Sermon, Proper 8, "What do you see?"

 

C Proper 11 16 Ord Paul 2025

Amos 8:1-12

July 20, 2025

           This past week I had lunch with a young college student I’ve come to love and respect who shared with me her mission trip to Cambodia.  In sharing some of the stories of that work, she also shared how liberating it has been to attend a United Church of Christ church.  I grew in respect and admiration for her as she said what she found most meaningful in her Cambodian work was not so much the original reason she has been sent in mission but the relationships she developed during her time there.  And to illustrate the point, she showed me a photo of her steering what would like the handles of a cross between a scooter and a motorcycle, with about five smiling Cambodian children on the seat directly behind her.  I imagined how she had changed the life of those children and how they had radically changed her life.

She grew up in a very strict wing of the Seventh Day Adventist Church which had her forever worried about her personal behavior—how she dressed, how she spoke, how God might be watching every detail of her personal life.  What she had found in United Church of Christ churches like ours was

And what she was continuing to hear in United Church of Christ churches like ours is that God is largely unconcerned about these personal sins, these details about appearance and personal preference, daily mistakes she might make in performance and work.  I would like to think that is a universal reflection of our denomination, the United Church of Christ, right?  That we teach and preach a God who is not checking in on our daily lives to see if we are more fit for heaven and hell?  That God begins primarily with a liberating love?

The flip side is what many of our churches get right about a God who leads with liberating love, they often then struggle to articulate and lead out their communities for where God’s attention is found.  I think that is the case because it is part of the human condition to be conflict avoidant.  We would rather that God asks nothing of us, to never walk into deep waters, to never call out evil and the suffering of others.

Jewish writer Marge Piercy penned one of my wife, Tracy’s favorite definitions of love.  “Attention is love,” Piercy wrote, “what we must give children, mothers, fathers, pets, our friends, the news, the woes of others.  What we want to change we curse and then pick up a tool.  Bless whatever you can with eyes and hands and tongue.  If you can’t bless it, get ready to make it new.”

What we want to change we curse and then pick up a tool.

If you can’t bless it, get ready to make it new.

I think those two wonderful sentences define how the Jewish prophets understood themselves, how the Jewish prophet Amos, a shepherd and sycamore fig farmer, understood himself. 

In our passage from Hebrew Scripture today, God comes to the Amos and asks him, “What do you see?”  God or a messenger of God asks this question seven times in the Bible, always seeking the answer from a prophet, a truth-teller.[1]  What do you see is a way of saying, “Read the times, what is the reality laid out before you?”  And what Amos saw, before the nation of Israel went into Exile into Assyria and long before both the nations of Israel and Judah went into Exile in Babylonia, was an end to the covenant God had made with Israel.  The whole Israelite infrastructure was so dirtied, so poisoned, so contrary to God’s hopes and dreams for them, that none of it was salvageable. 

That must have been an unpopular truth, a hard truth for Amos to tell. Again, prophets were not so much the fortune-tellers as the truth-tellers, the people who spoke truth with a strong voice to power.  From Samuel to Christ, Biblical prophets believed that if people did not act in right relationship with one another, abide by the covenant established with Moses, the world as God had made it, would unravel.  The prophet Jeremiah believed that the creation story would come undone—and all those limits and boundaries God had put in place to keep wind, water, and fire at bay would now be unleashed in chaos. 

So too then the Exile, the Biblical prophets of the time believed, was an indictment against the ruling and religious elite who lived in luxury and practiced their religious ritual while the most vulnerable in their communities suffered. 

The prophet Amos signals the break with the original covenant with Moses by referencing the Nile River in Egypt and how that river would rise beyond its borders and limits to create chaotic destruction.[2]  In invoking the Nile, Amos is not only invoking the creation story as Jeremiah did but is a reminder of God’s judgment against Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire who could not abide by God’s liberating love.

