Dear Rehoboth,

                We are taking a quick break from the gospel of Luke to see what the prophet Isaiah has to teach us. There is so much in this passage. But I think the place that we need to rest in is verse 15, “When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.” If that doesn’t make you sit up straight in your chair after this weekend terrorist events in El Paso and Dayton, I don’t know what will. Why do I think that? I think it’s because as a church universal we have become too complicit in the systemic injustices that allow for these types of things to happen. As a church, we gather and pray for world peace but then vote for those who don’t care when violence is perpetrated against those who are minorities or outcasts. We say we want to love everyone, and then we support those who have openly chosen not to love everyone. I was listening to a podcast this afternoon in which the host was speaking on this text, and he said the problem in this text is not that people are not going to church, the problem is that Jesus has decided to stop coming to our churches. We may think that we have nothing to do with the shootings in El Paso or Dayton, and we may think we are doing what is right, but it scares me to think that Jesus has decided to stop coming to church. That Jesus has decided to avoid our prayers and calls because we have become complicit in systems that say it’s ok to choke out black men on the street for selling cigarettes(Eric Garner), but a mass murderer is calmly put in a cop car without a scratch on him. I’m not saying someone should have hurt the shooter in El Paso, but what I am saying is that we live in a country in which the black man was killed, and the white man lived. Maybe this is too political for a Monday morning, but maybe we need to become more political as a church. Not the politics of the left or the right but the politics of God’s kingdom. A kingdom that tells us to “cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

                We can pray all we want. We can have communion every single day. We can write giant checks every single week. We can even extend our worship services to 2 hours every Sunday. We can sing louder and longer. But, if we are still willing to participate in the systemic injustices of the world, I’m afraid God might not be in our temples to hear it. I’m afraid that God is waiting for us to show a concern for the poor, the broken, the immigrant, the minority before God darkens the doors of our churches. It makes me uneasy to say these things. I hope this rambling made you move around in your seat. I hope it made you think of this past weekends event and the ideas of so-called Christians lead to these attacks. Those are their words, not mine. Maybe I’m too political, but then again, Jesus died because he called to be the Son of God. Because he claimed that he was God and not Caesar. They killed Jesus because he cared too much about the poor and the weak. They killed Jesus because he loved people he wasn’t supposed to. They killed Jesus because he wasn’t afraid to go against the leaders of his day. Jesus didn’t come to sit in a throne on earth, he came to sit in the slums and with widows, and the orphans, and the despised. Jesus showed us the type of politics he was interested in. Church, I think we have blood on our hands. I think we have sat back and allowed these injustices to happen. I think as we gather we need to think about whether or not the things we say and do in worship and acted out in the world because if they aren’t then, we might be praying to God who is not coming to church anymore. And that terrifies me.

                I’m sorry, this wasn’t an upbeat read. I’m sorry if you don’t agree with me, but this was what was on my heart, and I think this is what our scripture says. Please pray for me this week as I try to wrestle with this hard text and the events of this weekend and the spread of white domestic terrorism in our country.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Lee