From college and campus ministry, through seminary, and into parish ministry, I became increasingly aware of the damage done by some theologies within the church: specifically, the "Believe in Jesus or to go Hell" theologies. Knowing people who turned away from the church and from God because they'd been lambasted by such theologies, I decided to address those beliefs head on and look deeply at scripture, rather than simply ignore the tricky passages.
My goal was and is to bring healing to folks who have been harmed by those older, even foundational theologies, and to help free people from those theologies - people who don't believe in "believe in Jesus or go to Hell", but also don't know how they can't believe in them without ignoring much of scripture.
May you find peace and healing in the pages of this book, and may you help bring that healing to others.
The Rev. Brad Sullivan Lord of the Streets, Houston February 22, 2026 1 Lent Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 Psalm 32 Matthew 4:1-11
Can you imagine if an Olympic athlete was so excited at having made it to the Olympics that they said, “Yea, I made it! Now I think I’ll rest up until my event and stop all preparation. I mean, I’m really good, so I’ll just go out there and assume it’ll be fine.” Yeah, probably not going to work out all that great. The athletes for the Olympics, or any great athletes train for years to master their sport. Even if they have huge natural talent, they gotta practice and learn, hone their skills, train their bodies, and discipline their minds to be able to compete at an elite level. Take the most naturally talented skater in the world with very little training, and throw them into the Olympics against lesser talents who have trained for years, and the natural talent guy is gonna come in last.
So, when “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, [and] fasted forty days and forty nights,” it wasn’t the first time that he had fasted or resisted temptation. We’re not told of other times that he fasted or resisted temptation throughout his life, but we know he did so because that’s how human beings work. Jesus’ natural talent at resisting temptation was through the roof, being God and all, but he was also human, so he still had to train his body and discipline his mind to be able to make it through those 40 days. If you’ve never fasted before or resisted any great temptation, and then you try it out for the first time for forty days, you ain’t gonna make it.
That would be like a 30-year-old, out of shape, non-athlete strapping on a pair of skis or ice skates and trying to win gold at the Olympics. It’s not gonna happen. You’d crash out, embarrass yourself, and possibly die. Winning the Olympics, or even getting to the Olympics, again takes years of training, years of dedication to your sport, years of controlling and conditioning your body, years of discipline.
Jesus won the gold in that forty day fast and resisting temptation, and to do so, he needed years of training, years of controlling his body and mind, years of discipline. He grew up learning Torah, the Jewish scriptures, and he grew up learning the ways of life of the Jewish people. He grew up with a life of prayer. Jesus lived a life of walking with God throughout his days. He followed the law, followed God’s commandments, and grew into the way of love though his childhood and into his adulthood. Jesus also grew up following the way of repentance. He chose to be baptized when John was baptizing people in the river Jordan, and he followed the way of repentance in the yearly Jewish Day of Atonement. Whether he needed it or not, Jesus followed the way of repentance, looking at your life and seeing how you might change to more fully walk in the way of love.
We are now in the Christian season of repentance, Lent, a season of discipline, a season of penitence, a season of fasting.
I was asked last week, “Why do we fast? What’s the purpose?” Well, there are several reasons why someone might fast. With a traditional fast, you simply don’t eat from sunup to sundown. So, you have and early breakfast, then you don’t eat again until a late dinner, after the sun has set.
Why in the world would someone do something so crazy? It teaches us discipline. When we’re hungry during the day, we discipline our bodies and discipline our minds to overcome that hunger and wait to eat until after sundown. Fasting teaches us control over our bodies and our desires. Fasting also teaches us to trust in God as we remember that even as we hunger for food, we also hunger for unity with God, unity with one another. Our food is not only the physical food we eat, but also to follow in the way of love. Fasting is meant to remind us to feed ourselves on the way of loving God and loving others.
So, there are other fasts we can choose. Rather than the traditional daily fast from food, we can choose to fast from some particular thing, as you hear people giving up something for Lent. Whatever it is you give up, the point is the same. We’re teaching ourselves to discipline our bodies and minds, to overcome our desires, and to live more fully the way of love.
Then, with the discipline of fasting, we’re more prepared to give up things that actually matter. Following the way of Jesus, we give up things like punching people in the face when they bothered us, shouting at others, stealing, lying. What about a fast from taking advantage of others? What about a fast from assuming the worst in other people? What about a fast from letting anger guide us?
Jesus fasted and disciplined his body and mind over his whole life. He fasted from things like over-charging folks for what he made in his carpenter shop. He fasted from deciding that prayer and committing himself to the way of love was getting boring and he wanted to just stop working at it for a few months. Jesus fasted from assuming that because he was God, he didn’t have to work that hard at repentance and being kind and loving toward others. “Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself…” (Philippians 2:6-7). Jesus disciplined himself, fasting, working hard at living a life in which he honored others, controlling his own desires and emotions.
