Entangled States

Rome had a philosophy. It worked, after a fashion. Machiavelli would articulate it centuries later: better to be feared than loved. Control through overwhelming force. Peace through the constant reminder that resistance gets you crucified.

The Pax Romana was real. But it was built on garrison towns and roads lined with crosses and was mostly focused on keeping trade flowing.

Into that world, Jesus says: try something else. Build a community on forgiveness instead of fear. On reconciliation instead of retaliation.

Notice something curious here – he keeps saying “you,” but it’s plural. All y’all, if you’re from the South. Yinz, if you’re from Pittsburgh. This isn’t self-help spirituality. This isn’t about your personal spiritual journey. It’s a vision for how actual groups of people – people who annoy each other and disappoint each other – can exist differently but still peacefully with each other in the world.

Let’s be honest about where we are. We’re living through a time of profound political division. I’m not talking about policy disagreements – democracies need those. I’m talking about something else. The way we’ve learned to see people who voted differently as enemies. The way a yard sign can end a friendship.

We’ve gotten very good at a particular kind of revenge. Not the dramatic kind – most of us aren’t plotting elaborate schemes. But the small, daily kind.

The unfollowing. The uninviting. The cold shoulder. The way we’ll help someone until we find out how they voted, and then suddenly we’re busy.

Here’s the insidious part: we’ve convinced ourselves this is justice. We call it “boundaries.” We call it “self-care.” We call it “not being complicit.” Sometimes those things are real and necessary. But sometimes – and we need to be honest with ourselves here – sometimes it’s just revenge dressed up in therapeutic language.
We’ve learned to exile people from our lives with surgical precision. And we feel righteous doing it. It makes us feel like we’re powerful – even when we are manifestly not.

So Jesus is asking us to consider a different way. And we need to be very clear about what he’s not saying.
He’s not saying accept abuse. He’s not saying stay in dangerous relationships. Anyone who’s told you that has misunderstood the gospel.

But he is saying something challenging: the community he’s building doesn’t operate on the logic of retaliation. It breaks cycles instead of perpetuating them.

Think about the cycles we’re trapped in. Someone hurts us, so we withdraw. They notice and feel rejected, so they harden. We interpret their hardness as confirmation that we were right to withdraw. Round and round.

Or the generational ones: Dad and Uncle Mike haven’t spoken in fifteen years over the family business. Now the cousins don’t talk either, and half of them can’t remember why. The feud has become its own justification.
Or the neighborhood feuds: the tree branches, the property line, the parking spot, the dog. It’s absurd when you step back. But it’s everywhere.

Jesus says: what if you were the one who stopped it? What if you absorbed the hit and didn’t pass it on?

I’m not entirely sure what this looks like in practice. I suspect it’s different for each of us. But maybe it starts small.

Maybe you’re the one who reaches out first after the argument. Not with a fake “let’s just move on,” but with a genuine “I want to understand you.”

Maybe you stay in the difficult conversation when everything in you wants to storm out. You keep showing up to the family gathering even though you know Uncle Richard is going to say something infuriating. And when he does, you don’t take the bait. You ask him about his grandkids instead.

Maybe you volunteer alongside someone you disagree with politically. And you discover that the person you thought was ruining America actually shows up every week to serve meals at the shelter. Funny how that works.

Maybe when someone in this church hurts you – and they will, because we’re human – you don’t just quietly disappear. You speak the truth. You create space for repentance and reconciliation.

Maybe you refuse to participate in the whisper campaigns. When someone starts the gossip, you say, “Have you talked to them directly?”

These are small things. Ordinary things. But I wonder if their effect might be revolutionary.

You can view the whole sermon here.

Jesus describes a world where the poor are lifted up, the mourners are comforted, the peacemakers are honored, and those who suffer for righteousness are named as blessed.

Micah describes a people shaped by justice, kindness, and humble faithfulness.

Both texts point toward a way of life that runs directly against the grain of the principalities and powers of this world.

The message of the Cross is that this way of life — this way of justice, mercy, humility, peacemaking, solidarity with the vulnerable — will ultimately confound and overcome the systems of domination and fear that structure so much of human history.

In the ancient Christian imagination, the Cross was not only a symbol of suffering; it was a sign of victory. By this sign — by lives shaped like the Cross — the powers of the world are unmasked and undone.

Not through force.
Not through triumphalism.
But through costly love.

[…]These texts invite a serious question: Where shall we stand?

The Beatitudes do not let us remain neutral observers. They ask us to locate ourselves in God’s unfolding future.

Will we stand with those who hunger and thirst for righteousness — even when that hunger makes us uncomfortable?
Will we stand with peacemakers — even when peace requires truth-telling and repair?
Will we stand with the merciful — even when mercy is misunderstood as weakness?

Micah reminds us that faithful living is not an abstract idea. It shows up in concrete choices: how we treat the foreigner who sojourns among us, how we care for widows and orphans, how we protect the poor and the outcast, how we respond to those whom society pushes to the margins.

If we are true to the Gospel and to the Prophets, then we trust that this way of life is not in vain.

Not because we will always see immediate results.
Not because justice always comes quickly.
But because we belong to a story that is larger than any one moment.

We are, as Scripture dares to say, children of God. Members of Jesus’ own family. Participants in God’s ongoing work of healing and restoration.

The power of the Cross continues to move in the world — often quietly, often slowly, often through ordinary people making faithful choices in unremarkable places.

(This sermon is a reworked version of a sermon I preached in 2016).

You can view the entire sermon here.

There is no sense of comfortable stasis in the Kingdom of God.

No sense of “I’ve arrived.”
No sense that we are finally done changing.
If you are waiting to be ready before God comes into your life, you will wait forever.
You will not be ready.

And that is not a flaw — it is the point.

The call of Jesus always comes in the middle of things.

In the middle of work.
In the middle of uncertainty.
In the middle of ordinary life.

And the only question is whether we are willing to leave our nets.

Which raises the question we would often rather avoid:
What are the nets? What role are they playing in this story, and in our lives?

For Peter and Andrew, James and John, the nets were not bad things. They were necessary things. Respectable things.

Nets meant livelihood.
Nets meant identity.
Nets meant security.
They were not sinful.
They were familiar.

And sometimes that is harder to let go of.

We imagine that following Jesus means leaving behind only the obviously wrong things. But more often, it means loosening our grip on good things that have quietly become ultimate things.

The nets are whatever we cling to because they make us feel safe.
The nets are whatever define us so completely that we cannot imagine who we would be without them.
The nets are whatever keep us from moving when God says, “Now.”

And the Gospel tells us that when Jesus calls, the response is not careful calculation, but trust.

“I will make you.”

You will be equipped.
You will be taught.
You will grow into this.
Faith is not knowing how to do the thing.
Faith is being willing to step forward when someone says, “I’ll walk with you.”

In practice, that is what Christian life actually looks like.
We travel in response to call, going to places we’d rather not be, to circumstances we’re rather not experience.

Let those who have ears, hear what the Spirit is saying.

You can view the full sermon at this link.