As with Egypt, the cries of creation and the plight of the poor are symptoms of the deep destruction that is coming to Israel.  People are treated like commodities, turned back into a debt slavery that the Mosaic covenant expressly forbid.  Amos sees that the poor are exchanged for silver and the needy for a measly pair of sandals.[3]

Gleaning, a sabbath practice instituted in the Mosaic covenant to support the economically poor and provide for their starvation and hunger, are not permitted in Israel’s economic system.[4]  Amos sees that what was left over and intended for the poor, the sweepings, are even sold.[5]  Many of the Ten Commandments use the language “thou shall not covet or seize” as a way of forbidding the powerful from taking advantage of those who might need their mercy and kindness.[6]

In the marketplace, the commercial enterprise, Amos sees people taking advantage of false measurements and balances to advance their greed and profit.  Mosaic Law forbid work on the Sabbath so that rest would be valued, even for beasts of burden and the immigrant or resident alien.[7]  Amos sees traders seeking to short the Sabbath or religious holidays so there would be no rest.  Those in the know would buy and sell every single hour, every single minute, every single second.[8]  And the world, as the Living God has constructed and measured it, provided limits and boundaries for it, begins to unravel in Amos’s eyes.

“What do you see, Amos?” God asks.  And Amos feels, strikingly, the absence of God, in a time of profound grief and mourning.  The people go from the river to the sea looking for a word from the Living God.  And God is silent.  A word from God cannot be found.[9] 

We, in the United Church of Christ, are fond of saying, “God is still speaking.”  And what the prophet Amos sees and hears is that God is no longer speaking.  Amos rails against the royalty who demand that the poor peasants grow grapes for wine for the wealthy in the royal courtyard rather than the wheat which might allow the poor to glean from their fields and feed their children.[10]

Leftover wheat can be made into bread.  Grapes rot out the teeth of their children. 

In the climax of the book of Amos, those grapes are grapes of wrath Julia Ward Howe used to write the hymn, “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory.”  God is trampling through those grapes to say that God does now want your religious ritual if your public values are screwed up, if you can’t get the economics right.  The Living God says, “I hate your religious celebrations!”[11]  The Holy One declares in Amos, “I will not accept your offerings!” that try to get yourself right with me when you should get right with your neighbor.[12]  And, finally, the God of the Mosaic Covenant shouts, “Take away from me your hymns!”[13]  Don’t pretend your worship and prayer exclude you from your attention to public values. 

Instead, the God of the Exodus prays to the people, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”[14]  Give me economic justice, the Living God prays and begs of the people.  Let it course through your infrastructure and institutions.  Let it be about what you do daily with your wallet and pocketbook, defining your priorities.  Let it relate your relationship with the most suffering and vulnerable in your communities and nation.  God prays.  God begs.  God seeks their attention.

As your pastor, I read the Scriptures and feel almost heavy-handed in then asking you to turn, every so slightly, to our present day and ask what you see.  For I see us sucking on the tailpipe of a system that is not sustainable and becoming even more so.  I wonder if this system itself is sick and crumbling, readily destroying family, community, and national life for profit and wealth accumulation.  Creation is becoming undone.  The threads which hold us together are becoming frayed. 

Amos saw those same things happening among the families, communities, and the nations of Israel.  The very piecing together, the Mosaic coveant, had been ignored by political and religious elite who made greed, profit, and luxurying their values.  Amos mentions ivory beds[15], summer and winter homes[16], and eating and drinking sumptuous fare[17], as signposts of their public sin.  This is what Amos sees.  And as long as those were the values, Amos prophesied from his farm, all of society would unravel and the world, as presently constituted, would be destroyed.  For the pillars of creation, its stitching, is economic justice.  Hope could not be found sucking on the tailpipe of the present system and status quo.  Something new would have to be done by appealing to the public values of ancient covenant.

In appealing to the public values of ancient covenant, Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan believes that Amos most closely resembles Jesus.  What do you see, Jesus?  Jesus, like the prophet Amos, called people to right relationship as he saw rural Galilean villages disintegrating around him.    In response to that disintegration, Jesus called people within those villages to see how basic needs might be met around hunger and health care and urged the people of his time to practices, to turn away from a system which encouraged their climbing the ladder to become the exception, to not pretend they would be the exception by believing they could eek out something which valued greed, profit, and luxury to the very few. 

Jesus appealed back to that Mosaic covenant in four major ways, ways of economic justice, to keep communities where he taught and ministered from unwinding and unraveling.  Much of what he taught was based in the cooperation and collaboration found in the 10 Commandments.

