Month: February 2026

Refusing to Bow Down

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Lent, Sermons Year ALeave a comment

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11

For the past few weeks, we’ve been listening to Jesus preach his first sermon on a hillside. But on this First Sunday in Lent, the lectionary takes us back to the beginning of his ministry.

After his baptism in the Jordan, Matthew tells us that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Not by accident. Not by happenstance. Not by taking a wrong turn. But by the Spirit.

The word Matthew uses suggests Jesus was “launched” into the wilderness, like a ship pushed out into deep water. Because before Jesus could teach God’s reign of love and justice, he had to first confront the seduction of power.

And here’s something we overlook when we read or hear this text. This story is not just about Jesus confronting the seduction of power long ago. But it is about the church, the Body of Christ, confronting that same seduction today.

Every time we come to this table, consuming the Body of Christ, we affirm that we are the Body of Christ. This means the temptations Jesus faces in the wilderness are not his alone. They are ours.

This text in Matthew is about the soul of the church. And it is about the soul of our nation.

Now, before we move too quickly into the temptations, we need to pause and ask: Who is this “devil” in the story? The Greek word is, diabolos, meaning “the accuser,” “the divider,” “the one who slanders and distorts.” In Jewish imagination, this figure is not a rival god equal to God, or the ruler of the underworld, but a voice in the world that tests, twists, and tempts. It’s a force that magnifies fear and manipulates truth. The “devil” is not some scary red creature with horns and pitchfork. It’s the embodiment of every lie seducing humanity to grasp for power and supremacy.

It’s the ancient whisper from Genesis that Eve heard in the garden: “Did God reallysay…?” It’s the voice that promises security through exclusion, glory through domination, and comfort through control. Jesus is not arguing with some cartoon villain in the desert. He’s confronting the deepest distortions of power and faith that still haunt the world.

The tempter doesn’t come when Jesus is strong. The tempter comes when he is depleted, having fasted in the wilderness for forty days, saying “Turn these stones into bread.”

On the surface, it makes perfect sense. It sounds rational, justifiable. You’re starving, physically and spiritually. You need to be fed. So, feed yourself.

But as we are reminded every Sunday when we share Holy Communion together, Jesus understands that bread is much more than calories. Bread is covenant. Bread is relationship. Bread is community around a shared table.

Bread is a holy gift. It’s a process that takes time. There are no shortcuts to baking bread. Bread is not made from stones, but from seed in the ground. From rain and sun. From soil and sweat. From farmers and millers and bakers. From kneading hands and patient waiting.

Plant. Wait. Harvest. Grind. Knead. Bake. Serve. Eat together. Save the seed. Repeat. Shortcutting hunger may satisfy the body in a moment, but it will not nourish the soul, build a community, or strengthen a faith. This is why Jesus answers, “We do not live by bread alone.”

The temptation to turn stones into bread is the temptation to control. But as Master Baker and Christian Educator extraordinaire Maria Niechwiadowicz writes: “The true beauty of bread baking is learning to let go of control, to become attentive to the process instead.” This is why she leads Bake and Pray workshops. She writes: “When we approach baking as liturgy, as a rhythm of prayer, our focus shifts. We begin to notice how the dough has a life of its own, and how God is tending to our own spirits in the same quiet, steady way. Baking bread becomes a practice of noticing. It calls us to slow down, pay attention, and rest.”

And this where this temptation becomes political today.

Religious nationalism promises quick fixes and easy solutions to our fears. It says we can solve our complex problems with control, force, and exclusion. It offers the stone-bread of hatred—hard, fast, satisfying in the mouth for a moment, but incapable of sustaining life.

Because cannot build a peaceful and just world with stone-bread. A nation’s soul cannot nourished with anger. The problem of human hunger, physical or spiritual, cannot be solved by shortcutting the slow, relational, justice-centered work that real, holy, God-bread requires.

Our broken nation cannot heal by consuming stone-bread of fear. But we can heal with the God-bread of empathy, repair and reconciliation.

The beloved community cannot be created with the stone-bread of alienation, separation, or domination. But it can and it will with the God-bread of acceptance, equity, and inclusion.

Lent is not a season for quick fixes. It’s a season for planting. It’s a holy time to ask: How are we satisfying our hunger? How are we healing the world? How are we making our bread? Are we grasping at stones because they are quick and easy to throw? Or are we willing to do the slow, sometimes exhausting, long work that nurtures body and soul: the work of planting justice, kneading mercy, baking reconciliation, and setting a table wide enough for all of God’s children?[i]

It is then the tempter takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple, to the architecture of faith, the center of religious life. And there, you could say, “in church,” the devil quotes scripture. That’s right, the devil is in the church and the devil has memorized some Bible verses! “Throw yourself down. God will catch you. The angels will bear you up.”

On the surface, it sounds faithful. It even sounds biblical. But this temptation is about performing faith instead of living it. It’s hanging the ten commandments on a wall of classrooms, or mandating Bible teaching in the classrooms, while refusing to fund the classrooms, to feed the children, and to pay the teachers a living wage. It’s a mouth full of scripture and a heart full of hate. It’s about manufacturing a religious spectacle to prove to others that you are on the side of God.

