That's What She Said

We kick off our Holy Week with readings from the Gospel of Luke and thoughts on the politics of protest from Lead Evangelist Rev. Dr. Katie Hays, and a meditation on friendship gone wrong from Apprentice Evangelist Remi Shores.

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The restoration. So much of this book is deeply unpleasant – God’s anger unto wrath, the notion that God pulls geopolitical strings to punish and reward – but Jeremiah is clear that God’s punishment is for the sake of the people’s restoration, rather than an end in itself. We can reject (or at least question) the notion that God is orchestrating global events to teach anybody a lesson, but still take the promise of our “return” and the language of “new covenant” as a promise for us. 

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The economy of rest. In the middle of all the devastating geopolitical conflict, with intra-Judah political conflict and Jeremiah’s own life often in danger, comes a rant about the people’s failure to hallow the Sabbath – like, just take a day off. It’s that damned economic pressure, and the lie that we cannot “afford” to rest. The flourishing God has in mind for God’s people will not come because they work incessantly; it will come when they have enough trust in God to actually lay down their burdens every once in a while.

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The sorrow. Jeremiah expresses the ache of the heart that accompanies his visions. He both understands how things ought to be; and how very far reality is from God’s ideal. Theologians surmise that “the weeping prophet” (as Jeremiah is called) is actually God’s emotional surrogate, expressing the deep grief of God’s own heart at the brokenness of the world God loves.  

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The Indictment. Among other things, Jeremiah indicts Judah (on God’s behalf) for their economic practices – not just individual offenses committed against the poor, but an economic system that favors the rich and ignores (or tramples) the needy. And the religious establishment supports it all (v. 31). Watch out, says the prophet! It is appalling! Like, God seems *actually* shocked. There’s just not too much that makes God mad like this.

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The call. Jeremiah has a famous call narrative. It comes in a very specific historical period; God’s work is never in the abstract but always deeply situational/contextual. This call includes the instruction to “gird up your loins” (v. 17), and surely there are generalizable instructions here for all who heed God’s call to purposeful living: “Why am I here? What am I for?” We are not all prophets like Jeremiah, but we are all invited to participate with God in our specific time and place.

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The Centurion’s Pais. Oh this is a hard story, given all that we now know about enslavement, about sex between slaveowner and enslaved person, about power differentials… Does Jesus know these things? Is it a lovely story about queer love, or a painful story about Jesus’s tacit endorsement of a caste system? How do we recover a story like this from under layers of new understanding? What does it mean for us now? Could a sermon be a teaching opportunity for critical thinking/reading that is still faithfully exploring Jesus’s identity? Like, “Here is reading #1… here is reading #2… here is reading #3… here is what it means to receive the complications and confusion without losing your mind or your faith…”

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A Life Well-Lived. Someone said about Betty White, “Live your life so that when you die at 99, they will say it was too soon.” I say about Dan Patrick, “Live your life so that when you get Covid, no one will rejoice over your suffering and hope for your demise.” These little picture-stories from Jesus are about the quality of a life well-lived on the foundations of his example – what does it look like? In whom, other than him, have we seen it? Also, we dedicated a baby this Sunday!

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Blessings and Woes, Love and Hate. There’s an economic punch in the Sermon on the Plain – “blessed are the poor/hungry; woe to the rich/well-fed.” But there’s also this reputational component – do people speak well of you (woe!), or defame your character (bless!)? The relationship between those two is worth exploring, as we (still) tend to villainize the poor and assume good things about the wealthy. I don’t mean the super-wealthy – just the normally wealthy, as if they followed the rules and worked hard and blah blah blah. This is the lie of capitalism – that good people can prove their goodness by working the system to their advantage. Jesus calls bullshit.

New Wine, New People, New Practice. Levi throws a party for Jesus; it makes people mad. Jesus eats and drinks all the time; it makes people suspicious. He’s experiencing too much joy with all the wrong people, and religion shouldn’t feel that way? His metaphor about wine and wineskins means new people, new practice. “It’s supposed to be delicious, you dingbats.” 

To tell us your thoughts on this sermon, click through to the web posting and leave us a comment. Or, find us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Or, email us the old-fashioned way: [email protected]. To contribute financially to the ongoing ministry of Galileo Church, find us on Venmo, Patreon, or PayPal, or just send a check to 6563 Teague Rd., Fort Worth, TX 76140.