Rise Up

This is the sermon preached by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregations of Unfinished Community and Ashiya Christian Church on Sunday, February 1st, 2026, drawing from Micah 6:1-8 and Matthew 5:1-12.

One of the greatest challenges I have faced in my ministerial career, as some of you may (or may not) be surprised to hear, has been the intensity I naturally bring to the pulpit when I rise to preach. I tend to think of myself as a fairly reserved person truth be told, but despite my natural reservation I have been blessed - or cursed, as it often feels - with that terrible combination of an unruly bluntness and a deep voice with a natural volume level that sounds roughly a collapsing mountain range. 

That is to say…though my heart may be soft, my natural demeanor and way of thinking coupled with my physical properties…they often present me as far more intense, or far more angry than I intend. 

This really became a problem when I started preaching because, as so many do when they first rise to the pulpit, I had things to say. 

So for my entire career, ever since my very first days preaching as an intern, I have been engaging in a deliberate attempt to temper myself. To hold back. To tamp down the intensity of my rhetoric, stay the power of my voice, and really restrict any major expressions of emotion, positive or negative, lest people find me to be so over-the-top that they can’t even hear God’s message over the ruckus coming from me.

That’s right folks…I’ve been holding back all this time. Crazy, right?

But over the last month and a half, since our last English service on Christmas Eve, I’ve had time to wait. And to watch. And to really allow what’s been going on not only in my own life, but in our world, to settle on my heart. I’ve had time to open my eyes, and to reflect on the pain, and suffering, and injustice that seems every day to magnify in terrible intensity day, after day, after day.

For most of my life, the forces of authority in my home country off the United States have committed heinous crimes against beautiful bearers of God’s divine image, snuffed out precious light after precious light in the name of racism, bigotry, and fear. 

And I tempered my voice. 

For most of my life I have watched the rise of this goatee-wearing, funhouse mirror, alternate universe version of Christianity which we call “evangelicalism;” a cult cobbled together by politicians who gathered together snake oil salesmen and charlatans to offer them the same deal that was offered to Jesus in the desert, all the world to rule if you would just bow down in worship, and they took it. 

And still I tempered my voice.

And in the last few years I have watched this cult exercise its dominion by putting God’s name in the mouths of the powerful and the privileged as they call for the rejection of the immigrant and the refugee, and the murder of anyone they find different. 

And even still I have tempered my voice.

And in the last few months I have watched as the suffering has crested, as the cruelty has overflowed the banks of what any of us can bear, as bigots swarm the streets in Temu-body armor, armed to the teeth hunting other humans for sport.

And still, I thought my voice not nearly tempered enough for the task of peacemaking before us. 

And then there was Renee Good. And Alex Pretti. And countless others that we see on the news, on video, or even - as a colleague of mine in Minneapolis shared recently - with our own eyes. And there are still more yet whose suffering never made it in front of a camera, those whose skin color comes in still darker hues, trans folks, immigrants, refugees, and those disappeared by an indifferent and cruel state.

The cries of the poor in spirit rise and rise, and still should I temper my voice? Try to speak calming words of hope and encourage people to be patient, quiet, and small?

This week I opened the lectionary, and when I saw the passages we were given today I realized that I can not.

I simply… cannot. 

We are flooded with those who mourn, weeping for loved ones taken from us by - and let's not mince words any more - fascists with guns who seek to assuage their rampaging insecurities by intimidating and destroying anything that threatens their toxic masculinity. 

Every day we watch as people around the country are deliberately and intentionally persecuted, murdered even, all for the sake of righteousness, trampled for no other reason than that they stood up and said “No. You will not visit harm upon my neighbor.” 

We sit here in our pews, we pray and we pray, and we ask just what it is that the Lord requires of us, and the answer to our prayer is given to us right here, today!

“…what does the LORD require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

Justice. Not patience, not loving silence or the tacit “tsk-tsk” of a disapproving school teacher, not the useless “worry and concern” of folks like Chuck Schumer or the aged and out-of touch would-be opposition that populates the “other side” of American governance. 

Justice. Plain and simple. 

The book of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die;

a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to kill and a time to heal;

a time to break down and a time to build up;

a time to weep and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn and a time to dance;

a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek and a time to lose;

a time to keep and a time to throw away;

a time to tear and a time to sew;

a time to keep silent and a time to speak;

a time to love and a time to hate;

a time for war and a time for peace.

Truth be 

Truth be told, I always struggled with that. 

