This sermon was preached on Oct. 27, 2022 in LSTC’s Augustana Chapel. The sermon text was Matthew 21:28-32. A recording can be found on LSTC’s YouTube channel. This is the sermon I preached after someone with influence over my promotion and tenure processes suggested that I focus on writing instead of advocating for antiracist work at LSTC.
Confronted by the chief priests and elders of the people, Jesus responds with a parable. He is, it seems, still Jesus. The heart of this parable is the contrast between two children, one who refuses their parent’s call to work, yet does the work anyway, and one who verbally accepts that call, but ultimately does not do the work.
A parable about work is timely, indeed. We live in a time of deepening inequity, rising and entrenching fascism, and worsening ecological devastation. For those who would seek justice as or on behalf of the poor and not-so-powerless, there is no shortage of work.
In this world of injustice, there is certainly no shortage of work for those who would serve in the ELCA. Membership continues to decline. There is a growing awareness of racial diversity in society, paired with a persistent awareness of the lack of such diversity in the ELCA. Demands for justice, equity, and inclusion are advancing in step with accusations that the ELCA has made justice commitments on which it isn’t following through. Partly in response to such calls for justice, political conflict threatens to tear the ELCA apart. And with leadership needed so desperately and so much work that needs doing, the ELCA faces difficulty recruiting leaders for this church.
And in this unjust world and as a seminary of that uncertain church, we find ourselves in a time of transition at LSTC. Folks here – students, staff, and faculty alike – are stretched thin. Yet, in this time of abundant work and meager resources, we have been called as clearly as ever to do the work of pursuing equity, of seeking God’s justice.
It is a time when those who are called to do that work may be tempted to say no, and those who say yes may be doing so primarily out of the hope that in saying yes, they have somehow spoken equity into being, or at least done enough to soothe their consciences. Today’s gospel, though, reminds us that the work is not done until it is actually done.
It’s an obvious lesson to the parable of the two sons, and I want to stick with it for a minute, because it’s a lesson many of us have been taught, and that can be reinforced as we prepare for ministry or otherwise engage in the work of pursuing justice.
When you’re called to do the work of pursuing justice, what matters is that you do that work. It’s not enough to just say that you’ll do it. The implications of this lesson are probably fairly obvious: if you’ve said yes to the work of justice, but haven’t been doing the work, you know what you should do, and if you don’t know, then you should ask for help. If, perhaps, you said no in the past – as is part of so many call stories – but you’ve been doing the work: great, God knows, keep at it.
There’s a third group of folks, though, who might find this parable not convicting, but deeply discouraging, and you’re the ones I’ve been so excited to speak to in this sermon. You’re the folks who’ve said yes to the work of justice…but when you’ve tried to do that work, you’ve found that something gets in the way. You came here to study or serve or teach or encourage, and to do so in a way that promotes justice…but you don’t accomplish nearly as much as you feel you should, or at least as much as you know needs to be done.
Something has gotten in the way, and many of the folks around you just don’t even seem to notice, or maybe just the folks you really need to notice don’t notice.
You spend your energy navigating a building that wasn’t built with accessibility in mind. Or you spend your energy trying to get professors to honor academic accommodations or worrying that you’re going to push those accommodations past their limits. You spend your time and energy working your way through seminary because LSTC’s resources are stretched too thin to cover all your financial needs. You feel drained because the whiteness of this community is overwhelming, or demoralized because you get misgendered or deadnamed by a professor, then have to deal with what feels like resentment when you point this out. You exhaust yourself writing and talking in a language that still feels strange, while you’re separated from family and friends. You struggle with the sinking feeling that you will wait upwards of a year to find a single congregation that is willing to call you, no matter how open-minded and non-threatening you try to make yourself.
You’ve said “yes” to God’s work of justice, but something has gotten in the way. And instead of spending your time and energy doing a bunch of organizing work or volunteering or doing groundbreaking research or working toward the revolution or loudly proclaiming God’s message of radical love…it’s a struggle just to finish a paper, or finish planning an event, or finish your grading, or finish a long day of classes…it might even be a struggle just to send yet another email to let someone know you need more time to get the work done. You know you said “yes” when God called you to seek justice, but something has gotten in the way, and because that obstacle goes unnoticed, you can’t help but fear that in this parable, you’ve become the child who said yes, but did not do the work.
