Sermon, Proper 23, "Plant your garden . . . even when you are not in charge"

 C Proper 23 28 Ord ColPaul 2025

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

October 12, 2025

           If you haven’t heard from me before, you will learn that I think the prophet Jeremiah is one of the most important figures in the Bible.  He came from the exiled priestly village in Anathoth.  It was said that it was common for Jeremiah to go a Sabbath’s day walk to Jerusalem, going there in the morning and returning back home in the afternoon. In total, a walking journey of about three hours. 

           The story is told of how when Israel was the number one superpower in the world, David, on his deathbed, counseled his successor to the throne, his son Solomon, to kill all his rivals before he took the throne.  Solomon does so but for one key figure, the priest Abiathar, who he considers too morally powerful to assassinate.  Instead, he exiles Abiathar to Anathoth where Abiathar and the priests of Anathoth watch as the nearby Jerusalem, over the course of 300 years, descends into violence, graft, corruption, a love of power, militarism, ostentatious display, and destruction of the poor.  So much so that rebellion takes place and Israel separates into two separate nations, Israel to the north and Judah to the south, with Jerusalem located in the southern kingdom of Judah.

           The book of Jeremiah begins with, “The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, ² to whom the word of the Ruler of the Universe came in the days of King Josiah.”  It is the Bible’s way of saying, “Remember these guys of moral uprightness from the days of Abiathar?  The chickens have come home to roost.  And they are headed back to Jerusalem.”

           The graft, moral corruption, and violence against the poor continues under King Josiah, and (as I detailed in a former sermon) the prophet Jeremiah takes his Sabbath walk to rail against the royal aristocracy, priesthood, and prophets.  Jeremiah believes once you undercut God’s pillars of justice, your kingdom will necessarily fail. 

For bringing this bad news, Jeremiah is called unpatriotic, thrown down a well, and then deposited in jail.  Unfortunately for the nation of Judah, Jeremiah’s truth-telling turns out to be correct and Judah and Jerusalem fall to the Babylonian Empire—the leaders, the representatives of God, are executed or taken off into Exile; the land, the symbol of God’s promise, salted and ravaged; the Temple, the special place of God’s abiding, razed to the ground.  The Jews ask in Exile, “How shall we sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land?”      

Several years ago, Tracy and I served a church in rural Illinois that had been historic as a place for freedom seekers to remain hidden on the Underground Railroad.  That church had two safehouses in their small community.  One of their church leaders actively broke federal law to hide out these freedom seekers needing a place of refuge and sanctuary. 

In that historic church was a congregational member I knew it would never be a good idea to cross or to be on the opposite side of . . . in an argument.  Betsy remains a force of nature in that small community.  She has been a CASA volunteer (a court appointed special advocate), a school board member, and part of the town’s revitalization project.  Betsy didn’t suffer fools lightly.  And so, if she disagreed with you, you were in for a no-holds barred, Texas Cage Match.  And Betsy did not intend to lose.

           Her husband, Doug, is also an attorney in town.  And that granted him some status as he also served on the school board.  But Betsy, when she had her sights set on you, could make you feel itty-bitty.  She did all this, was willing to be strongly confrontational, to honor her family, her community, and her nation. 

           One of her dearly loved sons is part of the LGBTQ+ community and, when I was there, she loved that our church was actively making strides to become Open and Affirming and that the nation seemed to be opening up more and more to the LGBTQ+ community.  She knew that that meant a better life for her son. 

           So when she heard the strong rhetoric coming from Christian churches who supported the then candidate Donald Trump she consoled herself with the thought that he couldn’t win, could he?  And couldn’t possibly win with rhetoric that made her quake in her boots for her son?  The country couldn’t possibly backtrack on these issues, right?  Her own hometown church in rural Illinois had gone from heated argument that had split the church over the inclusion of the LGBTQ community to a church that voted unanimously to become open and affirming.   So a way was being made, a path was being cleared, as her son went on to a great career, began running in marathons, was carving out a path for himself. 

But then Donald Trump did win that presidential election and there was nothing she could do about it.  And the language grew even stronger as that Trump Administration sought to appease its Christian evangelical base with critique of pronouns, talk of litter boxes in bathrooms, and people reeling in fear that Trans people might be reading to children in libraries.  Finally, the removal of protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identification were on the national chopping block.  What would she do about it in the rural Illinois hinterlands? 

She couldn’t possibly make a dent in federal policy.  There was no way she could turn the tide, nationally, against conservative Christian pundits showing up every day to talk about her son in ways that were mean-spirited and even scary.  I remember seeing Betsy, on social media, asking everyone what she was to do now. 

I knew it would not be long.  Betsy got to work. 

She knew she could not do much about the national dialog.  She and people who agreed with her were not the ones in power.  So what she decided to do was to strengthen the local systems and structures which would support people like her son.   She formed the local group, “Moms for LGBTQ Equality,” and describes the founding of the group this way, “As the mom of an out gay man, I started this work to focus on the concerns of raising LGBTQ youth under a Trump/Pence Administration.”   In her small, rural Illinois town of 3700 people, the Facebook page of the group has over 2500 followers.  I recognized many of the early followers as members of Betsy’s own church.   Betsy also then radiated outwards forming partnerships with the PFLAG (functionally, the parents, family, and friends of the LGBTQ+ community)--the PFLAG chapter of the nearest city--and several other solidarity groups on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community.  All of this brought gravitas to her little organization but also reminded everyone participating that they were not alone.  As a result, they were able to share wisdom for their concurrent struggle and share resources. 

Betsy, force of nature, amplified her work to protect a vulnerable group, a group out of power, a group near and dear to her heart, to become a protected force of nature their own selves in doing necessary work of love and justice in their small community.   Though she may have been originally disappointed at her lack of power to change things at a larger level, she planned and organized a future that has now become a wider and wider circle of protection and love.  With yesterday being National Coming Out Day it seemed like a good time to remind us of how powerful we can be even when we are not the ones in power.