And Jesus refuses: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

In other words: Authentic faith does not need a stunt. Later, Jesus will say, if you want people to know you are on the side of God, that you are my disciples, love one another as you have seen me love you.

Jesus understands that faith, like bread, takes time, patience, and love—in quiet obedience, in daily prayer, in healing the sick one body at a time, in touching the untouchable, in eating with sinners, in welcoming children, in doing the difficult work of liberation and reconciliation, in walking dusty, lonesome roads to meet people wherever they are.

You don’t build faith in God by jumping off buildings. You build it by walking steadily in love, loving your neighbors as you love yourselves, standing up for and with, the least of these.

Religious nationalism thrives on religious stunts and theatrics. It believes that if we can just show strength (visible, loud, triumphant) then that must mean God is with us.

But Jesus understands when faith becomes performance, it stops being faith. And when the church becomes obsessed with visibility and influence, it forgets the slow, steady work of justice.

The kin-dom of God grows more like yeast than fireworks. It’s quiet, persistent, transformative from the inside out. The season of Lent invites us to step down from the pinnacle to practice the long obedience of mercy, truth-telling, and solidarity. No stunts. No spectacles. Just faithfulness.

Finally, the tempter says the quiet part out loud. No more talking about hunger. No more scripture games. Just a mountain. A wide view. And a deal.

“All the kingdoms of the world and all their splendor I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” There it is. The devil just comes out and says it with breathtaking honesty. Worship power, and you can have power. Bow down, bend the knee, and you can rule.

No shortcuts disguised as feeding oneself. No spectacle disguised as faith. Just the ancient bargain from the Garden of Eden spoken out loud: “You can be like God.” You can take control, secure dominance, and make it all yours.

And here’s what makes this temptation so dangerous: it would have worked.

Jesus could have enforced God’s reign of love and justice from the top down. He could have imposed righteousness. He could have seized the machinery of empire and steered it toward good. But that’s not the kingdom of God. Because the moment you bow to power to get power, power becomes your god.

Thus, Jesus refuses to negotiate. “Away with you, Satan, you tempter and deceiver! For it is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve God only.” Jesus refuses to confuse the reign of God with the rule of empire.

Religious nationalism makes this exact offer to the church. It says: “Align yourself with political control.” “Trade your prophetic voice for proximity to the throne.” “Overlook hate and greed, even sexual assault and pedophilia, if you can getyour way.” “Secure cultural dominance, and then you can shape the future.”

But we cannot build beloved community by bowing to power or create justice by surrendering to supremacy.

We cannot proclaim good news to the poor and liberation to the oppressed while kneeling before systems that require the poor to remain poor and the oppressed to remain bound.

The kingdom of God does not arrive through coercion but grows the way bread grows: through seed in soil; through slow, tedious, patient work; through trust; through shared tables and a cross-shaped love.

This path looks weak from the mountaintop. It doesn’t glitter. It doesn’t dominate. It doesn’t trend or immediately go viral. And it leads, eventually, to another hill, not a throne, but a cross.

And that is the decisive rejection of this temptation.

Jesus ultimately chooses suffering love over controlling power. He chooses grace over domination. He chooses faithfulness over force, nonviolence over violence. And because he does, angels come to him in the wilderness and minister to him.

Not because he won. But because he refused to bow.

Lent asks the church the same question the wilderness asked Jesus:

Whom will you worship?

Will we bow to the splendor of control?
Will we trade love of neighbor for political power?
Will we accept injustice if it keeps “our side” in charge?

Or will we worship the Lord our God, and serve God only?

This Lent, may we refuse to bow and resist the bargain. And choose the slow, holy work of love, mercy, and justice.

May we plant gardens instead of building empires.

May we always choose to worship God alone.

Amen.

From Dust You Came. For Justice You Are Called.

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Lent, Sermons Year ALeave a comment

Isaiah 58

I often encounter people who tell me that they would attend our church—if they were religious.

Some say to me, “If I believed in organized religion, I would go to your church.”

And I usually respond, “I wish you would come, because I think you’ll find we’re not that religious, and we’re really not that organized.”

And I wish they were here tonight. Because they would be surprised to learn that this day, often assumed to be reserved for the most devout, is actually God’s demand that we be done with religion.

Tonight, the church hears the prophet Isaiah asking a question that challenges religion. He looks at organized religion, the traditions and the the rituals, and he doesn’t hold back. In the words that are traditionally read by the church on this day, he shouts a question that should shake us to the core: “Is this the fast that I choose?”

In other words: Is being religious what you think repentance looks like? Do you think this is what faith is all about? Is it sitting quietly inside a sanctuary, while outside, injustice, hate, and cruelty are loud? Is it bowed heads while policies crush the poor? Is it words sung or spoken that soothes souls but never unsettles systems?

Isaiah says no! Because the truth is: God is not interested in religion that ignores justice. God is interested in a faith that transforms the world.