So let’s return to verses 31 and 32: “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the sex workers are going into the kindom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the sex workers believed him, and even after you saw it you did not change your minds and believe him.”
After telling his parable, Jesus points to the tax collectors and sex workers, exalting them above the chief priests and elders. But why? Did he point to them because they got results? Did they overthrow their Roman occupiers? Did they lead all of Israel to embrace the coming of the kindom?
Of course not…but they did pay attention to John the Baptist, and they did follow Jesus. They were rejected and reviled. You can imagine that they might not have had the energy to do much more than follow Jesus from place to place, helping folks find a seat as they gathered around or watching out for the authorities, but they followed faithfully. Jesus wasn’t demanding results, he was pointing out the difference between those who do the work – even if that work is struggling so that you can do just a fraction of the work you know needs doing – and those who make a show of being righteous, while balking at the impossibility of the work that confronts them.
If you’re here, you’re trying to do the work of pursuing justice, and what’s getting in the way is illness, grief, white supremacy, misogyny, or some other evil, even if nobody else recognizes your struggle, I want you to know that your mother in heaven understands. Know that the work you are doing just to make it through the day is God’s work. Whether it’s advocating for yourself, or resting, or taking a break from white folks, or turning off your camera on zoom or teams, or working through your anxiety or depression to send that email asking for help, God knows what you’re doing is necessary for you to pursue justice as God called you to do, as you said you would.
That’s nice, right? Satisfying enough to be some good news? A little bit of law, a little bit of gospel? Well, I thought my sermon would end right about there, with a little more exegetical playtime in the middle, but it turned out the Spirit wasn’t going to let me off that easy. No…this is gonna be a long one.
See, I figured all that stuff out a couple weeks ago. It felt good. I knew what I wanted to preach on, told Hannah what I had in mind, and I was ready to coast into a nice, affirming message for folks whose labor goes unnoticed, to let them know it is noticed, that it is good work. That even if it’s not glamorous, that it’s God’s work. But then…something got in the way.
This sermon has a particular context, just like Jesus’ parable. As is so often the case, the parable the lectionary carves out for us comes in response to a particular situation, in this case, something getting in the way as Jesus tries to teach. Let’s read the preceding verses, Matthew 21:23-27.
When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why, then, did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for all regard John as a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
As Jesus was teaching, the powers of the world got in the way. I’m talking about the demonic powers that take form in the many evils of Empire, working through individuals and communities to facilitate exploitation and violence, to divide and conquer. The powers got in Jesus’s way, speaking to him through the chief priests and elders. And wouldn’t you know, about a week and a half ago, as I was thinking through this nice, uplifting sermon about today’s little curated lectionary text, the powers of this world got in my way. Those demonic powers confronted me at this very seminary, though in my case, it was behind closed doors. I hope you can indulge a bit of personal testimony in this sermon.
You see, after four years here, I’m getting increasingly insistent that LSTC’s faculty actually do the collective and individual antiracist work to which we’ve committed ourselves. That’s led to some tension. In response to an email I sent to my faculty colleagues in which I expressed my need for them, individually and collectively, to take the work of antiracism more seriously, someone associated with LSTC asked to meet with me, to respond to my email and help discern how my needs might be met here.
I won’t say who they were, as I’m not interested in targeting or shaming them, but it’s important to understand two things about this person. First, this is my fifth year here, so I’m up for promotion in the spring. This person has a fair amount of influence over the outcome of my promotion review. Second, this person is white. That leaves a larger group of people than you might think, so I’ll simply encourage you to attend to the message this story supports, rather than putting on your detective hats and missing the point. In any event, when I say the powers got in my way, they confronted me through someone with a fair amount of institutional power over me.
During this meeting, I shared that a significant problem I face at LSTC is the amount of emotional labor involved in maintaining positive working relations with senior faculty who don’t prioritize antiracism. In other words, I said it’s hard working nicely with a bunch of folks who mostly seem content to give individuals space to do antiracist work in their classes, but who sit quietly when white supremacy shows its face in faculty meetings. It’s hard maintaining collegial relations when some of my senior colleagues persist in perpetuating the idea that preparing our ELCA candidates to do antiracist work necessarily means setting them up to fail in ELCA congregations. It’s hard keeping myself even remotely calm when one of my senior colleagues claims that those who insist on antiracist work do so only to serve our own ends, and this receives only the mildest redirection from one of the others, forget about any kind of clear rebuke.