When the Jews were no longer the people in power, the ones in charge to chart their own destiny, the prophet Jeremiah’s work was not done.  And, in our Scripture verse today, the prophet Jeremiah reminded the people that even though they now lived in Babylon, they were to plan for the future.  Plant gardens.  Have children.  Imagine what a faithful life might look like in Babylon.  Like so many Jews before you, when you are no longer in charge of the nation, you must build these smaller cocoons of goodness, protect your ability to love and flourish as you can.  That is then what it means to be faithful. 

I have seen that same plan of action taking place in the national climate action group, the Sunrise Movement.  They were the originators of the Green New Deal to move our whole nation to a more just and wholistic economics and ecology.  Realizing that under the present administration they will no longer be able to advance national initiatives, the Sunrise Movement has pivoted to trying to advance the Green New Deal in schools and local communities. 

It’s time for us to take over, classroom by classroom, school by school, city by city.    If we build our own mass movement, if we demand power in our hometowns, we can take over the country we only know in our dreams.   If we can remake our schools to take on the greatest crisis we’ve ever seen, we will pave the way for the rest of society to follow.  If we organize everyday people to bring the Green New Deal to cities and towns across the country, we can win local Green New Deal policy that proves to our neighbors and our leaders that this is the solution we need.  Day-by-day, door-to-door, hand-in-hand with our neighbors, we’ll sow the seeds of a Green New Deal from the bottom up.[1]

A statement cited on the NPR webpage just broke this week, “For the first time, renewable energy has overtaken coal as the primary source of electricity around the world, a new report says, indicating a shift in the global reliance on environmentally harmful fossil fuels.”[2]

And so the work of the Sunrise Movement, these incredible young organizers who fasted outside our nation’s capital , some of them almost at the loss of their own lives, to push President Biden toward the Inflation Reduction Act, have become the prophets of our time.  They are now inviting us to plant our own gardens, to teach our children well, that we might feed them on our dreams, to follow where God is leading.  But to know that our children might also teach their parents well. 

The prophet Jeremiah reminds us that we do not have to be the ones who are running the nation to lead the way of God, to provide and protect our communities, and to plant our gardens.  May we live out the lessons of Jeremiah in this time.  Amen. 

---

[1] https://www.sunrisemovement.org/theory-of-change/our-strategy/

[2] Alana Wise, “Renewable energy outpaces coal for electricity generation in historic first, report says,” NPR, October 9, 2025.  https://www.npr.org/2025/10/09/nx-s1-5564746/renewable-energy-coal-electricity-first. 

Sermon, Year C, Proper 22, "Start small against those mulberry trees"

 

C Proper 22 27 Ord Paul/Col 2025

Luke 17:5-10

October 5, 2025

 

Let us pray.  May the imperfect words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our rock and our redeemer. 

Ok, let’s clear some things up.  Before we go forward in besmirching the honorable name of Mulberry in talking about our gospel text for this morning, I thought I should let you know that the Illinois Everbearing Mulberry originated in White County, Illinois, in 1958.  The fruit’s flavor is, and I quote, “good to very good, very sweet, considered best by many.”  The tree is “vigorous, extremely hardy, and productive.”[1] 

When I shared this in a former congregation, I received a note from one of the prolific landscapers that the word “hardy” is code language for a shallow root system that is invasive and that that root system destroys everything around it. Mulberry roots are known to be expansive, aggressive, and cause damage to structures.  The wide-ranging root system makes it impossible to get out of the ground.  Thanks, I think?  I promised to share this information with future congregations.  And here we are. 

Teaching in rural Galilee, to people who are or were formerly peasant farmers, I think Jesus assumes his disciples know the realities of all things “mulberry.”  His hope that we might uproot the mulberry tree to be thrown into the sea gives us a clue what Jesus considers to be shallow but invasive, aggressive, and destructive to the everyday life of a rural Jew.  For the author of Luke collects sayings as a way of clueing us in.  Later on in Luke, it is those people who are the powerful exploiters that harm children who might have a millstone tied around their neck and thrown into the sea.  It is the oppressive and violent Roman military who act as the Gerasene demon, possess a man and have him violently cutting himself, that Jesus casts into pigs and then they run into the sea.  It is again the Roman Empire in the visions of Revelation which the angel takes as a millstone and throws into the sea. 

To remember that all through Jewish mythology “the sea” is the place of primordial chaos, the place beyond the reach of God’s goodness, a place reserved for those who do not wish to be a part of God’s creative rhythm, cannot accept God’s diverse, life-bearing order—an order fashioned with pillars of justice.

For Jews living in occupation, oppression, hunger, and violent repression, Rome seems as all-powerful.  The people must ask, “How can we possibly have faith that God is at work, that things can be different, that we might do anything to create change when the violent destroyers, their root system shallow but pervasive and ruining everything,  run the world?  Do we need to have some great trust that God is just when injustice seems to hold sway?  Do we need to have some great trust that love moves the dial, Jesus, when all around us it feels like the world is unraveling?  How do we unseat the mulberry tree that is shallow but is so pervasive and destructive, not allowing life or thriving for anything else?

Jesus responds that, even if you see yourself as small, something the world might see as a weed itself, just get started.  And the way a mustard seed works is it moves from underneath and becomes constant, regular, and pervasive.  But start small. 

The story is told of the Dunnes Stores Strikers in Ireland.  David Nihill, Irish author and comedian tells it best.  He refers to the women who started small as the grapefruit ladies. 

In Ireland, 41 years ago, ten white ladies working in grocery stores said, “We refuse to sell grapefruits imported from South Africa any more in this grocery store and by doing that we’re going to end apartheid.  And then said, ‘Who’s with us?’”

And the whole of Ireland said, “We really don’t like grapefruits, to be honest, it’s more of a luxury product.  And I don’t know if you’ve looked outside but we really don’t have any black people either, so best of luck with that strategy.”

To be honest not a whole lot of people supported them.  Maybe one or two politicians, but for the most part the police were against them, the trade unions were against them, and Dunne stores, the grocery store they worked in, was against them. 

And just a lot of the country

And they were delighted one day when this Black fella called Nimrod showed up and they were like, “Ooooh, must be workin’, I’ve never seen a black guy before and there’s one out there right now so we’re having an impact.”  These ladies had never met a black person before despite protesting on behalf of their rights.

And this guy Nimrod said to them, “Ladies, what you’re doing is so potentially impactful that I can’t even really properly vocalize it so I’m just going to stand with you every single day in solidarity until people pay attention.”

