Preached · March 17, 2024
Series · Forgive Us
Text · Matthew 11
Good morning. My name is Anthony. It's good to see you. It's good to hear you laugh and be here and be pleasant. It's a joy to be here too. I am a geriatric, and so I cannot help but love a BuzzFeed list. And so the BuzzFeed list that I'm going to inflict upon you today is expectations versus reality. So, Heidi, show us the first expectation: kids having fun with a sprinkler. Show us the reality: very grumpy kid. Show us the next expectation: a giant teddy bear, six and a half feet tall. Show us the reality: legs for days. I know the announcements mentioned there was a Tinder date. All right, next expectation: a beautiful dinosaur pillow. Show us the reality: there's a pillowcase, with the screen print. I'm sorry. Just—can you imagine?
So today we're going to talk about expectations and reality. Expectations about what John the Baptist hoped for, and the reality. We're going to talk about white Christian nationalism—and, you know, the opposite of that, like not being terrible. And we're going to talk about what to do about all of these things.
Matthew 11: John's question from prison
If you have a Bible, I invite you to flip it open or turn it on. We're going to be in the book of Matthew, chapter 11. The words will not be on the screen, so this is an invitation to download that Bible app. If you have to hit the Bible app and it's like, "We took this off your phone because you haven't used it in so long"—no shame. It will redownload. The wifi is fine. And you can go to the book of Matthew, chapter 11.
Matthew is one of the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So far in the book of Matthew, Jesus has given the Sermon on the Mount. He has started to do his itinerant ministry—he's traveling from town to town to preach the gospel, the good news. He's preaching and teaching and healing. And he has a cousin—probably like a cousin once removed, or a second cousin, or something like that—named John the Baptist, who is the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. John the Baptist was this fiery preacher who made the mistake of complaining about and prophesying against Herod, who was the sort of puppet king over Judea and Galilee. And John the Baptist finds himself in prison. So with that, we pick it up—Matthew 11, verse 2:
Now when John heard in prison about the things the Christ—aka, Jesus—was doing, he sent word by his disciples to Jesus, asking... —Matthew 11:2
John the Baptist is in prison. John had disciples. The idea of disciples was not unique to Jesus. Lots of rabbis had people that would come to them and say, "Let me learn to be like you, rabbi." And John the Baptist was one of those teachers who also had disciples. John goes to prison, and his disciples are like, "What do we do now?" Some of his disciples—like Andrew and Simon Peter—end up following a new rabbi named Jesus. Some of his disciples are the ones who are caring for John in prison. The way that prison worked in the Roman Empire is that the state, the empire, did not pay for your provision to live in prison. You depended on family, friends, or, in John's case, disciples to support you. If they don't show up, you die.
So John has disciples. John sends them and asks, through the disciples, verse 3:
"Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?"
Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another? So John has some doubts, and he's expressing these doubts. John's message was that after me, somebody would come who is greater than me, whose shoes I'm not even worthy to untie. And through the person who comes after me, that's when all of these big things will happen—we'll talk about those big things in a moment. And so John baptizes Jesus and says, this is the Lamb of God who's come to take away the sins of the world. John goes to prison. Jesus is doing his ministry. And now John is languishing in prison, asking, "What's going on?"
Verse 4—Jesus responds:
"Go, report to John what you hear and see. Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them. Happy are those who don't stumble and fall because of me."
Then John's disciples go—they go and report back to John. And Jesus speaks to the crowds, who were always following Jesus, and starts talking to the crowds about his cousin John. Verse 7: What did you go out to the wilderness to see?
John had a popular ministry. He was sort of like a freak-sideshow rabbi who was living in the desert, eating locusts and honey, and dressed in rough camel's hair. And people would go out and venture to see this guy yell and scream against the authorities and ask Philly Pinton. So Jesus says:
"What did you go out to the wilderness to see? A stalk blowing in the wind? What did you go out to see? A man dressed up in refined clothes? Look, those who wear refined clothes are in royal palaces. What did you go out to see?"
A little bit more context. What did you go out to see—a stalk blowing in the wind? Herod would distribute coins in his name, currency, and the symbol of the house of Herod was a stalk blowing in the wind. What did you go out to see? A stalk blowing in the wind? No—you didn't go out to see Herod. A man dressed up in refined clothes? No—John's dressed in camel hair, about the worst clothes you could possibly choose. Look, those who wear refined clothes are in their royal palaces—so we're still referring to Herod. No.
