Proper 27 (November 6-12)
Texts: Mark 12:38-44;
Heb 9:24-28; 1 Kings 17:8-16
PREPARING TO LIVE IN LOVE UNDER CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM
By all appearances, “Christian Nationalism” won the battle this week. We will see what unfolds in the months ahead. We will see how much influence the authors of Project 2025 have in the coming administration — because there’s no doubt that its authors and supporters ascribe to Christian Nationalism.1 But even if Christian Nationalism won the battle of a mandate in this week’s election, it hasn’t yet won the fight. In the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we believe that God has launched God’s reign such that someday God in Jesus Christ will finally win the peace.
For now, however, we must prepare to live under Christian Nationalism. What’s the old saying? Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. This morning, I want to outline four steps of such preparation, all under the theme of love (outlined in today’s Sermon Notes). Preparing to live under Christian Nationalism means we must prepare to love. To love our fellow citizens and each other even harder, more persistently than ever. As followers of Jesus, it means preparing ourselves to fight by making sure we are firmly grounded and centered in love.
We put our trust in the power of love. That’s why I’ve maintained all this past year that Christian Nationalism is an oxymoron, two words that don’t go together. It’s a simple matter of which power one ultimately places their faith in, violence or love. For nationalism in all its varieties, it puts its ultimate faith in the power of violence or force. It is grounded in Us-vs-Them thinking to justify the use of force against one’s enemies. To be Christian — a follower of Christ, on the other hand — is to place one’s ultimate faith in the power of love — to love even one’s enemies. To place our ultimate faith in the power of love is simply incompatible with placing one’s ultimate faith in the power of political force. So Christian Nationalism is an oxymoron, two words that don’t belong together because they represent faith in two opposite kinds of power.
So how do we prepare to love? A first, and perhaps most important, step for me is to practice silent prayer, contemplative prayer, for which the main aim is to spend time each day dwelling in the love of God. And one of my main guides to this practice is Steve Garnaas-Holmes, who has a website called “Unfolding Light,”2 on which he offers daily meditations to guide centering prayer in love.
These meditations also offer a second step for preparing to love by often taking-up the scripture passages of the weekly lectionary. We prepare by continuing to learn to read the Bible in terms of love. I’d like to share one of this week’s meditations with you, a poem about today’s Gospel Reading, which is sometimes is called the “Widow’s Mite,” m-i-t-e, referring to a kind of coin. But Steve Garnaas-Holmes has cleverly titled this poem, “The Widow’s Might,” m-i-g-h-t. In other words, it’s all about the power she chooses to put her faith in. Let me read “The Widow’s Might”3 (which is also printed out for you in today’s Sermon Notes):
I know, it’s the widow’s “mite.”
But consider.
Wealth was seen as divine approval.
(Is our world any different?)
A widow, destitute without a husband’s income,
was a model of poverty and helplessness,
and therefore also (are we any different?) shame.
But, in the same spirit in which he said
“Blessed are the poor,” Jesus honors her,
praises her generosity and self-determination:
she has done something powerful.
The sharing Jesus taught was not mere kindness;
it also confronted the boundaries of “mine” and “yours,”
and therefore the hierarchy of rich and poor.
In his praise Jesus questions
why she is poor in the first place.
Why do we have rich and poor?
Because the rich like it that way;
otherwise they’d change it.
The rich are afraid to share, but not the poor.
And sharing is powerful: it disturbs the line
between mine and yours, between rich and poor.
It changes the world.
Empowered by her faith,
unswayed by social expectations,
she has made her choice.
This is the widow’s might.
May it be your power as well.
In short, the widow chooses the power of love, the power of sharing for the sake of the other, erasing the normal boundaries between “mine” and “yours.” Her choice deconstructs the Us-vs-Them thinking which so often leads to justifying the use of violence against the Other. It deconstructs the power of nationalism, the power of forcefully hoarding wealth for one’s own people.