First, Jesus taught around issues of food cooperation and collaboration.  Shared bread, fish, and meals were fundamental to his ministry.  It is why we practice communion as a sacrament.  Communion is a reminder of our shared endeavor to meet hunger and need—physically and spiritually.  Forgiveness of debt, an important part of the Lord’s prayer we will pray later in worship, was about allowing people to stay on their farms, keep their nets and boats, and cooperate and collaborate around local food producers.  By supporting food cooperation, collaboration, and the support of local food systems, Jesus sought to sustain local villages and communities.[18]

What do I see?  I see so many UCC churches in southwest Michigan who have huge swaths of land which could plan and plant perennial food systems to feed their communities.  As food systems based on fossil fuels shipping from California begins to crumble, how powerful it would be to have churches who bring attention to their own local communities so that they piece together investment in local economies?

Supporting local food systems leads to the second emphasis in Jesus’s teaching and ministry.  When villages and communities have such dire poverty, disparity, or a lack of healthy food systems, health care becomes a major issue. Think of the number of healings and exorcisms recorded within the gospels that related deformity, leprosy, or maybe even alluded to mental illness. Even doubly so as we have depended on fossil fuel systems, the microplastics found in our water and the poisons used to produce our food leave the whole system compromised.  Tending to the ill in each community was an important part of the work Jesus and his disciples did. 

As I will continue to remind this blessed church, our tradition began with German immigrants in St. Louis who created what has become one of the largest non-profit health systems in the United States.  They were small.  They had little economic resource.  Still, they came together to care for the health care needs of their communities. 

Third, Jesus reminded people who they were as the Children of God, and that God created Sabbath out of love for humankind.  The Sabbath reminds us that we do not have to do it all, that we should have rhythms and practices to shut it down, that physically, emotionally, mentally, we were not meant to be “on” 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  That 24-hour-a-day business cycle makes us all into commodities to be bought and sold.  We are not slaves, consumers or dependent on any economic system.  Rather, we were meant to live and intentionally practice rhythms of rest, play, celebration, fun, and healing.  As a church, how shall we live into that calendar and encourage it for everyone?

Finally, with family as the central building block for village and community life, Jesus enlarged the meaning of family.  He called those who sought to collaborate and cooperate to piece together an alternative economic system “brothers” and “sisters” and “mother.”  The luxury many of us have had of single-family households may not be a reality in the near future.  We may have to have multiple families living in one home, become better neighbors, and think how we extend our homes, extended care facilities, and even hospitals to meet the growing needs as savings and retirement disappear.  As a church, how might we help expand the definition of family so that people in our communities experience grace, healing, and do not become even more vulnerable. 

This is what I see.  I see systems and structures that were based on greed, profit, and luxury coming to an end as we find them unsustainable.  I think it is my job, as your pastor, to encourage you to start dreaming and imagining a world God is still seeking to create and re-create, to encourage all of us to stop sucking on a tailpipe that will lead to further unraveling and destruction of community. 

Rather, I want to call you to ancient and Biblical practices that sustained communities and helped people live the lives God intended for them and now for us—lives full of cooperation, collaboration, and rest, fun, play, and joy.  The good news is that God is already creating something new—new systems, new structures, new ways of being.  And like Amos and Jesus, we are being invited to see in our mind’s eye a new earth. 

“Attention is love, what we must give children, mothers, father,s pets, our friends, the news, the woes of others.  What we want to change we curse and then pick up a tool.  Bless whatever you can with eyes and hands and tongue.  If you can’t bless it, get ready to make it new.” 

We are St. Paul United Church of Christ, a blessed and historic church of 175 years, part of the liberating love of the United Church of Christ.  Let’s get ready to make the world new.  As the church in the orchard, may our summer fruit feed our community.  What do you see?  Amen.

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[1] Jer 1:11, 13, 24:3; Amos 7:8; 8:2; Zech 4:2, 5:2.

[2] Amos 8:8

[3] Amos 8:6.

[4] Leviticus 19:9,10; 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:19,20.  See also the book of Ruth for how gleaning was used to protect the poor and the powerless (widows and women without resource).

[5] Amos 8:6.

[6] Exodus 20:17; Deut. 5:21; Richard A. Horsley, Covenant Economics:  A Blblical Vision of Justice for All (Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), p. 25.

[7] Exodus 20:10; Deut. 5:14; Richard H. Lowery, Sabbath and Jubilee (St. Louis:  Chalice Press, 2000), p. 107.

[8] Amos 8:5.

[9] Amos 8:11-14

[10] Amos 2:8; 5:10-11; 6:6

[11] Amos 5:21.

[12] Amos 5:22.

[13] Amos 5:23.

