Proper 9 (National Holiday)
Texts: Galatians 5:1, 13-26;
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20; Isa 66:10-14
YouTube: https://youtu.be/nrSd8eCslRQ
Sermon Take-Home Notes
WORKING TO SAVE THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT
I love this country and the great potential it stands for: A nation founded on the proposition that all people are created equal in our pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. We got off to a rocky start in living up to that proposition. The Constitution gave the freedom of the vote to only land-owning white men. Native Americans were deemed savages; African Americans were enslaved, deemed 3/5 a person; women were second class citizens to men, hardly mentioned.
Over these past 249 years, we’ve made some progress towards rectifying these things. We fought a bloody Civil War to free enslaved African Americans and to begin to give them rights. You see the list in your Sermon Notes when different groups finally received full voting rights: women in 1920, Native Americans in 1957, African Americans in 1965, and 18 year-olds in 1971. And in 2015 we granted equal marriage rights to people of all genders and sexual orientations. Progress!
But in recent years, we’ve seen cause for concern that we’re taking steps backwards on the proposition that all people are created equal, to pursue their lives with equal opportunity. Again, in your Sermon Notes, I have a list of the shrinking of citizen rights in favor of more centralized power for the few at the top, beginning with Citizens United in 2010 down to the Big Morally Repugnant Bill passed this week in Congress passed a spending bill that represents the largest shift of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich in our nations history — including huge increases in spending to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.).
To sum up, in the last twenty years we have been moving away from equality, with wealthy people getting more and more power. Plutocracy, rule by the rich; instead of democracy, rule by the people as equal citizens.
I ended the historical overview by mentioning I.C.E. That’s the other thing which has me extremely concerned. This administration ran on making sure immigrants who are criminals are deported. But over the past several months, there’s many indications that that has not been the case. Every community seems to have a story of someone they know not to be a criminal who has been rounded up by I.C.E. agents — ominously wearing masks so that their identities are hidden. Two stories that has impacted me in the last two weeks are:
• On June 21, Narciso Barranco is a landscaper in Santa Ana, California, forcefully taken by I.C.E. agents, while weed-whacking in front of the IHOP in Santa Ana, CA. He has been living here for 30 years, undocumented, but is father of three sons, all of whom serve in the U.S. Marine Corps (one veteran, two active duty). The family has tried to go through the process of getting Barranco documented via having three military sons but can’t afford it.
• On June 22, Donna Kashanian, age 64, — who has lived in the United States for 47 years, married a U.S. citizen, Russ Milne and raised their daughter, Kaitlynn — was gardening in the yard of her New Orleans home June 22 when I.C.E. officers handcuffed and took her away.
I have a serious question for all of us to keep in mind as the summer winds on: how are these I.C.E. raids on productive U.S. residents different from the storm trooper raids on long-time Jewish residents in Nazi Germany of the late 1930’s?
Which may prompt a the question you have for me: why rehearse all of this in a sermon? Even if it is Independence Day weekend? Here’s my answer: because sermons are about proclaiming the salvation God has for us in Jesus the Messiah, and I fervently believe that you and I are called at this crucial time in history to understand how that salvation can move our country forwards — forwards toward the proposition of everyone being created equal to pursue with equal opportunity full lives. For too long our preaching and church mission have seen the matter of salvation as mostly unrelated to us living our nation’s history. The more we focused on the afterlife, the easier it is for someone else to take control of our histories in this life.
But, of course, the other end of the spectrum is just as dangerous, perhaps more so. It has been easy in our national history for Christians to completely conflate God’s salvation with what we’re doing as a nation. This is what is happening right now for those who call themselves Christian Nationalists. They truly believe Donald Trump is working God’s salvation for this country.
So how do we steer a path between the two extremes? On the one hand, the first extreme is not seeing God’s salvation as related to our lived histories in this country at all — that salvation is just about the afterlife. And on the other hand, the opposite extreme is to too easily conflate God’s salvation and with our politics, where we read Scripture as prooftexts for what we’re doing.
What I’ve tried to do this past year-and-a-half is to carve a middle path that God in Jesus the Messiah has sent a brand new politics into the world. He sent pout the Seventy to proclaim God’s reign into the world. But God’s politics are so different than our usual politics that they can never be completely identified with our politics. God’s politics are there as ideals to strive for — first and foremost, in the way we lead our lives in church community.
I’ve begun this sermon with an overview of our nation’s history because I believe that the proposition of God creating each person for equal opportunity to live fulfilled lives is one of those ideals. Our nation was born under one of the main ideals of God’s salvation! So it is appropriate to make regular assessments of how we are doing. Right now, I think we have cause for serious concern that we sliding backwards. So it’s important for us to ask ourselves how you and I might be part of moving forwards again, isn’t it? We are called to live God’s saving politics and to invite others to join us.
Another of the ideals of God’s politics is more counterintuitive. This morning, on this weekend we celebrate the freedom we enjoy in the country, we read of God’s strange politics of freedom in our Second Reading. What makes for freedom, says Paul? Not self-indulgence, or self-serving. No, what makes for true freedom is, through love, becoming slaves to one another. Strange! It’s all summed up in the commandment to love our neighbor’s as our selves. We find freedom through lovingly serving each other. Strange, right? Paradoxical, even.
But Paul isn’t make this up. He’s getting it from Jesus. Next week, we’ll read his amazing Parable of the Good Samaritan, where he teaches us to stretch our notion of neighbor. Maybe someone like the migrants being swept up for detention and deportation right now. This week I want to wrap-up by pointing to Jesus’s teaching in all four Gospels, that he is our master and leader through serving us. And he directly contrasts his politics of service with our typical human politics. Beginning with Mark’s Gospel, he places this teaching as the last one before Jesus enters Jerusalem to die on the cross. This politics of service is what the cross is all about. Here’s what Jesus says:
“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45)
The “Son of Man,” the Next Generation of Being Human. Jesus is teaching us a better way to be human by lovingly serving one another.
Matthew places this teaching in the same place that Mark does. Luke moves it even closer to the cross. He places these words at the Last Supper, on the night before his self-sacrifice. John follows Luke’s lead by placing it at the Last Supper and even adds the symbolic footwashing. Jesus washes his disciples feet as a way to act out his politics of serving. And John’s extended account of the Last Supper adds the important dimension of equality. Jesus tells his disciples that they are no longer just his students; they are his “friends.” Why is that so important? Because it points to the importance of equality. Friends have a side-by-side, equal relationship. And when you link equality with the importance of serving, Jesus is calling us, above all, to mutual service. It can’t be true service if there’s not equal relationships. Serving among unequals is servitude, not service. That’s why our nation’s founding principle of all people being created equal is so important. To find true freedom we need to serve one another as equals.
Do you see that happening much in our country right now? After we just passed the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich? We are moving steadily toward increasing inequality. This is not what God’s salvation looks like. Not even close. So let’s speak up! Every chance we get, let’s proclaim the freedom that comes from serving each other as equals. Our celebrating the freedom of democracy next year at this time may depend on it. Let’s be part of saving this country. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, July 6, 2025
YouTube: https://youtu.be/nrSd8eCslRQ
Sermon Take-Home Notes