Isaiah is speaking to people who are deeply religious. They fast. They pray. They gather for worship. They present their offerings and sing their praises to God. And yet, workers are still exploited, the poor are still hungry, Eunuchs are still subjugated. Foreigners are still mistreated. And the vulnerable are still scapegoated.

And Isaiah tells it like it is: You seek God in the sanctuary, but you serve the systems of death. You humble yourselves in worship, but you harden your hearts in public life. You follow the laws of the Sabbath, but you don’t follow politics. You read the Bible, but you refuse to let it interpret the world you live in. You look after your own, but you neglect your neighbor. In divisive times, you call yourself apolitical, when you are actually being amoral.

Oh, how the church needs to hear Isaiah tonight!

Because the crisis we are living through in this nation is not merely a crisis of policy. It’s a crisis of values.

A nation that can afford abundance but tolerates poverty.

A nation that claims liberty while restricting dignity.

A nation that invokes God while rejecting the commands of justice, mercy, and love.

As we begin the season of Lent, Isaiah refuses to let us spiritualize repentance, contrition, and worship by saying the fast God chooses looks like this:

Loosening the bonds of injustice.
Undoing the yoke of oppression.
Sharing bread with the hungry.
Housing the unhoused.
Clothing the naked.
Refusing to hide from your own kin.

And who is our kin? Who is our neighbor?  In other words, Isaiah is saying, that we should be available to do the work of justice for the entire human family.

Jesus stands firmly in this prophetic tradition.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus exposes performative religion—faith that wants spiritual credit without social responsibility. He warns against prayer and fasting that seeks approval instead of transformation, against a righteousness that hides from justice.

Ash Wednesday names what many would rather avoid:

We are shaped by systems that privilege some and punish others.
We are beneficiaries of structures that reward greed and normalize inequality. And silence in the face of that reality is not neutrality.
It is consent.

Ashes tell the truth about who we are. We are dust.

In Genesis, God forms humanity from the dust of the ground — from the same soil that grows our food, from the same earth that holds every other body. We are not dropped into the creation from above. We rise up from within it. We belong to the earth and to each other.

Dust means we are made of what everyone else is made of. The same earth runs through all of us. The same breath sustains all of us.

Which means we are not autonomous individuals competing for survival. We are interdependent lives sharing one fragile existence. Dust cannot declare independence from other dust. What happens to one part of the soil affects the whole field.

Dust reminds us of something the powerful try to make us forget: No one is disposable. You cannot discard part of the earth without damaging the whole. You cannot throw away people without wounding yourself.

So, when you come forward tonight, and the ashes are placed on your forehead, you will hear these words: “From dust you came; for justice you are called.”

These words are not a blessing. They are a summons declaring that repentance is not complete until justice is pursued. That worship is not faithful until it confronts what dehumanizes. That Lent is not about what makes us feel holy, but about what makes the world more humane.

Lent is a season of moral clarity. It’s a season to break with greed in a culture of hoarding. It’s a season to confront racism in a society built on racial hierarchy. It’s a season to resist bigotry when fear is marketed as righteousness.

If our observance of Lent does not make us more honest, more generous, more courageous, Isaiah would say we have missed the point.

Ash Wednesday does not mark us for shame or for death. It marks us for responsibility. For truth-telling. For solidarity. For resistance grounded in love and for a life committed to justice.

Ash Wednesday tells the truth: we are dust. And God has always done revolutionary work with dust.

In the beginning, God bent down to the earth, gathered soil in divine hands, and breathed into it— and humanity stood up. The first declaration of dignity was spoken over dirt.

When empire tightened its grip and Pharaoh seemed untouchable, God did not raise up another emperor. God raised up a shepherd from the wilderness, dust from the margins, and said, “Go.” And the empire trembled.

When a giant towered over Israel in bronze and steel, God did not choose armor. God chose a boy and five stones from the ground. And dust struck down domination.

When a valley lay scattered with dry bones (history’s casualties, abandoned and forgotten), God did not turn away. God spoke. God breathed. And dust became a living, moving people again.

When a woman was dragged into the center of accusation and shame, Jesus did not stand above her. He knelt in the dirt. He wrote in the dust. He reminded the powerful that they, too, were earth.

And when violence did its worst, when love was crucified and laid in the ground, they thought the story was over. They returned him to the dust.

But the earth could not hold what God had breathed into it. And on the third day, dust rose.

So, when you hear the words tonight that you are dust, it does not mean you are powerless. For dust is where God begins. Dust is where God breathes. Dust is where God builds movements, topples idols, and raises what the world declared dead.

And tonight, ashes will mark your forehead. Not as a sign of shame. Not as a symbol of defeat. But as a reminder: You are dust. Dust shaped by God. Dust filled with breath. Dust capable of courage. And don’t ever underestimate what God can do with dust, especially dust that has decided to seek justice.

Amen.

 

Benediction

Beloved, as you go into this season of Lent,

Go remembering that you are dust
formed from the earth,
held together by breath,
bound to every living thing in sacred belonging.

Go not in shame, but in courage.
Go not in fear, but in hope.
Go not to perform religion, but to practice love.

May the God who breathes life into dust
breathe holy restlessness into you
a hunger for justice,
a tenderness for the vulnerable,
and a stubborn refusal to accept a world as it is
when it could be more humane.

