Much of Isaiah affirms the persecution a just deity inflicts upon his Chosen People who have been disobedient. In its last chapter, Isaiah tells the Chosen People who have returned to obedience that “Everyone will see the LORD’s hand of blessing on his servants and his anger against his enemies.” Jesus’ Gospel obliterates that blessing vs. persecution model. Jesus missions sometimes disobedient people to bless enemies and to expect persecution in return, “I am sending you like lambs among wolves… cure the sick … (and if) they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say, ‘The dust of your town that clings to our feet, even that we shake off against you.”
Peacemakers, specifically those learning from Jesus, do not expect preferential treatment and know to expect difficulties unto persecution. Why then do white evangelicals, who self title as Christian, complain so much about being persecuted, especially by the government? It is because white evangelicals are not peacemakers learning from Jesus. They are instead the Bible’s new Chosen People obeying Yahweh. As Yahweh once favored the Chosen People in the Bible, he now favors them. So too as rulers and government once favored Chosen People in the Bible, rulers and government should now favor them. As the Bible’s Isaiah reading shows, Chosen People’s past rulers and governments were sometimes disobedient. So too, Chosen evangelicals can tolerate disobedient Chosen rulers now. It is why white evangelicals are not bothered by Trump’s immorality. Trump favors them and arranges for rulers and the government to favor them too; husband over wife, father over family, whites over Blacks and so forth. Disobedient unchosen people – wives, children, Blacks, and so forth – are justifiable shown disfavor, are justifiably persecuted. This explains why self-titled Christians reject Jesus’ mission for gentle social healing in favor of Yahweh’s social anger for persecution. White evangelicals are the wolves from the Gospel story for our own time. They lay claim to the right to persecute others, as their Lord Yahweh did, as earlier rulers and governments did. As the Bible’s Chosen People had no problem with their Lord stoning adulterers and smiting foreigners, and actively prayed for Yahweh to do so, and joined in on it, so too it is now the same with white evangelicals. They have no problem with persecuting children in concentration camps on the border or executing persons who are gay, they pray for it, and they join in on it. We should not be shaken by white evangelical preachers, namely Kevin Swanson, Ben Bailey, Steven Anderson, Curtis Knapp, Andy Gipson, Matt Powell, who are urging violent persecution of refugees and LGTBQ persons. This month white evangelical pastor and police detective Grayson Fritts urged such violent persecution, “God has instilled the power of civil government to send the police in 2019 out to these LGBT freaks and arrest them and have a trial for them and if they are convicted then they are to be put to death. If you’re a policeman, then you know what? It should be your responsibility to carry these things out.”
We can shake off white evangelicals’ pretense to Christianity. We can help them be shaken by peacemakers like Jesus. White evangelicals show knowledge of memorized Bible verses but show ignorance of Jesus lived witness. Speaking to evangelicals the basic truth that Jesus did not act as they act and that they are not Christ-likely shakes them to their core. Let’s keep shaking these persecutors.
Prayer: Spirit of Truth, may our life witness always shake people up.
Question: What truth shakes me to my core and calls for my conversion?
July 07, 2019 Gospel Luke 10:1-12, 17-20 Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time