And he stood with them every single day for six months walking three miles each way to get there with the ladies and nobody paid much attention at all, to be honest.

Until it made its way to a rather interesting man Archishop Desmond Tutu.  On his way to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize he was like, “I’ve got to meet the grapefruit ladies.”  And he did.  He flew over to meet with them in London. 

And because of that a rather interesting man in America got wind of it.  And he said, “I’ve never heard of a bunch of white people protesting over something that affects with them so little.  This is fantastic.  I have to march with these grapefruit ladies.”  That was Rev. Jesse Jackson.  And he did march with the grapefruit ladies.

That was enough to get the attention of a guy on his Long Walk to Freedom on Robben Island, South Africa.  And he said, “Once in a while, you hear other people fighting on behalf of you, and it just really inspires you to keep going.  I have to meet with the grapefruit ladies.”  That was Nelson Mandela.  And in 1990 he flew to Ireland to meet with the grapefruit ladies.  By that stage the Irish government had given in, the trade unions had given in, the grocery store, Dunne Stores had given in, and Ireland became the first country in the Western world to ban the import and sale of all goods from South Africa thereby helping ending apartheid with a fruit that Ireland doesn’t really like. 

It's a lovely bit of history that all too often gets forgotten.  But Nelson Mandela never forgot.  When Nelson Mandela passed away, he made sure the ladies were welcome guests of honor should they want to attend.  And they did attend in a free South Africa they helped create. 

It was only then that Nimrod, the one black guy who showed up at the protests in Dublin, got around to telling him who he actually was. He had been Nelson Mandela’s cellmate on Robben Island, he knew exactly what he was doing. 

He knew that Irish people like speaking up for other oppressed groups and the Irish like the hip-hop, so they were a little bit black, and I tell you that story because the leader of those 10 people was called “Karen” so there you go.

I tell you that story so we might remember who we are.  And that our faith does not really expect that much of us.  Just that we do not have to put up with mulberry trees that try to take over our garden in invasive, violent, and aggressive ways.  We can be the weeds who work in small, constant, and pervasive ways to be the catalyst, or a small part, to overthrow the violence with communal resistance, to join hands with God to prepare the path of justice.

           It is the great Mexican-American writer and psychoanalyst, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, born just down a way in good ole Gary, Indiana, who reminded us that we were born for this.  She wrote:

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these -- to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate. [...]

In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.[2]

We live in desperate times.  In the time and place of Jesus, it felt like the whole world was coming to an end, unraveling.  And Jesus shared how the people might create mutual aid networks to share food, attend to mutual healing, and piece together a community that might offer resistance and transformation to the violence. 

           We might not feel like a great ship ready to sail.  But collectively, maybe we can see ourselves at least as a weed, small and non-threatening, but willing to begin with grapefruit to be a soul on deck.  Be a soul on deck.  Amen. 

---

[1] http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/mulberry.html

[2] Clarissa Pinkola Estés, “You were made for this,” AWAKIN.ORG, https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=548.

Sermon, Year C, Proper 21, "Chasm Architects"

 

C Proper 21 26 Ord Paul 2025

Luke 16:19-31

September 28, 2025

           Once upon a time there was a man named, Lazarus, a name that means “God helps.”  He was a poor man—not a rich man or a middle-class man—a poor man.  And unlike many people think and assume, his poor estate was not due to anything he had done wrong, not due to his lack of ambition.  Every day that Lazarus lived on this earth presented an opportunity every day for someone to draw closer to God and cross the great divide between here and there.  But it did not happen. 

           The most unfortunate thing about Lazarus’s poor estate was that—the worse things got for him, the more and more he lost his gateway to humankind.  His family disowned him.  So the family hospitality most of us have when tough times hit—his safety net for food and shelter and grace was gone as he tried to get back up on his feet. 

           Those former friends and acquaintances who did recognize Lazarus along the streets would stay as far from him as they could.  For they worried that “poor” might be a communicable disease with no vaccine available.  Those who were not former friends or acquaintances could not say that they knew a poor person.  But they also did not question when their government, their schools, and their churches equated wealth with virtue. 

           So that everyone felt safe, secure, and justified in finding no way from here to there--the respectable people in the community, those who shall go unnamed in the story but are regularly celebrated, spent a great deal of time digging a huge gulf between Lazarus and the community.  Middle-class folk never ceased in complaining how they were the ones ripped off by the government as they brought their new big screen TVs, home security systems, and vacation homes—necessities for life, ways to differentiate themselves from people like Lazarus.

           While the middle-class people employed people like Lazarus to dig the gulf, they acted unaware that they paid to construct it, grateful that they did not have to soil themselves to increase its breadth and width.  They could often be heard saying, “People like Lazaraus get free hand-outs and the rich get better taxes.” Almost all of them knew nothing of Lazarus’s life as he went without health care, injured by his work on the gulf, sacrificed by his mining of the gulf.  They knew nothing of Lazarus.  And the gulf between Lazarus grew and grew.

           Lazarus rummaged through his shirt pocket to find his yearly application for the drug assistance he would need for his medical cocktail.  “Where is it?”  Lazarus screamed.  “I need that medicine.”  And as he grew desperate, the wind picked up the misplaced application that had found temporary lodging on his pant leg.  And the wind blew the application toward the street.  The wind does blow where it will irrespective of poverty or position. 

           An elderly man, beginning to cross the street, picked up the application, crumpled it in his hand, and put in his coat pocket.  “My application!” Lazarus gasped, wide-eyed.  The man, hearing Lazarus, turned, recognizing that the paper belonged to Lazarus.  “Even beggars shouldn’t litter,” he admonished, wagging his finger at Lazarus as he crossed the street.  “Save the environment, you know!”

           And the gateway or gulf became a huge chasm.  Lazarus felt himself falling into it.  “No, my application,” Lazarus began heaving, sobbing as he fell to his knees, “my application.”  And the old man looked back just long enough to wag his finger again.

