Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across this country. The signs they carried said: “No Kings.”

I think Matthew's crowd would have known exactly what they meant. Because the people shouting "Hosanna" on that road into Jerusalem weren't cheering for a king in the conventional sense. They were crying out against everything the kings of their world had done to them. Caesar's empire. Herod's collaboration. A whole system built to keep the desperate people desperate.

“Hosanna!” ”Save us. Now. Please." That's what you shout when you've had enough of kings.

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Before Jesus does anything about the grave, he stands beside the grieving and lets his tears mingle with theirs.

We don't worship a God who observes our pain from a safe, hygienic distance. We don't lay our sorrow at the feet of a celestial efficiency expert who says, “You know, technically, this will all work out."

No. We bring our pain to the One who weeps.

And that means that when our hearts break, the tears aren't falling alone.

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The temptation isn't to want bad things. The temptation is to want good things so badly that we'll accept any path that gets us there. Safety. Order. Security. Provision. These are real goods. The question is whether the path to them builds the kind of community we actually want to live in, or whether it produces the desired outcome but poisons the groundwater.

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What comes next?

They don’t know. But they show up anyway.

The people organizing for immigrant rights in this city know the raids haven’t stopped. They know the laws haven’t changed and that families are being torn apart while politicians argue about masks and body cams.

Those people stand in the gap between the devastating reality and whatever restoration looks like, and they show up. Not because they got a sneak preview of the end of the story. But because something holds them steady when they feel like they can’t stand up any longer. Something they can’t even explain.

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So, what does this overflow righteousness look like when it's communal rather than private?

Private righteousness claims: I don't murder, I don't steal, I'm polite to others, I volunteer sometimes, I wash my hands after using the bathroom, I'm a good person.

Overflow righteousness says: Our community redistributes resources so nobody goes hungry. We shelter people the state wants to cage, and absorb legal liability to protect the vulnerable. The budget reflects that we value other people’s survival over institutional preservation. We organize collectively to confront systems that grind people down.

Private righteousness is manageable, respectable, safe.

Overflow righteousness can get you in trouble.

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That's what the Beatitudes are meant to do to us.

Not to make us feel noble about suffering, or teach us how to spiritualize oppression. But to form solidarity as a reflex. To make us the kind of people who stand up when cruelty shows up and starts pushing everybody around. The kind of people who refuse the empire's categories of real and not-real, worthy and not-worthy, counted and disposable.

It’s formation for resistance. Not resistance as a moment of drama, but resistance as a way of life. The Beatitudes aren't entrance requirements for heaven. They're a description of what it looks like when people start living as if God's reign is real ... right here, right now ... even when the empire keeps insisting it’s not.

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Because the measure of our faithfulness isn't whether we see the domination system collapse in our lifetime. The measure is whether we tell the truth about the Lamb who's already ended it.

John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." He said it once. And two thousand years later, we're still saying it. Still pointing. Still witnessing. Still waiting for the fullness of what God’s already begun.

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Jesus didn't start his ministry by going to the halls of power to make deals with the folks in charge. He went to a river where ordinary people were gathering, hungry for change but with no political clout to make it happen.

Jesus stood with them in the water. He got muddy with them. He submitted to the same baptism of repentance they were submitting to, even though tradition says he didn't need to repent of anything.

Why?

Because God's way into the world isn't from the top down. It's from the bottom up. It's from the margins in. It's Emmanuel, God with us, and the "us" isn't the people in the skyboxes, drinking complimentary champagne. It's the people in the cheap seats, drinking over-priced beer.

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John ends the prologue with this: "From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace." Grace replacing grace. Wave after wave of divine generosity.

Not scarcity and competition for limited resources. Not "there's not enough to go around, so we have to hoard and protect." Grace upon grace. Abundance. Enough for everybody, especially those the people in charge say aren't worth feeding.

That's the economy of the tent. That's what happens when the throne room is among people who've lost everything, and God starts building community based on sharing, not accumulating.

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I don't know what the coming year is going to hold. None of us do.

But I do know this: there'll be moments when the costs are rising, the pressure’s building, and somebody near us gets exposed, and we'll have a choice to make.

We can be righteous in a way that doesn't cost us anything. Or we can be righteous the way Joseph was righteous, which means stepping into the line of fire and attaching our names to the people the world would rather shame. And then trusting that Emmanuel is with us in exactly that place.

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The church's job is painfully simple and painfully hard. We have to learn to read the signs differently. We have to stop treating the category “criminal” as if it tells us everything we need to know about a person.

We have to stop assuming the people with microphones are the ones whose authority matters most.

We have to get suspicious of our own instinct to label people for our convenience. Because Jesus is a terrible respecter of society's signage.

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FAQ:

"What are you asking us to do?"

We're inviting people to partner with us in justice work—whether that's through monthly giving, through offering your time and skills, or both. Solidarity shows up in different ways, and we're trying to make it easier for people to be part of the work, however it makes sense for them.

"What if I can't afford to give money right now?"

Then don't. If you have sweat equity to offer (your time, presence, skills, creativity), we'd love that. Email us at douglassblvd@gmail.com and tell us what you'd like to contribute. Justice work needs both resources and people showing up.

