A Sermon preached at Edenton Street UMC on November 10, 2024
Isaiah 49:8-13; Matthew 20:29-34
Before I begin, let me say that I have prayed, deliberated, and lost sleep over this day and this service. There is a temptation for preachers in the face of what we might call those “elephant in the room” moments in history. The temptation is to say everything or to say nothing. The temptation is to steer carefully and say little or steer clear allowing silence to deafen. The temptation is to speak easy to sooth and calm when what is called for is truth spoken in love. Today I am striving to avoid those temptations. As one additional word of explanation about how I approach the preacher’s task – today and every Sunday I do my best to immerse myself in God’s Word, listen to God in prayer, discern our shared context as a church and larger community, and attempt to let the fullness of God’s power and love use me in some small way – knowing all too well I am human and that, to use Paul’s image, I am a clay pot that is fragile, sometimes spinning, often stressed, regularly hopeful, and striving to be supple enough to be of some small use as one vessel among many in the Potter’s hands. With that said … I invite you to reflect and read together with me our fourth and final core value:
Compassionate: We care deeply for each other and our world. We seek to follow Christ’s example of how to act justly, forgive freely, walk humbly, listen respectfully, and give generously. We seek to express our gratitude for God’s many gifts by sharing the message of Christ and actively serving one another and our neighbors with joy, warmth, and kindness.
Sisters and brothers in Christ – we need to talk. It is time to have a sit down for all who want to claim the name Jesus. I know we just read that core value. Months ago, when the language was being prayed over, discerned, discussed, and composed, it may have seemed like a simple and straightforward thing to say and commit to as a people of faith. Today, for many if not most of us, it may seem impossible and unrealistic. “We care deeply for each other and our world.” But do we? It is only five days post-election and this value feels hopelessly aspirational and naïve to even attempt in our current American context. No matter who you voted for this past week, I don’t think anyone is under the illusion that this was a normal, policy driven election based on the merits of each candidate’s measured, thoughtful, and detailed plan to lead our country over the next four years. It was not.
Over 74 million people voted red and 70+ million voted blue, but as I have said – this was not a normal election – and I am quite sure all 144 million+ know that in their bones. No one expects that we will now just get up, go to work and to school, and do the next thing – business as usual. Regardless of whether you were relieved, thrilled and elated on Wednesday November 6th or if you were grieving to the point of despair and despondency that same day – we are a deeply divided country and I believe it would be spiritual malpractice to not name the spiritual malaise that is infecting and affecting the very heart of our nation.
Instead of saying “We care deeply for each other and our world,” it feels like both sides of this divide are shouting “we care deeply for ourselves, the people who think like us, and sometimes for the world when it also serves our best interest to do so.” Instead of saying we seek to follow Christ’s example of how to act justly,” it feels like some are saying “we will act out in anger and self-righteous indignation” and others are saying “we will act out in smug self-righteous satisfaction and arrogance.” As for the rest of that sentence in our core value? It appears that it is not time to forgive, it is time to fight. It is not time to walk humbly but lean harder into our opponents until they either succumb to our way of thinking or go away. It is not time to listen respectfully, it is time to retreat and withdraw in bewilderment and confusion or to gloat and poke in self-serving certainty. We are slow to listen and quick to post and publish online, joining the bots and algorithms that bathe us in creeds, rants, and diatribes to use any means necessary to prove we are right, holy, just and justified and others are just evil, stupid, blind, and ignorant. It is not time to give generously, it is time to circle the wagons, protect what is ours, and dispense compassion in very small doses and only to the right kind of people, you know, our kind of people.
Let me state the obvious, but maybe it is not obvious which is why I feel a deep need to say it: Trump is not Jesus, and neither is he satan – he is a man. Whatever else he is does not change that simple truth. Kamala is not the sole defender of the marginalized and mistreated, and neither is she a master deceiver extraordinaire – she is a woman. Whatever else she is does not change that simple truth. Let me go one step further. The red wave that swept through our nation this week is not the source of our collective salvation and it is not the “revival” of Christianity that many who claim the name of Jesus have asserted. The blue waves of the previous elections were not a sign of salvific progress, the answer to all human thriving, nor the quick fix for ending all racism, sexism, prejudice and systemic evil.
Trump is not Jesus, and neither is he satan – he is a man. Whatever else he is does not change that simple truth. Kamala is not the sole defender of the marginalized and mistreated, and neither is she a master deceiver extraordinaire – she is a woman.
Put another way, to the left the church might say today – “I have seen your Jesus, and I don’t recognize who he is.” The church might say to the right the very same – “I have seen your Jesus and I don’t recognize who he is.” Have any of you heard of the Jefferson Bible? It is also called “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, and was completed by Thomas Jefferson in 1820 by cutting and pasting, with a razor and glue, numerous sections from the New Testament. Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral teacher but was skeptical of supernatural elements in the Bible – miracles, the resurrection, claims of divinity – so those were the portions he cut out. He wanted a version of Jesus’ teachings that focused purely on ethics and practical morality, without the theological elements he found hard to accept.
Now most of us would never want to take a pair of scissors to any Bible, no matter how old or worn out it might be – but I wonder. I have long thought that is precisely what American Christians often do with our Bibles, at least in the ways we pick and choose what we want to read, focus on, pay attention to and heed. I remember the story Jim Wallis tells of the days when he first went to seminary and began a project with other students to identify all passages in the Gospels that dealt with the poor, the suffering and how we are to respond in the face of social injustice and oppression.