That is why we fast during the season of Lent.
We fast to discipline our bodies during the season of penitence. Now, penitence is a form of prayer in which we confess our sins, we make things right with others when possible, and we work to change our lives so we stop harming others. Penitence is a prayer that Jesus practiced, whether he needed to or not.
More than saying “sorry” when we mess up, Penitence is a form of prayer which requires discipline, dedication, and practice. Penitence is a prayer that is done all the time, day in and day out. Sometimes you’re going to be voicing a prayer to God, confessing to God ways that you’ve harmed others. Other times, no one’s going to know that you’re praying, such when you tell someone you were wrong for how you treated them, and you see if you can do something to make it right. That’s just making amends to people, and that’s part of the prayer of repentance.
That prayer takes practice. Likely our first response when we do something wrong to someone is to deny it, try to minimize it, blame someone else, or just hope don’t get caught. Well, that’s the easy way, no work required, and it works out about as well as a thirty-year-old, out of shape, non-athlete throwing on a pair of skates and jumping into the Olympics. You get hurt. Others get hurt. No one wins.
Penitence requires practice, making a habit out of admitting our faults and trying to make things right with other people. We practice that over and over, making it our way of life, and every time we do, that is part of the prayer of penitence. Through discipline, dedication, and practice, penitence becomes a way of life, and the results are healing and love.
Now, one man said that he couldn’t admit to people when he wronged them because if he told this one guy that he had stollen from him, then he’d get his ass beat. “Ok,” I said, “so get your ass beat.” Then keep on doing the right thing. Keep on praying the prayer of penitence. If you know you’re going to fess up when you wrong someone and you know you’re going to get your ass beat when you do, then you might stop stealing from people. Then you might have more people on your side, and you won’t be at odds with everyone around you. You wouldn’t have to worry constantly about someone wanting to beat your ass.
That’s the way of life of penitence, a prayer that takes discipline, dedication, and practice. No one will know you are praying. You’re just living your discipline and dedication, and that way of life becomes your prayer.
It sounds like a lot of work. It is, and it’s also freedom. Eliod Kipchoge, Olympic gold medalist and world champion marathon runner said, “Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions.” Only the disciplined ones are free. The undisciplined ones are slaves to moods and passions.
You can’t just strap on a pair of skates or skis and compete in the Olympics. Jesus didn’t just decide one day it would be a really good idea to go hungry for a month. He practiced disciplining his body for years so that he wasn’t a slave to his moods and his passions. Jesus disciplined his body and mind and dedicated his life to the way of love so that when the devil’s temptations came, he was free. Jesus was free to be more powerful than the temptations of the devil. Rather than be a slave to his passions and a slave to his moods, Jesus was free because of his discipline, dedication, and practice, and so can we be.
Jesus said, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. Let your light so shine, that others may see your good works and give glory to God. This is more than getting someone to say, “Yay, God is good,” because they see your good works.
Giving glory to God is not the same as giving a “like” to someone’s good works. That person was kind; they were a light in the darkness. “Like,” and God is glorified. That’s not exactly giving glory to God. Seeing goodness and kindness in others and then giving glory to God comes through following in those same ways of life. When we see goodness and kindness in others, giving glory to God means loving others and showing kindness as well, living as God hopes for us to live.
The way God hopes for us to live, is to live in ways that minimize harm to each other and give the greatest healing and love that we can. We’re all God’s children, and God looks at us all with love, care, and concern. So when we talk about God’s way and God’s will for us, we’re talking about God desiring peace, community, and love for our lives. God desires healing and reconciliation for us so that we can love even our enemies.
That’s no small task, living as God desires for us to live. Following God’s will and God’s ways requires work on our parts. Daily, hourly, giving glory to God through our actions, through treating others with honor and love, respecting the dignity of every human being.
Glorifying God is not through words and religious practice, but through actions. Those words and religious practices are good, so long as they help guide our actions, to love and honor others, and respect this dignity of every human being. So, when Jesus said that he came not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them, that’s what he was talking about, how we live our lives.
We heard what the prophets had to say about the law and how we live our lives in our reading from Isaiah. He said that following religious practices just to get you right with God isn’t the deal. When Isaiah spoke to the people, they were fasting, praying, making sacrifices…doing all the right things to make God pleased with them.
If we were to translate these practices into our life as Christians, you could say they were going to church every Sunday, giving to the church, studying the Bible, praying and turning their lives over to Jesus, doing everything they were supposed to do. Unfortunately, none of that was translating into how they lived their lives minute by minute, day by day. They were doing all the right religious stuff, but actually caring about other people enough to be a light for them, to heal them, to be healed together, that’s the part they were missing. Actually caring about other people enough to be a light for the, to heal them, to be healed together, that’s at the heart of the Gospel.
