Truth-Tellers, Justice, Hope (Lectionary for August, wk 2)

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Week 2 of BLC’s August church-culture experiment following the “Revised Common Lectionary” for our inspiration. For this week’s Bible passages, we talk truth-tellers and Vince brings up “Star Wars” again. (It’ll be worth it; he promises.)

SPEAKER NOTES

Truth-Tellers, Justice, Hope (Lectionary for August, wk 2)

Intro

Last week, I got us started talking about culture in churches.

Here’s a congregational culture thing not a part of our church culture, but that I want to gently encourage us toward. Anyone ever been in church contexts where congregation feedback is encouraged? A lot of the Black church in America, for example. (“Amen!” “Preach!”)

As a buttoned-up, German-American white guy, a piece of me will always feel a little uncomfortable with this, but also another piece of me comes alive around this!

It’s one of the things I’ve loved about our church becoming a member organization this last year with the community-organizing group ONE Northside — who have been organizing people and groups for economic and social justice for decades in our neighborhoods.

They are not a religious organization, but they recognize that faith is one of the biggest things that animates people toward getting involved in justice work, so they welcome people bringing their congregational cultures in to ONE Northside meetings, and a lot of these folks are in congregations where there is feedback.

Here’s an example that ONE Northside has embraced and made part of their culture:

  • If someone speaking upfront shares an experience of injustice, dehumanization, failed promises of our society, or the like,
  • Someone in the room might shout, “that ain’t right” — as a way to affirm the person speaking
  • And the person speaking then repeats it back “that ain’t right” to affirm the affirmation right back.
  • Sometimes everyone else might repeat it back to if we’re all feeling it: “that ain’t right”

So, everyone, full permission to take any opportunity today, and going forward at services at BLC to shout: “that ain’t right”. We’ll see if it sticks! Maybe, maybe not!

Context

So I’m telling little anecdotes about culture in churches these Sundays in August, because we are intentionally trying something culturally different for our messages this month — as a little experiment.

Maybe you already heard me mention: we are following what’s called the Lectionary —

  • a church culture thing some of us will know and some of us won’t
  • The Lectionary is a curated listing of Scripture readings for each Sunday of the year in the Christian Calendar.
  • It is used every Sunday in many Christian denominations, Protestant and Catholic, all over the world.
  • If a church follows the Lectionary, then over the course of three years they will encounter the entire Bible.

In general, non-denominational churches (like ours) don’t follow the Lectionary.

  • Hayley and I usually bring our community through the Bible more topically,
  • But I wonder if you see, like me, the beauty to…
    • Engaging the same scriptures that millions of others all over the world are engaging
    • And giving ourselves for a bit to the wisdom of tradition. lectionary off
  • So, for this month, we’re following the Lectionary, as a little experiment — to see how it goes.
    • We’d love to hear from you in Discord or an email during and after this experiment — What do you think about following the Lectionary? Is there something you like about it? Is there something you feel challenged by?
    • It’s more reading-dense than we usually are, which has plusses and minuses. We want to hear what you think!
  • We’ve picked this month, August 2025, because I was invited to contribute for the month to an online Lectionary Commentary called “Process & Faith”
    • It’s a resource for ministers who preach from the Lectionary regularly, and are hoping to represent the particular perspective on God and life that we teach from here: Open & Relational Theology.
      • A minority but robust perspective within Christianity and beyond,
      • That I think makes the best sense of everyday experience for people,
      • And it coheres with Science better than more popular views of God.
    • If you’re ever with us on a Sunday, you get lots of examples of this perspective, but the quick overview is to keep in mind those two words: Open and Relational
      • Open meaning…
        • The future is not predetermined by “a distant God outside of time”
        • The future is open, always in the process of unfolding, and God is alongside us in the flow of time.
      • Relational meaning…
        • God can’t just independently control outcomes in life from above or from afar.
        • Because God is relationally intertwined with the world,
        • God is always influencing all things toward the most goodness, beauty, justice possible,
        • BUT God is met with varying levels of cooperation and partnership on the part of the world. Our choices, and the world’s complexity, and randomness, and evil can frustrate God’s aims.
        • As Jesus taught his disciples, God’s will is not always done on earth as it is in heaven; so we need not lose faith in God in the face of evil or tragedy or stress.
        • Those are all the more reason to pray to and partner with the Always-Good God.
    • Another cultural gift from the historically Black church in America is a call and response that goes:
      • God is good (all the time).
      • All the time (God is good).
      • I think the Open and Relational perspective gives the best grounding for that. process & faith off

Alright, let's dive in — today’s reader from our from-afar BLC community, joining us via video, is Jessica Koopman…

Readings: August 17, 2025

A reading from the prophet Jeremiah

“Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?” says the Lord. "Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the Lord. "I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, ‘I have dreamed, I have dreamed!’”

