No, Not Like That!

This is the sermon preached by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregation of Unfinished Community on Sunday, February 2, 2025, drawing from Jeremiah 1:4-10 and Luke 4:21-30

It probably won’t surprise any of you to hear that I’ve always had something of a…complicated…relationship with rules. As I have gotten older of course, I have come to see the point of rules, come to see how they are simply tools to be used when convenient, and either exchanged for another or discarded outright when they cease to be helpful. But as a younger man…I hated rules, especially when it church.

Churches do tend to have a lot of rules, and for good reason. We use rules as a check against our own worst natures, as a way to hold ourselves accountable when we reluctantly take hold of the power necessary to build, shape, and grow a community larger than ourselves. We use rules to prevent ourselves from becoming tyrants and, perhaps more importantly, to make sure that we are made to pay attention to those quiet-yet-insistent voices that speak from our personal and cultural blind spots; the voices of the oppressed, the unheard, and the silenced in our communities, and in our world.

That’s what rules are for of course but, as should come as a surprise to precisely no one these days, rules aren’t often used that way. In fact, they’re very often used as both bludgeon and shield, protecting the powerful from hearing the cries of the oppressed while they wield them as a blunt instrument to keep all those pesky minority voices quiet.

My first encounter with this was when I was a kid, growing up in the church. As is probably blindingly obvious, even as a kid I had an intense interest in the ways in which my church functioned. I wanted to know everything. I sat in on every meeting I could convince them to allow me in, and peered in through windows and keyholes at every one that I wasn’t. I was in awe of these wisened elders of the church, calmly and rationally debating issues before voting the future of the church into living reality.

Even when they didn’t agree, these rules and procedures seemed to hold them all together as one community, and I was absolutely in awe of the entire process. So, being the determined young man that I was, I decided that I wanted to speak up too! So, the very next time I had the chance, I attended a meeting and tried to speak up.

But, the second I tried, I discovered that as a kid, I didn’t have what was called “the privilege of the floor.” In short, I wasn’t allowed to speak.

No kids allowed, it seemed.

I was upset, annoyed, and filled with all the rage and irritation that defines a pre-teen American boy, so I decided that this simply would not, nay could not stand. So I set out to figure out just what this "privilege of the floor" was, and how I could go about getting it. Because I wanted to be involved, I wanted my voice to be heard, to be part of the collective of voices shaping this wonderful community we all shared.

I wanted to do more than just sit down, shut up, and listen while others decided for me; I wanted to contribute, to help too.

 .

After spending a few days in the church library with copies of the church constitution, the Book of Church Order, a battered copy Robert’s Rules, and whatever else I could find, I figured out that it wasn’t so much that kids “weren’t allowed,” but that one had to be a member in order to be permitted to speak and, while there weren’t technically any rules on how old you had to be to become a member, the elders had simply…not permitted anyone under the age of 17 or 18 to take the membership class.

But I can be pretty insistent when I put my mind to it so, after some petitioning and cajoling (and, I am certain, a few exasperated calls to the pastor from my parents who were no doubt sick of hearing me go on about this) I was allowed, as a middle schooler, to take the confirmation class separately with the pastor and, when I passed, I was allowed to join the church as a member.

So NOW I had the privilege of the floor. Now I could serve on committees, speak in meetings, and be a full part of the body politic. I was excited. I was energized. I was ready.

I still remember my first congregational meeting. I was so full of energy, so ready to be part of the process, that I totally missed the avuncular chuckles and eye-rolls from the elders and adults around me. I had my issue, I had researched it, and I was ready to speak.

I waited patiently meeting minutes in hand, and when the time came I stood up to speak. The chair looked at me, smiled with all the condescension of age, and before I could open my mouth he said "I think it's great that you're here, but this is a fairly adult issue. Why don't you sit back and try to learn a bit, and let us handle it, ok?" He then called the vote, and the issue was over before I had the chance to say so much as a word.

I remember sitting there thinking…"What just happened? I did everything they asked, followed the rules so perfectly and exactly. I got my membership, earned my rights, I had the privilege of the floor…why couldn't I speak?"

