I wonder how you build the church without ticking somebody off? I mean, Jesus started out with 12 and one of them had him killed, so maybe consensus isn’t always the big goal?

As the church prepares for Lent next week, we often think of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness as the kick-off to his ministry.  But what I find fascinating, and had never noticed before a recent podcast on Matthew 4 from Queer Theology, the scripture says that Jesus’ ministry begins with the arrest of John the Baptism (see Matthew 4:12).  Yes, the spiritual time of fasting prepared him for ministry, but when his cousin and mentor gets arrested for speaking against a political despot, Jesus left his hometown and began to announce, “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” (Matt 4:17, CEB).

Just what were the crowds to change about their hearts and lives?  What is this proclamation of a coming kingdom to a ragtag group under occupation of a political kingdom built to oppress and keep them silent?  And why does it take the arrest of his cousin to get Jesus out of the background and into the hands-on and dirty work of bringing sight to the blind, mobility to the crippled, cleansing to the diseased, hearing to the deaf, life to the dead, and good news to the poor? (This is an explanation Jesus gives as proof to his imprisoned cousin in Matthew 11:1-6 that Jesus is, indeed, “the one who is to come.”)

The gospel of Jesus cannot be divorced from the present reality of the people.  It is not just a gospel of hope in eternal salvation, or hope in some far away heaven. It is hope that the kingdom of heaven is coming…more than that, the kingdom of God is already within and among you.  Change your hearts – because the earthly kingdoms that occupy your world are not going to save you. The government could not possibly make you great.  The political parties and causes have no bearing on you any more.  Change your hearts because God is here, and God is here to bring the dead to life, to bring good news to the poor, and to bring healing to the sick.  And if you feel left out of that message, if you wonder why God didn’t come to make you wealthier or happier or safe from all the minorities and poor people you have harmed and isolated…well, maybe Jesus is telling YOU TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

I am a clergy person in a denomination that really wants to believe it is on the right side of history.  We are required in our clergy reports to talk about how we are engaging anti-racism in our ministries. All the straight allies are so confident that they are “safe” and that the “all are welcome” and the “Black Lives Matter” signs should be enough to prove that they are safe.  We see messages from our bishops denouncing cruelty against immigrants at the hands of the government.

But when the rubber meets the road, my denomination would rather choose a false peace than truly side with the poor, the disenfranchised, the oppressed and the harmed.  My denomination would rather its christian nationalist constituents not feel too uncomfortable in their own pews.  So it’s okay for bishops to put out statements.  But it’s not okay for a pastor to make the same kind of statement from a Sunday morning pulpit, because that’s too political, and too divisive.  It’s okay for us to use blatantly political language in our very requirements of clergy participation (you will not find a MAGA Republican or FOX News watcher using the word “anti-racist” in any positive light), but it’s not okay for clergy to make anti-racist statements from the pulpit if it means losing christian nationalist parishioners.

We don’t want to lose any more people.  We don’t want to lose funding.  We don’t want to lose.

But that’s what the Gospel is.  The Gospel looks more like one of your own people, closest to you, abandoning and betraying you because you didn’t talk about the kingdom of God they way they expected you to.  The Gospel looks more like loss in the eyes of every politician and every cause.  It looks like death at the hands of the state.  It looks like rejecting the hand of the Empire and choosing the image of God in the person most destroyed by that empire.  It looks like dining with the Pharisees without becoming one of them…inviting them to let go of their religious show and perfect purity and find God in the filth and the squalor of everyone who doesn’t belong in the fineries of their temples and businesses.

Please stop telling people  you are safe.  Let the marginalized decide that.

Please stop telling us you are anti-racist. Your actions and words will determine that.

The Universal Church in America is actively under occupation by a hostile government supported by people who long ago abandoned Christ for power, and yet continue to wear him like Leatherface wears one of his victims.  So please, stop trying to blend in and keep everyone on board.  Stop punishing your clergy when they speak out against nationalism.

John the Baptist has long been arrested.  It’s time to come out of the shadows and get your hands dirty with the poor and the weak and the occupied, and to let your constituents decide whether they will follow you or crucify you.