A Meditation on Matthew 11
And the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution (Part Two)
And the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution (Part Two)
Sunday, July 5, 2026
1.
This quote in your bulletin this morning, words of the indominable Gangulu and Aboriginal organizer Lilla Watson, seems to me a potent reminder of what’s a stake in every democratic project. Every one. “If you have come to help me,” she says, “you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” If you have come because your liberation, your freedom, even your salvation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the teachers, friends, mentors who’ve shaped my ministry and nurtured my faith, really, over many years. And every one of them has fused in their own spirit these two things: Christian discipleship and democratic commitment. Wherever it is they live and serve. Christian discipleship and democratic commitment. Or to put it in a different way: obedience to Jesus and servant leadership.
I’m thinking about my friend Zoughbi Zoughbi in Bethlehem, Palestine; and the bright light in his soul that has outlasted imprisonment and violence and now shines in a land of shadows. I’m thinking about my friend Taj Smith, black and beautiful and trans; and the faith in his eyes that continues to find friends, allies, beloved community in a world that can seem organized against his very survival. And I’m thinking about my friend John Thomas, once the President and General Minister of our United Church of Christ; and how it is that John spends his 80s now organizing labor unions and undocumented immigrants in some of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.
Every one of these friends chooses every day to follow Jesus. Not a smug, triumphalist Jesus. Not a festishized, European superhero. But a storyteller who invites moral and spiritual imagination. And a teacher who offers a practice of risky nonviolence and lovingkindness. And, yes, Jesus, a savior, whose mercy is not to be claimed by victors at the end of battle, but to be shared in reconciled and reconciling communities. By peoples of all genders and orientations. By children of all nations and faiths. For Zoughbi, for Taj, for John, and now, for me too, Christian discipleship has everything to do mutual liberation. Following Jesus, loving Jesus, means taking Lilla Watson seriously, and recognizing in the vulnerability of queer kids my own fragile future, and living my life in solidarity with Palestinian resisters and Jewish prophets of peace, and peoples across this continent striving for justice together. On a radically decolonized Turtle Island.
So let’s talk democracy for a moment, on this July 5, this day after the semiquincentennial. Because we’ve missed the mark, I think, if we imagine and then defend democracy as a system of protections designed only to make possible individual achievement and family, generational wealth. It’s not that. And don’t we see a bizarre manifestation of this capitalist sin in the White House itself these days?
And we miss the mark, I think, if we engage democratic traditions only insofar as they safeguard our tribe’s traditions, our people’s power, our nation’s control over economies and landscapes. To be clear, this is the crisis of white supremacy and Christian nationalism in this land. And in others too. And it’s a betrayal of both religious tradition and democratic values as well.
And indeed we miss the mark, I think, if we interpret democracy itself as a cut-throat battle for riches, as a pull-no-punches fight for survival. Mine against yours. The city against the heartland. Democrats against Republicans. Left against Right. Where salvation is nothing other than a bulked-up bank account, a stake in the hottest tech market, and a plan for a Mars get-a-way. When the planet falters.
2.
Instead, and this is where Lilla Watson and other indigenous teachers come in, we can and we must reclaim the dynamic (and let’s be honest, almost theological) vision of democracy itself. That on this planet, on this continent, and within every imaginable watershed, our liberation, our freedom, even our salvation is bound up with one another’s. And that, I’d suggest this morning, on the day after our semiquincentennial, that is the most compelling democratic insight of them all. And one we would do well to embrace anew. And teach to our children. And make the core curriculum of every church, synagogue, mosque, university and public school.
In the 60s Martin Luther King said: “Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” And it seems to me now, sixty years later, that we either believe in this as a democratic nation, or we don’t. We either commit to this vision of shared responsibility in a common future, or we don’t. And if we don’t, we should expect the democratic experiment itself to die.
And to this point, Dr. King said: “As long as there is poverty in this world, no [one] can be totally rich even if [they have] a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no [one] can be totally healthy, even if they just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America.” In other words, my friends, our liberation is always mutual liberation. And our youth saw this up close in the desert, at the border, last month. And those of who visit and advocate at the jail, in detention centers every week—you see it there. As along as racism poisons the blood of our politics, we are all sick. As long as capitalism drives the rich to abandon the poor, we are a house divided.
