Let’s pray: Oh God, be present here and in all the places from which we are worshipping; move in us and through us that we too would be moved and changed. Speak to us, we pray – less of me, more of you; none of me, all of you. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer, Amen.
What a blessing to receive this gift of song from Dr. Cee Adamson.
When I was serving in Harlem at Salem United Methodist Church before moving here to Bothell, we sang this song every Sunday. Having gathered together Sunday after Sunday, we would all rise in the ways meaningful to us, and I had the privilege of looking out into the congregation as we sang those words -
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.
Whew.
Today, known as the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was first recited as a poem by 500 students in 1900, written by James Weldon Johnson, a principal at that time in Jacksonville, Florida. His brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, would later set the poem to music after the brothers moved to New York City to pursue a career on Broadway.
They were part of the wave of Black folk leaving the south in the late 1800s/early 1900s, both fleeing threats to life and liberty and pursuing a better future for themselves and for future generations.
James Weldon Johnson would become the Field Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and after a wave of riots across the country, including in Waco and Memphis, and specifically the East St. Louis riots of Illinois, where thousands of white men traveled to East St. Louis marching, destroying buildings and businesses, and beating people, leaving around 200 people dead and 6000 homeless by arson attacks… Johnson and other leaders planned for the Silent Parade on July 28, 1917, where about 10,000 African Americans marched along Fifth Avenue, carrying banners condemning racist violence and racial discrimination.
The marchers would carry banners with messages protesting racial violence, lynchings, and the hypocrisy of American democracy, children leading the march, followed by women dressed in white, and then men dressed in black. For two miles, they marched in silence, forcing observers to confront the gravity of the injustices, a visual indictment of white America’s failure to address racial violence - the deliberate absence of sound.
Johnson wanted to disarm critics who might have otherwise claimed that Black people were being “disruptive” or “dangerous”, and leave no justification for violent retaliation.
It was part of the strategy to force the public to grapple with the very presence of Black folk.
I think our nation continues to have a problem with presence. We have become afraid of one another, threatened by one another, and now, those in the highest seats of power are not only allowing for the erasing of peoples, but encouraging it and executively ordering it.
Just this week, the National Park Service website updated their website to look like this (Slide 1). Under that main header, it reads: Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal. The Stonewall Uprising on June 28,1969 is a milestone in the quest for LGB civil rights and provided momentum for a movement.
As recently as February 12, it looked like this (Slide 2). Under that main header, it used to read: Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal. The Stonewall Uprising on June 28,1969 is a milestone in the quest for LGB civil rights and provided momentum for a movement.
To recognize that night in 1969 when the Stonewall Inn gay bar in New York City was raided by police after years of raids and beatings and attacks which ignited riots and protests and is now often regarded as a turning point in the nationwide movement towards equality for LGBTQ+ Americans without recognizing the roles of transgender activists, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, is the work of erasing peoples.
The same can be said for People of Color, for Immigrants, for the disability community, for federal workers… When we continue to have a problem with presence, when society condones the erasing of peoples, we are refusing to acknowledge the inherent worth of each person, and we are living into the systems of the world rooted in wealth.
This isn’t new.
In the times of Jesus, society was ruled by the Roman Empire which lived in a highly stratified economy with extreme wealth inequality. There was a small elite class, made up by the emperor, senators, and local rulers, who controlled land, resources, and commerce. Everyone else lived in and for a system where wealth flowed upwards through heavy taxation and tributes, which helped the elite stay wealthy and kept everyone else in debt.
There was also this patron-client system, which was a system where the wealthy (or patron) provided financial aid, land, or favors to the poor (or clients). In return, the poor owed loyalty, votes, and service back to the wealthy, which created dependence rather than justice. This ensured that wealth and power stayed concentrated at the top, reinforcing inequality rather than eliminating it.
And, don’t forget Pax Romana, or Roman peace. For them, peace meant the absence of tension, not the presence of justice, and this false peace was maintained through violence, fear, military dominance, and economic exploitation. This false peace came at the cost of the poor - land seizures, forced labor, and the suppression of revolts - again, keeping power with the wealthy.
It is into this world and this system that Jesus is born, and it’s this system that Jesus has come to upend.