It was the first time I tried to speak at my church, to follow the rules and participate. It was also the last. And it would be more than a decade before I ever even attempted to speak in any church, ever again.

Because I learned that day that what I was lacking wasn’t procedural at all. It wasn’t a condition of membership, or age, or eloquence.

It was power. Social power, position, and privilege. And as a child, I would never be able to demonstrate enough maturity, never be able to follow the rule precisely enough to achieve it, because having power meant being like those who had power.

My mistaken assumption was in thinking that we were all dedicated servants of Christ Jesus, members of the body of Christ each with our own contributions worthy of acknowledgment and inclusion into the great work of Christ’s ministry of compassion here on earth. I had assumed that it was the role of the church, and of its leaders specifically, to give voice to those among us who wanted to speak but couldn’t, to make sure that a hearing was given to those who could not otherwise be heard; to listen for Christ’s voice in the places we least expect to hear him, and to look for his face among faces that our flawed, broken, human, hearts tell us not to expect him.

And truth be told, I had an easier time of it than most. I had the privilege of supporting parents, the privilege of both sex and skin color which inclined the old men of our church to view me with tolerant disapproval, seeing in me an echo of the young men they once had been. As a result, I made it farther than those without those selfsame advantages did, even if my efforts still came to nothing in the end.

Still, I made it farther than my sisters ever did, who were ridiculed for even trying.

I made it farther than anybody non-white ever did, because "for some reason" folks like that never happened to enter that church in the first place, even though they comprised the majority of the local population demographic.

Later, I would learn that these church elders had expected me to sit quietly for years while they instructed me in the “right” way to do things, the “right” ways to speak and be heard, the “right” causes to speak in favor of, the “right” ways to vote, and the “right” ways to think. I had wanted to be an advocate for change, the first new voice of many more to come seeking an evolution, a revolution in justice, grace, and mercy.

But what the elders were looking for wasn’t anything like that at all; they wanted a bulwark against change, a new generation that they could hand-pick to endure things stayed just the same as always.

When I decided not to cooperate, to leave the church rather than to sit in silence, I was surprised at just how much anger, how much rage I encountered. Elders who had once been friends of the family met me with fury, telling me that I was abandoning church, abandoning God, even selling my soul to the devil, all because I felt called to speak the words God had given me, rather than submit to the status quo.

My experience is far from unique, of course. How many of us left our home churches, or left the church entirely, because we couldn’t stomach making ourselves subservient to systems that refused to grow or change, that refused to reflect on the harms of the past, and make room for new voices pointing to a better, more equitable future before God? And how many times have we seen representatives of these churches stand to speak, in public and in private, crying about the “decline” of the church, about how young people are “rejecting” church, or “rejecting” God?

And how much rage have we seen out there, from people who are powerfully offended at the idea that people coming to church looking for the gospel are leaving it because they didn’t find it there?

And How angry were the people of Nazareth at the words of Christ Jesus, who came to them simply to say that change was both imminent and required? How quickly they turned on him the moment his message began to unsettle them, the moment that God’s word showed them that justice wasn’t going to come gift-wrapped, hand-delivered, and in easy-to-open packaging.

You seem God's justice is always proclaimed by voices outside our areas of comfort.

Look at Jeremiah; only a boy, but God knew even before his life began that he was made to challenge the institutions of power and privilege in the world around him. When Jeremiah said "I am only a boy," God said to him "That doesn't matter!"

“Because you work for me.”

When Jesus stood to the pulpit in Nazareth, he knew he was fighting an uphill battle; a room full of people who knew him as some upstart kid, somebody who really ought to know better than to challenge the elders, or to preach a divisive word. He knew that at best he was going to get all the temple folk telling him that it's great that he feels he can preach, but not like that.

And knowing that, Jesus doubled down. He preached the word God gave him without reservation, without tempering it or scaling it back, and without waiting for some future day when the halls of power might somehow be ready to hear it.