"What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you," Jesus says, "and more than a prophet. He is the one of whom it is written: Look, I'm sending my messenger before you, who will prepare your way before you."
So Jesus says that John is fulfilling the prophecy of the Hebrew prophet Malachi—that a messenger would come and prepare the way for the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one, who would come and fulfill all the promises, all the expectations of Israel. So Jesus continues, verse 11:
"I assure you that no one who has ever been born is greater than John the Baptist. Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."
You have to sort of jive with Jesus's logic here. Look, John's great. There's no one greater than him. He's the one in prison. And also, in Jesus's economy and Jesus's way of shaping the world, children are the most honored. The poor are the most honored. And so, yeah, John was popular and famous and managed to baptize a lot of people, and he's great, no doubt about it. And also, don't forget: the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Pay attention to verse 12—we'll stop right there for now, at verse 11.
John's message and messianic expectations
So John's in jail. John is seeing the ministry of Jesus—who some people are claiming to be the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one, the prophet who is to come to fulfill all of these expectations amid Israel's continued exile, continued oppression by the Roman Empire. John is languishing in prison, sees Jesus's ministry, and begins to wonder: maybe I was wrong. So he sends out disciples and says, "Are you the one? Because"—reading between the lines—"I'm not convinced." And Jesus responds: look at what's happening. Sick people aren't sick anymore. The poor are having good news proclaimed to them—which was Jesus's initial sermon, proclaiming good news to the poor. You make up your mind, John. Am I the one who's promised or not?
Clearly, from John's perspective, he's not convinced. He's in prison. John had a message about the Messiah that seems to be a little bit different than what Jesus is up to. So we'll flip back a few chapters to Matthew chapter 3, if you're willing to follow me there. Matthew chapter 3 is about John's message—Matthew 3, verses 5 through 12. I'm going to just sort of jump around a little bit. John says:
The angry judgment that is coming soon... the ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire. The one who is to come is going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and he will burn the husks with a fire that can't be put out. —Matthew 3
John's using this poetic image: there's judgment that is coming, and the ax will chop down all the things that are wrong with the world. So John has an image of the one who is to come—the one who comes after John, the one that John believes he is the messenger for, the forerunner for, the prophet in preparation of. The one who is to come, the Christ, the Messiah, is one who is going to burn it all down and start over again.
And this goes with this idea of messianic expectations, which we can't spend a lot of time on here. Messianic expectations are basically exploring what first-century Jews—Israelites living in Judea, Palestine, and the Diaspora spread around the Roman Empire—thought Messiah was going to do. And there are lots of different traditions being traced. You can follow the root of Jesse through the prophet Isaiah. You can talk about the heir to the throne of David through many of the prophets. You can talk about this anointed one who seems to be inhabiting the presence of Yahweh God, coming to Jerusalem, to Mount Zion, to reestablish a temple and a kingdom and a throne. All of these different, varying ideas in the Hebrew scriptures about the Messiah, about Christ, about the anointed one who is to come. And the expectations are that he's going to be a king like unto David—David, who took over Jerusalem and established the throne there, who prepared for the temple and made the temple a holy place. A Messiah who is going to finally end the exile. Yes, the Jews had been let go from Babylonian captivity, allowed to come back to Israel, and yet there's still an empire oppressing them. The Messiah would kick them out.
So John has this idea. And then Jesus shows up. And instead of taking names, he's preaching, healing. John's set on the Messiah coming as a cleaning force—to clear out the bad Israelites, the ones who weren't faithful, to kick out the Roman Empire, the soldiers and the centurions, to establish a new kingdom. But instead of building an army, Jesus is giving sermons. Instead of building an army, he's healing the centurion's servant. Instead of kicking out the religiously suspect and shaming the poor and getting rid of the tax collectors and the disabled, he's making friends with them. He's not casting out the soldiers. He's casting out demons and evil spirits instead. Jesus' primary message is about a kingdom—but it's not the kingdom that people expected, or even necessarily want.
The kingdom of heaven
So let's talk about the kingdom of heaven a little bit. The kingdom of heaven is the primary message that Jesus comes to proclaim. If you do a concordance search, or a search on BibleGateway.com or whatever, you'll see the word "kingdom" show up hundreds of times throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's the number one thing that Jesus is about.