           The Medical Assistance program would certainly not pay for his medicine now.  His counselor was not paid to hear his excuses.  He punched in and out of a thankless job.  He had to have that application.  The sickness contributed with everything else to weaken his already ravaged body, his PTSD growing more severe every year since his army deployment, his body ragged and sacrificed from the cancer he inherited while mining. His mind withered. Lazarus was beginning to lose hope.  “I will die alone—utterly alone.

           In the midst of Lazarus’s despair, he picked himself and headed to find hospitality at the home of Gretchen Democrat.  Lazarus knew that if he knocked upon Ms. Democrat’s door, he could get some bread for the night.  Although it was something, the bread never filled him.  On the contrary, the bread still left him begging at the gateway that had become a gulf that the respectable people were making sure was a chasm. 

           He knew very well that the food given to him was only the garbage of Gretchen Democrat.  And that this confirmed his status as a dog barking at the gate.  Less than a dog actually, for Lazarus was given scraps the dogs would not eat.  Lazarus slept at the door of Gretchen Democrat that night but was told to move along the next day.  It would not look good to associate one’s status with the status of a man like Lazarus, a dog like Lazarus, not even a dog like Lazarus.  It was important that Gretchen Democrat not know Lazarus as anything less than a dog.  And the respectable people kept digging the chasm wider and wider.

           The next evening Lazarus was so tired that he feel upon the doorstep of Donald Republican.  With the little energy Lazarus had left, he knocked on the door of Donald Republican.  But the butler of Mr. Republican told Lazarus that Donald did not give scraps to poor people such as Lazarus, for it only encouraged their dependence.  “But I’m dying.”

           The butler shook his head.  “The poor,” the butler politely told Lazarus, “are addicts to the welfare system.  They must pick themselves up by their own bootstraps.  God helps them who help themselves.”

           Lazarus began to cough miserably.  “Excuse me,” Lazarus apologized, “excuse me, but I am dying.” 

           “That is quite alright,” the butler replied, “What was your name?”

           “Lazarus.”

           “Oh, should  I tell Mr. Republican you call called or would it be better just to say that nobody came calling today.”

           “Either way, Lazarus or nobody,” Lazarus coughed again, “what is the difference?”

           “You are quite right,” the butler responded.  “I know Mr. Republican knows your name but he does not personally know you nor any other poor person.  You would be nobody to him.”  He began to turn on his heel and then quickly turned around. “Oh, and please, if you need somewhere to sleep, please do it on the other side of the gate, beyond the gulf, further out past city walls and way past the chasm the respectable people have been digging.  We will let you pass in the morning if we need any goods or services.[1]

           And Lazarus slept outside the city wall that night—utterly alone.  The chasm created by the respectable people became his shroud, covering him and enveloping him in morning mist.  For the world we create here moves and shapes the eternal in equal and dynamic ways.  Lazaraus went from something lower than dogs to a nobody, to utterly alone, to welcomed and given hospitality in the home of Sarah and Abraham.

Rock a my soul in the bosom of Abraham,

Rock a my soul in the bosom of Abraham,

Rock a my soul in the bosom of Abraham,

Oh, rock a my soul.

 

So high, you can’t get over it,

So low, you can’t get under it,

So wide, you can’t get around it,

You gotta go through the door.

 

In the eternal, the chasm made it impossible for Gretchen Democrat and Donald Republican to receive the welcome and hospitality of God. 

           Knowing that Lazarus had been welcomed, the respectable people called upon Lazarus, as they had always done in our world, asking him to once again do their bidding.  But the chasm that segregates the desperately poor outcast, Lazarus, and the wealthy mansion owners is uncrossable because it has been designed that way by its architects.[2]  They did not call Lazarus kin or friend or brother, but asked Abraham to send him as servant and pet to relieve their pain, warn their relatives, to leave the hospitality of God to once again serve them. 

           They begged Father Abraham to have Lazarus do their bidding.  When he refused, they begged Abraham to send Lazarus to their families.  Certainly their families would listen to someone come back from the other side.

But Abraham reminded them of Moses and the prophets and the lessons learned in the wilderness.  Moses and the prophets had made it clear.  Life is a gift that begins with rain and ends with bread, that life is full and abundant.  In this rich and full and abundant life, we are to gather only what we need as the Children of Israel were instructed with the manna in the wilderness.  Had they done that?  Would their families turn from their ways to do that? 

           Moses and the prophets had taught that this goodness and abundance was not to be stored up must be circulated and redistributed so all, especially someone like Lazarus, that they might know the abundance and goodness of God.

           Finally, Abraham reminded the respectable people, children he called them, they were not to see others as merely a means of production but as people of delight--worthy of rest, play, and celebration.[3]  “But even now, as children, that is impossible for you as you see not only me but Lazarus as those people who should labor on your behalf and do your bidding.”  Moses and the prophets were available to you.  Moses and the prophets will be available to your family members. 

       So high you can’t get over it,

       So low you can’t get under it,

       So wide you can’t get around it

       You gotta go through the door.

 

But the respectable people will never go to the door to find Lazarus waiting there, walk to their gate to see the dogs lick his sores there, knock down the city walls to find Lazarus waiting outside the city of Sodom.  And there is Lazarus waiting for their hospitality as counseled by Moses and the prophets. 

           Never did the people repent.  Never was the chasm crossed, hoping their charitable donations might suffice.  But they did not.[4]  Moses and the prophets forever outside earshot of those who are the architects of the chasm.  When will we stop digging?

      

---

[1] During the day, the poorer people in the community were let in through the walls to provide the goods and services the elites wanted; at night, they were locked out.  See, Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minnesota, Augsburg Fortress, 2003). 

[2] Ched Myers, Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy:  Luke’s Jesus and Sabbath Economics (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2025), p. 163.

[3] Ibid, pp. 38-39.

[4] John Doinic Crossan has called charity as the last defense against injustice.

Sermon, Year C, Proper 20, "Weeping prophets reflect the Heart of God"

 C Proper 20 25 Ord Paul 2025

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

September 21, 2025

 

Jeremiah, chapter 9, verse 1, God speaks, “Would that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!” 

As with last week, when Jesus uses metaphors for God that might surprise us or push us to grow in imagining the activity of God in the world, so also the prophet Jeremiah uses imagery that might have us understanding how God acts in the world differently. 