[14] Amos 5:24.

[15] Amos 6:4

[16] Amos 3:15

[17] Amos 6:5-6

[18] The feeding of the 5,000 found in all four gospels and used, as liturgy, during our communion services is an example.  In John, the story begins with a boy who has five loaves and two fish who is willing to share.  The baskets return to overflowing, recognizing that all have shared.  Jesus shared meals so many times he was referred to as a glutton and drunkard.

Sermon, Proper 7, "To what do we give our loyalty and allegiance?"

 

Galatians 4 Paul 2025
Galatians 3:26-29
July 13, 2025

If we were going to have a test of faith . . . or a creed . . . what would you think is the bare minimum that we would ask of new Christians?  What would be the absolute minimum that you have to believe this?  Or you have to do this to be a Christian?  (seek out answer from congregational members) 

           Ok, I want you to hold on to that to see how that compares to the apostle Paul as he tries to figure out how to negotiate faith in First Century Rome and what his response is to the Roman gospel.  And then, how repeats, within his letter to the Galatians, the earliest Christian creed, the thing that is said to newly baptized Christians as they are taken into the community of the church.

           As I begin all Bible studies,  whenever we study Bible, we should ask ourselves, “What is the macro-story?  The soup in which people swim?  The environment or matrix in which people live?”  In the Gospel of Luke, the birth story of Jesus, the Christmas story my dad would always read on Christmas Eve began with “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled . . .”  And you know, in that moment, Rome and its Caesar run the show.  Caesar is instituting a census to set up a system of taxation that will make sure that all wealth flows from him and to him. 

           The ancient world was a religious world and religion was strongly tied to politics.  We knew and learned what the macro-story was in the ancient world by looking at their art and architecture.  Tons of money and effort were poured into these huge structure to spell out power, to tell a story, to tell you who was in charge.

The Attalid dynasty within the Greek empire set up an impressive structure called the Great Altar of Pergamon.  That massive structure is now on display in a Berlin museum. 

And what that impressive piece of art said was that the Greek gods had participated in defeating all rivals to their throne.  The Greeks brought law and order, civilization to these defeated barbarians.  The Great Altar told us who was in and who was out, who deserved to be killed, who had the backing of the gods, and who was human and who was beast.  Paramount and central to all the enemies of the Greek Empire were the Galatians—thought to be the universal barbarians. 

I want to make sure you know that from a Christian perspective this ordering of the world is unnatural and untrue.  And that is why so many resources are invested in the lie told by the Romans and all conquering peoples.  So many resources are invested in the lie.

When the Roman Empire ascended in place of the Hellenistic or Greek Empire, they took the Great Altar of Pergamon as their own and continued with the understanding that the Galatians were the people of terror and tumult.  So much so that Manlius Vulso, a Roman military commander, did a preemptive strike committed a genocide on the Galatians, slaughtering over 40,000 people in just one spot.  When the Roman senate called Vulso before them to explain what many might consider to be unjustified, Vulso referred to the Galatians as a mix-breeds, a vulgar race, people who you better hit first because by their very nature they would certainly hit you.

So the most iconic and popularly known art form was the “Dying Galatian” or “Dying Gaul.”  That oft-repeated figure represented the popular posture before Rome, that the conquered showed their nobility in the way they collapsed and died before their conqueror, before the victor.

Rome justified this by pushing a regular cultural button, by saying to everyone, “Well, what do you expect, these people are barbarians after all.  Any violence, any murder, any destruction we might wreak on these people is justified.  They are less than human.”

These past three weeks I have repeated this story again and again because I want to make it clear what Paul’s letter to the Galatians is a response to—it is a response to genocide—first carried out against the Galatians and then, as Jewish revolt and rebellion continues, carried out and justified against the Jews.  Rome and its Caesar believed that their gods handed the Jews over to them—to crush them.  While Rome pointed their finger at others and declared them as fundamentally violent and barbarians, it was Rome that defined peace as war, did everyday violence to the populace through debt and slavery, and required absolute loyalty to Caesar as divine.  Rome violently crushed their opponents, made military victory central to their foreign policy, and made all knees bend and all tongues confess that Caesar was the prince of peace, the lord and savior of all. 

As with the Greeks, Rome pour tons of money into its structures, its monuments, its rites and rituals to tell the lie again and again and again that their gods had handed over all of the other peoples of the world over to them as slaves, subjects, and servants.  There was an order of being.  And Rome, using brute force as course of fare, enforced and re-enforced that order of being. 