"What do monthly financial partners get?"

Weekly newsletter emails that keep us informed about what DBCC is doing. That's it. No membership expectations, no committees, just partnership.

"How do I offer time/skills instead of money?"

Email us at douglassblvd@gmail.com and tell us what you'd like to offer. We'll connect you with opportunities as they emerge—whether that's showing up at specific actions, lending your skills to projects, or being present when the work calls for witnesses.

"Can I do both—give monthly and show up sometimes?"

Absolutely. Some people partner financially. Some people partner with their presence. Some do both. Whatever makes sense for you.

Remember: the cross is what happens when you tell the truth about power. But resurrection is God's answer to the cross. And we live between the two, in this time when the old age is dying and the new age is being born, and we have to decide which age we belong to.

We have to decide whether we're going to use people as props for our comfort or see them as children of God.

Whether we're going to accept a world where people are fuel for machines or build communities of resurrection.

Whether we're going to stay silent while fascism rises, or speak truth, practice resistance, and embody the reign of God right here, right now.

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Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. Turn the other cheek. Give to everyone who begs. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

These aren't impossible riddles for religious overachievers. They're the habits of a people who know they've been welcomed while they were still a long way off. They're what belonging looks like in work boots.

If I know my life has been called blessed before I could prove anything, then I can stop guarding my worth like a secret.

I can risk forgiveness because I'm not paying for my seat at the table.

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But abiding teaches us a few stubborn questions: Does this freedom hold when the empire gets mad at us? Does it make more room at the table? Can it make it through Good Friday and still show up on Sunday?

Jesus' freedom can. It walked through death and came out holding the keys to the jail.

It taught Galilean fishermen to lay down nets and pick up neighbors.

It taught a tax collector to give the money back and still feel welcome at the supper table.

It teaches frightened congregations to stop asking "Who's my patron?" and start praying "Our Father, who art right here in the middle of this mess with the rest of us."

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This table today, set by God, is its own bridge that crosses every chasm. We come to the bread and the cup as people who need help, as well as the people who can help.

We come to remember Jesus, who crossed a greater chasm than any we've built, and who returns to find whether we've learned what he's been trying to teach us.

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Following Jesus costs a great deal more than we’re able to afford on our own. Let’s not kid ourselves, there are crosses with our names on them, just waiting for us.

And to be clear: in Luke, “take up your cross” isn’t code for generic misery, like “my bunions are acting up.” The cross is the predictable blowback you get for aligning publicly with Jesus and his upside-down reign in a world organized to keep the powerful comfortable. It’s the social shame and concrete political and economic risk that come when you side with the people Jesus sides with.

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So what would it look like if we lived this out?

It’d look like neighborhoods where homeowners invite renters. Schools where kids who get free lunch sit at the head table. Churches where people on the margins don't just get charity, they get justice.

I think it'd look like budgets that stop hunting for quarters in the couch cushions when it comes to feeding the hungry, while writing blank checks for weapons and tax breaks for the folks who need them least.

It'd look like communities where the poor aren't a problem to solve but guests of honor at the feast.

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And we’re the key. We need to make sure this room isn’t welcoming to indifference.

We need to advocate that meetings halt until anonymous faces have names. We need to fight for budgets that carry a compass and know when they’ve strayed from their true direction. We need our prayers to have hands and feet.

We need to straighten what’s gotten crooked—not because we can solve everything, but because we refuse to keep the ox watered while a daughter stays bent.

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We live in a world where so many go to bed terrified—parents for their children’s safety, and children for their parents, that they won’t be targeted and rounded up just because of the color of their skin; but Jesus announces a world where everyone has a place to go to feel safe from harm, a sanctuary from the hatred and violence.

We live in a world that feels like it needs the fire of God’s transformation, a new way of living together.

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In the world God desires, apparently, the more we have, the less we get to choose whether or not to give.

Viewing giving as an act of justice that the giver is obliged to perform helps correct power imbalances by affirming that those who are first will be last, so that those who are last may be first. It is God’s good pleasure, according to Jesus, to give us a world where the coin of the realm isn’t about grasping for everything we can get, but about selling what we have and sharing it.

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Jesus isn't just warning us. He's calling us out of the illusion of permanence and into the grace-filled community of participation—the kind of investment where the gold doesn’t rust or the moth destroy.

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But here’s the thing, real prayer to the God who doesn't do shame produces people who stop using shame as a sorting tool. If God rushes in to help with zero calculations, then maybe the question isn't "How do I sound more spiritual?" but "Am I reflecting God's shameless generosity or humanity's shame-soaked gatekeeping?"

Refugees, broke neighbors, starving babies in Gaza, overwhelmed friends showing up at your door like it's midnight and they're out of options? They’re not a spiritual test. They're an invitation to look like the God we claim to follow.

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But Amos is raining down fire on the whole nation. Everybody.

Why?

Because the crimes against the powerless Amos lays out aren’t just a few rotten apples. The crimes Amos names are institutionalized; they’re accepted as part of the fabric of society—you know, just the way things are.

