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.

Sermon, Year C, All Souls, "You 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, Reformation Sunday (Proper 25), "Humility for the Common Good and Adolescent Boy Energy"

 

C 25 30 Reformation Col Paul 2026

Luke 18:9-14

October 26, 2025

           I had one of those glorious experiences last Sunday evening where I got to hear Dr. Nichole Keway Biber speak.  She is a tribal citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and a part of the Turtle Clan.  I have become aware of just how important turtle is to Native story, Anishinaabe story, in places like Michigan because this land we sit on originated when muskrat plunged to the bottom of the water, sacrificing his own life, to come up with the mud that was then spread over turtle’s back as a safe place for humankind to place its feet.  That is why this land is referred to as turtle island.  Muskrat sacrifices for us.  Turtle is the safe place for our feet to rest.

Dr. Biber is the Mid-Michigan Campaign Organizer for Clean Water Action after having received her Ph.D. in English from Michigan State University.  Do you ever have the experience of saying to yourself, “Yeah, this person, they are going to be one of the real wisdom-givers in my life.  I can just feel that.”  That’s how it felt when I met Dr. Biber at the Michigan Climate Action Summit this summer. 

           Molly Mechtenberg, leader of the faith-based Hope for Creation, based in Kalamazoo, asked if I would come to their event focused on water.  My high theological reason for deciding I would come was, “Well, the Bears were on a bye week so sure.”  And lo and behold, Dr. Biber was one of the featured speakers.  I counted myself blessed. 

           Dr. Biber sings and speaks with what Cornel West, quoting Socrates has said is, parrhesia (παρρησία).  Parrhesia is “clear speech, frank speech, fearless speech, unintimidated speech, speech that flows from your soul not to show that you’re clever and smart, but to show that you’re courageous and wise.”[1]  Parrhesia implies a willingness to speak for the common good, even at great risk.[2]  Parrhesia is speaking with a relational wisdom.  With clarity and dexterity, Dr. Biber said that the measure of our relationship with water is not in what it can produce in GDP but asking,  “Is the water cleaner than it was yesterday?” 

           She spoke of the need for humility, recognizing that when we walk into creation as humankind, we walk in lower than others.  In the great Anishinaabe creation story, that water was first home for others before it became a home for us.

Then she spoke a great wisdom story of her people.  When the Anishinaabe were facing great hunger and famine, one clan said, in full humility, we will sacrifice ourselves to become the whitefish that will feed all other clans.  So they did.  And so they have.

And in their humility, Dr. Biber said, they told us, “As things go for us now, so they shall go for you.”   And is that not where we are?  Is the threat against the whitefish population in Lake Michigan a sign of where we are?  How do we now speak with parrhesia—clearly, frankly, fearlessly, relationally, for the common good?

In our gospel text for today, both pray-ers stand off at a distance from others.  The tax collector stands far off because of his despised role in the community.  The Pharisee stands by himself so as not to be in contact with anyone who might thought to be impure.  Both of them are representatives of the same oppressive system, a tax system based on extraction from a population that is below subsistence level or barely hanging on.  

The Pharisee profits from the system, an elite official directing religious obligation to pay tithe and tax to enforce the Temple cult.  The tax collector is working class collecting tolls, duties, and tariffs at the behest of others.  The Pharisee is honored for his direction of the oppressive system.  The tax collector is shunned for the way he cheats the public on behalf of others.

The Pharisee’s prayer is grandiose, self-congratulatory, and denounces “extortioners, swindlers, and adulterers,” presumably a swipe at somebody like the tax collector.  He shows himself to be religiously pious while also insulting the tax collector.  His prayer refuses to be relational.  Gratitude is to be one of the first movements of prayer, a gratitude which understands that earth, water, and goodness existed long before us.  And his form of God is to deny his relationship with the tax collector, “I thank you, O God, that I am not like him.” 

