Sermon/Essay/Rant Part Deux. (I Did Warn You.)

(Part One here.)

Y’all. These are seriously trying times. So I’m back with another wee rant.

The recent news coming out of Oklahoma would make a hilarious SNL skit if it weren’t so alarming.¹ Like Louisiana’s Ten Commandments stunt, it’s more you-know-what. (Insert glistening poop emoji here: _____)

I refer to the Oklahoma State Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters announcement last week that the Bible will immediately and henceforth be required to be included in every classroom and to be taught, along with the Ten Commandments, as part of the curriculum.

I encourage you to watch theologian Dan McClellan, who is way smarter than I am, systematically dismantle Mr. Walters’s “reasoning.” It will be well worth your time.

This vomit-inducing smarm about having the Bible in every classroom is yet another example of, say it with me now…PER-FORM-A-TIVE BULL-SHITE.² But don’t take it from me.

“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” That’s Jesus in Matthew’s gospel (Chapter 15) quoting the prophet Isaiah. Why? He was calling out the outward piety of the performatively religious who were using a loophole (Corban) to avoid the clear obligation to honor father and mother and care for them in their old age. (Listen, the prophets are where it’s at if you want to hear the straight, uncomfortable truth. No words minced.)³

This handy loophole was to pledge an offering to the temple, but wink, wink, it was a pledge you didn’t actually have to give. So you could say, “Oh, sorry, I can’t fulfill that obligation because it’s earmarked for a pledge. I’m such a pious and religious person and I love God so much, I’m sure you’ll understand, Mom and Dad, and I’m sorry you have to eat cat food from tin cans and will die alone in poverty. Wish I could help, but, you know…” Gestures up to the sky, clasps hands in prayer, lets one tear escape. Returns to enjoying sumptuous meal with important friends.

In this chapter of Matthew some religious leaders try to ambush Jesus with a string of questions about various religious rules (*gasp* sometimes y’all eat without the required ritual handwashing! *gasp*), intending to trip him up and discredit him as one who could speak about God. Each time Jesus responds with a verbal smackdown exposing the hypocrisy of their obsession with rules that have way more to do with their comfortable power structure than with the desires of God’s heart.⁴

They felt smart about how cleverly they had justified sidestepping the essentially basic obligation to be good to each other and care for each other. They got to decide who was out and who was in, who was counted as mattering and who was deemed unacceptable. They had come to love their power more than God’s mercy.

Sound familiar?

I’m so weary of those in our times who parade around wearing cross necklaces or lapel pins or Jesus-themed t-shirts, waving their arms saying “I just love Jesus! I’m a Christian! See? See?!” while the rich get richer and the hungry are sent away empty. Who foster “us vs. them” instead of embracing the “we” that is the human family. Who use scripture verses as shield and weapon instead of doorways to a new way of being together in the world. “What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say,” my momma was known to comment.

By the way, this 15th chapter in Matthew concludes with the story of Jesus feeding the large crowd of people who had come to listen to his refreshing take on what had become an ossified system that, shamefully using God’s name, benefited the wealthy and powerful and marginalized the poor and needy.

“I have compassion on them,” Jesus told his disciples as he put them to work helping, adding, “I am unwilling to send them away hungry.”⁵

1. Project 2025. One of the “four broad fronts” toward the goal of remaking the US from a democracy into a Christian Nationalist theocracy is to “Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” Be horrified. Christian Nationalism is pure idolatry.

2. Oklahoma ranks 49th in education and 46th in child well-being. This ain’t about the children.

3. The prophetic role is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” One of the Hebrew words often translated as “righteousness” is tsedeq, sometimes used to speak of balance in weights and measures.

4. From Hosea 6:6. “I desire mercy (goodness, kindness) not sacrifice (burnt offering of an animal).” From Micah 6:8 “He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does YHWH require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

5. Is that woke, or?