Blessing In the Face of Cruelty

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
August 17, 2025
Proper 15, C
Jeremiah 23:23-29
Psalm 82
Luke 12:49-56

During the time of the kings of Israel, from King David all the way up to 700 years before Jesus was born, they had a series of good kings, and decent kings, and really terrible kings. The bad kings forgot about following God and God’s ways and instead began worshipping other gods and idols. They treated the people terribly with injustice, oppressing the lowly, and gaining wealth through lies and exploiting workers. Under their leadership, others did the same, and Israel became a place of injustice, exploitation, and oppression. 

The very worst of these bad kings was Ahab. Ahab was married to Jezebel, who was famous for her devotion to Baal, the deity of her native country. Ahab started worshipping Baal with Jezebel, and that led to all sorts of other atrocities. He even had a man killed because he wanted the man’s field. Never mind that he had no legal right to the field. He wanted it, so he killed the man and took it. 

Long afterwards, the prophet Micah told the people of Israel that they were doing the same things as when Ahab was king: injustice, oppression, exploitation. They weren’t worshipping Baal. Their words and prayers were worship to God, but by their actions, they were worshipping something other than God. It wasn’t called Baal, but it was something other than God. If you’re practicing injustice, oppression, and exploitation, you can’t be worshipping God, even if your words say you are.

So, Micah told the people of Israel they were living in a time just like when Ahab was king, and as a result, God was going to give them over to oblivion. They would work and produced nothing good. They would never be satisfied or filled. Children would rise against their parents, and their enemies would be members of their own households.

Well golly, that’s just what Jesus said in our Gospel reading today. “I’ve come not to bring peace, but division. From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

That was God’s judgment against Israel during the time when Micah was prophesying, and Jesus was declaring God’s same judgment for the same reasons. Jesus was declaring to the people of Israel, Y’all are living just like during the time of Ahab. Y’all are living with injustice, oppression, and exploitation. 

There will be division, Jesus was proclaiming, because of how so many in Israel were going along with oppression. Then, in addition to proclaiming God’s judgment, Jesus asked them how they could be so blind to the injustice of their leaders.

You can tell when it’s about to rain, Jesus said. How can you guys not realize you are living in the time of Ahab? How can you not tell that your leaders are sending you down paths of oppression of the lowly, injustice, and exploitation? How do you guys not get it? Jesus wondered.

When we have leaders who oppress people, who give unjust rulings and support unjust laws, who exploit workers to get as much wealth for the rich as they can, then we too are living in the time of Ahab. When we live in the time of Ahab, then we will live in a society that is divided. We will live in a society that can never get enough. We will live in a society that works constantly and yet finds mostly emptiness for all of our labor. 

That sounds kinda like today, and I find Jesus’ words are just as relevant now as they were when he spoke them. Divisiveness and emptiness are the judgements of God for a nation that lives with injustice, oppression, and exploitation. We have a nation deeply divided. We have so much emptiness in our lives. We strive for fame and fortune as for a lover, and we’re left empty because neither fame nor fortune can love us back. We strive for power and possessions as for a dear friend, and we’re left empty because neither power nor possessions can love us back.

We’re living in the time of Ahab, just as Israel was when Micah prophesied to them and just as Israel was when Jesus spoke to the people. So, what are we to do about living in a time of injustice, oppression, and exploitation? Are we to fight, and kill, and destroy leaders who are taking us down these dark paths? Of course not.

We are to follow the teachings of Jesus who taught us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and love one another as he loves us. When our leaders follow ways of injustice, oppression, and exploitation, how we treat one another matters even more. When there is cruelty from leadership, the love we practice is vital. When the powerful have disgust for the lowly, then compassion for one another is more needed than ever.

Where there is hatred, we are to live in love. Where there is discord, we are to bring about communion. Where there is darkness, we get to be light for one another. Where there is sadness and misery, we get to hold one another and cry together. 

We are to worship God in word and in action. We are to remember that when we follow paths of injustice, oppression, and exploitation, we can’t actually worship God, no matter what our words say.

 

So what do we do with our hatred, with our anger, with our desires for vengeance? We offer those desires to God as part of our worship. We say, “Here you go, God. Here is my hatred. Here is my anger. Here is my desire for vengeance. I don’t know what to do with it all, so I am giving it to you, and you can do with it whatever you know is right.”

We make offerings of praise and shouts of joy to God, and that is true worship. Just as our offerings of rage are true worship. That way, we give our rage to God and don’t take it out on one another.

We follow the teachings of Jesus to show our faith truly is in God and not in something else. We live the kingdom of God and follow our prayers and worship with actions that make our words true.

Throughout our lives, we’re going to have good leaders and bad leaders. We’re going to have leaders who seek justice and those who seek injustice. We are called to follow not the way of those leaders, but the way of Jesus who is the way, the truth, and the life. Our leaders are not our God, and no matter how good or bad they are, no matter how much harm or healing they bring to the world, our calling as the church is to follow Jesus. Our leaders come and go. Jesus remains forever. Following Jesus, we seek justice. We seek to lift up the oppressed. We seek to help the exploited. 

In how we vote, in what we tell our elected leaders, in how we treat one another, in how we rise in the morning, and how we go to sleep at night, we seek justice. We offer love and mercy. We walk humbly with God. 

“In returning and rest we shall be saved. In quietness and confidence shall be our strength.”

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets Episcopal Church
May 14, 2023
6 Easter, Year A
Acts 17:22-31
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21
Psalm 66:7-18

“In returning and rest we shall be saved. In quietness and confidence shall be our strength.”

Has anyone else ever found themselves worshipping an idol, or is it just me? Interesting Sunday when the priest tells you he’s been worshipping idols, but I figure I should be honest about that when the sermon topic includes idol worship. Now, in our reading from Acts, Paul was talking about what we often think of as idols, little statues of gold or wood, and no, I’ve not bowed down and prayed to a little statue made of gold or wood. 

