Just Another Day in the Peaceable Kingdom
Epiphany 6C-25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
February 16, 2025
If only Jesus had had more days like this. It was beautiful. Jesus stood among a multitude of diverse peoples from the surrounding regions. They did not come to test him. They were not there out of idle curiosity. They came to hear and see Jesus, and to be touched and healed by him.
Jesus opened new horizons for them. He gave their lives direction and purpose. He gave them to one another as siblings in a large family transcending race, religion, ethnicity and time. He poured out the power of grace upon them. He nourished, emboldened, inspired, and sustained them. They would become, as Jeremiah described in our first reading, like trees ‘transplanted beside water. They are not afraid when heat comes. Their leaves stay green. Even in a drought they are not anxious and do not cease to bear fruit’ (Jeremiah 17:8). Like our ancestors before us we become like an oasis, a living sanctuary of hope and grace in a thirsty land.
“[People in] the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all” (Luke 6:19). Luke says there was something akin to fire in Jesus’ touch. The word, hapto, “to touch,” can also mean “to light,” or “to ignite,” just as we hold candles together on Christmas Eve to spread the warm glow of firelight throughout the assembly. The healing power of Jesus’ touch spread through them like a fire that would ultimately consume them and through them, reshape the world.
From beneath the shadow of Hitler’s Fascism, Lutheran pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, reminded us that this fiery call of discipleship is an invitation to come and die in the waters of our baptism. Yet, this death is not the end but a fresh beginning. Do not be afraid.
Here is the fire of Jesus’ touch in water and the Word; at the table in bread and wine; among us gathered in his name, assembled in the warm embrace of the Holy Spirit. We navigate by way of the compass of love and compassion. This makes us, like the diverse peoples gathered around Jesus in ancient Galilee, a resurrected people, called and gifted to extend our hands with Jesus in loving service of the marginal and vulnerable, the hungry and thirsty, the poor and the oppressed. The very people who Elon Musk in a recent post on X, called the “Parasite Class.” If you’re not a member of the Parasite Class, you have nothing to fear about changes being made in Washington.
Jesus chose a different descriptor for the poor. He called them ‘Makarios’, or ‘blessed.’ “Blessed are you who are poor” (Lk. 6:20). This elevated status stands out even within a bible full of admonishments to remember the widow, the immigrant, and the strangers among us. Jesus’ sermon on the plain is the first time in Jewish religious literature that the poor are directly called the blessed (Hengel, Property) [p.76]. In ancient Greece, Makarios, or ‘the blessed ones,’ referred only to the gods, because only the gods possessed a life beyond all cares, labors, and death. What did Jesus think was so special about the poor? God has a preferential love for them. The compass of compassion points directly to them. The fires of living sanctuary are lighted in our embrace with them. According to liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez, “God has a preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will” (“Song and Deliverance”, in Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, 1991).
When we stand with Jesus, we step down from our place of privilege. We step up out of our broken past and our shame. We stand on level ground in shoulder to shoulder with people everywhere. We stand together, for, and with all creatures, human and non-human. We stand with Jesus to share our hopes and joys, our pain, and sorrows. We stand on a new horizon as children of a new humanity.
Jesus’ sermon conjures an image of a peaceable kingdom, a way of life together that does not seem at first to compute. We get just a glimpse before it evaporates faster than spit on an Arizona sidewalk. The preacher, Frederick Buechner wrote: “The world says, ‘Mind your own business,’ and Jesus says, ‘There is no such thing as your own business.’ The world says, ‘Follow the wisest course and be a success,’ and Jesus says, ‘Follow me and be crucified.’ The world says, ‘Drive carefully — the life you save may be your own’ — and Jesus says, ‘Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’ The world says, ‘Law and order,’ and Jesus says, ‘Love.’ The world says, ‘Get’ and Jesus says, ‘Give.’ In terms of the world’s sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without being a little crazy too is laboring less under a cross than under a delusion.” (Quoted by Debi Thomas, “Leveled,” Journey with Jesus, 2/06/22).
In this Epiphany season, less than a month into a new administration in Washington, we have no illusions about the contrast between the manifestation of God’s dominion of love and the destructive grip of self-serving hierarchical power. The Prince of Peace is born and lives among us, yes. But the reign of love is not a Hallmark card and never has been. Any change to comfortable habits and patterns are met with resistance and sabotage but changes to our way of life which subvert the greedy powers that rule the world will be opposed most fiercely of all.
Yale historian of tyranny, Timothy Snyder, most of the power amassed by authoritarian governments is freely given—that the political space that you don’t use you lose. Don’t cede space. Don’t obey in advance. Religious freedom cannot be just for me and not for thee. Snyder’s little book on Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, offers concrete advice about how to resist. Resist we must and resist we will together with our God. One of the ways we resist is simply by being the diverse and loving community of sanctuary, hope and grace that Jesus summons us to be. And in the ensuing destruction let us not fail to watch for openings to create something new and better from the tragic failures that have brought us to where we are now.
Can we imagine a human economy with a currency which emulates the wise ways of Mother Earth? While lunacy rules in government and greed rules in business can we look for ways to exchange the currency, not of dollars, but of gifts? “Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly remarkable resource” (Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, p. 14). Can we build an economy on principles of abundance rather than scarcity? This type of circular economy is not so far-fetched as you might think. The little library in front of our church is one example. So are the local mutual aid groups sprouting up around our community—as are countless videos on YouTube in which people take time to teach how to make, fix, and/or operate practically everything.
“This is not prosperity theology. This is not “blessing” as health, wealth, and happiness. This is a teaching so costly, most of us will do anything to domesticate it. Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, sad, and expendable. Why? Because you have everything to look forward to. Because the Kingdom of God is yours. Because Jesus came, and comes still, to fill the empty-handed with good things. May the God who gives and takes away, offers comfort and challenge, grant us the grace to sit with woe, and learn the meaning of blessing.” (Thomas) The psalmist said, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8).