That first week of this series you may remember this cliché I shared with you. 

 

Ethnocentrism or racism was common at the time, not only among the Greeks or the Romans but also among the Jews as found in this quote from Rabbi Judah. 

Ancient Rome was a slave society.  Out of the 60 million people in the Roman Empire, up to 15 million were probably slaves.  Patriarchy was common.  In many areas, men were the only people allowed to have any public power—to make laws, to speak freely, and to buy and sell.  Scholars are now saying that what really defined a prostitute is a woman who had no family, no husband, no son, no property to provide protection and status for her.

So I don’t think I can convey how radical the earliest Christian creed truly is.  And to translate it makes it even more radical.  You can see how Paul changes the wording of the last phrase to make it not man or woman but male or female to take us all the way back to the Genesis creation story and how it was worded there.  Paul is taking it all the way back when he repeats what would be said at every Christian baptism, as someone is brought into this loyalty or allegiance to a way. 

“There is no longer” is how it is translated.  But what New Testament professor, Dr. Stephen J. Patterson says is that the better terminology would be “these do not exist,” they are impossible.  What the translation actually says is that Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female are fictions.  Race is fake.  Class is a conceit.  Gender is a construct.  They have no basis.  We are all one. Baptism is a public declaration of what they know privately.  Baptism states what we know to be true. 

So this was the early litmus test for Christians.  It was not to believe the heavily produced lie—to not believe what Roman rulers and Roman religion told you. 

Think about how radical that early baptismal statement, that first Christian creed is.  It says that there are neither differences in race or ethnicity, neither differences in class or social standing, neither differences in gender or sexuality that have any basis in reality.  That is not only radical for the First Century.  That is radical for our time. 

I also want you to see versions of that early baptismal formula as translated by our Galatians study class.  The wise and learned Nicole Gibby, using the incredible Octavia Butler book, Parable of the Sower, as a foil wrote:

“You are all seeds of the Sower through your belief, for all of you who were drenched in the waters of the Sower contain the potential to yield a holy crop. There is neither leafy nor root, bulb nor stem nor fruiting vegetable for you are all beloved seeds of the Sower.”

And the wise and learned Monica Parker used the incredible study and analysis she brings to everything.

She first began by asking about her privilege in society as a way of knowing her own place in society and that we might see all as siblings, as part of our group.  Following with the formula, she used three statements as a starting point.   She referenced her privilege as where she puts her allegiance, where are her location, community, and cultural identity ties?  In doing so, she asked what community she identified with and what traditions help build her values.

She asked about her on economic location in society. What “value” or status have others placed on her based on her education and employment?  Her race?

And finally, Monica did self-reflection on her personal identity.  What is her place at home?  To those closest to her?

She went on to write that we must assume good intent with these statements, choosing to say there is NOT the other is choosing to keep your unspoken biases hidden from yourself because all can be flipped.  And then she restated the baptismal formula:  “For as many of you were baptized into Christ have put into Christ.  There is no____nor____filling in the blanks of identity with

Christian-Secular.         Western-alien.       Colonizers-Indegenous

Educated-slacker.           Billionare-Homeless.     Employeed- starving artist

Cis-outside the Binary.           Childless - parent.  

           And the learned and wise Mary Ann Anselmino summed it up powerfully by saying, “We are all one in God.”

The question is, do we believe the heavily funded lie?  Are some necessarily the conquerors and others the conquered?  Some blessed by God and others cursed?  Some gods and others barbarians?  Or do we give our loyalty and allegiance to the early Christian baptismal formula?

In my study of one of my heroes of the Church, Bartolome’ de Las Casas, I learned how he came to the “New World” in the 16^th Century to be a plantation owner but was converted by the faith of the Nicaraguan bishop who gave his life trying to protect the indigenous people of the Americas.  Las Casas said he saw Christ in the eyes of the indigenous peoples.  He became known as the defender of the indigenous.

But my friends, the lie always seeks to devour and consume, and always seems to be well-funded.  At the University of Salamanca they used the teaching of the Greek philosopher Aristotle to say that “some are born slaves and some are born slave owners.”  All done to take their wealth, their labor, and their children.