But democracy is, democracy should be a thick matrix of practices, in an interconnected web of communities, that make us whole. That imagines mutual liberation. That invites and insists on sacrifices of the heart for the common good. And again, we can and we must embrace these practices anew. We can and we must teach them to our children. And we can and we must make them the core curriculum of every church, synagogue, mosque, university and public school.
3.
What Jesus brings to the table this morning is both provocative in a sense, and reassuring in another. And these two modes in his teaching, in his gospel, come together powerfully in the text this morning, as well as in John Thomas’s “Confession” for the semiquincentennial, a confession we’ll read together in just a few moments. Jesus provokes and he reassures. Jesus unsettles and defies our expectations, and then comforts and uplifts. And this, my friends, is Jesus at his best.
He’s provocative as he insists that communities of faith are easily fooled, that we can too quickly dismiss the call to discipleship, the sacrifice required of the faithful. He asks: “To what will I compare this generation? It’s like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you didn’t dance; we wailed, and you didn’t mourn.’” In other words, you got so tangled up in the machinations of the marketplace, or the angst of having it all, that you missed the whole point: which is committing your energies and prayers to the kin-dom of God, to the great feast of creation’s abundance and glory. “‘We played the flute for you, and you didn’t dance; we wailed, and you didn’t mourn.’” Tangled up in the machinations of the marketplace.
Lilla Watson and Martin King might put it this way: that we too often settle for a version of faith that conforms too easily to the status quo, that settles for capitalism as Truth, and fear and loathing as necessary protections. In a world where the market is God and violence sacramental. And in so settling, we miss the consequential and costly call to discipleship, community and (most importantly) mutual liberation. “We played the flute for you, and you didn’t dance; we wailed, and you didn’t mourn.” And Jesus gets at just this this morning, urging his generation, and ours, to listen carefully, take the gospel deeply into our hearts, and respond generously and bravely. To his voice, his call. “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens…”
Now the clue to this particular text, to its meaning and its purpose in Matthew’s gospel at least, is in those three precious, familiar, even intimate words. “Come to me.” “Come to me.” It’s the call to discipleship, my friends. With Jesus, it’s always the call to discipleship.
This is the same Jesus who says, “Come to me,” and then teaches his friends to turn the other cheek when struck, bear witness in that moment to a better world, and love their enemies. This is the same Jesus who says, “Come to me,” and then insists we find him not in temples and sanctuaries, but in prisons, detention centers, field hospitals and nursing homes. This is the same Jesus who says, “Come to me,” when his friends are overwhelmed by the hunger of the poor, by their misery far from home, and then teaches his friends to break bread, and bless it all gladly, and then to feed the many with holy human hands and bread that satisfies. “Come to me.”
So here, in the eleventh chapter of the gospel, very close to the fulcrum of the whole story, Jesus again calls you and me, and new friends too, to follow him on a perilous road in a bewildering world. The Roman Empire then. American Nationalism. Israeli Apartheid. Homophobic Fundamentalism. Now. Wherever frightened, anxious souls in frightened, anxious systems scapegoat this group or that one in the name of security or Making Someplace Great Again.
4.
“Come to me,” he says. “Take my yoke,” he says. “Learn from me,” he says. And I need look no farther than the third or fourth pew this morning to see what this looks like. Because I find among us, among you, a sign of such faithfulness, a pattern of discipleship in this little corner of the kin-dom.
That some of you—and this happens nearly every Sunday—that some of you leave worship, take the steps down to the basement, and then visit with Antony before heading home. It’s kind of like an extension of our liturgy. And your visits are something like holy communion for Antony, and for you too, I imagine. Laughter and hugs. Sharing and musing and wondering what in the world comes next. Signs of your faithfulness, but even more: discipleship, lovingkindness, and our common commitment to mutual liberation. “If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together…” What Antony has taught us. Threads you have now stitched into the garment of this congregation’s faith.
So if Jesus aims to provoke, if he intends to shake us up a bit, and I’m quite sure he does, he’s equally pastoral in this text today. This is God’s love embodied. This is God’s mercy made flesh. Because Jesus understands, deeply and tenderly, the agony of the oppressed and the angst of their allies. If you’re lying wide awake at night grieving for immigrants detained and the rule of law betrayed, Jesus grieves with you. If you’re aching for climate change and species lost to human avarice and violence, Jesus aches with you. He feels in his divine heart our ambivalence as the work gets harder, and the Sisyphean exhaustion of politics in an age of fascism and ethnonationalism.