John Chrysostom, early Church Father and Archbishop of Constantinople said, “We do not give thanks by speaking ill of others.”[3]

“I have much to be thankful for, therefore it must be that God has rewarded me, therefore I must be righteous, therefore I am not a sinner.”[4]  Hmm, hmmm, hmmm (humming, looking at nails, brushing them off).  And especially: I am not a sinner like . . . well, you know . . . them!  He has gone from praying to peaking, directing his attention away from God to comparing his life with that of the tax collector. All relationality is not tied up humility but in arrogance without any understanding that he and the tax collector are bound up in the same system of harm.

Consider Mrs. Turpin from the short story "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor.  She was a good, decent, upright, and proud woman who did everything right, except that she was a self-righteous racist. She was a person, writes O'Connor, who, when she entered heaven, needed "even her virtues burned away."[5]  Mrs. Turpin may be good and righteous in a vacuum but she is unwilling to be humble enough to speak and live with relationality, how she operates within a system that harms and destroys.

In contrast, the tax collector’s prayer is short, recognizing the part he plays in the system, “God, be merciful to me a sinner,” accompanied by extreme gestures of remorse and humility.  He knew who he was in the system, how it harmed and did damage. “This kind of humility, when accompanied by change of behavior is, according to Jesus, the gateway to healing.”[6] 

What is needed, Dr. Biber said, is restoration.  We need to choose a healing from the violence that has originally been done and restoration so that what we will have tomorrow is a material place that is better for children and grandchildren.  Can we begin to work on that, as a joint project, as a people together, humbled by the way we have participated but with full wisdom that God will join hands with us?  Or is it too hard to admit where we have been and where we are . . . to chart another path?

My good friend Josiah Hugs, a leader in the Wellbriety Movement, a path of recovery from addiction, would regularly point out to me people who were blaming to others, swinging wildly to avoid holding themselves accountable for the harm caused by their struggles.  Josiah would say that though they had stopped drinking they were still living out their addiction, not recognizing their complicity in the system.  In effect, never growing up, always the adolescent, never taking ownership of the humility necessary to recognize that the water was first home to others before we arrived on the scene.  Restoration never is accomplished.

I see that behavior as a sickness in our country.  Must America always be the adolescent?  Must it always be the country that never matures?  Sometimes we sound so much like the adolescent boy who enjoys the cruelty, speaks ill of those who are unable to defend themselves, free from boundaries and accountability.  Never are we accountable for systems and structures that harm?

How even in the Christian Church we regularly fail to speak humbly, clearly, frankly, fearlessly, relationally, for the common good?  Humility as a nation and as a faith seem no longer available to us as precious values.  We want to keep faith out of politics because, at best, we are afraid of someone else’s faith carrying the day politically without a thought to a faith that engages in humility to say, “But I could be wrong.  I might be complicit.  The water was here for others before I arrived on the scene.  God have mercy on me, a sinner, a participant in systems that harm.  May it be, O God, that this is the day I make sure that the water is cleaner than it was yesterday, that I move to recover and restore on this day.”

I hope that you all get a chance to hear Dr. Biber speak or present.  She is one of those people who speaks with a wisdom that calls us to a deeper place, a strongly material place, a relational place that, in humility, seeks healing and restoration.  Amen.

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[1] Peter Cunningham quoting Cornel West, “In keynote address, Cornel West urges integrity, action, and ‘soulcraft’,” YaleNews, February 5, 2018, https://news.yale.edu/2018/02/05/keynote-address-cornel-west-urges-integrity-action-and-soulcraft.

[2] “Parrhesia,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrhesia.

[3] Grant Gallup, Homily Grits, http://andraomeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits/msg00015.html

[4] David Ewart, “Luke 18:9-14,” Holy Textures, https://www.holytextures.com/2023/04/luke-18-9-14-year-c-pentecost-october-23-october-29-proper-25-ordinary-time-30-sermon.html

[5] Dan Clendenin, “The Pharisee and the Tax Collector,” Journey with Jesus, October 16, 2016, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1148-the-pharisee-and-the-tax-collector

[6] Ched Myers, “Leveling Social Terrain (Lk 18:9-14),” Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, October 22, 2025, https://bcmonline.org/2025/10/22/leveling-social-terrain-lk-189-14/.