In other words, there are good moral folks who know what’s going on—those who see the injustice being perpetrated on the helpless, aware of the labor being stolen from the voiceless—and yet remain silent.

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God didn't show up to make everybody speak the same language. God showed up so we could understand one another across our differences. That's not a return to uniformity. That's a celebration of diversity. That's a vision of the reign of God where every clan and nation and tongue can come to the table as themselves, not as carbon copies of whoever got there first.

And, let's be honest, we know how badly a little diversity triggers some folks in our country. We've seen what happens when people start talking about making room at the table for voices that have historically been excluded, for perspectives that challenge the comfortable assumptions of those who've always held power.

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When we refuse to worship at the altar of consumerism, when we choose justice over profit, when we stand with the oppressed against their oppressors, and speak truth in the face of lies, we’re going to face resistance. We’ll be called naive, idealistic, unrealistic. We’ll be told that this is just the way the world works, that we can't change anything, that our efforts don't matter.

But remember: we are not of this world.

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Of course, it's not always easy. Some days, the world drags you into the courtroom and puts your soul on trial. You get accused—by others, by your own failures, by that nagging voice in your head. But you don't have to argue your case. You've got someone who already knows the truth and stands by you anyway. The Spirit shows up like a defense attorney who's not afraid of a messy past, someone who doesn't need to prove you innocent to love you.

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Living this way isn’t easy. It means turning away from all the ways we’ve weaponized faith and marginalized people in God’s name. It means learning to see people as Jesus sees them, not as projects or enemies or obstacles, but as beloved children of God.

In a world full of hate, fear, and division, love isn’t just our calling … it’s our superpower, our secret weapon. It’s our most authentic sermon, the sign that points the way home.

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I find it fascinating, and not a little bit instructive, to think that God can make something out of us that nobody ever thought we could be. Knowing ourselves as we do—that God chooses us to embody the love and justice envisioned in this new reign is confounding. But if, when God tells us to get up, we get up and go, the story of the gospel is that God can change the world through us.

And that’s the thing: The world, as chaotic and torn as it is right now, needs a little resurrection—needs people like you and me to get up and bring new life to folks who feel like everybody else has given up on them.

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Dramatic conversion stories are never merely stories about dramatic conversions. They’re preludes to the real story. In fact, the real reason we care about this story at all is because of what happened after the euphoria wore off.

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Jesus didn't say, "I've overthrown Rome! Now we'll have peace!" He simply said, "Peace be with you," while showing them his wounds. His peace bears the marks of suffering. It doesn’t deny pain; it transforms it. It doesn’t require the elimination of enemies; it embraces them.

This is why passing the peace is indeed a political act. Every time we say to one another, "Peace be with you," we’re rejecting the peace of empires. We’re declaring our allegiance to a different realm with a different sovereign who rules in a different way. After Easter, we acknowledge that true peace, God’s peace, can’t come through domination or be secured through violence.

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We’re the kind of Easter people who don't just decorate the sanctuary once a year, but who live with rolled-away stones and open doors and trembling joy. We practice resurrection in how we vote, how we spend, how we welcome the stranger, how we care for creation, how we speak to and about one another.

We’re people who know that the most powerful force in the universe isn't military might or market value or majority rule. It's love that gives itself away. The kind that doesn't cling to power but empties itself for others. The kind that turns the other cheek, not out of weakness but from a strength so secure it doesn't need to dominate to prove itself.

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Words can heal and bring life: “The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.”

There’s nothing quite so wonderful in the world as when you’re told that you’re loved and appreciated, or that despite your belief that you’re alone and despised, someone sees you, that someone cares even when you remain convinced that nobody even knows you’re alive.

“I love you. I see you,” can raise people from the dead.

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Jesus wants his disciples to understand that poor and low-wealth people aren’t some distinct underclass that we can shuffle off to the shadows because they make us uncomfortable. They’re not a problem to be dealt with, not just a reminder of a broken system that renders some people disposable; they’re our neighbors, part of our community.

We need to feed them, not fix them.

They’re subjects to be embraced as friends and family, not objects to be embarrassed about

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This parable is a story about bad parenting, about a father who’s willing to give it all away … even to kids who’ve proven they don’t deserve it. It’s a story about the love of a parent who persists in pursuing us, even though we continue to run away from home or continue to turn our faces from the music, even after we’ve been ceaselessly invited into the party.

It’s a story about lousy parenting. I mean, just think what would happen if we started following that example and loving everybody—even though they don’t deserve it. Try to get that one through the Supreme Court right now.

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We peer into the distance for the one who will execute justice and righteousness in the land, who will redeem God’s children from ordinary days, filled with the soul-crushing fear that this world of pain and fear, of injustice and bigotry is all there is. We steel ourselves for the call to live as just and righteous right now … in anticipation of that day.

The days in which we live may be grim.

But the days are surely coming, says the Lord.

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We trivialize the gospel when we convince ourselves that it’s possible to be a disciple of Jesus without it ever costing us anything.

Following Jesus is hard. He asks so much. And he fails to provide us with turn-by-turn directions. He’s a moving target. Can’t pin him down. Can’t control him.