That same turn of phrase was then used in our own Declaration of Independence to refer to so many peoples decimated as the barbarians, as “the merciless Indian savages.”  We set up residential schools to civilize Native peoples to take their wealth, their labor, and their children. 

And today we are actively seeking to exclude this witness to so much suffering, so much death, and to continue the profit of the lie.

I was honored to listen to listen to a conversation with Bishop William J. Barber this week.   He is the President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach; a Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and Founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School; Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.  He spoke of the great suffering going on in the world right now.  And how hard it is to watch.  And he said, “Every crucifixion needs a witness.”

 

Every crucifixion needs a witness—to tell us the violence of the empire so that we do not believe that the people they call murderers and rapists are murders and rapists.  The people they call barbarians—that they are the perpetrators of violence.  That lie is heavily funded.  So many resources are invested in the lie. 

 

 

Every crucifixion requires a witness to recognize that we are not merely after a flipping of the script where, after we have suffered genocide, we strive after power ourselves, to be the top dog so we can be the ones who bite, consume, and devour.  We can now be the ones to perpetrate crucifixion and genocide.  The cross is a stumbling block to all of that.  And we preach Christ crucified. 

Now Christian friends, I need your help to affirm the first Christian creed we have, to say it out loud with me, to not lose your voice, to remember who you are down deep.  For we are all one.

Friends, they may try to tell you that you are not worthy . . . that you do not belong, that you come from the wrong side of the tracks or do not fit.  But today God says the truth that

We are all one.

Friends, you may hear that some by birth or by economic status or by race and clan have a right to the spoils, that they are the rightful conquerors and that their gods justify violence and death against others.  This is a lie.  Today God says the truth that

We are all one.

Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, we continue to hear that some people are not fully human as a result of their gender or sexuality, that God made easily divided distinctions.  You may have heard that the creative and creating God does not love this diversity.  This is a lie.  Today God says the truth . . .

We are all one.

Friends, we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  In full affirmation of our baptisms, say it with me now:

We are all one.

We are all one.  So now we know.  And the question put before all of us, as people who walk a particular way and show a loyalty and allegiance to a particular walk.  What are we gonna do?  For we are all one. 

Paul’s great solution to genocide is solidarity, that we might see Christ in the eyes of others, particularly those who are not like us.  That other path, that lie, is heavily resources.  Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, this is our first Christian creed!  We are all one.  Praise God!  Amen. 

Sermon, Proper 6, "Roman law and order co-opts what it means to be faithful"

 I want to make it clear I would never preach this sermon.  One of my cardinal rules for sermon-giving is that I should never appear as hero within my own sermon.  And this one reeks of just how good I am.  Whether that is true, I don't think congregations learn much when the pastor is "the hero."  Though the statements within the sermon are true, I am including this sermon only because it helps me with my systematic theology.

I believe Galatians is a window toward understanding the whole of the New Testament.  

C Proper 6

Galatians 2:11-21

Many of us know what it is like to be the person who does not belong, who is excluded and not part of the in-crowd.  As finding your people or developing a group of friends is an important part of life in adolescence, we see this as a common theme in movies that feature teens.  Who is in?  Who is out?  What are the markers for who is in or out?  Bandos, jocks, cheerleaders, burnouts, geeks, nerds, everyone seems to come with a ready-made label for their group or who belongs and who does not as we make our way through Junior High and High School.

Because that in-group, out-group dynamic is an almost universal story, movies about teens, teen spirit and angst, are regularly made.  In the 1980s, the years I grew up in, there were a series of movies made by teen stars named the “Brat Pack.”  Many of those movies were exactly about what it means to be part of “the club”—“Sixteen Candles,” “The Outsiders,”  “Pretty in Pink,” and

probably the most famous, “The Breakfast Club,” where a group of high schoolers in detention break out of their categories for just a moment to really hear each other’s stories and realize that all of them and their stories are bigger and broader than their high school cliques or labels.

Hard to believe those movies were forty years ago.  Twenty years ago, adolescent angst about who is in and who is out was portrayed in the movie “Mean Girls” and how even teen evangelical Christianity had become the “in group” in the movie “Saved.”

