In our continuing look at Becoming a Resisting Church, we turn to the writings of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We have spent the last 4 weeks looking at the various issues facing society and the church. Now we turn toward how we address those injustices and abuses.
In our Gospel reading this Sunday, we hear of the story of the woman caught in adultery. The religious nationalists of Jesus’ day brought her before him to catch him breaking the law of Moses. It is interesting to note, it was not Jesus who was breaking the law of Moses, but the religious zealots who did so.
The law of Moses required that both the man and the woman caught in adultery should be tried and stoned. (Leviticus 20:10) However, the religious nationalist, much like the Christian nationalists today, ignored the law and only brought the woman before Jesus.
I have long thought that when Jesus stooped to write in the dirt that he was writing the sins of the people who brought her to him. However, it could be that Jesus wrote the name of the man or even the verse out of the Torah that commanded both the man, and the woman should be stoned. Either way, it shamed them into leaving her with Jesus.
King talks about the kind of evil these religious nationalists were practicing. He states:
“We have seen evil in tragic lust and inordinate selfishness. We have seen it in high places where men are willing to sacrifice truth on the altars of their self-interest. We have seen it in imperialistic nations trampling over other nations with the iron feet of oppression. We have seen it clothed in the garments of calamitous wars which left battlefields painted with blood, filled nations with widows and orphans, and sent men home physically handicapped and psychologically wrecked. We have seen evil in all of its tragic dimensions.” (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Sermon “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore”)
We see this evil every day in our world. The evil of removing immigrants who only come to our country to seek a better, safer life. The abuse of women who are having their healthcare taken from them. The LGBTQIA+ individuals who are being denied life-saving healthcare and having their rights taken way one by one. People of color who are marginalized and abused in the name of the Christian Nationalists racist god.
King calls us to stand up and speak out. We cannot remain silent in the face of overwhelming evil. We cannot allow these acts to be committed in our names. And even when these acts are committed in the church or by people claiming to be Christians, we must speak out and stand up to them.
The only thing evil needs to triumph is for good people to do nothing!
Pax et Bonum,
Bishop Greer