In response to my explanation of how white supremacy impacts my work at LSTC, this person told me that if the problem was the emotional labor it takes to persist in antiracist work here while maintaining positive relations with my colleagues, then maybe I should “disengage” from that work, at least for a while. After all, I had said in my email to the faculty that I wanted to work on my book, so why not step back from all the emotional labor that comes with confronting my colleagues without permanently damaging my relationships with them and just spend my energy writing? If that “encouragement” wasn’t enough on its own, they mentioned my promotion several times, though in a later email they pointed out that they made no “direct correlation” between my promotion and my potentially publishing a book.
I don’t want to assume it’s obvious why this is a problem, so I’ll spell it out as clearly as I can. A white person with influence over my possible promotion invited me to a one-on-one conversation about how best to support me, then responded to my concerns and critiques about white supremacy in the seminary by recommending that I stop spending so much energy trying to get my colleagues to do the work of antiracism and instead just focus on what will help me to get ahead in my career. To take a little of the polish off of that: I was advised by a white person who can either help or harm my career that it would be better for everyone involved – including me – if I’d stop spending so much energy causing trouble and instead used that energy to succeed under the terms of the white supremacist system of supposed meritocracy that provides the backbone of the academy. If you were present for the Antiracism Transformation Team presentation yesterday, perhaps you can recognize white institutional values at work in this person’s intervention.
Reflecting on that meeting as I prepared to write this sermon, I realized that the powers had been speaking to me through that person as they spoke to Jesus through the chief priests and elders, trying to cast him as a troublemaker instead of one called by God…and as I’m sure the powers have spoken to more than a few of you.
And because the powers have been at work, speaking in this place, it seems the Spirit needs to speak, too. And since I’m the one who’s been called to do this little bit of work, that means I have something to say to those of you who find yourselves speaking for the powers and something to say for those of you who find yourselves targeted by the powers
To those who find yourselves speaking for the powers, I want to say a little bit about the chief priests and elders. I imagine them as folks who believed they had their community’s best interests at heart. I imagine they believed their work was to preserve God’s people, to be faithful stewards of the trust handed to them from untold generations before. From what I suspect was their perspective, some out of control folks were hollering about the kindom of God, about the poor, about radically changing the way they lived their lives, about how God might be rightly honored, but the chief priests and elders were certain they knew better. After all, they had more information than most about their political situation and the broader context of Roman occupation, and that their analysis was that what God’s people needed wasn’t radical action, it was accommodation. God’s people wouldn’t survive Roman occupation by following false prophets, they would survive by playing Rome’s game and maintaining as much of their distinctive identity as possible while doing so. As such, they understood people like John and Jesus as existential threats to their people and could not possibly imagine God speaking through them.
Here at LSTC, some of you believe you have the best interests of the seminary and the church at heart. You’re working to preserve LSTC and the ELCA. Unfortunately, this can lead you to resist calls for radical action, in favor of paying close attention to market trends or focusing on preserving time-honored traditions. And, at times, you find yourselves telling others that justice needs to wait. Justice needs to wait for one or two more people to retire. Justice needs to wait until he’s published his book. Justice needs to wait until they’ve gotten their first call…or maybe their second. Justice needs to wait until she’s finished her degree.
And when someone presents a threat to the stability of the seminary, maybe you react a little like the chief priests and elders did. You play your games of authority and legitimacy, trying to make sure everyone else is wrapped up in those games, too, either luring or bullying them out of the way of righteousness. You make people feel small and helpless, and tell yourselves that you’re doing it for the greater good, that you’re counseling wisdom, encouraging realism.
If you’ve been speaking on behalf of the powers – if you’re the person through whom the powers spoke to me this very month – I want you to know that repentance is always an option, that grace abounds. In today’s gospel, when Jesus pronounces his judgment against the chief priests and elders, he points out that they failed to change their minds. Their fault lies in their persistent rejection of God’s will, not in a single mistake. No matter what they’re shown, they refuse to believe that the way of Jesus is the way of his divine mother. So, if you find yourself speaking for the powers, even if you’ve been caught up in that role for years, you can repent, you can change your mind, you can seek justice. I know most of you have already said yes to the work of justice. Trust that God will empower you to do it, even when it leads you into tension with the institution you serve, or points you toward a deeply uncertain institutional future.