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First, like so many people since Tuesday, the church constantly needs to be asking, “Is this the best we can do?” Then, we need to advocate for a just economic system that protects the vulnerable and refuses to devour widows’ houses. We need to demand a system that refuses to make the poor feel like they’re not full participants until they cough up their last five bucks until payday.

Second, in the meantime, we followers of Jesus need to work like crazy to be worthy of the hope people place in us.

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Love, you see, requires activity. Love isn’t an abstraction; it’s a way of living with other people that takes their needs as seriously as we take our own.

The way we treat those who are hungry, the way we treat the laborer, the way we treat the disabled, the way we pursue justice—these all have to do with love.

What we care about and what we refuse to remain silent about, who we see and whose voice we hear, how we offer compassion and how we stand up for those who’ve been knocked down—those are all about love. Back bent, hands dirty, feet sore…love.

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Popular Christianity promises a Jesus who only wants to be your pal, a Jesus who doesn’t want you to be inconvenienced, a Jesus whose real concern is that all your biases are continually reconfirmed for you. A Jesus who knows what true glory looks like. And, let me tell you, that would be a whole lot easier on me.

But unfortunately, I’m not good enough figure out how to give you that Jesus.

Instead, I’m so incompetent at my job that all I can manage to figure out how to give you is a Jesus who seeks out the small, the irrelevant, and the marginal. I’m only skilled enough to show up on Sunday mornings with a Jesus who thinks glory looks like losing, sacrificing, and dying. I hope you’ll forgive me my vocational inadequacies.

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How do we stand with Jesus against a world that too often tramples the best interests of women and the needs of children, that regularly ignores the plight of the hungry, the houseless, the addicted, the stranger, and the outcast?”

After all, the world we inhabit wasn’t created just to bless people like us; it was created to carve out space so that all whom God loves can live and flourish with dignity.

And if we want to be like God, our vocation is to learn to participate in such a world—not to try to remake it in our own image.

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Moreover, embracing powerlessness in ourselves opens us up to the welcome we must now extend to the little ones, those who’ve been left behind by the rest of the world.

Only in that realization can we become great. Because, after we realize that—sterling stock portfolios and winning personalities aside—any greatness that emerges isn’t something we ginned up on our own; it's God's.

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We no longer have to wonder whether we have any responsibility for our brothers and sisters, those who can’t stand up any longer by themselves.

We no longer need to ask whether those who’ve been forgotten, abused, or kicked to the curb are our people.

Through the grace of the cross, we’re able to see not competitors in the food chain, not threats to our individual projects, not nuisances for which we have neither the time nor the energy, but family ... family everywhere we look.

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So, requiring us to live lives that look like Jesus is a pretty tough thing to ask of us. But if I, who claim to follow Jesus, won’t live a life struggling to be faithful, how can I continue to call myself a follower of Jesus?

If I, who claim to live a life shaped by the cross, don’t speak up for the weak, the poor, the forgotten, the bankrupt, those to whom medical services have been denied, to whom injustice is woven into the fibers of existence—if I don’t lift my voice—even knowing that I don’t have all the answers—then how can I ask anyone else to follow Jesus?

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And even after all this time, the church is often just as quick to erect barriers to keep people out, turning customs into dogma, human precepts into doctrine.

Unfortunately, many people’s experience of the church is having the ladder pulled up just as they reach for it.

“Thanks for inquiring. But we’re just fine. We’ve already got things pretty much the way we want them … I mean, the way God wants them.”

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In a world in which every detail has to be nailed down before we move forward, where every nickel has to be accounted for before we strike out, where every eventuality has to be covered, the notion that God is in charge, that God will provide is seen as naïve—if not ultimately unwise.

But maybe there’s a wisdom that Christians are called to practice that trusts God’s love enough to give thanks—even when giving thanks looks like the last thing any wise person ought to do.

Maybe living as wise in the unfolding reign of God involves a set of practices the rest of the world deems gullible and unrealistic but which signal our hope.

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And as painful as it is, Jesus says that for the fire of transformation to be kindled—the fire of God’s change in the world—we have to speak the truth about our current mess and the new world God desires.

We live in a world where division feels inevitable, but Jesus announces a world where divisions are healed—not by passively ignoring injustice but by shining a light on them.

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Elijah goes to God seeking relief, a remedy for the great weariness he feels in his bones. He wants God to change the world, but all God offers to do is change him. Presumably, being in God’s presence is of greater value to us in our pain and despair than any stop-gap measures or dime-store remedies we could conjure up on our own.

We often want God to fix the world or take us out of it, but what God offers to do is to sit beside us in it.

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In the face of God, I see one who prefers to tear down walls rather than maintain them, the one who calls to us from near at hand rather than keeping us far off.

In the face of God, I can see one who is not satisfied with the distance that separates us, the distance that keeps us suspicious of and hostile toward one another—but who seeks to reconcile us, to stand among us, to bring us near enough to see one another's faces.

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As long as we think that what we have, who we are, and what we’ve endured depend solely upon our initiative and the strength of our own determination and courage, we wind up flailing about, convinced we can do God’s work better than God.

