St. John’s Episcopal Church
Tallahassee, FL
Micah 6:1-8
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12
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Right now, we are smack in the middle
of the season after the Epiphany:
a season in which
we see Jesus’ miracles
and realize he’s no ordinary man;
a season in which
we hear Jesus’ teachings
and realize he’s not just offering advice.
In all his early ministry,
Jesus sought to reveal
to us and to his disciples
who God really is,
who God means us to be,
and exactly what kind of Kingdom
God is bringing
into this world.
But be ye warned, my friends,
for anytime God starts to tell the truth
about how things are supposed to be,
things are going to get
really uncomfortable, really fast.
Why?
Because, it turns out
the Kingdom God is bringing
is a Kingdom so diametrically opposed,
so inconceivably upside down,
from just about everything
we want to believe
that it cannot help but unsettle us.
We see this in all our readings today . . .
from the prophet Micah,
to the apostle Paul,
to Jesus himself.
Let’s dig in.
* * *
Micah comes in hot today, declaring,
“The Lord has a controversy
with his people!”
In Hebrew, that word “controversy”
is akin to “lawsuit.”
God is taking his own people to court.
What’s the charge?
The charge is that
they have gone way off the track
and completely forgotten what it is
that God desires from them.
Micah is not railing against atheists or outsiders;
he—and God—are furious with God’s own people,
particularly those in power.
Oh sure,
they’ve been doing all the right things
in terms of appearances.
They’re keeping their services.
They’re offering their sacrifices.
They’re proclaiming their prayers.
They’re saying all the “right” things.
But scratch just below the surface,
and what you quickly find is that
they’re masquerading their faith
as a cover for their cruelty.
They’re crushing the vulnerable.
Seizing their homes.
Pushing aside the poor.
Pandering to the rich.
And all under the assumption
that God is on their side . . .
or can at least be bought off.
But God makes clear
through the voice of Micah
that what God wants
is not their
glory,
power,
righteous,
certainty,
perfection,
or control . . .
not rivers of oil
or burnt offerings . . .
not better vestments,
or shinier trinkets.
No.
Instead,
“he has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice,
and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?”
That’s it.
That’s the reversal.
It was a reversal in Micah’s time,
and it’s a reversal now.
Because somehow
we still fall into the trap of believing
that what God wants from us
is strength,
and success,
and visible righteousness
worn on our sleeves,
all while we forget those
(or worse, harm those)
who are the least among us.
But Micah
and all the prophets before him
tell us otherwise.
What God wants is alignment:
lives shaped by mercy
and faith that shows up
in how we treat
the most vulnerable:
people like
the widow,
the orphan,
and the foreigner in our midst.
This is not a suggestion.
This is the plea and decree
straight from the heart of God.
* * *
Fast forward, then, about 800 years,
and the apostle Paul takes that reversal
and sharpens it further
in his first letter to the Corinthians,
hanging everything on the cross of Jesus.
“The message of the cross,” he says,
“is foolishness.”
More reversal.
To a world that prizes
efficiency,
dominance,
subjugation,
power,
and winning,
Paul knows that
a crucified Messiah
makes no sense at all.
What many Christians wanted then
and what many Christians still want now
is a warrior king . . .
a strongman Messiah
who conquers,
and prevails,
and overturns the world
with strength
and force
and might.
But pay close attention, O Christian,
to what God gives us instead.
When God finally chose
to reveal his truest nature to us,
what he gave us instead
was his Son:
is a poor itinerant rabbi
strung-up on a tree.
Prince of Peace.
Healer of the sick.
Friend of the poor.
Executed by the state
as a common criminal
for proclaiming a Kingdom
built on love
instead of might.
Jesus literally put his body
between ours
and the forces of sin,
and dominance,
and empire,
and evil,
and shame.
To the logical human eye,
it makes no sense . . .
and that, says Paul,
is the point.
God intentionally chooses
what is weak and overlooked—
what the world dismisses
as ineffective,
expendable,
stupid,
and small—
so that none of us
could ever boast or pretend
that our place
in this world or the next
was ever earned.
Instead,
it was given.
Poured out.
Freely.
Not as punishment.
