This Sunday's first reading
opens with God answering an accusation. The house of Israel has apparently been
saying, out loud, that God's way is not fair. And God's response is not
defensive. It is a direct question, thrown right back: how could it be that my
way is not fair? Is it not instead your ways that are perverse?
I want to sit with that reversal
today, because I think it names something happening right now, in this country,
with startling precision.
You have
said, ‘The way of the Lord is not fair.’ Therefore, listen, O house of Israel.
How could it be that my way is not fair? And is it not instead your ways that
are perverse? (Ezekiel 18:25, CPDV)
Who
Is Actually Claiming Fairness
Right now, federal immigration
enforcement is reportedly exploring mobile detention facilities. Immigrants
with final deportation orders have been disappearing from ICE's own detainee
locator system, meaning families cannot even find out where their loved ones
are. A man died in a crash while fleeing an ICE encounter in Michigan this
week. Families of people killed in ICE custody have described the pattern to
lawmakers using the words dual assassinations. And reporting this month has
specifically named children as a next target of enforcement.
At the same time, the current
administration has moved to ban transgender individuals from military service
entirely, and a Justice Department report earlier this year characterized
recognition of transgender people as evidence of, in its own words, radical
efforts to punish Christians. Let that framing sit for a moment. Banning trans
people from serving their country is described as defending Christians. Denying
someone their name, their medical care, their basic recognition is called
protecting the faith. Public research this year found that a majority of
Americans who hold favorable views of Christian Nationalism also believe
immigrants are, in their words, invading our country and replacing our cultural
and ethnic background, and that four in ten Americans now support detaining
undocumented immigrants in internment camps.
This is happening in a country
where a Christian leader publicly condemned the Department of Homeland Security
this year for using Bible verses to promote ICE tactics. Scripture, quoted to
justify cruelty toward the stranger scripture itself commands us to welcome.
This is the accusation I hear
echoing underneath Ezekiel's question this week. Somewhere, someone is claiming
this is fair. Someone is claiming this is righteous, even Christian. And God's
answer through Ezekiel applies with uncomfortable precision: is it my way that
is not fair, or is it yours?
What
Philippians Names As the Real Danger
This Sunday's second reading
gives us the oldest known hymn about who Christ actually was, and it names the
exact opposite instinct of what we are watching play out in public life right
now.
Christ, Paul writes, though he
was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be
seized. He emptied himself. He took the form of a servant. One writer
describing Christian Nationalism this year put it simply: it is best understood
as the worship of power rather than the worship of God. It uses the language
and symbols of Christianity for political ends, to shore up power for certain
elements of society.
That is the precise inversion of
the Philippians hymn. Christ had power and let it go. Christian Nationalism has
no power and grasps for it, wrapping the grasping in scripture to make the
grasping look holy. Those are not two versions of the same faith. They are
opposites.
Which
Son Actually Went
This Sunday's Gospel asks a
simple question with an uncomfortable answer. A father asks two sons to work in
his vineyard. One says no and goes anyway. The other says yes and never shows
up. Jesus asks which son did his father's will, and the answer is obvious even
to the religious leaders he is speaking to: the one who actually went,
regardless of what he first said.
Then Jesus adds the line that
must have landed like a slap: tax collectors and prostitutes will precede you
into the kingdom of God, because they actually changed course, while you, who
claimed righteousness with your words, never did.
I do not think that line has
stopped applying. Words of Christian identity, however loudly and publicly
claimed, do not determine who actually did the Father's will. Actions do. A
government that quotes Bible verses while separating families and disappearing
people from its own records has said yes, lord, and not gone. A movement that
claims to defend Christians while banning transgender people from serving their
country and calling cruelty compassion has said yes, lord, and not gone.
What
This Parish Actually Believes
This parish has never claimed to
have this figured out completely, but on this specific question, we are not
going to hedge. We believe that welcoming the immigrant, defending the
transgender person, and standing with anyone this current moment has decided to
target is not a political add-on to our faith. It is the actual content of it,
tested against the same standard Jesus gives us this Sunday: not what anyone
says, but what they actually do.
Twenty-three years of Blessing
Bags, of standing at Pride with something real to offer, of insisting that this
table has no exceptions and no conditions, has been our answer to the question
of which son we intend to be. We are not always sure we get it right. But we
know which direction we are trying to walk.
Is it my way that is not fair,
God asks, or is it yours? This Sunday, and every Sunday, we are trying to
answer that question with something more than words.
Come Sunday. Let us keep walking
in that direction together.
Pax
et Bonum, Bishop Greer | 