Whenever we start thinking it’s about us, we lose the ability to offer ourselves to the world as a fragrant offering of love and sacrifice.

It’s not until we let go of the idea that something native to our own virtue is what allows us to become the people God wants us to be that we’ll ever be able to taste the life God has in store for us.

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But in the face of failure, Jesus isn’t waiting around. He’s already headed out to the villages to continue doing what God sent him to do. And he’s not content to do it alone. He sends his followers back out into what must have felt like a hostile world to continue the work they’d already been rejected for.

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In the face of a scoffing world, Jesus demonstrates his faith in God’s willingness to snatch life from the jaws of death by ... acting faithfully. Jesus sees the woman and the young girl through the eyes of God and God’s idea of who’s valuable and who’s worth taking a chance on. In the woman who’s been dead in so many crucial ways for twelve years and in the twelve-year-old girl who’s also now dead, God sees the possibilities no one else can see.

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In the economy of God, the new creation holds a special place for the powerless, the stepped-on, and the least likely candidates to be social media influencers. In a strange and seemingly indefensible administrative move, God throws out the HR manual and starts employing the ones who show up to the interview in flip-flops and shorts.

And it’s almost never flashy, but it can leave ripples in the pond that seem to go on forever.

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Christianity, for too many people today, means “saving souls for Jesus” while often despising those same souls until they have the decency and good sense to become more like you.

But start living like Jesus—challenging the systems that keep only a handful fat and happy, hanging out with people who’ve been forced to live in the shadows to avoid being trampled by the religious folks who otherwise have contempt for them—and the wrath of the self-righteous will fall on you like Bull Connor’s billy club.

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Now, if I get blessed in the process—then that’s wonderful. And as difficult as that is for me personally to swallow, the church isn’t just here to bless me; I’m here to bless the world by participating in the beloved community and adding my gifts to the mix … for the common good.

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Because if we take seriously the public testimony of the marginalized and the vulnerable, we have to come to terms with the fact that we’ve participated in systems that, by their very nature, protect the interests of the powerful at the expense of the powerless. In other words, we’re not just innocent bystanders to all this agitation; in some way, we’re part of the reason these protests are necessary.

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True knowledge of God is always proportional to our willingness to live faithfully as witnesses of God’s faithfulness to us.

True belief is never an end in itself. We concern ourselves with believing the right things not so we can have the satisfaction of being right but so that our actions will be rightly directed.

Actually living what we know and what we say we believe is the real point.

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God comes to us and says, 'There are some folks who need my love and compassion. I want you to go to them. I want you to love them for me.'

'Which folks?'

'All my children. You know who I’m talking about, the ones no respectable church wants. The ones who’ve been systematically told they’re not welcome. The ones who don’t have anybody to speak up for them. Don’t talk right. Don’t dress right. Don’t have the right kind of money. Don’t live in the right part of town. Don’t love the right person. Don’t have the right skin color. I want you to go to them.'

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Three women went to the tomb, expecting the cemetery to be the last word.

But it wasn’t. Jesus was gone. They were afraid.

I have no doubt that, eventually, that fear was turned to joy. But before they felt joy, they were afraid. They knew that something cosmic was at stake.

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So, when Jesus arrived on the scene, Palestine was desperate for another messiah, a hero, someone to rally the oppressed locals to finally kick the Roman interlopers out of Palestine. They needed, in short, a messiah acquainted with the business end of a sword.

I suspect you can imagine that when Jesus starts talking about humiliation and death as his vision of messiahship, how it is that so many people completely fail to hear him. They didn’t quite get it.

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Jesus says, “Here’s what my glory looks like: Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever wants to catch on with my band of merry souls can look forward to the same kind of ‘glory’ with which I’m about to be ‘glorified.’”

And you can hear the wheels spinning in the Greeks’ minds: “What kind of glory is he talking about? Seeds falling to earth and dying? What does that mean? We know what glory looks like, and frankly, it doesn’t look like dead seeds. So, what’s he talking about?”

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Have you noticed how many people think the table is too big—that we’ve got no business telling everybody they’re welcome?

They say, “Well, of course, everyone’s welcome ... just as soon as they get their beliefs straightened out”—which, translated, generally means: “just as soon as they promise to believe all the things we believe, to hate all the things we hate, and to exclude all the people we exclude.”

I’m not quite sure how to put this, but no matter how systematic your theology is, that’s not Jesus. And this is what I think Jesus is getting at when he starts talking about those who hate the light, who love darkness because their deeds are evil.

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Many people believe that God is to be found at the “temple.” So, they spend a great deal of time trying to figure out how to help people find their way through the doors that they’ve been told for so long is the place where they can meet God.

But since so many people don’t believe religion has much impact on their lives, it’s hard to justify taking prime time out of a weekend to go to church. For people struggling to live faithfully, perhaps the focus should be on where God is moving outside the church's walls, away from the giant stable system that seems so comfortable and inevitable.

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Wayward children. Problem spouses. Overbearing parents. Demanding bosses. Arthritis. The heartbreak of Psoriasis. Male-pattern baldness. All of these and more serious things that bring suffering are commonly referred to as “crosses to bear.”