“How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back — those who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? They plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal. Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat?” says the Lord. "Is not my word like fire,” says the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”

A reading from Psalm 82

1 God takes his stand in the council of heaven; * he gives judgment in the midst of the gods:

2 "How long will you judge unjustly, * and show favor to the wicked?

3 Save the weak and the orphan; * defend the humble and needy;

4 Rescue the weak and the poor; * deliver them from the power of the wicked.

5 They do not know, neither do they understand; they go about in darkness; * all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

6 Now I say to you, 'You are gods, * and all of you children of the Most High;

7 Nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, * and fall like any prince.'"

8 Arise, O God, and rule the earth, * for you shall take all nations for your own.

A reading from the letter to the Hebrews

And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets — who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented-- of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

A reading from the Gospel according to Luke

Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:

father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"

scripture off

Commentary

The prophet Jeremiah, the composer of our first reading, sees himself as a truth-teller to a lied-to population. We’re dropping here into the 6th century BCE, a pivotal time in the Ancient Hebrews’ history: the Babylonian Exile. They have been forcibly removed from their homeland and their beloved temple has been destroyed by the brutal Assyrian & Babylonian Empires, and, in exile, they’re trying to make sense of what has happened to them and figure out how to survive as a people, as a culture.

Against this backdrop, Jeremiah wants to distinguish his words from the bloated number of supposed “prophets” who he sees as short-sightedly coddling the Hebrews during this exile with promises of quick, magical fixes to their plight. The tone of Jeremiah’s words feel like: “Are we just going to sell false hope because it’s hard to talk about the truth?! Is not our God a God who is going to treat people like adults and be real?!”

Jeremiah is angry. Jeremiah is anguished. Jeremiah is in touch with his emotions. And, as a result, Jeremiah ain’t suffering no fools.

I know from conversations with so many of you here in our community that, today, in our urgent matters of injustice, genocide, dehumanization, and precarious employment faced by common working people all over the globe... you, like Jeremiah, cannot stomach selling false hope to people.

Me too!

I, as a pastor, refuse to prophesy religious lies — about an imaginary superman God, outside of time, coming to intervene and magically save the day. Rather, like Jeremiah, I want to speak truth, uncomfortable though it may be, about where I think God really is in the midst of our urgent matters —

  • Not in magical quick fixes
  • But also not cold and distant from us,
  • Alongside us, matching Jeremiah's anger and anguish,
  • BUT with more creativity, hope, and resolve than we can muster in our frenzy to try to "fix" our pain and discomfort over the world with quick fixes.

(PAUSE)

Today’s psalm, Psalm 82, portraying God before the council of heaven, grounds a vision of genuine hope, instead of false hope.

The theology behind this Psalm is that the God of the Bible is NOT merely another warrior god (the common Ancient conception of the divine). The Biblical God presides among the gods, but NOT because this God won in a scrum for domination. Rather, the Biblical God presides among the gods because this God is a God of Justice, who takes sides with the weak, the orphan, the humble, the needy, the poor.

It’s interesting, we in the Modern West have inherited a lot of our images of “Justice” from the powerful peoples who have had the privilege of getting to tell history from their view — like the Greeks and Romans — the image of “scales of justice”, for example, is Greek — it makes us think about justice as balance, neutrality.

And that’s helpful to a degree, but in the Hebrew Bible (like Psalm 82) justice is often represented not as neutrality, but as the opposite: “taking a side” — with the weak, the orphan, the humble, the needy, the poor.

Side-taking justice stands in contrast to status quo false prophets offering false hope quick fixes for our discomfort when the world feels too messy. Quick fixes are about pacifying discomfort, genuine hope is found in resilience through discomfort.

And that’s how we can make sense of today’s Gospel passage — what is probably the most extreme and revolutionary comment of Jesus’ entire ministry — about bringing not peace but division (or a sword in some translations).

What’s Jesus getting at? I don’t think he is promoting violence. I think he is corroborating Psalm 82 and Jeremiah. Justice, he says, is beyond balancing scales, beyond nice status quo liberal ideals about everyone holding hands in perfect harmonious “peace”; justice is about taking sides with the oppressed. And that’s a long game, not a quick fix.