Meditating on the two Scripture verses myself, I realized that I grew up with an image of God as enthroned, in full power, demanding my purity and meting out judgment from on high. 

Jeremiah is referred to as the weeping prophet.  But the Scripture verses telling of his weeping, like the ones read for us today, are intentionally vague.  Is it Jeremiah weeping?  Or is it God who is weeping, distraught that the people suffer, that the poor are oppressed, that the Way has been forgotten? The Way or the path was really the meaning of the Jewish Torah.  In keeping with this Jewish understanding, in the Acts of the Apostles, the author of Luke defines Christians as people of the Way.

I think that is an important thing to remember as people of faith.  Faith is not believing in the miracles or the impossible things. Faith is a communal living  of a path that seeks to follow the Heart of God, Christian faith to walk the way Christ walked, to imitate the life of Christ.  The main goal of many early Christian spiritual practices was to imitate Christ, to “one” ourselves to the Heart of God—prayer, fasting, lectio divina, and examen all sought this as an end.  How do we, together, walk as Jesus walked, imitate Christ? 

I want to remember that definition of faith—in Hebrew Scripture, living out the values discerned to be the Heart of God; in Christian Scripture and tradition, imitating Christ.   To me, that definition of faith seems self-evident. 

But I remember growing up alongside a Christianity that defined faith as believing the impossible things—Virgin Birth, miracles, and resurrection.  As I grew older, I became aware of a Christianity defined by wealth and material success.  As I became an adult,  I learned of a Christianity that was about consolidating political power to push cultural narratives and reinforce mean-spirited rhetoric to justify hatred and violence. 

I became very aware of how real this Christianity is when one of my friends, one of the kindest, sweetest people you will ever meet, when I shared my mourning over the 600,000 people killed in Gaza said to me, “Yes, Mike, but Israel is the favored nation of God,” as if this favored-nation status, these magic words, exempted Israel from any wrongdoing, Biblical prophecies more important than thousands of lives, of children, doctors, and journalists, all justified.

In speaking to his own people, his own nation, the prophet Jeremiah or God speaking through the prophet Jeremiah says, “Would that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!” 

Is it imitating Christ, the Heart of God, to establish our particular faith to dictate to others how education, the arts, entertainment, and the government shall be?  Christ and Jeremiah certainly engaged and confronted power, to the detriment of their own well-being, but did they do so to win or to dictate?

Jeremiah, in fact, confronts the rulers of Judah, the religious aristocracy of his own time to bring bad news.  To Judah’s royalty, bad news was unacceptable.  Don’t tell the truth.  All the royal prophets told the king to ignore Jeremiah’s dire predictions and told the king whatever he wanted to hear.

Now things did not go well for Jeremiah as the bearer of bad news. He was thrown down a well, detained in prison for not being patriotic, the royal priests and prophets sought the death penalty for him, all for critiquing his own government.   Jeremiah regularly agitated against those leaders who sought private profit and gain over and against public well-being.  Greed had become the regular practice.  Wealth had become consolidated.   National leaders were so shameful that they could not even be embarrassed by their own behavior.

Jeremiah is probably responsible for recording much of the Jewish tradition we have in Hebrew Scripture. He started young, his people's tradition came under threat, he had a reason to get oral traditions collected and down in print. So he probably was responsible for the finished product of the first creation story in Genesis . . . chaos to order to rest.

Jeremiah regularly preached that because of the people's injustice, particularly the way they treated the economically poor, the inequity between rich and poor, that first creation story in Genesis, the one he may have written, was being undone. For Jeremiah, that inequity, the gap between rich and poor, was causing all of creation’s fastening, mooring, and boundaries to come loose. God's intent for rest in the first creation story was being forced back into chaos. Jeremiah effectively says that God's good earth is the canary in the coal mine.

Most representations picture Jeremiah as an old man. I think he probably looked like an activist in the Sunrise Movement, fasting outside the nation's capital, begging for her nation to make a u-turn, to follow a path, a way that brings all of humankind back into harmony with creation. 

Indeed.  Today is a huge day in the climate movement.  Throughout our country different parties and activities and teach-ins are breaking out to celebrate what is being referenced as Sun Day.   If it weren’t for worship services and a potluck today you would find me at a party on Pere Marquette Beach (a beach party!) in Muskegon or at a solar festival in Chicago, or a multi-faith blowout in Ann Arbor.  All of it is to celebrate the advance of solar and wind power as they are making a way we had at one time thought impossible.  Just this past summer, wind and solar power supplied Europe provided over 60% of Europe’s energy—an incredible landmark. 

It is Sun Day.  And people from all over our country are celebrating!

Climate activist Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and Third Act, regularly reminds people these days that for a long time we thought of solar and wind power as Whole Foods—nice ideas, maybe affordable to the elite liberal few, but not really practical.  

Actually, McKibben says, wind and solar are more like Costco, available to all of us and available in large quantities.  In McKibben’s new book, Here Comes the Sun,  he details how countries like Germany and Pakistan have started to use balcony solar.  They hook up a singular solar panel on their balcony and power their household.  McKibben believes wind and solar offer the possibility that energy of the future will not be hoarded by the select few, like fossil fuels, but can be shared by us all.  As a Christian and United Methodist Sunday School teacher, Bill McKibben believes this is the way, what God intends to uplift our whole community, to further the cause of democracy. 

I am going to lead out a virtual study of McKibben’s book later this fall and I hope you will join me to think and discern how we might follow in the footsteps of Jesus, imitate Christ, how we might know the Heart of God.

We have to move fast, McKibben contends.  Before seeing the incredible movement happening around solar and wind, McKibben believed that humankind had strapped its fate to those positive prophets who didn’t dare say a negative word about the direction we were headed focused on fossil fuels.  And with AI centers and developing China, demand for energy grows ever-greater.  McKibben admitted that this state of the world was what kept him up at 3:00 a.m., weeping for what we were intentionally doing to God’s good earth. 

In our country, our struggle to hold onto democracy becomes ever more dire.  Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich details how wealth has become consolidated in the hands of the very few. 

