The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew 5: 3-12
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he began to speak and taught them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
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There’s this cartoon that I really love, that I’ve been thinking about this last week. There’s two aliens with a spaceship behind them. In front of them is Jesus, crucified on the cross. And one alien says to the other, “What do you think this means?” And the other replies, “It means we need to get out of here, is what it means!”
If ever there were a symbol of why God ought to abandon humanity entirely, it’s Christ, His son, on the cross. Except, as followers of that man condemned to die on the cross, we know that the cross is not a symbol of God’s abandonment or condemnation, but instead a tangible promise of God’s salvation. In Christ’s agony on the cross, God did not turn away from us, but grasped us even closer. We find wisdom in the weakness of the cross. We’re working our way through the first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians right now, in this season of Epiphanytide. And this deep dive into this letter could not come at a better time. As Paul writes: The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
According to this world’s standards of power and might - standards that look like violence, occupation, and brutality - according to those standards, the message of the cross does seem stupid, offensive even. Yet, Paul’s words reveal the paradoxical way, the surprising and contradictory way, that God has chosen to work power and salvation through weakness and suffering. What Paul is doing in this part of his letter to the church in Corinth is describing the two worlds that they inhabit. They are a diverse community of Christians living together, sharing possessions in common, struggling to understand each other, but bound to one another in Christ.
That is one world, the sacred world of their Christian community, and then there is the world with very different values than the ones that they’re trying to live by, but that they must interact with, right? In the marketplace. At the well. In the village square. The Corinthians are navigating two worlds at once. Sound familiar? The last two weeks have felt unbearable at times. We see terribly distressing things - children separated from their parents, civilians killed in the streets - and, yet, we all also shoveled snow and went to work. We inhabit two worlds. A German-Jewish lawyer and political scientist, Ernst Fraenkel wrote a book about this phenomenon. He was a criminal defense lawyer who defended Jewish people targeted by the Nazi regime. Because he had served heroically in the first World War, he was allowed to practice law in Germany even after the Nazis banned Jewish lawyers from appearing in court.
In 1939, he emigrated to the United States and began work on his book The Dual State which is about the legal structure of the Nazi regime. And by examining how the Nazi legal system operated, he was able to paint a picture of how all authoritarian regimes function. Whether it’s Hitler’s regime or King Herod’s. To begin with, one thing that struck Fraenkel was just how normal life in Germany felt as the Nazis came to power. Perfectly normal. Wake up, read the newspaper, go to work, come home, have dinner, tuck the kids in, rinse and repeat. But, what Fraenkel realized is that “this first state, the business-as-usual one, actually exists to lull you into a sense of complacency such that you don’t realize that another state is also operating in parallel with it. He called the business as usual state, ‘the normative state.’” The second state, he called “the prerogative state.” And that state, well, that state only becomes visible when you do something that those with power don’t approve of. Then, suddenly, the rule of law no longer exists for people who upset the state.
The thesis of the book is also its most quoted line: “The dual state lives by veiling its true nature.” But, sometimes something happens that rips a tear in that veil. Too often, that something is an act of unspeakable violence. Something like the extrajudicial murder of a protest leader. A murder that the powers-that-be treat as nothing more than a joke, because what did he expect anyway? Going where he was going, saying the things he was saying, and doing the things he was doing? I’m talking, of course, about the murder of John the Baptist. Decapitated, his head served to King Herod on a platter.
Our Gospel lesson last week began with John’s arrest. The veil starts to tear. There must have been a heaviness in Jesus’s heart. John’s arrest is bad news. And Jesus does withdraw from that pain, he does take time to steady himself, he goes to Galilee. Where he meets Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John and calls them to new life, to become fishers of men. He invites them into a life of abundance that looks pretty foolish to the rest of the world. John the Baptist has been arrested, the threat to Jesus’s life is growing, and Jesus goes to the lakeshore, calls out to the first disciples, and asks them to quit their jobs, to leave the security of hearth and home, and join him.
And so begins the journey of the disciples, a journey that has them navigating two worlds, two realities, two societies. Just as the Corinthians would have to do and we still do today. One reality where power and might are used to terrify the most vulnerable among us into submission and one where true power comes from submission to the will of God and service to the most vulnerable. Like Paul, Luther talked about this division of worlds. He called them the “Two Kingdoms” - the earthly kingdom, that’s our kingdom, broken and hurting, here on earth, right now. Then, there is the heavenly kingdom, the life after this one, life eternal. All of it is God’s, all of it sacred.
