I’ve said this,
or something like it, before.
A challenge of opening the Bible,
of listening to scriptures proclaimed each week
is that
we’re in the United States in 2025.
Wait.
I do mean like that,
but also something more difficult.
Many of us grew up in traditions
where even if we didn’t encounter the pneumonic
“Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth”
we were exposed to the idea.
Open the Bible
to find the answers to your problems.
The Bible will tell us
what we need to do
in any situation.
What all of our texts today make clear
and what our collects remind us of most weeks
is that the Bible is not about us.
While humans are a chief character
in the Biblical narrative
from Genesis to Revelation,
the texts of our Holy Scripture
are meant to teach us
about God.
If we start with
what does this text tell us to do
or what does this text tell us
about humanity —
and we don’t take it any farther,
don’t look any bigger —
we miss what these stories,
these ancient words
passed down from generation to generation
tell us about God.
“O God,
you declare your almighty power
chiefly in showing mercy and pity…”
“Alas for those who are at ease in Zion,…
Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile,
and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.”
“I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth,
for there is no help in them.”
The Lord shall reign for ever,
your God, O Zion, throughout all generations.”
“I charge you to keep the commandment
without spot or blame
until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
which he will bring about at the right time—
he who is the blessed and only Sovereign,
the King of kings and Lord of lords.
“It is he alone
who has immortality
and dwells in unapproachable light,
whom no one has ever seen or can see;
to him be honor and eternal dominion.”
“If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be convinced
even if someone
rises from the dead.”
I don’t think that this week
I need to recount a litany
of all the trouble in the world.
What’s really drawn my attention, though,
is what we’re learning about the most recent
political shootings.
I hate that school shootings
are being over shadowed
by political shootings
because we’re just used to them.
As we’re learning more about
the motives and happenings of
the assassination of Charlie Kirk
and the attack on an ICE detention facility
and as Luigi Mangione is back in the new
I’m seeing something,
if only through a glass dimly.
Not excusing their violence,
it is seeming to me that they acted
because they’ve been left behind.
Mangione seems to have been very specific
as he targeted an insurance executive.
The other two, though,
with their engravings on their shell casings
seem to have done it in part
for the lulz.
None of the seems to have
a partisan, philosophical, coherent
political position or reasoning.
After reading Elle Reeve’s
Blackpilled —
and preaching about it at Easter —
it rang true to me that these young men
are mad that people care about society
mad at people who are working for change.
They’re mad because they’ve been left behind
and their cynicism has won out.
“Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory,
and lounge on their couches,
and eat lambs from the flock,
and calves from the stall.”
It is easy and right to point out
how these actors of violence
have so many legs up
compared to everyone else in the world,
especially as white American men.
As the saying goes,
when you’re accustomed to privilege,
equality feels like oppression.
Meanwhile unionized Starbucks employees are being fired
because the company is allegedly not doing well.
The CEO commutes via private jet
and made $96 million last year.
We know, right in our church,
how the demonic project of mass deportation
is impacting people truly on the margins.
With the announcement of potential troops in Portland,
I’ve already started praying for one of you
in case you decide you need to go join
a black bloc contingent.
I could choose cynicism.
I could lean toward apathy
and give up
and join the reveling.
That’s not my vocation,
and it’s not the call God has given us as Christians.
I point us to our Biblical texts being about God
because the ancient words,
passed down from generation to generation
have been the source of hope and comfort
for millenia of Christians
and our Jewish siblings.
Last Sunday night Brandon and I watched
the smash K-Pop Demon Hunters,
and I was struck by this line:
“That’s the funny thing about hope.
Nobody else gets to decide
if you feel it.
That choice belongs to you.”
I have hope
because Christ is risen from the dead,
trampling death by death,
and upon those in the tombs
bestowing life.
We have hope because as Jesus points out
God has never left us to our own devices.
The unnamed rich man
wants Lazarus to go warn his brothers
and Abraham says they already have the prophets.
We have the words of Amos.
The psalmist tells us,
about God, not us,
“The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind;
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
The Lord loves the righteous;
the Lord cares for the stranger;
he sustains the orphan and widow,
but frustrates the way of the wicked.”
We turn away, and our love fails,
but God’s love remains steadfast.
As Paul writes to Timothy,
Jesus’ full reign will be made manifest
at the right time
by the Lord of all creation,
who rules over every earthly ruler
the sovereign of all
whose power does not pass away.
That’s the funny thing about hope.
Nobody else gets to decide
if you feel it.
That choice belongs to you.
Amen.