May your fasting loosen injustice.
May your prayers soften hardened systems.
May your repentance bear the fruit of repair.
May your worship spill over into mercy.

And when you grow weary,
remember: dust is where God begins.
Dust is where God breathes.
Dust is where resurrection rises.

Go in peace
to love boldly,
to serve humbly,
and to do justice with joy.

Amen.

One Human Family

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Year ALeave a comment

Matthew 5:21-24

Almost every day, I read or hear someone say that much of the church today looks nothing like the movement of love and justice that Jesus started.

Many agree it is due to a wide-spread rejection of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount. Folks in church have dismissed the beatitudes where Jesus proclaims that God is on the side of the poor, the meek, the grieving, the compassionate, and those who hunger for justice and peace. Because they prefer to live in a world where God is on the side of the privileged and powerful, those who have never had to ask for their lives to matter, even on the side of those who are merciless and violent—to the people who look, speak and worship differently.

Because frankly, if you are one of the privileged, it’s just better that way. It’s more comfortable. It’s safer and just easier.

         However, I want to suggest that the main reason many churches look nothing like Jesus is because some of us have refused to obey the first command Jesus gives about worship. We’ve ignored Jesus’ command to stop worshipping, stop singing, stop praying, get up in the middle of the sermon, and go home. And don’t come back, until we’ve reconciled with our brothers and sisters.

Or maybe it’s because, we’ve grossly misinterpreted this command.

As a child, I remember being warned very seriously by my mother: “Jarrett, you must never, ever call your brother, Jason, ‘a fool.’ Because you could go to hell for that!”

And I believed her. I think I called my brother every name in the book. But I never called him a “fool.”

It’s strange when I think about it, as I grew up in a world where I heard the “n-word”spoken casually. I’ll never forget hearing racist jokes told around the dinner table, right after church, hearing laughter at the expense of others.

No one warned me about that.

         My family was deeply religious, in church every time the doors were open. And yet, we seemed to miss what Jesus was actually saying in his first recorded sermon.

Referring to verse 22, and the danger of calling a brother or sister “a fool” or else “be liable to the hell of fire,” I’ve heard people boast, “Well, I’ve never called my brother or sister a fool!”

The problem is that whenever Jesus speaks of family, he always broadens its definition.

Later in Matthew, we read about a time Jesus is teaching in the synagogue when someone interrupts him saying, members of your family are here to see you. Jesus turns and points to everyone in the room and says, “All of these are part of my family.” In every word and action of Jesus, he continually enlarges the circle. Family is not defined by bloodline, nor ethnicity, nor tribe, nor nation.

In Matthew’s Gospel, the word translated brother or sister, adelphos, stretches beyond biology. Family is not bloodline or tribe. It is anyone who belongs to God.

So, when Jesus says, “if you say to your adelphos, ‘you fool,’” he’s talking about the person sitting in front of you and behind you, the one across the aisle, across the border, across the political divide.

He’s saying: The ones you despise are your siblings, and that should change everything. Because it’s one thing to insult a stranger. It’s quite another to degrade members of your own family. It’s one thing to caricature “them.” And it’s another to realize there is no “them” in the kingdom of God.

Jesus then names two insults. The first is raka, an Aramaic word which means something like “empty-headed,” “stupid,” “washed up,” “good for nothing,” “worthless.” It’s a dismissal of someone’s value. It’s saying someone is disposable and can be discarded.

The second word is translated “fool.” In Greek, it is moros. It’s the root of “moron.” But in that culture, calling someone moros was not about intelligence. It meant morally worthless, godless, demonic, beyond redemption. It was a way of saying: You do not matter, you do not belong, and you never will.

With these two words, Jesus was warning people of the harm of dehumanization and demonization.

When we hear Erika Kirk call the protesters in Minneapolis “demonic,” when we see images depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, when Congresswoman IIlan Omar is called “garbage,” when immigrants are described as “infestations” or “invasions,” and when a Puerto Rican singer is told “he doesn’t belong,” we are witnessing a centuries-old strategy of dehumanization and demonization.

Enslaved Africans were called “property” and “animals,” because you cannot enslave someone you fully recognize as part of your family.

Indigenous peoples were called “savages,” so land could be stolen without moral consequence.

Black men were labeled “brutes” and “bucks”, so lynching could be framed as protection.

Jewish people were depicted as “vermin,” so genocide could be justified and rationalized.

Japanese Americans were called enemies, so detention centers could be normalized.

The pattern is always the same: First, a label, then a caricature, then a policy, and then a grave.

What we are continuing to learn about the Epstein files should not surprise us as we are bombarded with language that objectifies women: jokes that reduce women to body parts; comments that treat women as trophies or temptations; speech that minimizes harassment or blames the victims of assault.

Before assault becomes physical, language makes it conceivable. When the bodies of women are described as things to be grabbed, owned, and evaluated, then empathy is lowered and permission to harm is created.

Jesus is saying here that once someone is no longer adelphos, once they become “less than,” harm becomes easier to justify.