As Lutherans, we believe in civil engagement, in living like Christ in our communities. We believe that we have power that we are called on to exercise for the common good. The power of the cross, power that finds wisdom in weakness. We are called to constant discernment, to an examination of our values as Christians, and to seek the common good for all people, not just people like us. As Lutherans we believe we are called to participate in our common life. And so, what exactly do those values - finding wisdom in weakness and power in humility - look like in Minneapolis right now?
No doubt many of you know that Minneapolis-St. Paul is like Valhalla to American Lutherans. German and Scandinavian migration to the Midwest in the nineteenth century is the reason for that, those immigrants dotted the Minnesota landscape with Lutheran churches. I’m blessed to be friends and colleagues with pastors in Minneapolis who are doing incredible work and who have been sharing what exactly things look like for our siblings there right now. There are an estimated 3,000 federal agents in Minneapolis. There are more ICE agents than police officers in the city. In fact, there are more federal agents than the 10 largest police departments in the metropolitan area combined. My colleagues there tell me it feels like a military occupation.
Black and brown people are being stopped on the street or pulled out of their cars and forced to show their papers, proving that they are citizens. And some of those people, including small children, are being arrested, flown out of the state, and jailed in detention centers in spite of the fact that they’re in legal asylum processes. Lutheran pastors serving their congregations in the midst of this are clear: the actions of federal agents in Minneapolis are far outside the norms of policing and law enforcement. Judges say the same. And recent polls suggest that the majority of Americans believe that the federal government has gone too far in Minnesota.
The veil has been torn. And, so what are Lutheran churches doing in Minneapolis right now to be peacemakers? The world is watching, how are our siblings showing what it means to find wisdom in weakness? Well, for one, the nights are still long, so they’re lighting candles. Lots of them. They’re keeping vigil on street corners. They’re gathering with their neighbors to sing songs about freedom. And because so many of our black and brown siblings are terrified to leave their homes right now, they’re delivering groceries and meeting the needs of those living in fear.
It’s so often the case that it is in times of crisis that the true beauty of life in Christ is revealed. Paul certainly knew this. The Corinthian church is in trouble, there’s a power struggle with some loyal to Paul and others to the so-called “Super Apostles.” There’s an implicit criticism of Paul’s abilities in this. Paul himself describes some “thorn” in his flesh, some weakness of his. When he writes about call and ability to the Corinthians, he’s writing as much about himself as his congregants: Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. In contrast, God is why you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
We’re living in a time of unprecedented division and disconnection. The powers of this world want us to turn away from one another, but the cross demands us to turn toward one another in humility. In a world of darkness, we light candles. In a world of fear, we offer safety. In a world that hungers and thirsts for righteousness, we bring Christ’s redeeming love, sustenance for all people. In a world that amplifies the voices of the most powerful, we uplift the voices of the most vulnerable. And certainly the children living in Minneapolis are the most vulnerable, living in the midst of an escalating conflict that they had no part in creating.
On January 20th, a preschooler from Valley View Elementary School, Liam Conejo Ramos, was detained by ICE alongside his father. Photos of Liam made national news, he was wearing a blue bunny hat. A nod to his middle name “Conejo” which means rabbit. The neighborhood around Valley View is being heavily patrolled by ICE. 25 parents at the school have been detained and 20% of the students now attend virtually because they are too afraid to leave home. Students at the school wrote letters to the agents working in their neighborhood and this weekend, The New York Times released a video of some of the kids reading theirs. One young student concluded her letter very simply: “I think you should make friends with the world. Love, a Valley View student.”
A message of love and friendship no doubt sounds foolish in light of the rhetoric of our politicians, but we know that we are called to be fools for Christ. Because, in the words of Paul: The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. Even as others jockey for power and authority, we know that Jesus reverses the powers of this world. We know that the weakness of the cross is the truest source of wisdom, wisdom that begs us to listen to the voices of children. We know the last will be first and it is peacemakers who receive the blessing of God. Whatever happens in the coming weeks and months. We know that we are called to reverse the powers of this hurting world. And we know how we do it: by praying and singing and lighting candles; by feeding people the world would let starve and by protecting strangers that the world tells us to fear. Amen.