In all honesty, I’m not really sure we ever get out of that mindset of insider/outsider.  I know some of the most toxic churches I have pastored often have an “in group” that they invite the pastor and their family to join.  Come be a part of our special group, trade in the insider knowledge we have, and see our local church and the wider world as we do.  Regularly attend the social gatherings we post and maybe overlook some of the ways we exclude the other, not so civilized members or friends of the church.  Within that group the clergy family becomes aware that we will be protected from the in-group’s church gossip and backwater conversations.  We are even subtly warned that comes with a trade-off if we do not accept.  If we do not accept the invitation to be part of the “in-group,” we run the risk of being talked about ourselves.  And excluded from the next big social event.  And talked about much more often like, I’m not so sure about “that” sermon, or the pastor seems to be spending quite a bit of time with “that” family.  Or what would happen if “that” crowd the pastor is talking about started to come to “our” church?

I remember Tracy and I having conversations in our kitchen about whether we accept the invitation to let other people in the church know we had made the insider choice.  We had walled them off, even as their pastors.   Or do we make it clear that we will move with freedom in other circles to embrace a wider community? I’ve stated that in a way which makes the value choice seem simple.  At the time, it did not feel that way.  And it was painful, really painful, as we made mistakes, tried our best to navigate what love means in the everyday world, where our choice would cost not only us as a couple but also cost our kids.

Paul and a disciple named Cephas--some New Testament writers identify Cephas as Peter, but for here we’re going to stick with the name Cephas--Paul and Cephas had a confrontation.  While Cephas was in Antioch, he would eat with the Gentiles, in some Jewish circles at the time, a break of Jewish kosher practice.   Cephas seemed to be ok doing that, Paul said, until two people who believed in the insider/outsider story of circumcision arrived in Antioch.  When those of the circumcision faction arrived, Cephas drew back from the gentiles.  And his behavior encouraged Barnabas to draw back as well.   Cephas seemed to be willing to break bread with Gentiles until the “in crowd” rolled around.  And when they did, Cephas broke communion with the Gentiles, would not break bread with them.  “Is keeping this kosher practice more like Roman law or Jewish faith?” Paul seems to be asking.

Now for centuries Christian scholars have pointed at this Scripture as a difference between the legalism of Judaism verses the freedom Christ provides.  But looking closer, that’s not how Paul tells it.  In verse 14, Paul says he confronted Cephas and said, “If you, though a Jew, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews?”  Paul does not believe that Jewish Law is about an insider/outsider story—where some are acceptable and some are not, some are worthy and others are not.  In fact, what Paul seems to be saying throughout his letter to the Galatians is that too often Roman law has appropriated Jewish Law and they have become conflated.  Roman law is about domination, who is in and who is out.  It is the gentiles, Paul writes, who tell us to look at the gentile and not see our neighbor but to see someone who should be less than, excluded, and not worthy at the table. 

In fact, Paul says, I used to be like the gentiles, up on my high horse, not remembering that the whole of the Jewish Law is summed up in loving our neighbor.  “So,” Paul says, confronting Cephas, “are you a Jew, Cephas, or just like any other Roman gentile, seeing those whom you dined with in Antioch as less than, unworthy, or sub-human?”

Now those teenage dramas of who is in and who is out, who belongs and who does not, who has worth and who does not, can be incredibly painful and devastating for a young person. 

But, as people largely of privilege within our church membership, I don’t know if we can really comprehend the magnitude, the devastation of what that means for a whole people.  And what that means when the most ruthless military power on the planet can justify preemptively slaughtering 40,000 of your people because you are considered the barbarians, the terrorists, the universal enemies of law, order, and all that is right with the world. 

When we killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq based on phony evidence, we used this Roman gospel.  When Black folk are killed by police for wearing a hoodie, during a traffic stop, or to serve a no-knock warrant, this is the Roman gospel we use.  When Jordan Neely, an unhoused Black man, is choked out on a subway because he is having a mental health episode, is it because all the facts conspire to show that he is sub-human, less than, not worthy?

The Roman gods justify their children’s violence over and against the Galatians by seeing them as the people of terror and tumult, the perpetual threat, the security risk.  If justice comes through this kind of violence, Paul writes, then Christ died for nothing. 

The Christ Paul preaches is Christ crucified, the vanquished, the one considered the security risk.  Roman violence did not make things right.  God makes things right by choosing to be in solidarity with the conquered, the defeated, the vanquished.  Not unlike how God chose to be in solidarity with the Children of Israel as they lay in bondage in Egypt, God’s love is revealed in solidarity with the crucified Christ. 