Airlines merged from 12 major carriers in 1980 to 4 today.  Four giants control 80% of meat processing.  A handful of companies control the pharmaceutical industry.  In 1983, 80 companies controlled 90% of the U.S. media market.  That number is now down to 5.[1]

This inequity, this concentration of voice, and wealth, and power, with corresponding statistics that show how deep the divide is growing in our country threatens to undo all of creation.  Greed becomes the regular spiritual practice.  And God weeps.

On the front cover of your bulletin is one of the most power images I have ever experienced.  Tracy’s dad used to live near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in Shawnee.  So one day we decided to go to the Oklahoma City Memorial.  I remember going through the memorial and being powerfully moved at the two gates, the reflecting pool, the empty chairs.  But then I found myself on the other side of the memorial thinking I had seen it all when I looked up and saw a figure with his back turned to the memorial proper.  I came around to see the rendering of "Jesus wept,” a remembrance when Jesus mourned the death of his friend, Lazarus.

The very people who killed all those children at that day care, destroyed the lives of all those federal employees . . . they are now prominent in our country to say their Christianity must now hold sway, must be instituted in every university and classroom, must put women in their proper place, must purify the nation as they hoard wealth and resources.   Some of these same people have been deputized to our streets.

And I have to ask . . . is this the Heart of God, the imitation of Christ, the way, the path in all humility that is put before us as people of Christian faith?  When did Jeremiah or Christ suggest that the path was seeking after power over others rather than sharing it, hoarding wealth and position rather than distributing it, destroying the lives of people not like us rather than dining with them?

Jesus has left the building and is weeping in the streets. Weeping publicly, openly. Be a damn mess.  Now is the time. The ancestors are with you. Jeremiah and Christ still lament, weep, and plead. God still laments, weeps, and pleads for those slain, for those detained, for this good earth.  We are not alone.  Amen.

---

[1] Robert Reich, https://bsky.app/profile/rbreich.bsky.social, September 18, 2025, 11:07 PM

Year C, Proper 17, "Healing affluenza with a different perspective on playground status"

 

C Proper 17 22 Ord Paul 2025

Luke 14:1, 7-14

August 31, 2025

Maybe your grade school playground had a bully like mine did. Maybe it wasn't even a bully so much as a few eighth-graders who enjoyed their physical superiority by interrupting any form of play or fun that up and coming fourth-graders could muster. Even to this day, I remember the rage I felt because the football or kickball or basketball we had checked out from the gym had been taken by an eighth-grader for the upteenth time. What right, I remember thinking, did those eighth-graders have to do this? What right to take away what was checked out by a fourth-grader?

It was the time to turn the tables.

It was the day I erupted. We had been the victims for far too long.  I had had enough. Injustice had persisted for far too long on the Metamora Community Consolidated Grade School playground. It was time for fourth-grader wrath. Steve Scrhamm, tall and lanky eighth-grader that he was, had taken our football again. He stood there, smug, tossing the football from hand to hand, smiling at the lot of us. In a full display of “can't take it any more” stupidity, I decided to act. With no teacher or administrator to be found to correct these injustices, it was time for the masses to rise. “Sic semper tyrannis est.” Crying and screaming all at the same time, I launched myself at Steve Schramm's left leg and pulled and tugged and beat as hard as I could.

I must have bewildered him so completely, or my attack was the equivalent of a single gnat on the leg of a huge beast, such that Steve stood there and took the punishment from my tiny, little fists—whapping and whapping against his left leg. That is, until I bit him, and he promptly kicked me to the side. But I remember what I was thinking as I whapped and hung on for dear life. I remember thinking over and over again, “Wait till I'm in eighth-grade. Wait till I'm in eighth-grade, and then we'll see who runs the playground and how it is run.”

These were not the early signs of ordained Christian ministry in the cards. Au contraire! I even hate to complete the thought of “Wait till I'm in eighth-grade.” For what I was thinking, was not some benevolent change in the system and structure in the playground. I was looking forward to my turn, when I was at the head of the table.  “Wait till I'm in eighth-grade, I'm the king of the hill, I get to be the big cheese, I get to snatch any basketball or kickball or football I want. I'll be in power, and I'll get to interrupt play time, tease and make fun, and steal all those footballs from fourth-graders.”

Now that may not be the most Christian sentiment, but I do believe it is a very human one that survives with us long into adulthood. When we are on the outside looking in, part of the crowd that is not in power, instead of imagining a day when we will create a different kind of playground, it seems to be human nature for us to dream of the day when we will get to do exactly what has been done to us.  And we have been fed a line, that we are the victims, the dispossessed.  

It is almost like a revenge fantasy, where we have the expectations that those dispossessed will rise up and do to others what has been done to them.  This is a violent game we play day after day, deciding who is victim so that we might justify our violence to gain our rightful place at the table.  

The author of Luke has the habit of grouping healings with teaching.  The sickness or the condition coming before Jesus embodies the presenting problem in the wider world.  In the ancient world, the physical condition of “dropsy,” a swelling of the soft tissue due to excess water, represented the spiritual problem of avarice or greed.  It was said that the person suffering from “dropsy” had a need to drink more and more water without ever being sated.  Dropsy was like a greedy person could never accumulate enough wealth or possessions.  The Roman philosopher Cicero said: “Diogenes used to liken greedy men to those suffering from dropsy.”   

The healing of the spiritual condition, a form of affluenza, is then what Jesus addresses in his teaching.  Eating together is an intimate and communal act.  In the ancient world, eating defined social position and status.  Dining at the home of a Pharisee on the Sabbath, the social stakes are heightened as all eyes are on Jesus to see what he brings to the table.   Jesus heals the physical condition for the man with dropsy.  He then instructs how the spiritual, societal question shall be healed.   As we hear his teaching, we should remember that Jesus’s contemporary listeners are not the usual poor and dispossessed.  He is speaking to those people who have climbed the ladder of the Jewish religious aristocracy.

Jesus does not counsel that social status should be wholly abandoned.  Instead, he advises that for healing, one should consciously and deliberately live beneath presumed social status, to not thirst after social status or higher honor.  To displace oneself to a lower seat is a way of bringing back social health and well-being.  When Jesus tells the host who he should invite to a dinner party, he tells him: “Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”  For readers of the gospel of Luke, these groups should be a memory cue.  They are a reminder of Jesus’s original mission statement when he first begins his public ministry, standing in the synagogue and reflecting on the scroll of Isaiah:  “The Spirit of the Living God is upon me.  For God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the Year of God’s Amnesty.”   This is a cue that Jesus is speaking into being, enacting a different way of life, a life that has the ability to end the violence of affluenza, that will bring about a spiritual health.  