So Jesus leans in, God’s love embodied, he leans in and he says: “Come to me.” And he’s speaking to you personally, o yes, this is a personal address, an intimate invitation. And also to the church. And also to the planet. “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Peace. Salaam. Shalom. Jesus grieves with us, he aches with us, he feels in his heart our ambivalence, our exhaustion. But he does not yield to despair. And he does not give up on you or me or our common future.
I’m remembering my dear friend Zoughbi Zoughbi in the West Bank last summer, loading a bus of Palestinian women and taking a weary, exhausted community up into the hills above Bethlehem for an afternoon of fun. And there, at one of Palestine’s last, surviving vineyards, Zoughbi laid out, for all of us, a magnificent Palestinian picnic. His team of organizers grilled meats and veggies and feasted together with the women: women of all ages, almost every one of whom has lost someone dear of late. To violence. To poverty. To apartheid. And I remember the laughter among them; it was raucous, even holy laughter, at least some of which came at my expense, the geeky American pastor, as they relaxed together, told wild tales to one another, and then as they played several rowdy rounds of BINGO for imaginary prizes. My friends, if there’s a heaven, and I believe that there is, it has to be something like that picnic, that vineyard, that afternoon in Palestine.
And that’s the rest, that’s the renewal Jesus is offering here. That’s the peace Jesus extends to you and me, and all who carry heavy burdens. Wherever you or they may be. Peace. Salaam. Shalom.
5.
What this text is not—and again, today, on this weekend of our semiquincentennial—what this text is not is permission to withdraw. Justification for despair. Or a rationale that privatizes Christian faith and reduces Jesus to the role of spiritual conquistador or eschatological gatekeeper. What this text is not is a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for Christians. As if the point of this gospel is a promise of deliverance that frees the true believer from the wrath to come.
Instead, what Jesus is saying to the 21st century church—and you and me, today—is this. Come to me. Follow me. Make common cause with neighbors whose languages you struggle to understand, whose traditions befuddle you. Lose yourselves in the wild and godly diversity of your cities and towns. And surrender your fears at every border (real or imaginary) where refugees cross to new life. And where your future, your family’s future is revealed in dreams only God can dream.
What Jesus is saying to you and me today is this. Come to me. Follow me. Let’s build cities that honor public service as sacred and the common good worthy of our sacrifice. Let’s build villages that welcome strangers, their traditions and dreams, and weave the many into one body politic. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll discover that peace isn’t the absence of tension and conflict, but peace is the trust—the trust we build together, the commitments we make to one another, and a lived experience, a richly shared experience of mutual liberation. Peace. Salaam. Shalom.
And maybe, just maybe, ol’ Woody Guthrie’s words will guide us home again, together:
Nobody living can every stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land was made from you and me.
Amen and Ashe.
1.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the teachers, friends, mentors who’ve shaped my ministry and nurtured my faith, really, over many years. And every one of them has fused in their own spirit these two things: Christian discipleship and democratic commitment. Wherever it is they live and serve. Christian discipleship and democratic commitment. Or to put it in a different way: obedience to Jesus and servant leadership.
I’m thinking about my friend Zoughbi Zoughbi in Bethlehem, Palestine; and the bright light in his soul that has outlasted imprisonment and violence and now shines in a land of shadows. I’m thinking about my friend Taj Smith, black and beautiful and trans; and the faith in his eyes that continues to find friends, allies, beloved community in a world that can seem organized against his very survival. And I’m thinking about my friend John Thomas, once the President and General Minister of our United Church of Christ; and how it is that John spends his 80s now organizing labor unions and undocumented immigrants in some of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.
Every one of these friends chooses every day to follow Jesus. Not a smug, triumphalist Jesus. Not a festishized, European superhero. But a storyteller who invites moral and spiritual imagination. And a teacher who offers a practice of risky nonviolence and lovingkindness. And, yes, Jesus, a savior, whose mercy is not to be claimed by victors at the end of battle, but to be shared in reconciled and reconciling communities. By peoples of all genders and orientations. By children of all nations and faiths. For Zoughbi, for Taj, for John, and now, for me too, Christian discipleship has everything to do mutual liberation. Following Jesus, loving Jesus, means taking Lilla Watson seriously, and recognizing in the vulnerability of queer kids my own fragile future, and living my life in solidarity with Palestinian resisters and Jewish prophets of peace, and peoples across this continent striving for justice together. On a radically decolonized Turtle Island.