 

Sermon, Year C, Proper 24, "The Tenacious Persistence of a Widow"

 

C Proper 24 29 Ord Col Paul 2025

Luke 18:1-8

October 19, 2025

          In the stories Jesus would tell, he would use Jewish archetypes, word symbols, that had a history, to share his meaning and message.  For example, one of the archetypes he uses is the term historically translated as the “Son of Man.”  Jesus often uses the term with vague references to himself or to some figure in the future who will come to judge the righteous and the unrighteous.  The literal meaning of the term goes all the way back to the first creation story when humankind is created out of the “fertile soil” or the earth.  The prophet Daniel then picks up on this term to talk about the mythological figure who shall oppose the cruel and the violent empires of the world, pictured as grotesque beasts or monsters.  Daniel says that this figure is literally the Human One or the Earth Child who comes to judge these monstrous, violent, and cruel imperial powers.

           Our Scripture verse ends today with Jesus asking, “When that Human One or Earth Child comes, will they find faith on earth?”  In other words, there is God’s way and the way of the imperial, violent, and cruel world, will the Human One find anyone loyal to God’s way when they come to judge the righteous and the unrighteous? 

           Jesus . . . he could get so judgmental!  Would Jesus really belong to a UCC Church with that judgmental stuff?

           That summation was the typical way a Jewish prophet would say that there is a story deeper, a way in the world more everlasting than the way of the pharaohs, kings, queens, Caesars, and city officials.  Their monstrous ways do not have the last word. 

           The other archetype Jesus uses in our Scripture passage for today is the widow.  Throughout Scripture, the widow is part of the holy trinity for whom God’s Heart is especially devoted.  The widow, the orphan, and the immigrant are seen throughout Hebrew Scripture as without resource and advocate, people who are extremely vulnerable—so God is a stand-in as a way to say, “You mess with them, you mess with me.” 

In Hebrew, the word for widow connotes one who is silent or unable to speak, without a male for status in society.[1]  Throughout the Gospel of Luke, widows figure prominently, brought up in five different stories in the gospel, as those who seek a different kind of economics and politics, those who seek liberation and justice.  As people dear to the Heart of God, widows are the megaphone to express the deepest desires of God. 

Throughout Hebrew Scripture are those warnings from God, admonitions to demand that the people of God act with the Heart of God.  To name just a few Scripture passages, in Exodus, in the Psalms, in Isaiah, and twice in the Deuteronomy, “The Living God is not partial and takes no bribe. . . . Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.”[2] You mess with them, you mess with me.

And here she is, this widow in Jesus’s story seeking justice before a judge who fears God nor public opinion.  The story suggests that the only way this judge would rule for anyone is by a bribe.  This judge has “abandoned all pretense of impartiality and has become openly what he has been covertly, a judge of injustice.[3]   As a result, this widow is trapped in a city, a world, where justice goes only to the highest bidder.  And . . . well . . . she is a widow, probably trying to get the maintenance owed to her by her husband’s estate, the inheritance that might help her survive.  What she might have as a bribe is tied up in court.  And . . . and she is a widow. 

What is she to do?  Jesus uses this story as a way of saying to those who follow him, people who might identify with the widow and her vulnerability, what they are to do when their basic economic and political needs are threatened by a system skewed toward the wealthy and powerful, unable to deliver justice because the system does not seek justice. 

What this widow does is she throws convention out the window.  Women, widows in particular, are to be private and silent?  Pffffft.  She breaks the rules and approaches the judge publicly and directly.  She does not prevail upon the judge by denouncing him but by telling him to do his DARN job!  Do your job![4]  

This widow is persistent and tenacious in her pursuit of justice.  She “forces the judge to reevaluate the cost-benefit ration of her case . . . cut his losses and move on”[5] such that injustice is not inevitable.

She makes the judge’s life impossible.  And he delivers justice to her not because he has become righteous or makes a righteous choice but because, “she will keep bothering me,” literally, “makes trouble,” or “makes my life difficult.”  In some translations, the Greek is translated that she will come in and give him a black eye, a shiner, shame him in her tenacious persistence. 