But if she is your sister, if she is adelphos, then her dignity is not negotiable.

If Barack and Michelle Obama are adelphos, then ape imagery is not just offensive. It’s family betrayal.

If Black and Brown immigrants are adelphos, if the Puerto Rican artist is adelphos, then slurs are not just words. They are deep wounds within the household of God.

If women exploited and molested by rich and powerful men are adelphos, then the demand for justice will be relentless and a suggestion that the acceptance of injustice is worth a $50,000 Dow Jones will not be tolerated.

Now, it’s easy to hear a sermon like this and think of someone else. It’s easy to nod our heads because we would never post the meme, never chant the slur, never laugh at the joke. But Jesus does not say, “If your enemy has something against someone else.” He says, “If your sibling has something against you.” Which means this is not only about the loud cruelty out there. It is about the quiet ways we withdraw from people who frustrate us. The way we roll our eyes and dismiss others. The way we avoid hard conversations. The way we decide someone is not worth the effort. Dehumanization does not begin with a microphone. It begins in the heart. And even good, justice-seeking people are not immune.

         Jesus says dehumanization endangers us with hell. But like a misinterpretation of the word adelphos, raka, and moros, the way we have interpreted “hell” has actually made this world more hellish.

The word Jesus uses here is Gehenna. It’s a valley outside Jerusalem associated with burning refuse and with Israel’s history of violence. It symbolized what happens when a society becomes a dumping ground for human dignity.

Jesus is saying that Gehenna is what we create on earth when we treat others as garbage, worthless, washed-up, disposable.

And then, to underscore how important it is to treat all people with dignity, to love others like family, to love all people as we love our own, as our very selves, Jesus says this: “If you are offering your gift at the altar and remember that your sibling has something against you, leave your gift at the altar.”

Leave the worship service before the peace is passed and the benediction pronounced. And go. Be reconciled. Jesus refuses to separate love of God from the love of people and suggests that God does not receive praise from lips that practice dehumanization of others.

Reconciliation is not politeness, or kindness, although we certainly need more of that in the world. It’s not pretending harm did not happen or moving on, letting bygones be bygones, nor is it “agreeing to disagree.”

Reconciliation is truth-telling. It is repairing and restoring. And it is a refusal to continue dehumanizing and being silent in the face of dehumanization.

After learning that our sibling Christopher Lilley, passed away suddenly this week, many have asked me if Chris had family. I do not know of any biological family, but I do know he had family. He had church family, members of this church and members from the former Court Street United Methodist Church, who enveloped Chris in love and grace. He also had his recovery family, a community that helped him stay sober for the last 11 ½ years.

I cannot put into words what it meant to Chris that he had people who treated him as adelphos.

Two months after Chris was born in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, his mother literally discarded him, threw him out with the trash, leaving him outside of a garbage dumpster. Chris was found and placed in the custody of the state for months before he bounced around between several different foster parents. Years later he was finally adopted, but his childhood was one of trauma.

Chris struggled with mental illness and alcoholism. He often heard dehumanizing and demonizing voices in his head. Most wrote him off. However, the good news is there were people in this city who loved Chris, who treated him like family, who let him know that he was not trash. He was a beloved child of God, a sibling of immeasurable worth.

And not only did Chris overcome his addiction to alcohol, he became a sweet, caring, empathetic, soul. The little way he giggled at his own jokes revealed a spirit that was far from broken.

Chris had an incredible passion for social justice. Chris often told me how he had no tolerance for white supremacists, Nazis, and bigots, for anyone who made anyone else feel like trash. Chris called me often, many times just to ask me how I was doing, or how people on our church’s prayer list were doing.

Having been treated as garbage, Chris experienced his share of Gehenna in this world. But because he found a community of grace, reconciliation, and restoration, I believe he also experienced a little bit of heaven.

So, before we come to this table, before we say the prayers, before we receive the bread and drink from the cup, we must ask:

Where have we dismissed someone as less than?
Where have we laughed along at jokes that harm?
Where have we stayed silent?

This table is not for the perfect. It is for the honest. It is for those who are willing to love as Jesus loved, to resist dehumanization and demonization in all its forms.

 

Invitation to Communion

Here we remember a body that was mocked.
A man publicly shamed. A Savior treated as disposable.

And we remember that he refused to return contempt with contempt.

This meal does not erase our responsibility. It forms us for reconciliation.

So, come.

Not because you have never spoken harm. But because you are willing to stop.

Come, ready to see every person as adelphos.
Come, ready to reject the language of Gehenna.
Come, ready to build a community where dignity is not negotiable.

Because Jesus is not just trying to keep us from committing murder. He is trying to form a community where murder becomes unthinkable.

Preserving Truth, Exposing Lies

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Year A1 Comment

Matthew 5:13-20

As I said last week, many of us were raised hearing a very skewed version of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, as we sat in the comfort and shelter of a flag-adorned sanctuary among the beneficiaries of white supremacy. It’s fair to say that some of us heard from an alternative Jesus who blesses the rich and the powerful, instead of the Jesus who blesses the poor and confronts power.