Not as retribution.
But as unmerited love.
Full stop.
* * *
Which lands us finally
on today’s reading from the Gospel,
in which Jesus begins
the Sermon on the Mount.
Today, Jesus climbs high up on the hill
so everyone in earshot can hear him,
and he proclaims the Kingdom out loud.
Blessed are the who?
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are who?
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
To be clear,
these are not instructions
for becoming blessed.
These are revelations
of who God already sees,
who God already draws near to,
who God already clings to
and calls his own.
This is the great reversal
at the heart of our Christian faith.
What Jesus is telling us
is that the Kingdom of God
is already present
(always has been!) . . .
it’s just never where the world
has trained us to look.
* * *
Which brings us unavoidably
to today . . .
to this moment,
in this world,
and the reality in which
we find ourselves living
in this present age.
I want to say this carefully and clearly.
What we are living through right now
is not first a political crisis.
I know it seems like it is,
because politics is power,
and the world has always taught us
that power is the only fix
for all our woes.
But politics are weak,
and they are petty,
and they are small.
What we are living through
is a human crisis,
and for those of us
who go by the name Christian,
it is a baptismal crisis as well.
Citizens have been killed.
Families are being torn apart.
Fear is being weaponized.
Human beings and their children
(often not “the worst of the worst”)
are being rounded up
and reduced to problems
rather than held as neighbors.
In times like these,
the Gospel does not give us
the luxury of abstraction,
and our baptism
presses the question
we would rather avoid:
If God is who we say he is,
then what does it mean
for the Church to be credible?
Because I gotta tell you,
Christianity has been facing
a real crisis of credibility
for years now.
For the Church to be credible,
we have no choice:
we must refuse to confuse
strength with righteousness
and cruelty with order.
The cross tells the truth about power.
God does not save the world by domination,
but by self-giving love.
Otherwise, we are not who we say we are.
For the Church to be credible,
we have no choice:
we must insist that no human being
is disposable,
inconvenient,
or beneath dignity.
Jesus’ teachings—
including the Beatitudes—
are not sentimental.
They are specific.
They bless the ones
the world teaches us to throw away.
Otherwise, we are not who we say we are.
For the Church to be credible,
we have no choice:
we must tell the truth about suffering,
even when it unsettles us,
even when it costs us,
even when it makes us afraid.
Micah makes it clear,
and the prophets of old all agree:
justice cannot remain theoretical,
and humility does not mean silence
in the face of actual harm.
Otherwise, we are not who we say we are.
* * *
For you and me at St. John’s,
this, my friends, is what it looks like
when deep roots,
true belonging,
and abundant grace
are more than just a slogan
we slap on the back of our bulletins.
Deep roots
mean we are anchored
not in nostalgia or control,
but in the strange,
stubborn,
foolish wisdom
of the cross.
True belonging
means the Beatitudes shape
who is at home here
and in the world we seek to build:
a place for the outcast and the searching
as much as for the accomplished and the strong.
Abundant grace
means we refuse to ration compassion
as if mercy were a scarce commodity,
and we believe that God’s economy
runs on generosity rather than fear.
If the Church is to be credible,
we cannot bless what God has named unjust;
we cannot remain silent
where Jesus has spoken;
and we can never forget who we are
as those who have pledged our lives
to the Prince of Peace.
* * *
My friends, this is a season
of epiphany and revelation—
not just liturgically, but existentially—
in which the true nature of God
is still being revealed
by his confessing Church
and the least powerful of our society.
The prophets were not fortunetellers;
they were tellers of the truth.
The apostles were not fools;
they were proclaimers of grace.
The Beatitudes are not naïve;
they are demanding, and they are brave.
All of them, and hopefully all of us,
tell the truth about the Kingdom
that God has already brought near.
Some say this moment
is solely about politics,
but that is merely
the ignorance of the world
speaking once again,
for they see only in part.
For us, my friends,
this is about your baptism.
This is about your humanity.
This is about
the weakness and wisdom
of the true cross of Christ
and what it means for a people
in real pain and need.
For the cross is utter foolishness
to the powers of this world,
but for us,
it has always been
the only thing
worth clinging to.
Amen.