The students took him up on it and found 1000s in the first three Gospels. One out of every 10 verses. In the Gospel of Luke, it was one out of every 7 verses. Now try this one as a mental exercise – imagine doing what Jefferson did. Take out your imaginary scissors with me this morning and start cutting them all out, one by one. Old and New Testament. Your Bible would not just be full of holes, it would be unrecognizable and most like nothing but scraps of incoherent words with little context. Those Jim Wallis students then began to compare notes about the churches they attended and were active in – none of them had heard a single sermon about the poor in worship in the years they had been attending. Not one. They began to question why so many Christians avoid the hard passages – the uncomfortable passages – the stories that might call our apathy and our indifference into question. Maybe – just maybe – it is because we have our own spiritual scissors when it comes to the biblical Jesus. We keep the parts we like and conveniently set aside the parts we don’t.
Both of our biblical texts today demonstrate the very heart of God. Compassion is not just a core value that ESUMC ran across this past year and then arbitrarily decided to lift up for our shared consideration. No. It is the very heart of God. In Isaiah, we remember that God is moved with compassion when God sees our pain and our suffering. God sees and God acts. See, discern/judge, act. I was trained years ago a part of our UM Church’s National Plan for Hispanic Ministry to do those three things when I read Scripture and when I strive to follow Jesus when I see a fellow human being suffering. Ver, juzgar, actuar – see, judge/discern, act.
It also is a pattern in Matthew’s Gospel where we today encounter not the Jesus of Republicans, not the Jesus of Democrats nor the Jesus of any other political party or movement – but the biblical Jesus – and if you haven’t met him yet, I should warn you – buckle up. Over and over again in Matthew’s Gospel we hear about how Jesus “had compassion” and then he was immediately moved to act. The Greek word for compassion is splagchnizomai (σπλαγχνίζομαι) and it describes a deep, visceral feeling in one’s gut. It’s often translated as “to be moved with compassion” or “to feel sympathy,” but its meaning goes even deeper. The root of splagchnizomai refers to the internal organs, or “bowels,” which were thought in ancient times to be the center of emotions, especially love and compassion. So, to feel splagchnizomai means to be moved in the core of one’s being—to feel a powerful, gut-wrenching empathy that compels action.
Today I invite you to encounter not the Jesus of Republicans and not the Jesus of Democrats nor the Jesus of any other political party or movement – but the biblical Jesus – and if you haven’t met him yet, I should warn you – buckle up.
This term is used to describe the way Jesus feels when He encounters people who are suffering, lost, or in need. It signifies a compassion that is not detached or theoretical but intensely personal and physical—a love that feels the pain of others and leads to an active response. Jesus’ compassion is more than pity; it’s a profound, heartfelt connection with those in need, prompting him to heal, feed, and forgive.
In Matthew 9: 36 Jesus was traveling among all the cities and villages healing every disease and every sickness and “when he saw the crowds, he had “compassion for them because they were troubled and helpless,” and he acted looked to his disciples as leaders who could help and then also prayed to the Lord for even more workers for harvest. Ver, juzgar, actuar.
Matthew 14:13 Jesus withdrew in a boat but the crowds followed him. He “had compassion” and healed those who were sick, and when the disciples realized there were too many and it was getting late, Jesus saw, discerned, and acted again – feeding all five thousand rather than sending them away hungry.
Matthew 15: Jesus is again moved with compassion in his gut for the great multitude and feeds four thousand saying “they have been with me for three days and have nothing to eat … I will not send them away hungry” and he acts – feeding four thousand.
And here in Matthew 20, Jesus is at it again. The biblical Jesus. Not the one we have taken scissors to, but the real one who sees, who discerns, who acts – especially on behalf of those who are sick, those who are blind, those who are hurting, and those who are at the margins of our society and on the sides of our streets. Two blind me shout “show us mercy, Lord Son of David!” They, in their need, are shouting and perhaps disturbing and disrupting everyone else who have more important things to see, more important things to hear, and more important things to do. At least that is the way my bible reads … “now the crowd scolded them and told them to be quiet.” That caused them to shout all the louder. And what does the biblical Jesus do? He stopped in his tracks and asked, “What do you want me to for you?” “We want to see,” they replied.
The irony is – these two blind men, on a Palestinian road outside of Jericho, left to fend for themselves, judged by their peers and disdained by the crowds … these two blind men actually saw the real Jesus better than everyone else who were too busy scolding, too busy being self-focused, self-righteous, and self-important. They knew exactly who Jesus was and what Jesus could do – he could help them to see.
My prayer today is that God can do the same for us. Our God is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast mercy and love. God calls us to do the same. See, discern, act. Let us lay down our scissors, rediscover the biblical Jesus who calls us out of our darkness into his marvelous light, and live into the radical, difficult, counter cultural call to compassion – which also means that no matter hard it is to do – we will stive to act justly, forgive freely, walk humbly, listen respectfully, and give generously – God willing and the Lord being our helper.
I can’t leave you without sharing a word of hope from the Apostle Paul, as he wrote to a deeply divided people in Corinth: “Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. 2 We have renounced the shameful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God. … the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing clearly the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. … we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. 8 We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, 9 persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, 10 always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”[1]
Today, Jesus comes to us just as he did outside Jericho over 2000 years ago and he asks: “What do you want me to do for you?” I believe our answer should be the same as the two blind men on the roadside: “Lord, help us to see.” To paraphrase the prayer of Richard of Chester: O most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother, of you three things I pray: To see you more clearly, love you more dearly, follow you more nearly, day by day.
Amen.
[1] 2 Corinthians 4:1-12
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