But that’s not right, is it? Jesus isn’t talking about the cross-as-symbol-of-just-any-garden-variety suffering. He’s talking about the death-dealing power of the state to impose its will on anyone with enough courage or enough gullibility to question it.

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With the uncertainty Jesus has just laid out for them about picking up their crosses and dying as enemies of the state, Peter sees the ancient Near Eastern version of the Justice League all wearing their technicolor dream coats, and he says, “You know, all things considered, this seems like a swell place to be. Why don’t we pitch a few tents and stay right here?

I totally get why the disciples would rather just watch Jeopardy than head down that mountain into an untenable political environment that would soon cost Jesus everything.

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But if Jesus’ mission is about healing, about re-establishing the dignity and purpose of others, of helping them to find a place that’s safe and affirming—then, perhaps, we who are his followers ought to follow suit.

Perhaps we should be less concerned with doing what everyone else thinks churches ought to do and worry more about doing what Jesus calls us to do—to make a place in the world for those who have no place.

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Why? Because Jesus speaks as one with authority—a new kind of authority; he speaks the truth … always.

Jesus is, according to this definition, a faithful jihadist who squares off against the powers that preserve injustice by privileging certain classes of "worthy" people, giving them access—while excluding the powerless and the disadvantaged.

And we who are trying to follow him don't get to excuse ourselves from the messiness. We don't get to stand by silently while some folks get kicked to the back of the bus, or dragged kicking and screaming back across the border, or singled out for the bathrooms they use. We have our own tyrants before whom we need to speak.

Maybe God’s trying to tell you something at this very moment. Maybe there’s not some big PowerPoint pitch to lay out all the pros and cons, not some incentivized benefits package, not some assurance that everything’s going to turn out right, and you’ll become famous, have wonderful, well-adjusted kids, and escape the ravages of arthritis.

Maybe it’s just a tug, a gnawing at the edge of your mind that you can’t quite shake, saying, “Follow me. Drop what you’re doing, and follow. Immediately.”

Herod resides in regal luxury in the thriving metropolis of Jerusalem; Jesus begins his life relying on the generosity of visitors in a modest dwelling in Bethlehem. Herod has access to the most influential leader of the time; Jesus, a mere infant, doesn’t even have access to the local Red Roof Inn.

Yet, what’s truly captivating in this narrative is the fact that Herod, embodying power and affluence, is deeply terrified of Jesus—a seemingly insignificant child from an obscure backwater. Despite all his wealth and security, Herod wakes up the day after the Magi’s departure, tasting only the bitter tang of fear and feeling a weight of dread in his gut.

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In a world that feels increasingly out of control every day, we’ve been given glad tidings that sound unrealistic at best and downright deranged at worst. We live in a world that has a way of grinding people down, making them beg for their bread, and judging them by the color of their skin, the country of their origin, the fullness of their bank account, and the people they love. In short, we live in a world content to force people to justify their very humanity before we’ll even see them as neighbors.

Into such a world comes Mark’s Gospel, carrying John the Baptist, Elijah, Jesus, Caesar, and the whole Roman Empire on its back—announcing that the world we know, the one that’s taken so much from so many … is coming to an end, and a new one is coming to take its place.

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"=Why does 'freedom' in so many people's mouths appear to mean little more than 'freedom to feel superior to everybody who doesn’t look/talk/love like I do?'

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Well, for one thing, God created us … all of us. And afterward, God paused to consider the fine craftsmanship of God’s hands. Apparently, God was heard to say, 'That’s pretty dang good! No … Yeah, that’s excellent!'

So, it stands to reason that God might take more than a little exception to watching those whom God has so lovingly called forth into existence have their dignity trampled. Their lives are threatened, either by those who actively seek to exploit the defenseless or those who commit their violence through neglect. God has always seen those who remain invisible, unseen to so many.

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When we read about vulnerable people being evicted and left to survive in the streets, we find a way not only to help feed and shelter but to agitate for justice in housing.

When we witness White nationalists openly advocate bigotry and threaten violence, we don't sit idly by and hope everything turns out all right; we take sides.

We followers of Jesus not only sound the alarm, we figure out a way to be in the middle of it—organizing, protesting, lobbying, healing, dispensing the mercy denied by the merciless

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But God says, “If everything else you do isn’t motivated by your love of the imperiled and unremembered, then it’s worse than if you’d done nothing at all. If you’d done nothing, at least that would be an honest admission that you don’t understand. As it is, you take for granted you already know what I want. But that’s the thing: there’s no way to know what I want without looking into the eyes of those who’ve been cast aside.”

“Do you know what I really want?” God says. “I want justice to roll down like water and righteousness like an everflowing stream. And I want you to be all mixed up in the middle of it.”

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Caesar’s always going to want what Caesar wants. Wall Street. Madison Avenue. They vie for our attention like it’s their birthright. There are so many claims placed upon our loyalties ... from every direction.

And, sometimes, that which pursues us most relentlessly is our own desire to be in control, to be ourselves, gatekeepers of God’s mercy. We in the church have been guilty of spurning the gifts people bring to God. But Jesus isn’t having it.