And the reason Jesus gives for this way of life?   Is that the Divine Host . . . this is the way God acts in the world.  And so as we act in this way, we come into the home and being and practice of God.  It is God’s good wish, God’s deep desire, that our chasing after status and affluence, on the playground or at the dinner table, in the board room or among the nations, the violence and sickness of affluenza, come to an end.  

Usually this Scripture appears on the first Sunday of September, a Sunday when most congregations like ours share in the holiest of meals, a practice that remembers the many meals Jesus shared on this good earth in a way that was counter to the sickness and death found in the wider world.  We est this meal to steel our courage, enliven our hope, and say that we would once again recognize that as God asks us to take a seat at the front of the table, we are willing to live in some discomfort, and we waive our hand to say, “No, no, I am afraid you don’t understand.  I am confident in the good gifts you intend for me, Gracious One.  I defer.  Rather, this person who is poor or beaten down by the world should sit next to you.  It is only right and well.” 

And in that moment, when we enact the mission statement of Jesus, God smiles, smiles broadly, and says, “In my house, this place, you shall always have a home.”  And in that moment, we share in God’s joy.  Amen.  

Sermon, Year C, Proper 16, "Being seen and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

 

C Proper 16 21 Ord Paul 2025

Luke 13:10-17

August 24, 2025

           The story is told of the bent-over woman who entered the synagogue with a crippling spirit that had kept her that way for 18 years.  Eighteeen years!  Can we imagine any person that we know our love in our faith community walking into the place of worship for eighteen years without asking or the leaders of our church asking, “What ails you?  Why has this become your lot?  What can we do?  How might we help?”

`          In reading the Bible, one of the first lessons we learn is that ancient peoples did not necessarily see themselves as a-part from the wider society.  When we read the beautiful hymns from the Psalms, and hear one of the voices say, as in my favorite Psalms, “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for you, O God.  My tears have been my food day and night, as my enemies say to me, ‘Where is your God?’”  The point is that that is not just a singular voice crying out to God.  We are to read that Psalm as a voice of the community, crying out on behalf of the community.   “People who want our destruction think that you are a joke, God.  Where are you in the midst of such suffering and pain in our lives? Why have you been silent, O God?”  Psalms like that one made it into holy Scripture because people heard voiced in that Psalm their own voice, the voice of their people.

           So  many Scriptural stories are written not to tell the story of one individual but of the whole community.  Like a good movie or a good story, the stories are meant to be something the whole community understands and experiences.  When we hear of a bent-over woman who walks into the worship place with a spirit that has her crippled, unable to stand up straight, think of what that might be saying about the plight of the whole people during the time of Jesus. 

           If we could step back for a moment from seeing this story literally, imagine the story being told to reflect a dispute going on within the Jewish faith.  At the core of Jewish faith is the Exodus story which also reflects all the rules and regulations for keeping the Jewish people right before God and maintaining their freedom. 

           The most common phrasing for understanding the Exodus story is that the Egyptians and their Pharaoh held the Jewish people in bondage, and through God’s deliverance, God liberated or loosed them.  Moses then taught the Hebrew people through what was called The Way, what was bound (not permitted, and reflecting a life of slavery) and loosed (permitted and what reflected a life of freedom).  In the same manner, everyday Jewish teaching then became about what was bound (not permitted and slavery) and loosed (permitted and freedom).[1]

           These are the same verbs found in Matthew, where the author of that book strongly alludes to Jesus as the second Moses.  Not unexpectedly then, Jesus says to the apostle Peter, a verse often quoted by the Roman Catholic Church to reference the authority of the Pope, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.  And whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”[2]  Because the Roman Catholic Church traces all of the Pope’s authority back through Peter, they are drawing a beeline back through Peter to Jesus and then back through Jesus to Moses and the Ten Commandments to say, “Whatever the Pope says . . .goes.”

           Ok, I took a small detour there.  Let’s get back to our story to see the Jewish dispute that is going on.  On one side in this story are the synagogue leaders who believe the Exodus story and the giving of God’s Way which includes the rules and regulations around the Sabbath, that whole story, is about a personal morality that must be observed and honored to maintain integrity before God.  Honor the rules to honor God.  Those who do not honor the rules bring shame upon themselves and their community. 

After all, and this is important, if you start asking why this woman is bent-over, is to invite the hard work of analysis, looking upstream, to see who is really responsible for her suffering.  And that just begins the hard work, the conflict we might have to endure, to be involved in bringing healing to an entire people.  And remember, going back, this story is a story intended to be a metaphor for the whole of Jewish people living in rural Galilee.  Do you see the suffering?  Do you hear the cries of the people?  Bent-over and crippled these 18 years?  But who is ready for that?  Who wants to enter that conflict?

Jesus notices.  Though he is teaching in the synagogue, he notices a woman held in bondage.  He hears the cries of his people, as God did and said to Moses when the Divine Deliverer first related the reason for speaking to Moses out of the burning bush.  “I have heard the cries of my people, and I have come down to deliver, to loose my people from slavery.” 

Throughout the Scripture passage read for us today, the verbs used repeatedly are “bind” and “loose.”  What does it mean that this bent-over woman is bound by this spirit and that Jesus says in response, to characterize what happened to her, “[W]as she not bound to be loosed from this bondage on the day of the Sabbath?”?  The overt repetition of the language tells us what is at issue here.

Jesus is effectively saying, “It is necessary to alleviate her suffering, for her to be freed.”  Jesus does not say that she is healed.  “Heal” is the term used by the synagogue leader—a term he uses to invoke the rules and regulations.  The synagogue leader is trying to say this is about this woman and the woman only.

The synagogue leader does not blame Jesus for this interruption.  He blames the suffering woman.  Jesus says that she is not healed but “loosed”[3]—a term that invokes the deeper meaning of the Sabbath, rooted in the Exodus story, and invites the Jewish people to collectively see themselves in this woman. 

