PREACHING 2025: "When the Gospel Divides"

Bethlehem, West Bank, June 2025

Almost two months ago, during a busy and crowded Easter celebration at home, two couples left in protest (or maybe disinterest) during my sermon on resurrection and resistance.  I had recognized (with immense gratitude) the $6,000 contribution I was soon to deliver to friends and partners at Wi'am in the West Bank--funds raised to extend mental health programs for children and empowerment initiatives for women under occupation.  And I had noted that this gift represented love, even solidarity, for Palestinian Christians brokenhearted and grieving for a genocide in Gaza funded, in large part, by our American Congress.  Our friends in Bethlehem would be immensely grateful.

Wi'am receives CCD's gift!

In order for the four to leave--during my sermon--those sitting near them were asked to stand and offer safe passage, which of course they did.  But the quiet flurry of activity created a moment for curiosity and reflection, for a fairly polite congregation and its fairly ordinary pastor.  And understandably, said flurry saddened a few kind greeters at the back door.  Does any mention of unrest, genocide, dissent have a place in Christian worship?  On Easter Sunday?  Do friends who've made an effort to attend a special holiday service have a right to something less troublesome, less political, more satisfying and affirming?

Looking back at it now, I think these kinds of experiences are crucial, formative even, in the 21st century church.  Where the rubber hits the road, so to speak.  Not that I should aim to offend decent people, much less drive them from church (we seem to do enough of that already!)--but that the gospel should, from time to time, be so wildly committed to human well-being, so truthfully committed to divine mercy, so clearly on the side of human liberation, that it causes a stir.  That it moves a few among us to say, "What?"

Here's the part of that April 20 sermon that seemed to provoke a mini-rebellion:

My friend Ched Myers suggests that the collaboration of Roman and religious leaders in crucifying Jesus on Golgotha marks the culmination, the realization of a so-called “crucifixion economy.” It’s an appalling notion, and still prescient in a contemporary kind of way. This idea of a “crucifixion economy.” That is, in nailing Jesus to the cross—as it had done to so many other rabble rousers of that era—the empire sought once and for all to erase his vision of abundance and mutual aid, to silence his cry for forgiveness of debt and jubilee in the land. There’s something terribly familiar in all this. Right? For this “crucifixion economy” claims that scarcity is creation’s one and only natural law. Claims that poverty is a tragic necessity, a price to be paid for progress among the deserving. Claims that state violence itself protects the just from the unjust, and the wise from the foolish, and the keepers of the peace from the rabble rousers themselves.

So Jesus is executed then. His friends—though not the women in our story this morning—scattered. His practice of plenty for the poor and forgiveness for the indebted, snuffed out. For the common good. To Make America Great Again.

It's impossible, of course, to watch what Elon Musk and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are doing this spring and not make a connection. When they brazenly defund foreign aid, and HIV prevention programs in Africa, and peace initiatives here and abroad—while cloaking all of it in messianic language—isn’t this something very much like a “crucifixion economy”? And when they continue funneling billions of dollars to CEOs at Lockheed Martin and Elbit Systems for Israel’s renewed and genocidal assault on Gaza—isn’t this something akin to a “crucifixion economy”? And when they float the possibility of paying El Salvador to incarcerate American citizens, American dissidents, American academics in dank and desolate dungeons—isn’t this their version of a “crucifixion economy”?

But discipleship takes another road. Discipleship is about joining hands and hearts and marching forward; it’s about building relationships and coalitions to fight hatred with love, to resist racism with steadfast courage and consequential action. Counting the cost. Doing it anyway. Because Jesus isn’t to be found in that tomb, my friends; Jesus is risen and walks again among the brokenhearted and hungry. And in the church that serves them.

I've had almost two months to think on all this.  And much of my thinking takes place here now, in Bethlehem, just a stone's throw from the apartheid wall separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem, and about an hour's drive from Gaza itself and the matrix of ethnic cleansing and starvation there.  Among dear and creative disciples, Palestinian Christians, drawing on their own faith (and ancient texts) for imagination and hope.  And given this location, I think I'll stand by the Easter sermon.

I wish I'd had some kind of opportunity that Sunday: to hear from the disgruntled visitors, maybe even to understand what kinds of need, what kinds of pain, they carried to worship that day.  I wish they'd taken a bit more time to hear me out, to probe my motivations, maybe even my faith in raising genocide and American complicity at such a high moment in the liturgical calendar.  But that wasn't to be.  So I'm left to do some reflection on my own.

Civic religion may work for some in the States: a kind of reassurance that one can find solace in old stories and hymns (occasionally), or even an affirming blessing that sets apart the American experience from all others.  But the church betrays Christianity if it settles for such, and allows its sacred traditions to be used as prooftext for American goodness, American ambition and capitalism itself.  To invest our spiritual lives in Jesus, and in the movement he inspired, is to invite daily renewal, radical trust and a whole set of practices that defy 'civic' religion and its accommodation to violence, accumulation and earth's despair.  

In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Old City, Jerusalem

So there's just no way to worship on Easter--or receive the promises of resurrection--without looking at the warmaking world, the suffering of the poor and the starvation of children.  Especially when all of that madness is justified so very often in the name of religion, even Christianity itself.  If the Risen Christ means something to us, if he offers something beyond platitudes and pie-in-the-sky escapism, he must also be the Wounded Christ, the Crucified Christ, the bombed and starved Christ...who returns with hands outstretched inviting our compassion, our courage and our love.

What I know today is this: that this same Christ (Wounded, Crucified and Risen) has given me these friends; that these friends insist on my companionship and solidarity "on the way"; and that sometimes that kind solidarity is going to offend...even folks I may love and cherish.  Call that the way of the cross.  It's my way now.