So let’s talk democracy for a moment, on this July 5, this day after the semiquincentennial. Because we’ve missed the mark, I think, if we imagine and then defend democracy as a system of protections designed only to make possible individual achievement and family, generational wealth. It’s not that. And don’t we see a bizarre manifestation of this capitalist sin in the White House itself these days?
And we miss the mark, I think, if we engage democratic traditions only insofar as they safeguard our tribe’s traditions, our people’s power, our nation’s control over economies and landscapes. To be clear, this is the crisis of white supremacy and Christian nationalism in this land. And in others too. And it’s a betrayal of both religious tradition and democratic values as well.
And indeed we miss the mark, I think, if we interpret democracy itself as a cut-throat battle for riches, as a pull-no-punches fight for survival. Mine against yours. The city against the heartland. Democrats against Republicans. Left against Right. Where salvation is nothing other than a bulked-up bank account, a stake in the hottest tech market, and a plan for a Mars get-a-way. When the planet falters.
2.
 |
| With Tarek Zoughbi, 2025 |
In the 60s Martin Luther King said: “Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” And it seems to me now, sixty years later, that we either believe in this as a democratic nation, or we don’t. We either commit to this vision of shared responsibility in a common future, or we don’t. And if we don’t, we should expect the democratic experiment itself to die.
And to this point, Dr. King said: “As long as there is poverty in this world, no [one] can be totally rich even if [they have] a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no [one] can be totally healthy, even if they just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America.” In other words, my friends, our liberation is always mutual liberation. And our youth saw this up close in the desert, at the border, last month. And those of who visit and advocate at the jail, in detention centers every week—you see it there. As along as racism poisons the blood of our politics, we are all sick. As long as capitalism drives the rich to abandon the poor, we are a house divided.
But democracy is, democracy should be a thick matrix of practices, in an interconnected web of communities, that make us whole. That imagines mutual liberation. That invites and insists on sacrifices of the heart for the common good. And again, we can and we must embrace these practices anew. We can and we must teach them to our children. And we can and we must make them the core curriculum of every church, synagogue, mosque, university and public school.
3.
What Jesus brings to the table this morning is both provocative in a sense, and reassuring in another. And these two modes in his teaching, in his gospel, come together powerfully in the text this morning, as well as in John Thomas’s “Confession” for the semiquincentennial, a confession we’ll read together in just a few moments. Jesus provokes and he reassures. Jesus unsettles and defies our expectations, and then comforts and uplifts. And this, my friends, is Jesus at his best.
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| The Prodigal, Hoffman |
Lilla Watson and Martin King might put it this way: that we too often settle for a version of faith that conforms too easily to the status quo, that settles for capitalism as Truth, and fear and loathing as necessary protections. In a world where the market is God and violence sacramental. And in so settling, we miss the consequential and costly call to discipleship, community and (most importantly) mutual liberation. “We played the flute for you, and you didn’t dance; we wailed, and you didn’t mourn.” And Jesus gets at just this this morning, urging his generation, and ours, to listen carefully, take the gospel deeply into our hearts, and respond generously and bravely. To his voice, his call. “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens…”
Now the clue to this particular text, to its meaning and its purpose in Matthew’s gospel at least, is in those three precious, familiar, even intimate words. “Come to me.” “Come to me.” It’s the call to discipleship, my friends. With Jesus, it’s always the call to discipleship.
This is the same Jesus who says, “Come to me,” and then teaches his friends to turn the other cheek when struck, bear witness in that moment to a better world, and love their enemies. This is the same Jesus who says, “Come to me,” and then insists we find him not in temples and sanctuaries, but in prisons, detention centers, field hospitals and nursing homes. This is the same Jesus who says, “Come to me,” when his friends are overwhelmed by the hunger of the poor, by their misery far from home, and then teaches his friends to break bread, and bless it all gladly, and then to feed the many with holy human hands and bread that satisfies. “Come to me.”
So here, in the eleventh chapter of the gospel, very close to the fulcrum of the whole story, Jesus again calls you and me, and new friends too, to follow him on a perilous road in a bewildering world. The Roman Empire then. American Nationalism. Israeli Apartheid. Homophobic Fundamentalism. Now. Wherever frightened, anxious souls in frightened, anxious systems scapegoat this group or that one in the name of security or Making Someplace Great Again.
