FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Psalm 71:1-6

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Luke 4:21-30

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and ever-living God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and love; and that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove [Jesus] out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.” Luke 4:28-29.

How does a worship service turn into a lynching? What could Jesus possibly have said to make the people among whom he grew up want to kill him? According to the account of Luke the Evangelist, everything went sideways when Jesus began speaking about God’s love and attention to outsiders. It was a widow of Zarephath, a city of pagan Phoenicia, that gave sanctuary to the prophet Elijah when he was a refugee fleeing persecution under the reign of the wicked King Ahab. It was Naaman, a general of Israel’s arch enemy Syria, who found healing and faith from the prophet Elisha. To be sure, God is the God of Israel. But God is not the possession of Israel. God’s love is for all people of every tribe and tongue. As Saint Peter would proclaim in Luke’s sequel, the Book of Acts, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Acts 10:34-35. That message did not go down well with the good people of Nazareth.

Luke the Evangelist portrays Jesus as one who refuses to accept the distinctions of class, blood and soil through which people of his day found their identity. He scandalized the religious and respectable by dining with folks like Levi and Zacheus. But he could just as often be found eating in the home of civil and religious leaders. He had compassion on a leader of the military occupation of his own country and healed his servant. In an age when people feared to touch lepers for fear of being rendered unclean, Jesus touched them in order to make them clean. It is as though Jesus were blind to the “no trespassing” signs we erect to protect our “our people” from the corrupting influence of outsiders.

So, too, the church in the Book of Acts is constantly breaking down ethnic, cultural, religious and class barriers as it expands beyond Galilee and Judea into Samaria and from there into Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Italy and beyond. It was not smooth sailing all the way. Tension and conflicts are reflected throughout the New Testament between Jewish believers and gentile newcomers. Though Paul affirmed that in Christ there is neither male nor female and accepted women as apostolic coworkers with him, it is clear the women struggled to find their voice and place during the formative years of the church. Paul’s pastoral advice on that score was sometimes less than helpful. Still, the church never abandoned its belief in and understanding of itself as a single body with wildly diverse members uniquely gifted for mutual service in pursuit of its mission of reconciling the world to God in Christ.

The church proved to be a destabilizing force, threatening to disrupt the Pax Romana maintained by the Roman Empire through the threat of violence embodied in the cruelest implement of death, the cross. Mary the mother of our Lord sings eloquently about the reversal of the imperial order, the mighty being cast down, the hungry filled with good things and the rich being sent away empty. Luke 1:46-55. Simeon predicts that the infant Jesus “is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.” Luke 2:34-35. In the Book of Acts Paul and his associates are accused of having “turned the world upside down.” Acts 17:6. The very existence of this odd community of diverse persons practicing radical equality and showing no regard for rank, status or the emperor’s delusions of godhood threatened the legitimacy, authority and power of the imperial order, built up as it was on distinctions of race, class and citizenship. That accounts for the empire’s vicious and ultimately futile efforts to extinguish the church.

The stability of a hierarchy depends on everyone at every level being content with their place-or at least convinced that trying to rise above it is dangerous and certain to be futile. When those on the lower rungs begin to sense their power, begin to imagine a different arrangement and begin to doubt the religious, ideological and traditional glue that holds the hierarchical pyramid together, the structure begins to wobble. Those nearest the top panic because they have the furthest to fall. Panic breeds hysteria and hysteria produces violence. A lynching is seldom about its individual victims whose only crime is happening to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. It is, rather, a knee jerk reaction against a host of social fears and phobias. Lynching is a frantic effort to hold together a dying regime against a hurricane of change threatening to topple it. Both then and now, Jesus is that hurricane.

So here is the real deal. There are no hordes of lawless migrants made up of criminals and insane people storming across our southern border to invade our country. There is no deep state conspiracy to change the sex of school age children. Haitian immigrants are not eating American’s pets. How could anyone in their right mind believe such malarky? The simple answer is that they need to believe it. These baseless conspiracy theories help fragile people make sense of a world that is changing too fast for them. They see rising prices, more and more black and brown faces in their neighborhoods, schools and workplaces, more stores with signs they cannot read, fewer job opportunities in their communities and decaying towns and cities-and they are mad as hell about it. The lies, propaganda and hysterical rhetoric directed against migrants have been whipped up by our cynical leaders to a give a shape to our deepest fears, put a face on the monsters that terrify us and give us a neck around which to place the noose. Make no mistake about it, that is exactly what this “greatest deportation ever seen” is about. It is a government inspired and sponsored lynching. Migrants are the scapegoats for all that is wrong with America. And you can be sure that when all the undocumented migrants have been deported and America’s problems remain, there will be another scapegoat. There always is.

I read with dismay the pastoral letter from ELCA Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton on President Trump’s Executive Orders calling for mass deportations. To be clear, I appreciate the bishop’s addressing the issue and agree wholeheartedly with her analysis. But we need more than analysis at this point. We need truth telling and fearless preaching. The truth is that the Republican party, now fully controlled by Trump and the MAGA movement, has all the hallmarks of a hate group. See “Time to Declare the Republican Party a Hate Group.” It is time for the church to say so. For my part, I refuse to go on pretending that the GOP, as currently constituted, is just another political party functioning within America’s democratic system. I refuse to allow lies, slander, conspiracy theories and hateful ideology to be invited into serious moral deliberation. I refuse to participate in the normalization of bullying, intimidation and violence under the color of law. It is time to tell the powers that be “We must obey God rather than any human authority” and that we will resist governmental actions that harm our neighbors. Acts 5:29.

To all bishops and pastors, I have a hard word to say: You need tell your people who support Donald Trump and his party, “You are deeply loved by God. You are valued members of our church community. We love you dearly and that is why we need to tell you that by your support for this man and his followers you are grievously injuring your neighbors and scandalizing the Body of Christ. By your association and support, you participate in their hatred and cruelty. For your own sake and for the sake of Christ’s church, you need to repent and renounce your association with this evil movement.” If you are unwilling or unable to say this to your church, then for your sake, for the sake of the church and for the sake of the world, please step aside and make room for someone who can and will.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is good news. Lutheran’s like me are fond of saying that “God loves us just as we are.” However sinful we may be, God accepts us where God finds us. Nevertheless, God loves us too much to leave us there. That is why God’s Word speaks the truth that sets us free. John 8:32. Jesus loved the people of his hometown enough to tell them the truth they needed to hear-even when it turned them against him. This is not the mushy sentimental kind of love. It is what poet Sonia Sanchez calls “love colored with iron and lace.” It is love that seeks repentance, justice and restitution. The complete poem follows:

This Is Not a Small Voice

Source: Wounded in the House of a Friend, (c. 1995 by Sonia Sanchez; pub. by Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts). Sonia Sanchez (born Wilsonia Benita Driver in 1934) is an American poet, writer and professor. She is a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement. Sanchez has written several books of poetry. She has also authored short stories, critical essays, plays and children’s books. She received Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 1993. In 2001 she was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to American poetry. You can read more about Sonia Sanchez and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.