In Isaiah, the Lord God declares that the Chosen people shall soon “rejoice” in victory, “as people make merry when dividing spoils” in war. Rival Assyrians, foreigners, will be crushed. It will happen when the Chosen warriors trust in their Lord God and stop trusting in the foreigners. Foreigners, especially those living among them, scam the Chosen people of their rightful place at the apex of their culture.
The Chosen people were once a great nation of great men. They blame foreigners for scamming them of the rightful supremacy. The great men are aggrieved at having lost their dominance. They will not live as neighbors. They will kill perceived enemies, undeserving foreigners, and reclaim their exalted position. The model is routinely repeated, currently so in the U.S. White men blame ‘foreigners’ like women and immigrants for scamming them of their rightful place of supremacy. Both women and immigrants have struggled against supremacist systems of politics, capitalism and ethics to achieve rights in education, finances, speech, voting, and so forth. Their achievements made it apparent that white men lived at the apex of culture not due to merit but due to criminalizing most rivals. Ever since, aggrieved white men have acted as warriors, killers, blaming their ‘foreign’ rivals of women and immigrants for scamming the warrior white men of their rightful top spot. For over 30 years the warrior Rush Limbaugh blamed women as being men’s femiNazi rivals, so too he blamed immigrants. He formed an army of like-minded white men who swarmed right-wing radio that persists in warrior Andrew Tate types blaming women and immigrants still for the loss of supremacy. The warrior Jerry Falwell Sr. made the misogyny and xenophobia Godly. He too formed an army of like-minded white men who swarmed right-wing evangelical churches that persists in Minnesota pastor and ICE agent David Easterwood types blaming women and immigrants still. For white men, it is women and immigrants who are to blame for causing the breakdown of the family, lost jobs, and a diminishing American culture. But it is wealthy white men who arranged for the destruction of unions and their higher wages and benefits that forces current households to have two exhausted and meager wage earners that are causing the breakdown of the family. It is wealthy white men who control the workplace, its location, outsourcing, industrialization and deindustrialization, as well as its AI robot plans that are causing lost jobs. It is wealthy white men who value plunder over people, materialism over spirituality, alienation over community, anxious consumption over principled character, shopping over civic engagement that are causing a diminishing American culture. Never do the warrior white men blame other white men, certainly not white men who are wealthier than them for scamming them. What do white men do with other wealthier white men who are scamming them. They elect them to higher office.
In the Gospel, Jesus is travelling through that very region the Old Testament reading scolds for trusting foreigners. Rather than calling for victory over rivals in war, Jesus calls for followers in the “Community of God,” “’Come after me, and I will make you fishers of people.’ At once they left their nets and followed him.” We who follow in the Way of Peace join public life not as warriors, killers. We relate with others not as rivals or enemies, but rather as neighbors. It is the witness of people across this empire, especially in Minnesota of late. We co-create community together. We can tell the warriors who want to blame us as rivals to stop getting scammed. We can tell them to lay down their killing weapons and join with us as neighbors.
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit guide us in loving our neighbor
Question: Jesus says the Community of God is at hand. How am I making that happen?
January 25, 2026 Gospel Matthew 4:12-23 Third Sunday in Ordinary Time