Some speculate that Jesus’ spurning of “peace” here is a reference to the Roman Imperial Vision of the time — “Roman Peace” or “Pax Romana” — because it was no peace at all; it was law and order and fist and spear, that suppressed any dissent to give a veneer of peace. visual off

We can call Jeremiah’s and Psalm 82's and Jesus’ patient God of Side-Taking-Justice the God of “power-with” rather than “power-over”.

We tend to reflexively think of “power-over” as the “most powerful power” in life. Even if we are skeptical of power-over, we still often concede this point, like if we joke about how "maybe we just need a benevolent dictator”.

BUT… the Bible poses to us… what if it’s the patient, committed “power-with” that is actually the “most powerful power” in life? More precisely: power-with-the-oppressed.

I think that’s brilliant, not just wishful thinking.

Because think about it: Authoritarianism, totalitarian control, power-over…

That’s not strength…

That’s brittle, egocentric weakness! If God is the supreme power in all of life, like I believe, then God can’t even be a little bit that kind of power. God is power-with.

(PAUSE)

In today’s Hebrews passage, again we can see “a justice that takes sides with the oppressed and is accomplished by patient power-with”. That’s what is behind the stories of all these Biblical characters who lived by faith — feeling God with them, they stepped out into open, uncertain futures, even though they “knew not fully where they were going” (like Abram's story that we looked at last week).

The images of shutting the mouths of lions, quenching raging fire, escaping the edge of the sword, winning strength out of weakness, long-suffering chains and imprisonment all point to oppressed patiently overcoming oppressors.

And then, after this, the writer of Hebrews brings us to Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter” of such patient faith.

Like we talked about last week, we should not read Hebrews’ references to ”the joy set before Jesus” and “the race set before us” as being about pre-destined stories already written no matter what we do, but rather about the powerful story archetypes that help our own still-unfolding stories find expression. We all need stories to inspire us to live into our own.

(PAUSE)

I brought us to Star Wars last week as a universe of stories that move me, personally. If you’ll indulge me, I want to go back to Star Wars one more time to close today.

Again, I recognize Star Wars doesn't do it for everyone, BUT what I want to share about right now is the most recent Star Wars streaming series called Andor, which I argue is not so much a Star Wars story, as it is an injustice and hope story that just happens to take place in the Star Wars universe. You do NOT need to like Star Wars or Sci-Fi to like Andor. The lead writer and show-runner for the series Tony Gilroy admits, himself, he doesn't even like Star Wars that much; he just wanted to tell a story about domination and rebellion. visual off

And that is why Andor moves me so much. It feels crazy to me to say it, but I think a Star Wars property is maybe the most powerful modern portrayal of what the Prophet Jeremiah and Jesus are trying to get us to see about real-life oppression and justice. I mean it. I genuinely think Andor has a prophetic edge to it.

Because it's layered, character-rich, and culture-rich story shows vividly, heartbreakingly, how domination of people groups and common working people really happens. NOT by the sudden, obvious evil of Darth Vader's magical-force choke, BUT by the gradual, subtle evil of an empire’s tightening grip — that, to use language from the show, squeezes the life from us so carefully that we of the common working masses may not even realize we're choking until it’s too late.

Yeah! A friggin’ Star Wars show is engaging this kind of stuff. Crazy, right?

Even more though, the show also shows vividly, beautifully, how hope and resistance happen. Not magically, but through commitment to the long game, two steps forward, one step back.

Let me end with a quotation from a manifesto in the story, written by a young rebel, and which comes to play a huge role in turning the tide for the rebellion.

Allow me to stress one last time for effect that the incredibly high level writing you’re about to hear is from a Star Wars show!

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.

Remember this, Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of [it] are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy…

And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear…

And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empires’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.

Remember this.

Try.

Y’all, that makes me believe in the God of Jeremiah and Jesus. Star Wars is taking me to church.

God is calling to us: Remember. Try. Do not lose hope.

We of the common working masses are all burnt out under the imperial rule of a global economy that works not for all but for the few on top. (That ain’t right.)

This same imperial rule keeps in power those who would see people groups extinguished and our planet extracted from without second thought. (That ain’t right.)

And this same imperial rule sends us false prophets claiming to understand our exhaustion and outrage but just peddling false hope in the form of quick fixes to our discomfort, not genuine side-taking justice.

BUT… imperial rule breaks and leaks; it’s brittle.

And God is not. God is good (all the time). All the time (God is good).

Prayer

Hebrews, Jeremiah, Luke, PsalmsVincent BrackettLectionary 2025Comment