Dear Friends of Saint Philip’s,

This coming Sunday’s Old Testament lesson is from the book of Micah, who worked between 750-722 BCE. He, like Amos and Hosea, refused to comply with the then-conventional “common sense” that ignored the covenant and Torah ( the law, the first five books of the OT).

All three dared name in public the acceptable hypocrisies of the day: economic exploitation of the poor, corrupt leadership, corrupt courts and bribery, wealthy land owners who oppressed the poor, all summed up as “trampling the poor and perverting justice.”

I suspect that many of us of a certain age never heard the word “justice” in our Christian formation, or if we did, it wasn’t given much weight. Unique from the ancient near east is the Hebrew Bible’s concern for the poor, the disadvantaged, the forgotten ones, the marginalized ones, or the ones no one really wants to see. The lack of justice means that the system is rigged. It works for “them that’s got it,” but for those without, not so much. A politics grounded in the common good still remains as a distant ideal.

Some folks think that politics must not be addressed in church. Politics has been hiding in plain sight all these years. It’s right there in the prayer we call “the Lord’s prayer” when we pray “thy kingdom come.”

In effect, we are saying that our kingdoms are not working, so please let more of your kingdom manifest. In these words, we are not praying for the afterlife. We are not praying for some vague spirituality. We are praying for what’s going on “down here” to be diminished in favor of God’s politics. For sure as shootin’, our politics are not working.

The word “politics” comes from the Greek word for city, the polis, which became extant in the 8th-7th centuries BCE in referring to that body of citizens that comprised a gathering of persons who lived in proximity to one another. From polis we get police, policy, metropolis, and acropolis. Paul tells the Philippians that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20).

This is not far away afterlife heaven. It is a reality that is yearning to be born and realized in life right here, right now. Continuous birth pangs continue until that reality becomes mankind’s reality.

When the nations are gathered for the last judgment(Matthew 25), they are judged on how they treated certain categories of people. Policies are implicated in these categories. Actions and results are to flow from them.

Did these nations show care and mercy for the hungry? The thirsty? The strangers, the aliens, the refugees, the immigrants? Those even without clothing? The sick?

Implications for health care are obvious. The imprisoned. Implications for criminal justice, the sorry state of prisons, and the dehumanizing policies of capital punishment abound.

Friends, if you and I do not feel our consciences getting tweaked and made uncomfortable, we just aren’t getting the messages of scripture. I know, as a highly privileged white man who is a Christian, I am a bit too comfy in my privilege.

The prophets and Jesus (whose identity included the prophetic) set about to inflict the comfortable and comfort the inflicted. We need both. We need our overly comfy spaces to be awakened, and we also need those afflicted places to be comforted.

The exclusion of politics is a dismemberment of the Christian faith. It’s a not so subtle way to leave God out. Policies are politics and vice versa. We are to be awakened to poisonous practices that delight in cruelty and sadism. How else can a disciple live their life? I want to embrace more of the depths of Jesus the Christ, both in his comfort and his rebukes. Otherwise, there is no growth and stagnation results.

Our prophet for Sunday is Micah: “He has told you O mortal what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”

Your fellow traveler,

—Richard

by Matt Moberg, Chaplain to the NBA Minnesota Timberwolves

If you’re a church posting
prayers for peace and unity today
while my city bleeds in the street,
miss me with that softness you only wear
when it costs you nothing.

Don’t dress avoidance up as holiness.
Don’t call silence “peacemaking.”
Don’t light a candle and think it substitutes
for showing up.

Tonight an ICE agent took a photo of me
next to my car,
looked me in the eye and told me,
“We’ll be seeing you soon.”

Not metaphor.
Not hyperbole.
A threat dressed up in
a badge and a paycheck.

Peace isn’t what you ask for
when the boot is already
on someone’s neck.
Peace is what the powerful ask for
when they don’t want to be interrupted.

Unity isn’t neutral.
Unity that refuses to name violence
is just loyalty to the ones holding the weapons.

Stop using scripture like chloroform.
Stop calling your fear “wisdom.”
Stop pretending Jesus was crucified
because he preached good vibes
and personal growth.

You don’t get to quote scripture
like a lullaby
while injustice stays wide awake.

You don’t get to ask God to
“heal the land”
if you won’t even look at the wound.

There is a kind of peace
that only exists
because it refuses to tell the truth.

That peace is a lie.
And lies don’t grow
anything worth saving.

The scriptures you love weren’t
written to keep things calm.
They were written to set things right.
And sometimes the most faithful thing
you can do is stop praying around the pain
and start standing inside it.

If that makes you uncomfortable – good.

Growth always is.