The judge is moved because this widow will not believe what the wider culture tells her—that her poor position means that she does not deserve justice.  She believes she deserves justice. 

In wider cultural understandings, we often approach Scriptural stories and ask ourselves, “Who is the most powerful person, the one who orders this or that that we might say, ‘Ah, this must be the person who is the metaphor for God!”  We equate earthly power with the Divine. 

But Jesus makes it clear with the amoral references to this judge that God is not found at the judge’s seat but in the widow’s seeking.  God activity is the widow seeking justice. 

In this passage and throughout the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is trying to persuade his followers, “Rich people and their official agents are actually afraid of you exercising your power!”  So step up.  Jesus effectively says in our Scripture passage for today, in Luke 18, verse 6, “Pay attention to the unarticulated anxieties and fears of the powerful—you can outlast them.”[6]  You can outlast them. 

There is a deeper, a wider story which reminds us of those vulnerable women who knew they deserved justice:  Mary of Nazareth, Sarah, Miriam, Rahab, Esther, and even Hagar. 

In more recent history, widows or vulnerable women have shown us the face of God, seeking justice. 

In 1976, a military group took over the rule of Argentina by force.  Soon men in unmarked cars began arriving in the night at homes, restaurants, and workplaces to take away people in the struggle for Argentinian peace.  Before long there were thousands of people among the ranks of the “disappeared,”—sons and daughters, friends and relatives. 

Lines began to form in front of government offices.  Mothers of the missing came day after day, begging for information about their loved ones.  When they were turned away, they got together and drew up a petition, listing the names of their disappeared children and demanding that they be returned.  When the government refused their petition, they began a silent, illegal protest.

Every Thursday they marched in a circle in front of the government offices that ring Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo.  Each mother wore a white handkerchief embroidered with the names of her missing children.  Many carried pictures.  As the number of disappearances grew, so did the group of silent, walking women.  Despite beatings and arrests, the mothers persisted.  Their vigil went on for years, challenging the dictatorship, drawing international attention to the cruelty and injustice, recovering some of the stolen children, 400 to date, demanding justice that resulted in the prosecution and conviction of many military officials, and, finally, developing a legacy of activism in Argentina. 

In 1952 in South Africa, with apartheid still firmly in place, 20,000 women converged on the prime minister’s office in Pretoria, demanding justice.   In the following decades, mothers marched, compiled affidavits of torture and murder, and helped children into safe exile.  They did this all under the rallying cry, “You have struck the women, you have struck the rock.”  That rock was one more immovable object in the work to bring down apartheid. 

In El Salvador, mothers and widows fasted at the tomb of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero and occupied the cathedral in San Salvador, demanding an end to repression.  Their actions kept the number one superpower from committing to all-out war in El Salvador and to the eventual sainthood of Archbishop Romero. 

All these women displayed the tenacity, the persistence of the widow in today’s gospel parable.  They reflected the Heart of God.  They confronted the “unjust judges” of their time—whether they come in the guise of prime ministers, police, mayors, or military officers.  These women demanded to be heard, believed they deserved justice.  And today, through our holy Scriptures, they now invite us to join them in taking a stand for justice—not just for a day, a week, or a year, but to persist in knowing that the most vulnerable are dear to God’s Heart. 

Pay attention!  The unarticulated anxieties and fears of the powerful are fully on display in our age.  And God is on the move to say that there is a story wider and more everlasting.  Wear . . . them . . .out.  So that the orphans, the immigrants, and the widows, the people who are dear to God’s Heart might find an ally in you, in us.

Did you think, as people of faith, you were not supposed to be involved with the injustice of our day, private and silent?  Pfffft.  Today our scripture calls us to the deep and everlasting story.  Praise be to God!  Amen.

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[1] Ched Myers, Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2025), p. 173.

[2] Deuteronomy 10:17; 27:19.

[3] Myers, Healing Affluenza, p. 173, p. 175, quoting William A. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), p. 225.

 

[4] Myers, Healing Affluenza, p. 175. 

[5] Ibid, quoting Herzog, Subversive, p.  230. 

[6] Myers, Healing Affluence, p. 175.