Now, sometimes folks will say that the kingdom is not real. It's not physical. It's not political. They'll use words or sayings like "my kingdom is not of this world"—Jesus says this to Pontius Pilate on the day of his death—or "our citizenship is in heaven." Phrases, Bible verses like that. They'll say the kingdom of heaven is not a political or worldly or real or physical thing. That's a misunderstanding of what Jesus is up to, because Jesus is doing real, physical things that have political implications.
Now, it's a sort of backwards kingdom. It's a king with no throne. It's a land with no borders. It's owned by the poor—which should sort of be weird in our brains. Diseases are cured, and debts are forgiven, and the oppressed are liberated. The oppressors are converted. There are alternative economies. And it is really painfully slow—which actually is like a lot of government that we know of today, but it's slow on purpose, okay? It's like a mustard seed that very slowly grows into a plant. It's like yeast in dough that slowly works its way out. It's this intentionally, purposefully slow reality. And so Jesus comes and proclaims that God's rule, reign, will is breaking out of heaven onto earth. Other biblical writers talk about the idea of a new creation—that the creation is happening again, that all the stories of Genesis 1 and 2 are happening all over again in Jesus.
It has no standing army. It has no tax system. It doesn't seem to have much of a hierarchy. But it's real, it's physical, it's political, it's a threat to Rome—and it still requires power of some sort. Power is a necessity in order to make a difference in the world, but it's a power restrained by love. Martin Luther King Jr., of course, talks about this. He says:
Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. —Martin Luther King Jr.
Those ideas are what Jesus is up to when he is proclaiming and enacting a kingdom. So I want you to note, before we get too much further, that when we're talking about the kingdom of heaven, what we're talking about is not the absence of power or the absence of a political reality. The kingdom that Jesus is establishing is real and physical. It has political implications—implications on the ground, where people actually live today with their bodies. And it's a threat to the empire that Jesus is a part of, and that gets him killed. It gets Paul killed, and Peter killed, and the myriad of martyrs and disciples who are killed because they believed in this kingdom and were working to make it.
Violence and the kingdom
But John appears—again, reading between the lines—to be disappointed. Jesus brings up this idea: blessed is he, happy are those, who are not stumbling because of me. Jesus seems to note a hint of doubt in John's question. Are you the Messiah? Are you the one who was promised? Or should we be waiting for someone else? Because—again, reading between the lines—Jesus, I don't see the army. I don't see the sword. I don't see the throne. You're not charging Jerusalem. What's going on?
So Jesus brings up this really interesting point. This is back to our first passage, Matthew 11:
From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been treated violently, and violent men take it by force. —Matthew 11:12
Now, probably all of us have encountered violence in some real, handleable way. We've had friends who have suffered violence. Perhaps we have suffered violence. Emily and I—we've witnessed a shooting. I'm sure many of you have friends or acquaintances who have witnessed or been part of some sort of stabbing, mugging, violence in some way. You've experienced abuse. I want to name that: when we talk about violence, we're not talking about merely something many miles away, things that we've never seen. We're talking about things that we've seen. And Jesus is talking about things that are real, that we've seen.
Jesus is naming this reality: the kingdom of heaven is being proclaimed and enacted through Jesus and his disciples and through the ministry of John—and now, violence. John's thrown into prison. Probably not a great place. And violent men, violent people, are trying to co-opt this kingdom that Jesus is proclaiming and enacting, by violence and force. Some translations use this idea of plundering the kingdom—take all the good stuff that Jesus is up to, and then plunder it. And I wonder—there's a hint in my mind of, Jesus, who has Judas Iscariot there. And Judas Iscariot, we know, is in charge of the purse for Jesus and the disciples—which, by the way, is funded by women, wealthy women who are supporting Jesus. Judas gets it—that's right, women be repping. Judas gets a hold of the purse and starts taking the money, plundering it for himself. I think there's all sorts of hints going on here with Jesus' great violence. John, of course, is a victim of that violence. Herod doesn't want to upset the crowds who like Jesus, so he won't directly arrest Jesus at this point in Jesus' ministry—and so he gets a little bit of the fame and the glory for being so benevolent, to let Jesus do his thing and feed 5,000 and heal the people. Meanwhile, he puts John in prison and eventually has him decapitated.