That is why it is impossible to avoid politics in talking about authentic Christian faith.  Because although we may want to believe that politics and religion were fused in the ancient world when talking about the Seleucid, the Romans, the Galatians, and the Jews, we cannot talk about who gets food and who does not, who gets housing and who does not, who gets health care and who does not, who gets human rights and who does not, who gets driver’s licenses and who does not, who gets public education and who does not , who gets police protection and who gets suspicion and brutality . . . without talking about politics.

When religious faith chooses to ignore a needed response to the civic religion of Roman law and order, we consent to that law and order.  We say this is the macro-narrative that holds value for us.  Religious faith, or religious faith’s failure to act, chooses to ordain and bless those decisions. 

Should not religious faith, as Paul’s religious faith did, call us to say, “This is wrong.  This is not God’s will”  God is actively working against systems and structures which oppress, dominate, or divide to destroy.   The Roman macro-narrative says that you, as the daughters and sons of God, siblings and cousins of God, you belong, while you, you we have identified as barbarians, terrorists, Galatians, do not belong.   In fact, we’ll create a whole media story to tell you why shock and awe had to be performed, why the drone had to be used against your wedding party, or why your land had to be confiscated.  We, we are doing the work of God.  You, you are the merciless savages.  In fact, if you have a media story that shows us as the merciless savages, we’ll confiscate the film and put you in prison.

Paul wants to make it clear.  Christ’s gospel sides with the vanquished, the defeated, the destroyed, those done violence against, and no Orwellian doublespeak is going to change that. 

Paul uses his confrontation with Cephas to open up a dialog about the need to distinguish Jewish faith and Roman law, between the Great Altar of Pergamon and Christ’s table.  And throughout Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he is exhorting his readers and listeners to choose values that are more than just skimming the surface, more profound than skin-deep.  These are the values that are at the heart of the Mosaic covenant, reflect the extended width of Christ’s table, and question every division that does not see the person in all their glorious difference from who we are, standing, sitting, or praying across from us as a Beloved Child of God. 

I cannot tell you what a difference this has made in my life, how this drains my life of fear, and opens me up to incredible friendships I would never have imagined possible.  For, in the end, that is one of the ultimate goals of spiritual practice in prayer, that we might become friends of God as Christ prayed that his disciples might be known as his friends.  Rabbi Binah Wing, the first-ever rabbi in Rockford, Illinois, became one of my best friends.  African-American pastor Jesse Waters was the one who could see when I was boiling over in seminary class and take me to the basement of our seminary dormitory and whip my butt in ping-pong until I settled down.  Rabbi Uri Barnea became one of my greatest colleagues on the Montana Interfaith Network mission and ministry and we became great dishwashers together.  I have spoken of great Native leaders in Billings, Montana, Josiah Hugs, Philene Whiteman, Nell Game Counter Eby, and Lita Pepion as great leaders for their own people who are rightly suspicious of Christianity and have been the greatest of friends.  Barb Wenger, out lesbian woman, risked her life every darn day for Guatemalan refugees and saved my life on a fateful early morning at the Mexican border. 

All of these friendships crossed traditional lines.  If I had any responsibility for them, they happened because my Christian faith, in humility, made my heart open for the possibility of being changed and transformed.  They did not happen, my life was not saved, because these friends became Christian.  On the contrary, my life was saved because of who they were as non-Christians.  God is forever tearing down walls, breaking apart altars to violence, and bending implements of war into tools for gardening.  These friendships make me a better friend of God.  Imagine if I had forbid them in all of my arrogance and righteous indignation as a person of the true white, straight, male Christianity that affords me all the benefits and entitlements of my superiority.  Pffffft.  I would be so much lesser of a person, poorer in spirit, and fail as a friend of God.  That does not make me heroic in any way.  It means I just paused long enough to let God’s love wash over me.

Friends.  Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, these are the possibilities that await us when we get off of our high horse and we are convicted by Christ who meets us on the ground to know ourselves in solidarity with the people who are forever named the barbarians, the terrorists, the outsiders.  Pay attention to a macro-narrative that calls people or the good earth less-than--not based on behavior but because those labels benefit those who seek to enslave, dominate, and make a profit from those divisions.  Do not let it happen!  Do not consent to values that are surface or skin-deep!  By Christ’s cross, join Paul as he invites us to something richer, deeper, and fuller as friends of God.  As friends of people who bear gifts and salvation we could not have imagined possible.  Amen.