Jesus says, "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar; give to God what belongs to God. But here’s the thing: It all belongs to God."

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Unlike Matthew's original readers, when Jesus started talking about a King giving a wedding banquet, his audience wouldn't have immediately made the connection between the King in the parable and God. They would be much more likely to see their own cultural struggles in this King—who, let's be honest, seems pretty vindictive and pouty.

No, “vindictive and pouty” would have described not their vision of God but of a genuine political figure in their own world—somebody like King Herod Antipas. Jesus' listeners knew about arbitrary rulers who pursued their self-aggrandizing interests at the expense of the people they were supposed to protect. It seems clear that the King feels like everyone, but he is unworthy. This King feels like he's always walking around searching for somebody new to be disappointed with.

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Jesus heads into the vineyard to cheers of “Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” But he can read the political tea leaves. He’s got a pretty good idea where this story is headed.

So, it should be no great surprise to learn that Jesus is a little testy—even in the face of the palm branches. He knows which way the political wind is blowing—but he walks into the vineyard anyway.

The parable ends. The fate of the vineyard is yet unresolved. But we know that already, don’t we? We’ve seen too much injustice two thousand years in to believe the vineyard has changed much.

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If you’re starting a revolution, you don’t have to follow the same rules designed to keep power in the hands and for the benefit of those convinced the world was made for them.

You don’t have to live in fear—the kind of fear necessary to make a world where some have and some do not, where some get justice, and some silently cry themselves to sleep at night, certain that justice is just a word used to protect the powerful and punish the weak.

You don’t have to choose between violence and passivity. If you’re starting a revolution, if you’re committed to following the Jesus whom the powerful killed to make a point, you’ve got choices.

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Real-life virtues—the ones that help us live real lives and not just "impressive” lives among those closest to us—are the kinds of virtues necessary for us to live together in community. These soft virtues like the ability to live and speak truthfully, to be a person others consider trustworthy (and not just being reliable about taking out the garbage, but about being worth the trust necessary to hold the vulnerability of others with gentleness and care), to be able to forgive (especially those who deserve it least), to have good boundaries that communicate where “you” end and “I” begin. These are the kinds of virtues that allow us to live not just in the memory of those who matter most to us but deeply and lastingly in their hearts.

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In embracing the cross, Jesus’ followers can say of empire at its most blood-thirsty, “Is this the best you’ve got? God’s got an even more astonishing trick up God’s sleeve. It’s a little something we call ‘Easter.’”

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My first reaction is to want Jesus to pray for it to be easy. I want him to protect me from the world by installing some kind of force field, some heat shield around me that won’t allow the slings and arrows to touch me.

But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he prays not that there be a protective wall around me to guard against the damage life can cause but that I can endure the damage, that I can embrace the truth that life is full of fear and horror.

Because Jesus knows that if we who follow him can’t speak the truth, everything we have to say will be easily dismissed. If we find ourselves hedging our bets over speaking what’s true, why should anyone take us seriously when we talk about a better world?

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In other words, if you love one another, you’re already doing the works that I’ve done—and you won’t have to question the “way to the Father,” about whether you’re following the step-by-step directions since everyone will already know who you belong to.

If you condemn a system that allows police officers to kill a Black man in cold blood … on video … you and everyone else will know you’re following “the way.”

If you raise your voice on behalf of the unemployed and the undocumented in a culture satisfied to let them suffer unaided by the powers and principalities, you won’t have to question where I’m going—you’ll already be there with me.

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In other words, the people tasked with watching over the most vulnerable of the flock have proven themselves sightless. They care more that the sheep don’t jaywalk than about the fact that the way they run things has created even more vulnerable sheep.

The trouble with the folks in charge is that being in charge isn’t the point; it’s about what kind of world we want to live in. Does it create space for the invisible people? Does everyone have enough to eat, a place to sleep, a means to care for people’s bodies and minds? Does it stand vigil against predators who feast on the weak and defenseless?

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We heal the sick; we bind up the broken-hearted; we comfort the grieving; we pick up the downtrodden; we fight for justice … not because it makes for good strategy, but because we follow Jesus, which means we’re prepared to walk with him down any dark alley he enters—in search of those the rest of the world would just as soon leave behind.

We do it because it’s right. And because God loves us enough not to let us stay where we are, because we’re the blessed who come in the name of the Lord, and because we don’t know how to do anything else.

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“Love your neighbor as yourself," as an ethical system, does have the drawback of relying entirely on me as the reference point—which, frankly, feels like something of a flaw in the system. I mean, what if I don’t love myself very much at all? What if I happen to be self-destructive? Does the golden rule relieve me of any duty I have toward another person beyond what I might expect from myself? The golden rule doesn’t work for nihilists.

That’s a problem, isn’t it?

Jesus, seeing that more is needed for the ordering of a new world, comes up with a different standard. No longer do I get to treat people the same way they treat me or even treat people the way I would like to be treated. He raises the ethical bar on us. According to Jesus, I'm duty-bound now, not to love my neighbor as myself (which is inadequate, given the many ways we fail so often to love ourselves), but to love my neighbor as Christ has loved me.

