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. 

Rather than what the market demands, choose justice, mercy, love, and transformation.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Lord of the Streets, Houston

February 9, 2025

5 Epiphany, C

Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13]

Psalm 138

Luke 5:1-11

Title

“From now on, you’ll be fishing for people,” Jesus told his first disciples. This has been interpreted by many as Jesus’ call for his disciples to be evangelists, sharing the good news of Jesus and getting folks to become Jesus’ disciples. So, I’m supposed to preach about how we’re all supposed to go out and be good evangelists and get people to believe in Jesus. 

When I’ve heard people talk about this kind of fish for people evangelism, the message that I’ve heard that people are to share often has very little to do with this life and has a whole lot to do with life after we die. So, there are often thinly veiled threats of God’s punishment or not veiled at all threats of God’s punishment, along with a get out of punishment free, Jesus card. Believe in Jesus. You just gotta believe. The whole thing is often kind of confused and leads to believers whose faith may be in Jesus, but whose lives are not transformed. 

It kinda follows the movies I’ve seen about Jesus where his disciples get so excited about fishing for people that they go around talking about the good news, and how great it is because of the good news, and y’all should believe because of the good news. There’s never really any explanation as to what the good news is, and audience members who haven’t been raised in the church are left wondering what in the world they were talking about. 

I find that a lot of our “fish for people” evangelism is equally confused, people feeling like they have to tell folks about Jesus to get them saved, but in that conversation, the actual person with an actual life is irrelevant. “You gotta get saved.” “But what about what’s going on in my life right now?” “You gotta get saved.”

So, that’s definitely one interpretation of what Jesus meant by “you’ll be fishing for people,” but I read a different interpretation last week which is fantastic and actually makes sense with the rest of Luke’s Gospel and the prophets that came before. “Fish for people” was an image used in Jeremiah, and Amos, and other prophets calling for justice, for an end to oppression, and for turning back to God’s ways of loving and caring for one another. 

In Jeremiah 16:16-17 God says he is sending fishermen to catch those who are not following God’s ways, who are following idols and violence. In Amos 4:1-2, God says those who oppress the poor and crush the needy will be taken away with fish-hooks. In light of Jeremiah and Amos, it sounds like Jesus was sending his disciples to call out oppression and to serve and heal the needy who were being crushed by the powerful.

Jesus sending his disciples to fish for people by working to help the poor and needy, and striving against oppression, that follows all that had come before in Luke’s Gospel. What did Mary sing when she was pregnant with Jesus? I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t, “My son is going to be a get out of Hell free card with little or no impact on this life.” Mary’s song said, “[God] scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” Justice and mercy were the themes of Mary’s song. 

For centuries, the prophets had been preaching justice and mercy. “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” (Micah 6:8) “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” (Hosea 6:6) “Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17) Then, when John the Baptist was proclaiming his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, people asked him what they should do, and he told them to live lives of justice and mercy. 

So, when Jesus told his disciples, I’m going to have you fish for people, he was telling them, we are going to work for justice and mercy, and by working for justice and mercy, we are going to draw people closer to God and one another. We are going to live lives of love and transform people’s lives by how we care for them. We are going to transform people’s lives, and we teach others to do the same.

That work of justice and mercy, that work of love and transformation was for everyone, those who were wealthy and those who were poor. In one parable Jesus told, a wealthy man showed mercy, and a poor man did not, and the poor man was not let off the hook (or the fish-hook) just because he was poor. 

Justice and mercy, love and transformation, that’s God’s will for our lives. That’s always been God’s will for our lives. We see this in the earliest parts of scripture and when God formed the people of Israel and gave them the law. One law God gave was about gleaning. Gleaning was a practice in ancient Israel in which large landowners, farmers, would not take in all of the harvest. They would intentionally leave some of the grain, leave some of the fruits or vegetables out in the fields, so that the poor among them could come and take what had been left.

In other words, the wealthy intentionally took less than they could for themselves so that others might have enough.

If we look at modern-day gleaning, we could look at the owners of businesses and the executives of businesses. Owners are the shareholders, and they want to get as much as they can get from the profits of the company. Executives try to keep shareholders happy by earning as much profit as they can to give as much as possible to the shareholders. The executives also end up getting as much as they can in their salaries. The market demands that executives get huge salaries, because if one company didn’t pay as much, then another would pay more, and they’d get the best executives. So, salaries keep going up as companies compete for the best people.

Executives and shareholders get as much as they can out of the business, and folks on the bottom have not enough or barely enough to live on. That goes completely against the Biblical demands for justice and against the concept of gleaning. Modern-day gleaning would look like shareholders and executives intentionally giving themselves less than they could get so that those at the bottom could have more.

That’s the kind of thing Jesus and his disciples might preach when they went around fishing for people. For those at the top, you don’t need to take as much as you can for yourself, regardless of what the market demands. Choose to take less than you can, so that those at the bottom can have more and won’t be weeks away from eviction at any moment. 

Rather than choosing what the market demands, choose justice, mercy, love, and transformation. I think that’s what Jesus and his disciples would preach as they went fishing for people, and Jesus and his disciples would preach that message to all of us, not just to the wealthy. Even those with very little can oppress others. 

God, who created all that is, has been teaching us this for millennia. Choose justice, mercy, and love, rather than oppression. God knows how hard that can be for us, and so God became human. God became human to join with us in our oppression, both when we are oppressors and when we are being oppressed. God joined with us to strive with us and to help transform our lives. From lives of oppression to lives of justice, mercy, and love, God strives with us, joining us together with God and one another so that our lives might be transformed. That sounds like good news. Fish for people. Choose justice, mercy, and love, and allow Jesus to transform our lives.