I came to fulfill the law and the prophets, Jesus said. The law and the prophets’ interpretation of the law were given by God for our sake, out of care and concern for us. The law and the prophets were given to help us learn how to walk in the light. The law and the prophets were given to help to minimize the damage we cause from generation to generation and to heal the damage we cause from generation to generation, because the damage and the healing we cause echoes throughout generations.
We know the harm we cause one another echoes throughout generations because we live that harm every day. We are still living to this day the echoes of the harm caused when the first human being was chained and sold as a slave in this nation. We are living the echoes of the generational trauma that came as hundreds of thousands of people were stolen from their homes in Africa, chained, and sold as slaves here in America, as the slavers used up and discarded the bodies of human beings as nothing more things to make them money.
Slavers used the law, or rather misused the law, to justify their captivity, beating, killing, raping, and terrorizing Africans who were taken from their lands and sold into slavery. The slavers would say, “There were slaves in scripture, therefore we can have slaves now,” but they could only say that by misunderstanding the scriptures and using the scriptures selfishly, rather than seeking to fulfill the law and prophets like Jesus did.
Those slavers built a nation on torture, rape, and murder of human beings. Those slavers built an economy on torture, rape, and murder of human beings. Those slavers built an economy on treating human beings as disposable things, used to make money and then discarded. Generations and generations later, our economy still works that way. Billionaires have luxury surpassing kings and pharaohs of legend, while the lowest of their workers don’t make enough even to afford a one-bedroom apartment.
Sure, we don’t have slavery anymore, but the grossly wealthy, like the slavers of yore, still create their great wealth by using up and discarding the bodies of the human beings as nothing more than things to make them money. The way our economy was built is the way our economy still is. The echoes of the harm done to even one person reverberate throughout generations.
If only the slavers had understood that, had understood what Jesus meant when he said that he came to fulfill the law and the prophets. To do that, you have to care deeply about people and then look at scripture deeply through that lens of caring deeply about people.
For example, Genesis 4:10 says, “For anybody who destroys a single life it is counted as if he destroyed an entire world, and for anybody who preserves a single life it is counted as if he preserved an entire world.”
Now, those words may not sound like anything you’ve ever read in the Bible, because they’re not. The actual words of Genesis 4:10 are, “And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!” That was God speaking to Cain after he had killed Abel. What have you done, Cain, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground?
I said that Genesis 4:10 says, “Anybody who destroys a single life is counted as if he destroyed an entire world,” because that is a rabbinic teaching about Genesis 4:10 in the Talmud. The Talmud is called the oral Torah, teachings of rabbis on the first five books of the Bible over centuries. In Genesis 4:10, rabbis teach that the word for blood was not singular, but plural. Your brother’s bloods are crying to me from the ground. The life-bloods of Abel were crying to God from the ground, meaning that all of Abel’s descendants who would never now be born, were crying to God from the ground.
Cain had not just killed his brother Abel. He had killed the countless generations of people, the world of people, who could have come from him. “Anybody who destroys a single life is counted as if he destroyed an entire world.”
Fulfilling the law and the prophets requires caring about people enough and looking deeply at scripture enough to realize that the harm we do to one another echoes through centuries and millennia. Jesus understood this when he taught that it isn’t enough simply not to murder someone else. Even if you hate someone, it brings generational harm, like slavery did. When you traumatize a single life, you traumatize an entire world. The hurt we inflict on one another is passed down to our children, and to their children, and to their children’s children, spreading and echoing for countless generations…and so does healing.
Remember, the full teaching from Genesis 4:10 is “Anybody who destroys a single life is counted as if he destroyed an entire world, and anybody who preserves a single life is counted as if he preserved an entire world.”
Jesus came to heal the wounds we inflict on one another, and Jesus came to lead us into healing those same wounds and hopefully causing fewer and fewer of those wounds. We are the light of the world, Jesus said, and that means we are hoping to help cause less harm and to heal others in this life so that healing and light will follow for generations.
That is the work of the church. You are light, Jesus said, so let that light shine before others. Show them, teach them, offer the light of the ways of God. We don’t do that with condemnation and threats, telling people how sinful we think they are. Jesus didn’t you are a light to burn people with or to set them on fire till they finally listen to you. That doesn’t glorify God. That just causes more harm.
Jesus said to be the light by how you live, and offer that way to others. That will glorify God. When we help one another heal from the hurts of our lives, and from the generational hurts of the world, that will glorify God. When we look upon one another and choose to see each person as beloved, that glorifies God.
As far as religious practice goes, that’s what we do to keep kindling the light within us. We keep connecting to God. We keep giving over fears and anxieties to God. We keep turning every day over to God’s guidance. Then we live that nearness and peace, loving others, honoring others, and respecting the dignity of every human being, even our enemies. When we glorify God in those ways, then the hurt that is echoing throughout generations is soothed and lessened as the healing we bring echoes throughout generations as well.