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But the real question to us is, “Now that you’ve got this shiny new resurrection, what’re you going to do with it? Are you going to hang out with it, set up a shrine to it and serve lattes, thinking all the work’s been done two thousand years ago? Or are you going to realize that the freedom the resurrection brings is the freedom to back out of the tomb, walk down the road, and get back to work?”

You see, it’s not that the resurrection isn’t cause for celebration; it’s that we’ve misunderstood celebration. It’s too easy to think that it means release from duty, a time to set down our work and head to the party. But the story of the gospel is that resurrection doesn’t free us from labor; it offers us labor worth giving our lives for. We find our greatest joy, our greatest expression of celebration, in the work we’re entrusted to do.

What work is that?

Why, it’s a continuation of the work that Jesus himself did—healing the sick, feeding the hungry, setting free the captives—remembering the forgotten.

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Death too often calls the tune to which, sad to say, so many of us feel compelled to take the dance floor.

But I’ve got news for you—regardless of how it looks to you at present or who you think is in charge, Jesus is almost finished with his Lenten journey. And while the path he takes will ultimately lead him to a garbage dump on the edge of town called the “place of the skull,” the truth of the faith we profess is that that dump—which too casually deals in the art of death—is not the final destination.

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Being born blind is the definition of a pre-existing condition. But according to Jesus, it should never be a pretext for finding an excuse for why helping that person to find healing is wrong.

According to today’s Gospel lesson, if you’re more concerned about who doesn’t deserve help than actually helping, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but Jesus has a fundamental problem with how you view the world.

You can talk about having compassion for the most vulnerable. But if you spend more time worrying about who should be blamed for their vulnerability than finding ways to protect them, Jesus is going to be something of a disappointment to you.

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He could play it safe—you know, suck up to the religious bigwigs, make friends with the influential political high-rollers. But instead, he seeks out the last, the least, and the lost—because he’s not interested in establishing some kind of stable empire where everybody has to come and kiss his ring because he's so important.

But instead, he drops any ambitions he might have had about being a big shot, walks down the first dark alley he sees, and starts having theological discussions with the invisible folks everybody else would just as soon forget.

But when Jesus ventures down dark alleys looking for those who creep around the edges, he redefines the edges so that the margins are set in the center; and it’s the folks who usually occupy the center who risk finding themselves on the margins.

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But because God loves the world—even with all its fear and distrust, God sent Jesus not to condemn the old world, to throw it on the scrap heap. Instead, according to the translation in your pew Bible, God sent Jesus to “save” the world. The word for salvation is probably better translated “healing” here. In other words, Jesus comes to transform the lower world from above and usher in a new reign, a new realm, a new world that looks like heaven right here on earth.

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In Matthew’s hands, the devil is supposed to be a clever stand-in for Caesar and his empire, who argues that all the kingdoms of the world are his to dispose of as he sees fit.

So, the question posed by this story to the congregation at Antioch struggling with where to put its trust, given the annoying fact of all of Caesar’s persistent and humiliating reminders of who’s in charge, is: Where does the church place its trust?

Does the church trust the old regimes and their systems of domination to solve people’s problems, or does it trust the means of producing equity and abundance available in God’s new realm where power remains in God’s hands and never in the hands of the giant babies who holler like scalded cats to let everyone know they get to be boss?

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Peering into the dark valley ahead—the one Jesus has just announced—the thought of camping out on the mountaintop with the Palestinian Justice League sounds like a pretty safe place to be, doesn’t it?

Ever feel like that?

You’re getting ready to graduate; the kids are getting ready to leave home, or the nurses are prepping you for surgery. As tough as it was in the past, the future seems way scarier. Even if the past was hard, at least you lived through it. You’re not sure you’ll survive what feels like the Zombie Apocalypse coming at you from around the next corner.

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And this is a crucial point to make for people whose purpose for existing requires them to live as agents of God’s love. We’re salt and light. We are who we are, not because the situation calls for it or because of how others treat us, but because through the eyes of the God who created us, we’re already everything we need to be because God made us this way.

And through the eyes of an executed carpenter, we’re able to see a vision of a new world that embraces us—all of who we are … garbage heap and unexcavated treasure. No matter how hard we fight it, we can’t crush it out of existence, and we can’t run far enough away from it.

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So when Jesus says that those who will be blessed are the poor in spirit in God's kingdom, he’s not talking about the fainthearted. He’s talking about those who are actually poor, those who are so far down the economic ladder that their spirits are characterized by the constant despair that they’ll ever be able to go to bed at night without the gnawing horror of hunger to keep them awake.

When Jesus says that the new world God is creating will bless those who mourn, he’s not suggesting that people go out and find things to be sad about—the people whom Jesus grew up with, and lived and worked with, didn’t have to go searching for sadness. On the contrary, the very nature of their existence meant that sorrow, suffering, and grief had already built an evil home among them. No, what Jesus is angling at is that because oppression isn’t what God intended, it should be mourned. And the people who mourn oppression will be blessed because they’ll be part of a new realm set up with them specifically in mind, one that conquers oppression.

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