It was bronze…kidding. 

When Paul saw all of the things the Athenians had for their various religions, he saw idols, little statues, and he saw an altar to “an unknown God.” Paul let them know that God was not actually unknown, and pointed out that God is not anything like a little statue. God is not something that we make. 

God is, in fact, beyond all of creation. As vast as the universe is, all of the universe is contained within God. Anything that we could make or do is contained within God, for as Paul said, “In God we live and move and have our being.” Rather, than something we make, God made us and all of creation so that we would search for God and perhaps grope for God and find God.

Union with God is the deepest desire of our souls, and God is always united to us. The trick of the devil is not to separate us from God; that’s impossible. The trick of the devil is to have us think that we’re separated from God and then to think that something else will fill that void. 

In the Garden of Eden in the second story of creation, we find desire for knowledge as the first idol. Remember, God told the humans not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but the serpent told them that they actually should eat it, told them that God had lied to them. The serpent tricked them into thinking that their union with God was broken and gone. Then the serpent let them think that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, would somehow replace their union with God, would satisfy their longing for union with God. Their union with God wasn’t actually broken, but the serpent convinced them it was and then lied to them about how they could fix their longing. 

Classic marketing strategy on the serpent’s part. Here’s a problem you didn’t know you had; now you can fix it by purchasing this.

Our souls want union with God. We actually have union with God, but our hurts and fears, our anxieties and traumas often keep us from realizing the unity we have. We feel a deep longing for peace. We feel great disquiet within ourselves, and we long comfort, for soothing, for some way to know that we are ok or to stop caring that we are not. In our hurts and fears, our anxieties and traumas, we seek all sorts of things which we think will fix us or fill us. 

Some seek money and power, never having enough, even when they’ve got more than they could need in multiple lifetimes. Others simply have enough, and yet they still fret constantly, worried about the future and if there will be enough. In either case, money can become an idol when it becomes our focus in soothing all our fears and anxieties. That’s one of the kinds of idols I was talking about earlier. If only I had enough not to worry about money, well then, I’d be ok. 

We have countless idols, not statues of gold and wood, things that we think will help soothe our souls. Being right and making sure we can prove others wrong can be an idol. Hanging on to anger and resentment can be an idol. Finding fault in others to make ourselves feel better can be an idol. The what ifs of the past or the if onlys of the future can be idols. Numbing and escaping reality can be an idol. 

So, now when I ask, “has anyone else ever found themselves worshipping an idol,” maybe you get my meaning a bit more? The kinds of idols I’m talking about: money, more, being right, resentment, anger, escape, what if, if only, numbing out…these kinds of things are idols I’m guessing all of us find ourselves turning to. 

My point is not, “Oh, we’re terrible idolaters, how awful of us.” My point is that we are hurting, and we tend to seek help in ways that don’t actually help us all that much. We unwittingly believe the serpent’s lie that our union with God is broken and any number of these other things will fix it. 

The truth is, “In God we live and move and have our being.” God is with us, among us, around us, in us, and through us all the time. So, when we set our minds on other things to fix us, we ignore the life all around us. When we turn to the idols of money and more; the idols of being right, resentment, anger; the idols of escape, what if, if only, and numbing out, when we turn to those idols, we block out God in whom we live and move and have our being. When we turn to these idols, we block out the peace we can have by turning to God in whom we live and move and have our being. 

I was talking with a gentleman a while back, seeking some peace, and we talked about prayer and meditation as ways to be with God, rather than disassociate from our fears and anxieties. 

We talked about having a rhythm of prayer. Rhythm has been found to help heal trauma. Our bodies are wired for rhythm. Our breath, our heartbeats, the steps we take, all in rhythm. There are the rhythms of the sun and the moon, night and day, the rhythms of the seasons. We’ve separated ourselves from a lot of these natural rhythms in modern society, and I believe that adds to our stress. So, adding in some rhythm of prayer can help heal our bodies, spending time with God in whom we live and move and have our being. 

In the Episcopal Church, we have a rhythm of prayer. Eucharist every Sunday. We also have daily prayer: morning, noon, evening, and night. Following this rhythm of prayer helps bring rhythm back into our lives and helps bring us into constant awareness of God’s presence with, and around, and within us. 

Another way to spend time in awareness of God meditation, specifically a meditation prayer called Centering Prayer. In Centering Prayer, you spend time in silence, focusing on your breathing, simply being in the present moment, aware of God’s presence around and within you. 

The way it works is you sit in silence for a few minutes, or up to twenty minutes, and you simply breathe. Before you begin, you choose a “sacred word,” generally something related to faith: God, Jesus, Love. Mine is Peace. The sacred word is used to draw us back to the center and back to the breath. As we sit in silence, thoughts will come, as thoughts tend to do, and when thoughts come, we say our sacred word in our minds to let go of the thoughts and draw us back to the present, to the breath.  

Centering Prayer is a way of letting go of our thoughts, simply experiencing the quiet (or the noise) of the present. Simply experiencing the quiet of breathing, of life around us. Simply experiencing God in whom we live and move and have our being.

The result is peace. 

Dwelling not in the past or the future, but simply dwelling in the present, focusing on the breath, breathing God in and out, we find peace. 

Rather than disassociate because of hurt and trauma, rather than use various idols, we can seek rhythm of prayer and meditation. We can seek to know and live unity with God, for it is God in whom we live and move and have our being. Union with God is the deepest desire of our souls, and despite the devil’s lie, we are still united with God. We always have been. When we let go our idols, when we turn to rhythm of prayer and meditation, we help our bodies realize the union with God that is always there. The union with God that is always with us. The union of God that brings us peace.