I preached this sermon on Sunday, July 6, 2025, for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9, Year C), at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church and Pro-Cathedral, Brooklyn, New York. The lectionary texts cited can be found here.
These last few days all I’ve been able to think about is the passage of the so-called “big, beautiful bill” that went through the House by a narrow margin on Thursday. I’ve felt sick, grieved, and angry in relentless turn.
You may have seen the viral image of House Representatives in a prayer circle, praying for the success of this sweeping legislation.
And what is it that they were praying for?
Well, if you’ve been paying any attention at all, you know the depth and the breadth of the effect this will have on Americans.
Funding will be slashed for SNAP and Medicaid. Anywhere from 12 to 20 million Americans will lose access to healthcare. In New York City alone, early estimates say 1.5 million people will no longer be insured. This, in a country that already trails other wealthy nations in life expectancy and outpaces them dramatically in preventable deaths; where 1 in 5 children go hungry—that’s almost 14 million children. Children who can’t vote, who have no power and no authority.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also increases military spending and supercharges ICE. We’ve seen the roving gangs of ICE agents in plainclothes, masked and armed, who kidnap people off the street. The images of Alligator Alcatraz, in Florida, as well as detention centers that have been run in the U.S. for years are virtually indistinguishable from internment and concentration camps of World War II.
For these craven politicians, who have rejected anything resembling the gospel in the name of money and power, I suppose that’s good news.
There’s nothing Christian about it though. Nothing whatsoever.
To say that God is acting in legislation that steals from the least of these to line the pockets of billionaires and commit atrocities in the U.S. and abroad is to take the name of the Lord in vain. They are blasphemers.
Wealth inequality in the U.S. today is worse than the Roman Empire at its peak. That is true. And when I say worse, I mean that the top 1% of Romans controlled 16% of the wealth. Do you know what the 1% in the United States controls today? Just fix a number in your mind. It’s 40%. 40% of our wealth.
These people and their sycophants praying in Congress are the ones stealing food from the mouths of children, leaving their fellow Americans to die and be terrorized, and greasing the wheels of the war machine. People who have outstripped, by far, the greed and excess of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire.
We are in the belly of empire.
It’s a sobering reminder, on this July 4th weekend, that “we, the people” was a dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for land-owning white men.
Christianity in the United States has always been practiced under empire, even as it is perverted in the pursuit of money and power, domination of land and people.
Indigenous genocide, chattel slavery, even denying women the right to vote were all justified by a twisted gospel of empire.
But Christianity came to life under empire.
The kingdom of God is built in every age. Christ is birthed in every age. This is not the first time that Christianity has been used to justify despicable acts of evil.
Much like the early followers of Jesus, we may wish for a God who sweeps away the decay and makes all things right in a divine flourish; the pleas for military victory, for retribution, for safety sound more and more sympathetic.
But God entered the world as a baby in a manger. God was poor, from the backwater town of Nazareth. God was a refugee.
We proclaim a God who humbled Godself to be with us: who hurt with us, wept with us, was hungry and abandoned and rejected with us. To hurt is human, and it is also divine, because of the reconciling love of Christ. To be present in our world is to be vulnerable—and that is to open ourselves to hurt, as God does.
God was vulnerable. God is vulnerable with us.
We are called to vulnerability—and peace.
How does Jesus send out these laborers in our Gospel passage today? These disciples who might be, if they were following another Messiah or another king, soldiers sent out in conquest?
Jesus says, “See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals …”
This is not a promise of glory—far from it. It’s no wonder that the powerful, as early as Constantine and even before, have sought to remake God in their image: a God of might, a God of military victory, a God of wealth and prosperity.
But the kingdom of God does not come at the point of a sword. We will not win by the tactics of empire because those tactics desecrate the imago Dei: the image of God in which all of humanity is made.
The Gospel of Luke is a constant subversion of empire. A few weeks ago, we heard the story of the demoniac in the Gerasenes, who was possessed by demons called Legion. “Legion”: the Roman military unit that was said to impose order but only caused chaos and suffering for the people under it. Millenia before Orwell’s 1984, Pax Romana played with this idea of war and peace. The Roman peace was war. Peace was war. You only got a hint of real peace if you submitted absolutely to empire.
For Jesus, peace is peace. Peace is peace, not war.
The kingdom of God is not physical, but it is material. It comes near when peace is extended, when people are fed and healed and brought together. This is a spiritual kingdom that works for the material good.
We cannot build the kingdom of God if we succumb to the mechanisms of empire.
We can be fierce in our convictions without seeking to dominate. To wipe the specks of dust off our feet is hardly a mild-mannered visual. It may even be striking coming from Jesus, this kind and lovely figure. But in contrast, what would the Romans do if a town failed to submit? They would decimate them—literally.
Jesus and his disciples back away from the rejection. Their peace is not contingent on the acceptance of others. In fact, failure is built into the system. To wipe the dust from our feet is to refuse to be deterred by inhospitality.
It is also to unchain ourselves from a peace that relies on acceptance from the world. We will be rejected. This is guaranteed. The gospel, the real gospel of Jesus Christ, is actually not popular, and it never has been.
There is much ahead of us in these days to come. We will act and agitate. We will join mutual aid groups, and build coalitions to keep ourselves and our neighbors safe as best we can. If you don’t know where to start, then just ask. I’m confident that someone in this room has a connection or a suggestion that will resonate with you. We’re all called to different ministries at this time.
Our Collect of the Day reminds us to keep the commandments by loving God and loving our neighbor. I’m actually not concerned about our commitment to caring for others, even as pressures increase. I am concerned, however, about how our humanity will fare and whether we will keep love at the heart of our work.
I’ve written and scrapped this sermon half a dozen times, because it was so poisonous. It was so angry and vitriolic; and I almost can’t get past it even now. I am afraid of the anger in me and the violence that I would want for people who are doing this to fellow human beings. I would hope, in some way, that anger, that retribution coming from a place of justice would be more acceptable in the eyes of God … and yet I know that it is not the work of vulnerability and peace that I am called to—that we are called to.
There’s a reason why civil rights leaders spent hours a day—truly, hours a day—in Bible study and prayer, as did base communities in Latin America, Nazi resistance, abolitionists, and so many other Christians who have worked for justice under the worst circumstances. We need deep roots to stand firm in the storm. I pray that we will all do the work so that we can find the peace that passes understanding.
There was a story shared with me this week, you may be familiar with it, of a Dutch-born American minister named A. J. Muste, who was a pacifist, a labor rights activist, and a bold, public witness to justice and dignity for all people. For years during the Vietnam War, he would stand outside the White House, night after night, holding a lit candle in perfect silence.
A reporter once asked him, “Do you really think this will change the world?”
Muste replied, “No, I don’t. But I’m not doing it to change the world. I’m doing it so the world doesn’t change me.”
Now, I hope we will be changed. I hope we will experience such a rebirth, such a transformation in this time, that we will know the kingdom of God so closely, that we cannot help but to change. What I don’t want is for us to be changed to empire. I don’t want us to be converted to violence, to hatred. I don’t want us to justify acts of evil and claim them in the name of Christ.
I want us, I want myself, I want the coalitions we build and the communities we nurture to be places of peace: to be glimpses of the kingdom of God where all are free, where all are dignified, where all are beloved and recognized as image-bearers of the Divine.
May our vulnerability make us channels of peace.
May God’s peace flow through our tender, broken hearts.
May our prophetic witness come from fierce love.
And may God working in us continue to tend our humanity this day and all the days to come.
Amen.
Artwork: The Seventy. Greek-Georgian manuscript, 15th century, Athos. Wikimedia Commons.
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