Give to God the Things that Are God’s: Our Hurt, Pain, Anger, and Fear

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets
October 22, 2023
Proper 24, Year A
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Psalm 96:1-9, (10-13)
Matthew 22:15-22

Give to God the Things that Are God’s: Our Hurt, Pain, Anger, and Fear

So, the Pharisees had a neat little trick they were trying to pull on Jesus. See, Israel was under Roman occupation. The power-hungry and blood-thirsty empire had taken over Israel, like so many other places, because they believed they were the only truly good civilization, and all other places in the known world needed to be ruled by them. They’d all be so much better off if they all just followed and did whatever Rome forced them to do.

Rome still allowed Israel to worship God, follow their own religion, and Rome also had soldiers in Israel, keeping the peace, meaning oppressing those whom Rome felt got out of line. Rome also made Israel pay them taxes so that Rome could afford their occupation and oppression of Israel. Rome’s message was, “We’re going to take over your country and oppress your people, and you’re going to pay us for it.”

So, taxes to Rome were not exactly popular. When the Pharisees, therefore, asked Jesus if it was lawful to pay taxes to Rome, they were trying either to get him arrested by Rome for saying, “No” or to be hated by the people for saying “Yes.”

So, Jesus stymied them in their efforts. “Hmmm, the coin had Caesar’s image on it, so it’s meant to be given to him.” So, yes, paying taxes to Rome was legit under Roman occupations. If Caesar wants to rule over you and control your life, fine. Pay him what is due. That way he doesn’t just come and burn your home and take the taxes anyway. Yes, give Caesar his damn tax money…  

…but don’t play his game. Dominance over others, proving loyalty. Outward sign after outward sign that you are one of us, that you belong, that you aren’t going against the powers that are. That’s the game the Pharisees were playing. That’s the game Rome played.

Jesus wasn’t interested in playing those domination games, proving loyalty, proving somehow that you really are a part of the acceptable group of people. Jesus wasn’t interested in dominating or coercing his followers or anyone else. That’s the way of Rome, the way of Empire, the way of signs and assurances that you are still part of the in-group and don’t need to be punished or banished.

The coin had an image of Caesar on it, an obvious sign of whose it was. You carried the coin; in his mind, your life was his.

Notice, however, that the things that were God’s, that Jesus said to give to God, had no image associated with them. There was no visual to put on display to show you were giving to God the things that were God’s. Jesus offered no proof of loyalty, no faithfulness test, no signs given to assure you weren’t backsliding.

That’s because none of those things exist. Jesus’ message was never, “believe or else,” and yet, we’ve taken the Gospel and turned it into a “get out of Hell free card,” written by God saying, “Believe in Jesus, and I won’t torture you forever. P.S. I love you.”

That was never the Gospel, and all of our various churches’ fearful methods of controlling people’s lives in order to “get them saved” are taking God’s Gospel of love and healing for humanity and turning it into a gospel of fear and coercion. 

What does that fearful, controlling gospel tell so many people? That they’re destined for Hell unless they happen to believe in Jesus. What, then is the god of that gospel saying to humanity? That god is saying “I love you, and I really want you to love me back, and if you don’t, I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to hurt you and torture you forever. Oh! You love me too? Well, that’s great! Now, we can be besties!”

That’s not love or healing. That’s coercion and abuse. “Believe in me or else” was never the Gospel Jesus taught. There are passages which, when misunderstood and read out of context, seem to say that, but “Believe in Jesus, and I won’t torture you forever. P.S. I love you,” is not the Gospel.

Jesus didn’t give a test to the religious leaders like they gave to him to “prove their faithfulness and good religious behavior.” In fact, Jesus made a habit of breaking the faithfulness to rules test, constantly pissing off the religious leaders.

Rather than threats and coercion, Jesus’ religion was fairly simple. Know you are beloved, and love others. That was the religion of Jesus.

See, unlike the false god, the emperor Caesar, God does not sit up on high demanding we constantly give him his due while doing his work and kissing up to him. Unlike the emperor Caesar, God doesn’t give edicts from on high demanding that we kill others in order to make the world how he wants it. That is not the god of Jesus.

Instead, God teaches us to love and care for one another. God gives us healing in those teachings. God teaches us to love, care, and pray even for our enemies, and God gives us healing in those teachings. Then, rather than give harsh edicts from up on high, God becomes one with us and shares with us all the joy and all the suffering of human life. Rather than coercing and abusing us from some throne up on high, God joins us at the cross on Calvary.  God joins in all of our hurt, all of our pain, all of our anger, and all of our fear.

“Give to God the things that are God’s,” Jesus said. We might start with our hurt, our pain, our anger, and our fear.

We find that we are giving to God the things that are God’s when we do as he did and join with one another in our sorrow and suffering. We give to God the things that are God’s when we offer to God all of our hurt, all of our pain, all of our anger and fear. We give to God the things that are God’s when we pray for our enemies rather than kill our enemies.

Then, we also give to God the things that are God’s when we find we’ve done everything wrong. When we’ve acted like Caesar, killed our enemies, ignored and caused the suffering of others, we give to God the things that are God’s.  We give to God all of the hurt and the pain we have caused as well as the hurt and pain we have suffered. Then, we give to God the things that are God’s when we accept God’s forgiveness, when we accept our belovedness, when we accept the belovedness even of our enemies and oppressors, and we are healed.