Finally, a word to those being targeted by the powers: there is a blessing in being targeted by the powers. In the gospel reading, Jesus announces that the tax collectors and sex workers would be first into the kindom of God.
I’m here to say that you, too, will be first into the kindom because the kindom is coming to you. It’s poised to break into your life. Because if you just reach out, others who’ve managed to threaten the powers will find you. If you reach out, you’ll find that you’re not alone, that you’ve never been alone, no matter how hard the powers have worked to isolate you.
I suspect that’s why I was compelled by the Spirit to share my testimony. After all, as a U.S. born tenure-track faculty member, I’m about as privileged as you can be in this seminary. I know many of you might feel like you can’t reach out, even quietly to friends, in case it gets back to the wrong person. But the Spirit questioned me: if I can’t stand up in this pulpit and testify that the demonic powers of white supremacy are at work in this place, who could?
After all, I had this gospel echoing in my head. Jesus didn’t go off into a private room with those leaders soothing their bruised egos and downplaying the threat he posed to their hierarchical authority. He talked to them in front of his community, making sure his people know what was going on and that they didn’t have to just accept it because someone with influence challenged them, because someone powerful implied a threat. He knew that the chief priests and elders were afraid of the crowd.
Now, are we guaranteed to win when we stand up to the powers? Was it guaranteed to work when Jesus stood up to the powers? Well…he died, on a cross. He suffered death and indignity by imperial violence.
Jesus died…and then he rose again. Resurrection power denied the powers of this world, the evils of Empire. I believe that for us, right here and now, resurrection power lies in the connections we form when we bring evil out into the open.
Resurrection power, connection that sustains us as we work for justice, is at the heart of the church that sprung up around the community that mourned Jesus’ death and celebrated life eternal.
Resurrection power brings us to the table, where we’re called to remember Jesus’ body and his blood, to remember those who broke his body and shed his blood, to remember that the bonds that tied him and his community extend all the way through time and space to us. Resurrection power gathers us around the table as children of God who can refuse to be intimidated or bought out, who can live as if the kindom is real and as if it is already ours…because it is.
For days after I had the meeting I told you about, I felt terrible, sick to my stomach, like there was just no point to being at this school. In a way nothing else in this place has done, that meeting made me feel dead inside. But God reminded me I had work to do, and breathed new life into me to do it.
How? Through this gospel, through Jesus’ confrontation with the powers of his day. By reminding me that I wasn’t alone, that I could get up and preach today and reach out, knowing that someone would get it, that this message was needed by someone today. By reminding me that if I’m doing the work to which God called me, I could have nothing to fear in this place. Even the cross falls down before resurrection power, so how could some potential trouble in my career possibly stop me?
Those of you who’ve been targeted by the powers in this seminary, in this denomination, in this country, I know you’re here in the room, or you’re with us online, or someone will tell you about this sermon later. I’m reaching out, and I can already feel our connection, I’ve been feeling it for days, the Spirit binding us to one another, I can already feel the kindom’s presence, God’s rejection of this world’s death dealing powers in favor of the power of resurrection.
Now Empire, the powers, they’re everywhere. Pick a seminary, pick a church, pick a country, there’s nowhere they can’t reach you. Maybe not every seminary has someone who will get up and name them this way. But however quiet other seminaries keep it, they nearly all have their chief priests and elders, they’ve nearly all made their deals with the powers. Empire is everywhere.
But I pray that you know that the kindom is everywhere, too.
So if the powers are telling you to give up on the work to which God has called you, or to put it off until you’re so deep in their hierarchical system that you can’t tell right from wrong…if they’re making you feel small and scared…know that while you can be made to feel like you’re alone, you never are.
Do the work to which God called you, however humble it might seem each day – even if it’s just reaching out to a friend to be reminded that the power of the resurrection is yours – and you will be first into the kindom, along with Jesus’ beloved tax collectors and sex workers, and God willing, along with me.