And just as the boy Jeremiah spent his whole life facing persecution and violence for the message of justice given to him by God, so too did Jesus have to face the wrath of an enraged status quo who heard calls to change, to turn away from the broken ways of the past and back towards the ever-moving target of God's justice and mercy, as a specific and personal threat.

They brought him up that hill to kill him, you know.

Jesus' own hometown, the people he grew up with, the elders of his church, families his mother had to have had over for dinner dozens of times over the years; there were people he loved in that crowd, people who he must have thought loved him too. And they wanted him dead for his message, a message where all he did is stand to the pulpit and read the Bible.

He read from Isaiah 61 by the way, in case you ever want to look it up, and it was his choice of text that inspired the rage of the community around him. But it wasn't just where he chose to start reading, but where he chose to stop reading, that inspired so much rage from those around him.

You see, Isaiah 61:1-2 reads as follows:
 

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me

    because the Lord has anointed me;

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,

    to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives

    and release to the prisoners,

2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

And the day of vengeance of our God.

Jesus, you may notice, left that last line out. And he did it intentionally, because he knew that the context he was presented with was different from the one to which Isaiah had first preached those words. Isaiah, you see, was preaching to an obliterated people, victims of the brutality of a violent, military conquest. But while Israel in the time of Jesus was also under foreign occupation, the Roman control over Israel was primarily economic. And not only economic, but it was facilitated by Israel’s own government and temple leaders, who were allowed to profit from the exploitation of the poor of Israel.

For the leaders of the temple at the time it was vital to keep the people focused on the Roman occupiers, to keep them addicted to visions of vengeance and retribution against the evil empire, because as long as they were focused on the enemy outside, they wouldn’t notice the enemy inside; an entire system that parted widows from their coins with a message of hope and salvation sometime in some distant future.

Which is why Jesus stopped before vengeance, and landed directly on the year of the Lord’s favor. At the Jubilee. At good news for the oppressed today, uplifting for the brokenhearted today, liberty to the captives today, and the forgiveness of debts today.

At the uplifting of silenced voices today.

Power loathes justice, because a just society tolerates no oppressor to continue, suffers no injustice to endure. Power loathes justice because it requires the unheard to be heard, the unseen to be made visible, the crooked paths to be made straight, and the rough places plain. Power loathes justice because a just world is on Earth as it is in heaven, and if the lion were to ever actually lie down with the lamb - or worse, rise to their defense - then who would profit by selling lamb cutlets on the cheap?

We live in a world full of voices, clamoring around us day in and day out trying to tell us what is right and what is wrong, which voices to listen to and which voices we should ignore. Billionaires with bespoke podiums rise to speak, to tell the whole world about how they are the real victims; politicians fly in on private jets to scream about how any disagreement or dissent is really them being oppressed.

Evangelical preachers stand to the pulpit to scream about how the giving of rights to others is an offense, the silencing of their so-called faith,

But if we are called to truly bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to lift up every silenced voice in a great choir of justice and love, how will we know which voices to listen to? How do we decide who has the privilege of the floor? And how do we ensure that we are on the side of righteousness, when God’s justice and the selfish desires of powerful collide?

Consider these words from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:

If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant

or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;

it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part,

but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

Let us ask ourselves which voices are speaking words of love? Which voices are speaking words that are patient, or kind? Which voices are crying out for the ways of others, rather than their own? Which voices are crying out for truth, rather than twisting their words to suit their agenda? Which voices are willing to bear all things, hope unceasingly, endure all that is necessary, just to see God’s justice done?

And which voices speak with the arrogant, irritable, blame-fueled prophecies of power and privilege?

Invariable, inevitably, we find those love-filled voices crying out from under the oppressors boot, spilling out from the mouths of the silenced, exploding from the hearts of children, and in all those places where gather those who have been refused the privilege of the floor, who have been invited to sit at the table in silence, or who have been met with anger and rage when they could contain God’s clarion call for justice no longer, only to be told;

“No no. Not like that.”

So let us try to listen. To yield, and to allow those voices to speak that we find challenging, unexpected, or new. Because I promise you, so long as we hold fast to love, these are the voices that will carry God’s message to us today, tomorrow, and in all the days to come.