There’s another very important truth within this poem, when it simply says, “Wealth was seen as divine approval.” Parenthetically, he asks if anything is different for us. We can state it in present tense, “Wealth is seen as divine approval.” The theology behind all forms of nationalism is that God has chosen Us to hold the power of wealth and wield it, using force when necessary against Them. Wealth means, to this way of thinking, that God has favored our group to be in charge, to have dominion over others. But all this year we’ve seen how Jesus came to subvert the usual nationalistic thinking. God, in fact, favors the poor and calls the wealthy to share their abundance with the poor. (Recall the wealthy man in the Gospel four weeks ago [Proper 23]: he walks away sad because Jesus asks him to share his wealth with the poor.) The God of Jesus calls the wealthy not to a power of dominion over others but to mutually serve with others. Jesus is the master who serves and gives his life as a ransom for many (recalling what Jesus said in the Gospel three weeks ago [Proper 24]). The widow in today’s Gospel Reading is a true follower of Jesus by choosing a life of giving, of sharing. If the wealthy watching her were to take up her practice, her choice, the line between rich and poor would begin to disappear. We would be stepping into the reign of God which Jesus came to launch, in which all the things that divide us — hoarding wealth being chief among them — would begin to melt away. We would be the one human family that God designed from the beginning and which Jesus came to bring about through the power of love, not force.
The great potential of a democracy like ours is that we could more and more begin to choose the way of love over the way of fear and hate. When we choose our leaders, we can try to discern the more loving path in their policies — a third step in preparing to live under Christian Nationalism. Here’s what I mean. Steve Garnaas-Holmes’ poem raises and answers a very important question. “Why do we have rich and poor?”, he asks. His answer: “Because the rich like it that way; otherwise they’d change it. The rich are afraid to share, but not the poor.” In the election this past week, many are saying that the swing issue was inflation. Inflation has hit many families so hard, that they simply pulled the lever, so to speak, for someone new to be in charge. But, as followers of Jesus, seeking to live into the reign of God, I think we need to educate ourselves to advocate for the way of love, as we choose our leaders.
Jesus talks, in the first part of the Gospel Reading, about how the powerful devour the houses of the widows. In a democracy, we can choose our leaders to have policies that contain the greed of the wealthy and encourage investment in and opportunity for the poor and middle class. As voter-citizens who follow Jesus, I believe we need to avoid being trapped in our own financial situation to ask the wider questions of the common good, like, “Why do we have rich and poor?” And then we can vote for economic policies that require the wealthy to do their fair share.
So what do we have so far in preparing to live in love under Christian Nationalism? Number one, we pray in ways that keep us grounded and centered in love. Second, we continue to read the Bible as a guide to the power of God’s love. Third, we educate ourselves to understand political issues like economic policy in light of the power of love in God’s reign launched by Jesus. I’d like to end this morning with a fourth step. We prepare to protest, to speak up against the powers that divide us and to advocate for those things that bind us together — especially ways to care for the least among us, those most harmed by the way of nationalism. For this fourth step in preparation we go beyond where Steve Garnaas-Holmes’ poem takes us.
Imagine that the widow came to the treasury in protest.4 There, in the Court of the Women in the Jerusalem temple (see the diagram of the Temple in today’s Sermon Notes), she knew, at the very least, she’d get the attention of the pillars of society. After all, this was the sacred space where women could publicly plead and pray — the physical place where she would be nearer to the Holy, the One who is the Giver of Justice.
Imagine that she was trying to make a point: You rich people have taken everything else from me — in your finery, with all your privilege and power. I’ve got nothing left. Take this. Choke on this, you thieves. Lord, have mercy! Defend my cause!
And then, instead of letting her corrupt lawyers and greedy bankers take her very last penny, she threw her final mite — the little that remained — into the Temple treasury where they couldn’t touch it. She gave her last to God instead of them. She had nothing to live on anyway because everything had been stolen. In the Court of the Women in the temple, she shamed her oppressors and threw herself on God. And, while they made a show of their wealth, she made a show of their injustice. Yes, she gave out of her poverty. She was poor. Most likely at the hands of greedy elite. She wasn’t meek. She was enraged. But she also refrained from violence. In the power of love, she took a stand and made her protest.
And Jesus approved. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, November 10, 2024
Notes
1. For more on the historical movements leading to the current iteration of Christian Nationalism, including a Bibliography of further resources, see my recent PowerPoint presentation on Christian Nationalism.
2. https://unfoldinglight.net/
3. https://unfoldinglight.net/2024/11/07/the-widows-might/
4. From this point in the sermon to the end is a lightly modified quote from Diana Butler Bass’s “Sunday Musings” for this Gospel Reading: https://open.substack.com/pub/dianabutlerbass/p/sunday-musings-bd5?r=9tcpq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