4.
“Come to me,” he says. “Take my yoke,” he says. “Learn from me,” he says. And I need look no farther than the third or fourth pew this morning to see what this looks like. Because I find among us, among you, a sign of such faithfulness, a pattern of discipleship in this little corner of the kin-dom.
That some of you—and this happens nearly every Sunday—that some of you leave worship, take the steps down to the basement, and then visit with Antony before heading home. It’s kind of like an extension of our liturgy. And your visits are something like holy communion for Antony, and for you too, I imagine. Laughter and hugs. Sharing and musing and wondering what in the world comes next. Signs of your faithfulness, but even more: discipleship, lovingkindness, and our common commitment to mutual liberation. “If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together…” What Antony has taught us. Threads you have now stitched into the garment of this congregation’s faith.
So if Jesus aims to provoke, if he intends to shake us up a bit, and I’m quite sure he does, he’s equally pastoral in this text today. This is God’s love embodied. This is God’s mercy made flesh. Because Jesus understands, deeply and tenderly, the agony of the oppressed and the angst of their allies. If you’re lying wide awake at night grieving for immigrants detained and the rule of law betrayed, Jesus grieves with you. If you’re aching for climate change and species lost to human avarice and violence, Jesus aches with you. He feels in his divine heart our ambivalence as the work gets harder, and the Sisyphean exhaustion of politics in an age of fascism and ethnonationalism.
So Jesus leans in, God’s love embodied, he leans in and he says: “Come to me.” And he’s speaking to you personally, o yes, this is a personal address, an intimate invitation. And also to the church. And also to the planet. “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Peace. Salaam. Shalom. Jesus grieves with us, he aches with us, he feels in his heart our ambivalence, our exhaustion. But he does not yield to despair. And he does not give up on you or me or our common future.
I’m remembering my dear friend Zoughbi Zoughbi in the West Bank last summer, loading a bus of Palestinian women and taking a weary, exhausted community up into the hills above Bethlehem for an afternoon of fun. And there, at one of Palestine’s last, surviving vineyards, Zoughbi laid out, for all of us, a magnificent Palestinian picnic. His team of organizers grilled meats and veggies and feasted together with the women: women of all ages, almost every one of whom has lost someone dear of late. To violence. To poverty. To apartheid. And I remember the laughter among them; it was raucous, even holy laughter, at least some of which came at my expense, the geeky American pastor, as they relaxed together, told wild tales to one another, and then as they played several rowdy rounds of BINGO for imaginary prizes. My friends, if there’s a heaven, and I believe that there is, it has to be something like that picnic, that vineyard, that afternoon in Palestine.
And that’s the rest, that’s the renewal Jesus is offering here. That’s the peace Jesus extends to you and me, and all who carry heavy burdens. Wherever you or they may be. Peace. Salaam. Shalom.
5.
What this text is not—and again, today, on this weekend of our semiquincentennial—what this text is not is permission to withdraw. Justification for despair. Or a rationale that privatizes Christian faith and reduces Jesus to the role of spiritual conquistador or eschatological gatekeeper. What this text is not is a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for Christians. As if the point of this gospel is a promise of deliverance that frees the true believer from the wrath to come.
Instead, what Jesus is saying to the 21st century church—and you and me, today—is this. Come to me. Follow me. Make common cause with neighbors whose languages you struggle to understand, whose traditions befuddle you. Lose yourselves in the wild and godly diversity of your cities and towns. And surrender your fears at every border (real or imaginary) where refugees cross to new life. And where your future, your family’s future is revealed in dreams only God can dream.
What Jesus is saying to you and me today is this. Come to me. Follow me. Let’s build cities that honor public service as sacred and the common good worthy of our sacrifice. Let’s build villages that welcome strangers, their traditions and dreams, and weave the many into one body politic. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll discover that peace isn’t the absence of tension and conflict, but peace is the trust—the trust we build together, the commitments we make to one another, and a lived experience, a richly shared experience of mutual liberation. Peace. Salaam. Shalom.
And maybe, just maybe, ol’ Woody Guthrie’s words will guide us home again, together:
Nobody living can every stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land was made from you and me.
Amen and Ashe.
