.  In March of 2025 it was stated that since 1975, 79 trillion dollars has been re-distributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.[6]  And, as you might guess, legislation has been passed and is proposed to make that re-distribution even greater.[7]  What I hope and pray is that we know the Easter eggs in this repeated story that will stop us in our tracks—so that we might declare our readiness for salvation and liberation.  Ready to get out of the system doing extractive violence?

Carrying now salvation and liberation in Jesus’s rag-tag crew are trans people and members of the LGBTQ community, the immigrant, girls and women experiencing violence, the Palestinian, so many going through a housing crisis, those accumulating tremendous debt to survive, and any number people of color and the economically poor.  Jesus has brought them along and they are now waiting to be received into our homes, to sit at our tables.  As people who come to the First Congregational UCC of Coloma/St. Paul’s UCC  on a regular basis hoping to hear a word from Jesus and seeking to welcome Jesus with joy, are we ready to receive the community he has brought with him?  Are we ready to make reparations and show that we are ready to break with the addict’s excuse and not hitch our wagon to what is wrong and unjust and unkind just to protect our treasure?  Are we ready to do reparations?

Easter eggs await us.  Now is the time for us to be a part of the long story which not only has us welcoming Jesus but reconciling ourselves to the family of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar.  Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins of Abraham, now is the time.  Praise God!  Amen.

 

 

 

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[1] Jan Sorup, “Easter Eggs in Movies. Meaning and Examples,” FilmDaft, November 14, 2024, https://filmdaft.com/what-are-easter-eggs-in-movies/.

[2] Ched Myers, “One Final Time: Poor Man, Rich Man, and the Cost of Discipleship,” Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, October 31, 2025, https://bcmonline.org/2025/10/31/one-final-time-poor-man-rich-man-and-the-cost-of-discipleship/.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Alexandra Jacobo, “Since 1975, $79 trillion has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%,” Nation of Change, March 5, 2025, https://www.nationofchange.org/2025/03/05/since-1975-79-trillion-has-been-redistributed-from-the-bottom-90-to-the-top-1/.  From the non-partisan RAND Corporation.

[7] In his book, Burned by Billionaires:  How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet, Chuck Collins shares 11 ways we are personally getting burned by billionaires:  1) The billionaires stick us with their tax bill; 2) They rob us of our voice and vote; 3) Billionaires supercharge the housing crisis—and profit from it.; 4) They inflame existing divisions in society; 5) They are trashing our environment; 6) They are making us sick; 7) They are blocking timely action on climate change; 8) They are coming for our pets; 9) They are dictating what’s on our dinner plate; 10) They are corrupting charity and philanthropy; 11) They are buying up and hijacking the media.