From recipients of violence to baptizing the sword
And then, for the first 300 years or so, the Christians—the people who identified with the way of Jesus, variously known throughout Roman history as followers of the Way, or Galileans, followers of the Galilean—the Christians are the recipients of violence for about 300 years. They're the ones that when somebody picks up a stone to throw it, they get in the way. And so when there are refugees, the Christians are the ones who take them in. When there's a disease, they're the ones to create hospitals to care for them. The Christians are the recipients of the violence.
And then the Roman Empire stopped using its sword to control and beat down Christianity, but then starts using the sword to enforce Christianity, and the Christians of 300 and 400 AD are happy to—. The emperor becomes a Christian who doesn't put down the sword, but baptizes it instead. And so the Christians, who were known for power with—let us join with those who are on the margins of society and have power with, and create alternative communities and alternative economies so that everyone can flourish—instead became about power over. Instead of power plus love, that King talks about: power plus prejudice.
White Christian nationalism
So, what does this have to do with white Christian nationalism? White Christian nationalism is what happens when you combine power and prejudice with religious language and race, and then you give it power. And the time that we're living in right now is when that power begins to slip away. It's what happens when violent men try to take the kingdom of God and plunder it and make it theirs, by violence and force.
So let's give a technical definition. This comes from, well, a bunch of different books—I can give a bibliography. White Christian nationalism, number one, is a strong moral traditionalism based on creating and sustaining social hierarchies that revolve around race, gender, and sexuality. So it's about moralism, it's about tradition, and it's about making sure that people know their place—where they are in the strata of society, the layers of society. And this is based around race, gender, and sexuality.
Number two, it's about authoritarian social control. The world's a chaotic place, and at times society needs strong rules and rulers to make use of violence, or at least the threat of violence, to maintain order. So it gives this sense of benevolence—we're just here to put things back in order—but it's using violence, or the threat of violence, and authoritarian social control to do everyone that so-called favor.
Number three, it's about strict boundaries around national identity, civic participation—like voting—and social belonging, that fall along ethno-racial lines. A quote-unquote "Christian nation" is generally understood to be one where white, natural-born citizens are held up as the ideal, and everyone else comes after.
Now, there is such a thing as Christian nationalism beyond just white folks. It can be a belief among Black folks and other people of color. But there's a massive difference between the political vision of white Christian nationalism and the other racial varieties. And the number one predictor of Christian nationalism that espouses violence and the reduction of rights is whiteness.
The deep story
So that's a definition. Now we've got to talk about deep story. Deep story is the sociological idea of a mythology that is born around your beliefs, to give those beliefs the idea of a historical root or basis to prop them up. So white Christian nationalism has a deep story, and it goes like this.
Number one: America was founded as a Christian nation, by white men, who were traditional Christians, who based the nation's founding documents on Christian principles. That is a core founding myth, or deep story, of white Christian nationalism. Now, there are hints, elements of almost-truth, in nearly every phrase in that paragraph. But it's enough to then twist it into something that's not actually true at all. And it leaves out a lot.
Number two: the U.S. is blessed by God, which is why it has been successful. Part of the deep story, part of the mythology. Why are we the largest economy in the world? Why do we have the largest military in the world? Why are we all of these things? Well, it's because we're blessed by God. And why are we blessed by God?
Point number three: because this nation has a special role to play in God's plan. A couple weeks ago I talked about dispensationalism—this particular way of reading the arc of scripture that leads towards an end-time scenario with Armageddon and all of those sorts of things, and a violent end to all of God's enemies. And dispensationalism, when it came to the United States, was taken up to mean the United States has a special place in God's plan. We become the main character of Hebrew Bible, Old Testament prophecy.
Number four: these blessings are threatened by cultural degradation from un-American influences.
So when your deep story, your mythology, has those four elements—we were founded as a Christian nation; we're blessed by God, that's why we're successful; the nation has a special role to play; but those blessings are at risk because they're threatened by un-American influences—then there is no cost too high to pay to reclaim America. And therefore: the kingdom of heaven has been treated violently, and violent men take it by force. Use religious language, equate America with the kingdom, and then take the language of Christianity, co-opt it for political power, and use violence to make it happen.
