I had a clever sermon in mind, tying together the two disparate anecdotes in today’s gospel. You can tell I had something clever in mind by the first reading and my sermon title. About that…
Those who read my column for our most recent Cross Currents newsletter know that I have chosen to forego one aspect of Lent this year, the idea of giving up something like chocolate. It isn’t really part of the Reform Christian tradition, and anyway, the world feels pretty Lent-y right now without some trivial sacrifice. Scripture is filled with texts where the prophets announce that the sort of fasting God cares about is fasting from injustice. This is exactly the context of Micah 6:8, that passage so central to the Social Gospel movement. So this year, my Lent is going to include soup and prayer, but also some good books, naps on the couch, and chocolate mousse.
That does not mean that we are going to skip the whole season in worship, however. We still live in the story of the un-credentialed itinerant rabbi from Galilee. And this week’s reading marks a key turning point in how that story was recorded by Mark and copied by Luke and the unknown authors of Matthew. While Ash Wednesday is a ritual of sorts, it is from today’s reading that all eyes turn to Jerusalem. And to the events that occur in Jerusalem.
For too long, those events were framed by Christians as Jesus being killed by the Jews, with Rome being a reluctant player in the whole affair. It was a convenient narrative, especially once Christianity became the default religion of Rome. It also fueled century after century of pogrom and antisemitic violence. As a correction, enlightened and progressive Christians have emphasized in recent decades that it was Rome that actually executed Jesus.
But there is more than enough blame to go around, so let’s take a moment to look at the Jerusalem that is the destination of Jesus and his rag-tag band, the spiritual destination of our Lenten journey, from the Garden to Golgotha and on to the joy of Easter.
The entire region was occupied by Rome, a brutal and violent nation that believed it could swallow up territory at will. Jerusalem was under Roman rule, and technically under the administration of the prefect, Pontius Pilate, who, despite his portrayal in the gospels, was actually known for his cruelty.
But honestly, Pilate did not have to work that hard to maintain control. The Hebrew elite, the members of the Sanhedrin and the Temple establishment, collaborated with Roman rule. They did this for one simple reason. The money was still flowing. They were the wealthy Hebrews, and their ultimate loyalty was not to Yahweh or some ancient dream of a Davidic Kingdom. Their loyalty was to themselves, to profit. They ask the Romans to execute Jesus only after he disrupts the commercial activities in the Temple.
And back to our world. The stock market was back up at the end of the day Friday, and Berkshire Hathaway is in the black, even though innocent people are being slaughtered in Kyiv. Sure, energy prices are going to go up, impacting you and I, but that will just be an excuse for more price-gouging by corporations, and won’t really effect the wealthy, who spend only the tiniest portion of their assets on silly things like heat. I mean, its warm enough in Aruba! The toughest sanction, removal of Russia from the SWIFT system of financial transactions, has been limited to only a handful of banks and didn’t happen until last night, because that might effect the ability of Russian oligarchs to maintain luxury flats in London and Dubai, penthouses in Manhattan, might force their children out of places like Eton and Harrow, and that might actually impact the wealthy.
For when it gets right down to it, the world’s super rich are not loyal to God or country. Billionaires are only loyal to other billionaires, regardless of their nationality or crimes against humanity. Their nation is billionaire. Their religion is billionaire. Just like the wealthy members of Jerusalem’s Sanhedrin. This is what allows gay Silicon Valley denizen Peter Thiel to finance right-wing politicians who would happily round up every other LGBTQ+ person in America and put them in camps, for Thiel knows that billionaire trumps homo every time.
It is not a question of if Vladimir Putin will get away with his crimes anymore than it is a question of whether China will get away with its invasion of Taiwan, all but certain at this point. We know that entering foreign countries to supposedly protect ethnic enclaves is exactly the script that was followed by Adolph Hitler, claims on Sudetenland, Memelland, Danzig. We even know the Russians have kill and camps lists just like the Nazis. But those lists don’t include billionaires, so no one with power really cares.
The amazing thing is not that the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, would squawk but do nothing substantive. The amazing thing is the courage being shown by ordinary Ukrainians in the face of certain defeat. It is the border guards who were told to stand down or be killed, and who responded by telling the Russians to go… well, if you haven’t heard, I’ll leave it to your imagination. There are words even I won’t utter from the pulpit.
There will always be humans who do risk-reward calculations.
But there will always also be humans who do not care about risk and reward, don’t care if they are bound to lose, who do what is right, no matter the cost…
Who go to Jerusalem even though John the Baptizer’s head has ended up on a platter. Who stand in the street and proclaim that Jesus who they thought they’d gotten rid of is still the promised messiah, even as they approach Stephen with stones in their hands.
I care about effectiveness. I’m all for Saul Alinsky’s “Rules of Radicals,” for being strategic. I truly want to see a world where humans are at their best, each able to live into their full potential, even as the planet itself and all of the amazing living things on it also thrive.
I’m not quite certain how that works, but I know for sure it isn’t this, isn’t Putin and Thiel and the self-serving American politicians trying to score points while the body count grows by the hour, the body count of a politicized pandemic, the body count of an autocrat’s refusal to allow his own people to see what freedom looks like in a nation next door.
There is a rock anthem that I’d have never heard and never understood, but I am enraged that it will never be written because the punk girls in the band won’t all be alive next week. There is a hearth where friends laughed that will never again be warm, for it is rubble, as cold as the bodies of those friends. I am furious at politicians of both parties, corrupt and craven.
But in the end, I am going to do what is right, as best I can, from where I am, for as long as I can possibly do it, not because of a maybe heaven and St. Peter at the gates, but because I have to live with myself.
I must, as the great Welsh poet counsels, rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The light of sacrificial love in the gospel of Jesus.
The light in our aspiration to one day be a free democracy where all humans are regarded as equally valuable and worthy.
The light in the lives of so many Ukrainians facing off against raw human evil.
Rage. Rage!
Amen.