Remember, two chapters before ours this morning, Jesus begins his ministry by standing up in the synagogue and reads from the prophet Isaiah, saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And then he rolls up the scrolls, gives it to the attendant, sits down and says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”.
It’s not insignificant that the people want to throw him off the cliff after that.
You see, when we are so used to the ways things are and have been, we lose sight of the things that matter - belovedness, peace, justice…
Jesus continues preaching across the region, answering questions, healing the people who come to him, and then he goes to pray. He goes up to the mountain to pray, he goes up to the place throughout Jewish tradition where the ancestors went to meet God - think Moses going to Mount Sinai, later Jesus will take his disciples up a mountain where he is transfigured and communes with Moses and Elijah. And after he prays, he comes down. He comes down to be with the people, to call his disciples and choose his apostles, to teach among the great crowd of mixed people from across the region - Jews and Gentiles, city folk and rural folk.
And note this: the text specifically identifies the coast cities of Tyre and Sidon. This is interesting. For us, the naming of these cities brings into the conversation the inclusion of Gentiles, the non-Jewish people, who were present for Jesus’ healing and his teaching, the breaking of barriers. But for Luke’s audience, the naming of these cities would have added another layer underneath everything Jesus is about to say.
Back in the Hebrew Scriptures, prophets frequently condemned these two specific cities, Tyre and Sidon, for arrogance, wealth-hoarding, and oppression.
Ezekiel 26-28: the prophet Ezekiel delivers a prophecy against Tyre, describing its downfall due to pride and exploitation.
Isaiah 23: the prophet Isaiah speaks against Tyre as a symbol of unchecked economic power.
Joel 3:4-6: Tyre and Sidon are accused of participating in the slave trade.
You see, these cities represented a system where the wealthy thrived while others suffered - exactly the kind of system that has kept the people oppressed, exactly the kind of imbalance Jesus speaks against in our text.
Jesus comes down from the mountain, from his time with God, to be with the people. Verse 18 tells us, “they had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases, and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.”
I wonder if those unclean spirits included the ones that worked so hard to keep an unjust system going - greed, desire for status and power and wealth…
Get this: Jesus receives the people, all the people, and power comes from him to heal all of them. And after that, then, he teaches:
Blessed are you who are poor, blessed are you who are hungry now, blessed are you you who weep now, blessed are you when the people hate you and exclude you and revile you and defame you.
He comes down to be with the people, he heals all the people - Jews and Gentiles, rule and urban, the poor and the wealthy… all the people who are stuck in this unjust system, he heals. And then he teaches them a new way of existing in the world.
Blessed for the people society wants to erase; blessed are the people our system wants to ignore; blessed are those who struggle to matter in our messed up system.
One last thing from our text. The way Jesus teaches in our text follows a form of Hebrew poetry, where blessings and curses are linked together.
Like in Deuteronomy 28:1-2, 15, Jeremiah 17: 7-10, Leviticus 26:3-4, 14-16, Malachi 3. But there’s a difference. When Jesus uses it, he uses it like the prophets before him, but he doesn’t tie the blessings to legalistic covenantal stuff or their identity as God’s covenanted people. He doesn’t say blessed are you if you… or when you…
He simply says: Bless are you who are. Blessed are you because you exist.
What would it look like if we could claim our blessedness, not just for ourselves but for all God’s people? I’d like to think that’s the task of the church today in 2025 - to make it our task to upend the systems of today so that God’s peace, the one with the presence of justice, can prevail, so that all might know their inherent worth as God’s beloved.
Here are your action points for this week:
Read Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. It’s free online, free on audible. Take the time to work through this timely and powerful text.
Look in the mirror or at your reflection at least once this week and say, “I am God’s beloved.”
Tell someone else that they, too, are also beloved. You can use the words I love you or God loves you or something similar.
Observe the ways society is taking away inherent belovedness and find ways you (and the church) can respond
That’s good news, Church. When the world tells us that there is one way, and it’s the world’s way, Jesus comes down into a holy messiness to upend the system of the world. I am God’s beloved. You are God’s beloved. We are God’s beloveds.
May it be so.
