Tag: Protest

Preserving Truth, Exposing Lies

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