So today, I invite you to clear your minds and open your hearts to hear from the brown-skinned Jewish Palestinian who experienced life as an immigrant on the run, who was, from day one, a target of the state. Listen to the Jesus who identified with the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the criminalized, as he delivers a word from God to people who are exhausted from life under a corrupt, tyrannical government, to people who know what it is like to hear their leaders use scripture to support exclusion, exploitation, and oppression.

And it is to them (not to the powerful; not to those called “patriots” by King Herod and his minions; not to the priests aligned with Rome or to the loudest voices claiming divine authority) that Jesus says: “you are the salt of the earth,” and “you are the light of the world.”

And what may be even more shocking is that Jesus does not say, “you will be salt”—when Herod dies, or “you will be light”—when the pendulum swings.

But to those who are exhausted by a system that favors the rich, to the poor in spirit, the mourners, the powerless, to those who hunger for justice and yearn for peace, Jesus says: “you are,” today, right now, in this very moment, “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.”

Salt in the ancient world was not merely something that was sprinkled on food to enhance its flavor. Its main purpose was to preserve food that would otherwise rot. And due to its antibacterial properties, salt was used as a therapeutic agent to treat wounds. Salt was essential for healing—disruptive, uncomfortable, and necessary to stop infection and decay.

That’s why we should pay attention when we hear people say we shouldn’t “open the old wounds of our past,” that talking honestly about our nation’s racist history through works like the 1619 Project is somehow divisive, unnecessary, or unfaithful. Because anyone who has ever had a wound knows this: wounds that are never cleaned don’t heal; they fester. And salt, when applied to an open wound is never comfortable. It stings. It burns. It makes us wince. But it also kills infection. It interrupts decay. It makes healing possible.

If Jesus calls us to be salt, then he is not calling us to comfort the wound, to cover it, or to pretend it never happened. He is calling us to tell the truth about where the injury is, how deep it goes, and what it has cost, because it is only then that healing can begin. Refusing to name injustice is not simply moving on. It is choosing rot over restoration.

That’s why Jesus gives the warning if salt loses its saltiness, if salt stops doing what it was made to do, it becomes useless and gets trampled underfoot. In other words, if you don’t want those in power to tread on you, you must start being who you were created to be!

Like salt, light can also sting and be uncomfortable. Light is dangerous, as it is a threat to darkness, exposing what the darkness covers up. And Jesus says, you don’t light a lamp and then hide it for the sake of safety. You don’t dim it, to keep you out of trouble. But you put it on a stand, and you share it with as many people as you can.

Jesus is talking about being a public witness. He’s talking about possessing a faith that shows up in the world where people are hungry, oppressed, and crushed by unjust systems.

When Jesus talks about light and salt, I can’t help but think about the way people are bearing public witness to the truth today with nothing more than a cell phone in their hands, recording what others hope will go unnoticed, preserving the truth that would have decayed otherwise.

In a world where lies travel fast and violence is quickly denied, these witnesses are letting their light shine, exposing what the darkness wants hidden, preserving the truth before it can be erased. With moral courage they are refusing to let darkness control the story. Every time cell phone cameras come out in Minneapolis, you could almost hear the people singing, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine!”

That simple song that most of us learned as a child might not have been written as a protest anthem, but it was never neutral. It emerged from Black communities of faith where light was already a language of survival. To sing about light in a world shaped by slavery and Jim Crow was already to make a claim: that God’s presence and love could not be extinguished by racism and violence.

During the Civil Rights Movement, that song was carried out of the sanctuary and into the streets. It was sung in marches, in jail cells, in the face of clubs and dogs and fire hoses. Freedom singers didn’t softly hum “This Little Light of Mine.” They shouted it and marched with it in the streets. In the darkness of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, they turned it into a bold declaration of justice.

And at the same time, those of us who grew up in predominantly white churches, learned how to sing the same song without ever stepping into that darkness. The words and the tune were the same. But the power of the words was diluted. The light was kept safely inside, deep in our hearts, something personal, something polite, something that asked nothing of power.

What we did to that song illustrates how the gospel of Jesus gets whitewashed, prompting the Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock to recently say: “I have to say, as a pastor, I think Jesus is the biggest victim of identity theft in the country.”

We’ve learned how to keep the language of Jesus while emptying it of its demands. The light Jesus talks about becomes personal comfort and salvation instead of public confrontation and social transformation. And Jesus becomes someone to believe in rather than someone to follow.

Which is exactly what Jesus is addressing in verse 20 where we read: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

It’s important to remember that the scribes and Pharisees were not secular villains. They believed in God. They were morally serious and deeply religious. They quoted scripture fluently. They claimed divine authority. They believed they were defending God’s order in the world. And yet, they had learned how to practice religion without practicing love. How to keep the law while neglecting the least of these. How to be righteous without being just.

And Jesus is saying: “That kind of righteousness is just not going to cut it!”

Not that it might prevent us from experiencing heaven when we die, but that it will certainly prevent anything close to God’s reign of love from being experienced here on earth.

Jesus is saying: You can know and even obey all the rules and still miss the reign of God. You can quote scripture and still block the kingdom at the door. You can be loud about God at a prayer breakfast and silent about injustice.