The Jewish crowd in this story gets it.  They, collectively, know this story and suffering.  They rejoice at her being loosed, knowing God’s intent for all of them.  The Jewish crowd know themselves to be the bent-over people whom God necessarily frees. 

Again, the synagogue leaders try to do a go-around.  They see the bent-over woman as an easy target and try to move around a conflict with Jesus.  They do not cast their aspersions at Jesus but point the finger at the easy target, a woman, who is shaming their synagogue for being free from her suffering, the Satanic spirit.

Today we are still arguing over the interpretation of the Exodus story.  Who is right?  The synagogue leaders?  Who invoke individual rules and regulations to say religious faith is about shaming those who do not abide by the rules, regardless of how they suffer?  Is it the easy play to make faith about personal morality so that we do not have to do the hard work to do the critical analysis, look upstream, and seek to loose a whole community bound in the suffering slavery?  Is suffering a signpost of sin?

Or is Jesus right about the Exodus story?  Does real physical suffering call us to do the hard work to bring about freedom?  Is true suffering a signpost a wider sin of societal breakdown which we then necessarily move against?  And are we willing to enter into that conflict?  Because my reflection is that many of the world’s ills are a result of an unwillingness to enter into conflict, to look deeper.  Like the synagogue leader, we take the easy way out and blame how things are going on those who suffer.

One of my favorite writers, Sarah Kendzior, revealed in her column this past week that she is a big fan of horror movies.  And now I cannot love her more.  I pray that I don’t offend anyone by admitting that. 

Kendzior was traveling in Austin, Texas, this past week and wrote of her fandom for the movie, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  In particular, during her college years she had interviewed the actor who played Leatherface, Gunnar Hansen, and had become somewhat a friend to the guy who played Leatherface, the wielder of the titular chainsaw. 

Hansen had been a former graduate student in English, and a Herman Melville scholar, the writer of Moby Dick.  And he was philosophical about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, referenced that Raiders of the Lost Ark was much more explicit in its violence.  And to remember, Hansen said, that was a movie aimed at kids  But that the violence in Raiders of the Lost Ark was a polished violence, a polite violence.  The problem in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was that it was filled with impolite violence.  Hansen went on to explain,

What’s happening is that we’re going after these films not because of their violence.  We see the violence as something we can hang on to.  We’re offended by horror movies because we’re middle Americans who don’t want to see things in which the values are not the same.  The vision in horror films is often very dark.  We want to have a movie that tells us that everything’s okay.

        A horror film does not pretend that death is not horrifying.  It does not pretend that violence is not bloody, grotesque, and painful.  What’s irresponsible are the films that show violence with no ramifications.[4] 

        For the writer Sarah Kendzior, Gunnar Hansen made her feel normal, to recognize that the violence and the resulting suffering in the air could not be polished to become palatable.  And to complete Kendzior’s thought, I think that we often demand polite violence so we can get our necessary fill of it.  Or we find ourselves turning aside and shunning the real effects of violence, the people who remind us of what it does in the world.  We just want them to go away.

           I think that is why when I imagine God personified, I always imagine God with kind, weathered eyes, because God refuses to do individual rule-making to turn aside from suffering.  God knows the horrors of it.  God openly weeps through it and rails against it.  God’s heart grieves the suffering, wailing and screaming against it. 

           There are times when I am a very poor excuse for a Christian.  But then there are other times when I am aware that God is moving through me to move upstream, seek answers, and ask, “Were they not bound to be loosed from this bondage on the day of the Sabbath?”  I remember this past winter, going out to one of the piers on Lake Michigan in the midst of a snowstorm, and shouting out into Lake Michigan on behalf of one of my kids who was going through continued, tremendous pain, begging for them to be loosed from it, to be impolite, the snot flying in my face, my tears and the snow making it impossible for me to see anything, the biting wind whipping into me.  I cried and screamed for them until I lost my voice.  I opened my mouth to scream against it and all that I had was a hollow hoarseness. 

It was not only me crying out to God on their behalf but also a promise that I would do “whatever” to loose them from the bondage in their lives.  For one moment and following, I was faithful.  Would that I could find the strength, the courage, the wherewithal to do that when there is so much polite and polished violence and suffering in the world. 

           There are any number of peoples and places in the world bent-over by Satan, maybe that describes you in your time of life, feeling like the suffering is too much to bear.  We know of whole peoples who are bound to be loosed and necessarily need to be freed.  When we speak of our faith, can we talk about how our suffering and deliverance is wrapped up in the suffering and deliverance of others?  Do we hear Jesus critiquing the polished and polite religious faith which shames individuals, those bent-over women?  That religious faith too often saying that if the woman had only been of more character, followed closer the morality code, been more faithful, learned their lessons, only did things legally, God would have delivered them by now?  Are we enslaved by a faith that speaks of individual sin so that we do not have to do the hard work of taking on the wider systemic and structural issues that break our backs?

           So it is that when we pray today, we bind ourselves to others who suffer or rejoice so that those who are bound may be loosed and those who are loosed may hear our shouts of gladness and jubilation. 

           What the Scripture teaches is that others may not even know us by name or just refer to us as “bent-over,” but Jesus and his followers notice, go to our place in the sanctuary, make eye contact . . . maybe for the first time in eighteen years and declare God’s will for us to be loosed in the world.  Certainly . . . as God wills that for us, God wills it for people, communities, and nations today. 

           May the followers of Jesus, the ones who believe that Jesus’s interpretation of the Exodus story carries the day, join in crying out.  May they bind themselves to one another so that they know God’s will for them to stand up straight, to be lifted.  May they see the suffering in the world and recognize that the sons and daughters, siblings and cousins of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar deserve our notice and our hard work.  May it be so.  Amen.

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[1]http://www.ed-nelson.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=59.

[2] Matthew 16:19; D. Mark Davis, “A Bound Woman Bound to be Loosed from Bondage,” Left Behind and Loving It.  http://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-bound-woman-bound-to-be-loosed-from.html. 

[3] Ibid.

[4] Sarah Kendzior, “My Friend Leatherface:  Remembering a creative conservationist as plutocrats take a chainsaw to Texas,” @sarahkendzior, Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter on substack, August 20, 2025.