That's why there's this very fascinating thing happening in polls and religious surveys of America, where more and more non-Christians are identifying as evangelicals and Christian nationalists. Because identification has less to do with a theological vision of God and God's character, and more to do with a political vision of America. So if you're white, and your whiteness is threatened by un-American influences that threaten our place on the world stage—well then, sure, count me in as an evangelical, even though I don't believe in God or Jesus, or couldn't name you one theological truth. Count me in, because when I identify with good Christian people, they're going to have my back and make sure that I don't lose my place in society.
Jemar Tisby, a historian, says white Christian nationalism is the greatest threat to the witness of the church in the United States today—because the church is now just a tool and a weapon to enforce white supremacy, then you know the place where God will and good. Gorski and Perry, two sociologists that write about Christian nationalism, actually go far further than Tisby. They say this:
The United States cannot both be truly a multicultural democracy—a people of peoples and a nation of nations—and a white Christian nation at the same time. That is why white Christian nationalism has become a serious threat to American democracy, perhaps the most serious threat it now faces. —Gorski & Perry
Who wants to go back to the BuzzFeed articles at this point?
Patriotism versus nationalism
Now, in this room, watching online, there are lots of people in this church who love the United States—or, if you don't love it, at least you want to work to make it better. You work for improvement; you work for the rights of all, justice, all of that. You, too, probably have a political vision for America. And what we're not saying is—we're not preaching against patriotism. We're not preaching against the necessity of power and political reality in order to make people's lives better. Nationalists would love for you to believe that there's only one way to be a patriot. Jill Lepore writes this. She says:
Because it's difficult to convince people to pursue a course of aggression, violence, and domination, nationalists pretend their aims are instead protection and unity, and that their motivation is just simple patriotism. This is a lie. Patriotism is animated by love, and nationalism by hatred. To confuse one for the other is to pretend that hate is love and fear is courage. —Jill Lepore
So there are some differences between Christians who advocate to Make America Great Again and merely Christians advocating for justice. Some differences include:
Number one: as long as anybody is up for the work of bringing about justice, they can be part of God's work. They don't have to subscribe to the Apostles' Creed, or, you know, the "the Bible says it, that settles it, I believe it" sort of thinking. It is a pluralistic reality of what it means to implement good in society—as opposed to a Christian nationalist, who says Christians must be supreme.
Number two: hopefully you believe—we believe—that ends don't justify the means. If the means aren't just, if the ways of working towards justice aren't themselves just, then the ends inherently cannot be just either. That, of course, puts limits on—or entirely eliminates—violence and creating inequality as the means of creating justice. As opposed to a nationalist perspective that says: by any means necessary.
Number three: we believe here at The Table Church in collective liberation. No one's free until we're all free. If we believe in giving rights to immigrants and LGBTQ folks, and giving reparations to Black folks, then by doing so, that doesn't reduce the freedoms and rights of either natural citizens or straight cis people or those of European descent. When everyone prospers, everyone prospers. Your prosperity does not come at the cost of my rights. But a nationalist says: my rights, and mine alone.
And there are many kinds of Christians—it is common for many kinds of Christians—to put God's sovereignty as the most important aspect of God. Because God is sovereign, God can do whatever God wants and get whatever God wants to get. And this, unsurprisingly, forms and creates a certain kind of Christian that reflects that kind of God—where the ends justify the means, and there is no cost too high, if God is sovereign, to get what God wants. But if God is instead a God of love, and that has priority in her divine agenda, then that will just create a different kind of Christian—where love restrains power.
What do we do?
So, what do we do? A couple responses. Number one—as I was reflecting on all of this personally—it's my deep belief that Christian nationalists need to be saved too. I don't want to create a pariah or a boogeyman in my mind, some sort of evil person that I want to burn in. Christian nationalists often are our own family members, former friends, or neighbors, or people we went to college with, or people who work down the hall from us. And my belief is that they are in a domination system that's going to eat them from the inside out. My belief is that evil is self-defeating, and people who I love, who have been swallowed up by these lies, are going to be undone by that self-defeating evil. So even though they're willing to say the ends justify the means, eventually they too will find themselves sacrificed on the altar of someone else's power. So it's my belief that I have to work toward their liberation as well.
What do we do in an election year? We have to take action. But that action can and must happen in different ways. We can't all act in the same way in order to prevent the sort of nightmare scenarios of what happens when white Christian nationalists take charge.