Jesus is saying the righteousness of the kingdom exceeds right religion, because it is all about right relationship, with God and with our neighbors, especially with our neighbors who are suffering: the poor; the foreigner; the crushed and the cast aside.

The righteousness of the kingdom looks like love showing up to heal suffering. It looks like justice showing up to disrupt the darkness. It looks like the refusal to stay safely inside the Pharisee’s religious walls of belief.

It’s the kind of righteousness that is never private but always practiced publicly. It shows up in real places, with real bodies and real risk. It looks like telling the truth in the face of lies. It looks like standing with our brown and black neighbors who are being targeted, even when it costs us comfort or reputation. It is showing up where silence would be complicity.

Salt preserves what would otherwise decay and exposes what the powerful want to hide. And every time we choose courage over comfort, solidarity over safety, truth over security, we are practicing the righteousness Jesus is talking about.

So, when Jesus says, “you are the salt of the earth,” he is saying:
don’t lose your edge; don’t soften the gospel until it no longer confronts injustice.

When he says, “you are the light of the world,” he is saying: don’t hide the truth to stay safe; don’t dim your witness to stay comfortable.

And when he says our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, he is saying:

The kingdom of heaven is experienced through love that refuses to look away, through justice that costs something and through faith that stands with the vulnerable even when it makes us enemies of the powerful.

Jesus is saying: The world today does not need any more salt that has gone bland. And it does not need a light hidden behind patriotism or religious certainty.

It needs a church brave enough to live a righteousness that exceeds belief, rejects the false religion of nationalism, and dares to trust that God’s reign is still breaking in. The world does not need more certainty. It needs more courage.

And Jesus does not say this to shame us. He says it to name us. “You are the salt of the earth.” “You are the light of the world.” Not someday. Not when it’s safer. Not when the cost is lower. But right now. Which means courage isn’t something we wait for. It’s something God has already placed in us—

The courage to tell the truth when power is lying.

The courage to show up when silence would be easier.

The courage to follow Jesus not just in what we confess, but in how we live.

The darkness is real today. But so is the light.

And the darkness does not get to decide if the light shines.

So, at the end of the service when we sing, “This little light of mine,” we’re not singing a sweet little children’s song like you used to in Vacation Bible School.

We are making a public vow,

a declaration that in the darkest night, the light still shines.

That truth will be told.

That wounds will be healed, even when it stings.

And love will not stay silent.

Amen.

Foolish Enough to Be Faithful

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Year ALeave a comment

1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12

Father John Dear reminds us that the Beatitudes are not polite blessings for private spirituality. It’s not chicken soup to nourish our souls during a quiet time with God.

The Beatitudes are Jesus’ nonviolent manifesto—a public declaration that God stands with the poor, the mourning, the meek, the justice-hungry, and the peacemakers.

Jesus was declaring a way of living that turns the world upside down, directly confronting every system that depends on fear and violence to survive. The Beatitudes unmask the lie that domination brings security and expose the myth that peace can be achieved through force. It is Jesus’ refusal to bow down to Herod, his rejection of religious nationalism, and, his insistence that the way of love—not fear, not coercion, not “comply or die”—is the only power that will heal this broken world.

And yet, the reality is that most of us didn’t grow up hearing from that Jesus, the Jesus of the gospels: brown-skinned; Jewish; Palestinian; unjust law-breaker; anti-racist; one who was born poor and forced to flee racialized, state-sanctioned violence as a refugee in Egypt; one who was arrested and executed by the state for protesting and resisting systems that harm the least of these.

Instead, many of us were raised hearing about an alternative Jesus— a very white, privileged, moderate, capitalist Jesus, a “wise,” law-abiding Jesus shaped by flags, greed, and power. A Jesus who blesses order more than justice, silence more than truth, authority more than accountability, the privileged more than the vulnerable, and even violence if it preserves the status quo.

The version of the Beatitudes many of us were taught is the voice of what we might call “religious-nationalist Jesus.” It’s a voice that borrows Jesus’ name to protect systems that harm the vulnerable while protecting the privileged. I invite us to hear out loud what has already been speaking quietly to us for a long time.

It sounds something like this…

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountain. He walked out on stage, flanked by uniforms and flags, and then spoke with the calm authority of one who never had to fear the law.

Blessed are the rich, for their hard work and great faith, God has given them the gift of prosperity.

Blessed are the strong, for they will never have to depend on anyone.

Blessed are the hard-hearted, for empathy clouds judgment.

Blessed are those who comply, for they will make it home alive.

Blessed are the merciless, for mercy interferes with enforcement, and that could get you murdered.

Blessed are those who do not mourn too loudly, for public grief makes people uncomfortable as it asks dangerous questions about deaths, cruelty, and suffering.

Blessed are the pure in heart who know how to stay in their place and keep their protests to themselves.

Blessed are those who do not hunger and thirst for justice, for justice is disruptive, and to the king, disruption looks like insurrection.

Blessed are the peacekeepers, not the peacemakers, but the ones who call pepper spray ‘domestic terrorist control’ and bullets ‘necessary force.’

Blessed are those who condemn protests in the name of civility, who call moral resisters “agitators,” “communists,” “Marxists,” and “antifa-types.”

But woe to you if you are poor, for you are obviously lazy and unfaithful.

Woe to you who are weak and need help from your neighbors.

And woe to you who march.

Woe to you who blow a whistle.

Woe to you if you block traffic.

Woe to you if you if you love your neighbor as yourself, if you dare to put your body between a masked agent and a woman shoved violently to the ground.

Woe to you if you bear witness to the truth you see with your own eyes instead of repeating the lies from those on high.

And blessed are those who echo the lies and blessed are ones who say, “well, there’s bad on both sides,” because bending the knee to power is safe, and neutrality feels like wisdom.

Rejoice and give thanks, for your reward is order without justice,
peace without righteousness, life without humanity, but a system that works exactly as it was designed.

And the crowds nodded, a few amens could be heard, because they knew their king would approve. It sounded like law and order. It sounded like good, common-sense, conservative values. It didn’t sound foolish at all. It sounded like the wisdom of the wise.

This thinking is perhaps what prompted the Apostle Paul to quote the prophet Isaiah: “For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise…’ …For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

Paul does not try to rescue the gospel from the charge of foolishness. He embraces it. He leans into it. He says, in effect: Yes. I know this way of love that Jesus taught and embodied looks foolish. I know the cross doesn’t look like wisdom to an empire that measures strength through domination. A crucified Messiah doesn’t inspire confidence in a world that believes security comes from force and order comes from fear.

And yet, Paul dares to say that this so-called foolishness is exactly how God is dismantling the violent wisdom of the world, “abolishing the things that are,” he writes.

This foolishness, says Paul, is the power of God.

It’s not the power to crush enemies, but the power to expose their lies and cruelty. It’s not the power of coercion, but the power of love that refuses to disappear even when it’s nailed to a cross or murdered on a public street.

This is why the Beatitudes and the cross belong together. Both seem foolish. Both look weak and impractical. Both seem absolutely powerless when confronting those invested in keeping things exactly the way they are. And both announce that God is not impressed by what those in high places call “wisdom.”

Paul reminds the church: “Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth.” In other words, not many of you are respected by those in power today. Not many of you would be called patriots or even people who love their country. But God is not going to ask their permission to choose you. God is not going to wait until the next election to call you. God is calling you today to change this world.

In this very moment, I believe God is choosing the foolish. God is choosing the weak. God is choosing the despised. God is choosing the poor in spirit. God is choosing the mourners. God is choosing the meek. God is choosing those who hunger and thirst for justice. God is choosing the peacemakers who refuse to confuse peace with silence.

And because this is who God chooses, Jesus speaks with a wisdom that sounds like foolishness, feels like resistance, and looks like hope.

When the world says, “Be obedient,” Jesus says, “Be merciful.”

When the world says, “Keep the peace,” Jesus says, “Make peace.”

When the world says, “Respect authority,” Jesus says, “Blessed are those who refuse to bow to evil.”

This is why protest makes power nervous. Not because it might lead to violence, but because it tells the truth. It exposes the gap between our rhetoric of equality and due process and the reality of racialized suffering. It reveals who is expected to absorb pain quietly, so that the privileged can remain comfortable.

And when people who are supposed to be invisible refuse silence, the wisdom of the world begins to unravel.

Paul says God chooses the foolish and the lowly. And Jesus says they are blessed now.

This means that God is not neutral. God is not undecided. God is not standing above history waiting to see who wins. No, it means God is already present—among the crucified, the criminalized, the grieving, the justice-hungry, the meek, and the merciful.

That’s why Jesus does not say the poor will be blessed eventually, after they stop being poor. He does not say the mourners will be blessed once they move on. He does not say the justice-hungry will be blessed when they stop resisting and wise up to the ways of the world. He says they are blessed now.

And we see that blessing even now. You can murder Renee Good for defending her neighbors, and Alex Pretti for protecting a woman shoved to the ground, but instead of killing love, you only multiply it. You only make it stronger, wider, deeper, and fiercer.

So, hear the good news today: mercy is not weak; empathy is not foolish; compassion is not soft; and love is far from powerless.

These things are dangerous—to injustice.
These things are disruptive—to systems that depend on fear.

And these things are powerful enough to dismantle a world shaped by domination and supremacy.

Love looks weak—until it refuses to die.

Mercy looks small—until it spreads.

Empathy looks foolish—until it builds movements.

Compassion looks soft—until it organizes, makes signs, marches, chants, sings, and exposes the evil of a system that dehumanizes, divides, and demonizes so it can survive.

The poor are not powerless; they are positioned.

The meek are not losers; they are inheritors.

Those who hunger and thirst for justice are not wasting away; they are bending the moral arch closer to the Kin-dom of God.

And those of us who mourn today are not abandoned; but we are being held close to the heart of God and are being reassured that God’s reign of love and justice is coming.

Not through religious nationalism or enforced conformity, but it comes through a foolish, cross-shaped love that refuses to let violence have the final word.

And blessed are all who believe this, because you are already living into God’s future.

Amen.