The social change ecosystem
Deepa Iyer is part of an organization called the Building Movement Project, and she wrote about the social change ecosystem—ten roles necessary in building movements. I want to go through these quickly. You can think of it as an Enneagram for organizers: there are ten different possible roles where you can be part of building a movement for justice, but not everyone is doing the same thing.
The weavers are those who see the through-lines of connectivity between people, places, organizations, ideas, and movements.
Experimenters are those who innovate and pioneer and invent. They take risks, and they course-correct as needed. If you're familiar with APEST or the fivefold, these would be the apostolic.
You have the frontline responders—those who address community crises by marshaling and organizing resources and networks and messages. These are your type-A people who love a good spreadsheet. They're the ones who are showing up to do the work of care.
You have the visionaries, who imagine and generate our boldest possibilities, hopes, and dreams, and remind us all of our direction. Sometimes these are the bosses who are like, "I have a dream, and I don't know how I'm going to make it happen," and they drive other people nuts. But you need the visionaries to set a course of direction that we can implement.
Builders are those who develop and organize and implement the ideas and practices and people and resources in the service of a collective vision. Your visionaries and your builders are often the people who fight together the most, but they're both the most necessary.
You have caregivers, who nurture and nourish the people around them by creating and sustaining a community of care and joy and connection.
The disruptors, who take uncomfortable and risky actions to shake up the status quo, to raise awareness, and to build power.
The healers, who recognize and tend to the generational and current traumas caused by oppression—oppressive systems, institutions, policies, and practices.
The storytellers, who craft and share our community stories, cultures, experiences, histories, and possibilities through art, music, media, and movement.
And the guides, who teach, counsel, and advise, giving gifts of well-earned discernment and wisdom.
All ten of these are centered around equity and liberation and justice and solidarity—which, those four words are an awful lot like the mission and vision of The Table Church. We need everybody to be participating in their role, so that we can move toward the vision that we want to see, so that we can move towards collective liberation for all, so that we can work towards the renewal of all things.
So, to try and summarize a little bit: we need to care for those who have been lost to the vision of Christian nationalism. We need to play our own role. And then we need communities of connection and protection—things like mutual aid, and safety circles, and small groups, Safe Outside the System, which is part of the Audre Lorde Project—how do you provide care and protection without using the police, particularly if you're a person who is in a body that the police might see as a big threat? This is why churches have historically done things like small groups—not just as a way to have a nice dinner together, but: when the sky does start falling, whose number will you call?
One more word of hope
Now, I offer one more word of hope. It comes from Luke 17:
The Pharisees asked Jesus when God's kingdom was coming. He replied, "God's kingdom isn't coming with signs that are easily noticed. Nor will people say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' Don't you see? God's kingdom is already among you." —Luke 17
God's kingdom is already among you. This is the thing that requires faith, and some hope, to actually believe and then to put into practice: that God's kingdom is not going to happen by storming the Capitol building. God's kingdom is going to happen when we care for each other well, and, because we care for each other well, we care for those outside these walls well. The church is a colony of heaven among an empire of death. When we say our citizenship is not of this world, that doesn't mean we're hoping to escape this world. It means that we are joining in God's already active work of renewal—that heaven is making inroads to this planet. It means that we believe that God is already up to new creation. 2 Corinthians says: if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. New creation is here already. The old things are going away, and look—everything is becoming new.
So our job isn't to do this work alone. It's to see where God is already at work and to join in. We're not alone, and it's not all up to us. We trust in God's millennia-old work of making beautiful things out of the ashes.
Closing prayer
Would you pray with me?
Messiah, Christ, anointed one—sometimes we, too, are like John, and we come asking you: are you really it? Is this all we have to hope for? Because sometimes, Jesus, we'd love for you to also pick up the sword, to also make things happen faster, to also just put up blocks and boundaries and get rid of all of the things that are out to hurt us and harm us. But Jesus, may we rather instead see your work—healing and preaching good news to the marginalized—and join in. May we see your kingdom without a throne, and your land without borders, and your new kind of economy, as a place worth investing in, inviting others into, and not giving up hope.
God, there are those out in the world that would dare to use your name to cause harm. May we be bold enough to say no, stop—and to get in the way. May we be the bane of any system of harm, of any people who would try to use your name. And God, may we be a place instead in the things life. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