When could there ever be a time for war? If peacemakers are truly as blessed as Jesus says, how could it be even remotely possible that there could ever be a time for war?

My friends, while the truth is that I had often wondered at this, I have to say that I had prayed just as mightily that I would never, ever see an answer to this question in all my days on this earth.

Sadly though, I feel I must report that we have, I think, been given an answer to this question.

For a long time we in Christendom have equated our call to peacemaking and love as something more akin to a call to placidity, a call to silence, or a call to inaction, ignoring the fact that history is replete with examples of Christians standing up in bold defiance against the overreaches of Empire.

If you look to our history, beyond that of the terrible example of modern America, you find that resistance is not only our tradition, it's in our very spiritual DNA!

At first, one could be forgive for thinking that stubborn resistance, that the ability to move into conflict is some kind of sinful, all-too-human strain of thought that poisons our collective mentality twisting us away from loving, patient, obedience to the state and the powers that rule….but even saying that just now feels so very…very wrong. And not wrong in the "it offends my American sensibilities" kind of way, but wrong in the "this is a fundamental violation of my identity as a child of the living, loving God" kind of way, doesn't it? 

Resistance to those who would oppress the least of these is a foundational, fundamental part of what it means to be a Christian at all

Consider for example, The Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa, architects of the Belhar Confession which is a central confession to our own church, who stood in the face of apartheid in South Africa and said that this terrible institution has no place in God’s world, willing to bear the consequences in Christ’s name.

Detrich Bonehoeffer, famed theologian from World War II, stood in defiance of Nazi Germany, aided the resistance to their fascist, bigoted crusade in the name of the risen and loving Christ, and was put to death for it by the state.

Or how about his counterpart, someone a little closer to home? Toyohiko Kagawa, my personal favorite theologian, was a Japanese preacher and servant of the poor during WWII in Japan, who was imprisoned and tortured repeatedly for opposing the warmongering stance of his government and his efforts to create workers cooperatives for fair treatment and wages, some of which endure to this day.

Óscar Romero, then the archbishop of El Salvador, publicly denounced state violence, death squads, and U.S.-backed repression, and was publicly executed for it during a Mass in 1980

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 for, among other things, his work at trying to unite minorities in the US with poor whites in a coalition to oppose the overreaches of political and institutional authority.

Elijah Parish Lovejoy was a Presbyterian minister and abolitionist, who spent his life opposing slavery only to be murdered by a pro-slavery mob in 1837.

Or how about Martin Luther himself, who very famously defied the authority of the church, kicking off the Protestant Reformation through his defiance of an authority that insisted - often on pain of death - that you could buy your way into heaven, and that forgiveness was for sale to whomever could pay.

Of course Martin Luther knew the risks, because before his time, there was John Hus, who was excommunicated and eventually executed for similar views.

Going further back we have Pope Gregory VII, who spent his entire papacy in conflict with Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, at one point not only straight-up excommunicating the Emperor but publicly releasing all subjects of the Holy Roman Empire from their allegiance to the Emperor on behalf of the Church. This conflict continued for his entire papacy, leading to the Pope being exiled from Rome amidst a series of "Antipopes" being brought up by the Empire and other claimants trying to take the Papacy for their own gain. He shattered the church rather than allow tyranny to proceed unchallenged.

Maximus the Confessor, a Christian monk from the early 7th century, opposed Emperor Constans II of the Byzantine Empire, who was attempting to dictate theology from the throne. As a result, Maximus was declared a supporter of the Muslims, and was then tortured, having his tongue cut out, so he could no longer speak his rebellion, and his right hand cut off, so that he could no longer write letters.

Hmmmn….that one sounds a bit, hauntingly familiar, but I digress….

Of course by this point we’ve come all the way back to the Roman Empire, where we have no shortage of people being persecuted for their faith by an Empire that was terribly afraid of what a doctrine of unyielding love could do to their tenuous grasp on power. Though, to be fair, we also find no shortage of people being persecuted by the faith after Constantine realized that the only way to stop the love people from resisting you right out of power was to give them the power and allow it to corrupt them until they become the same as you. 

Again…hauntingly familiar…

But as I look at the news, and compare it with the history of our faith, I find myself asking agin, and again, and again: where are our modern day Bonhoeffers? Where can we find the Kagawas of today? What clergy are out there, right now, like Oscar Romero, unknowingly penning the service which will be their last because the administration can suffer no longer their prophetic obstruction of the abuses of state? Who's out there nailing theses to the door of these evangelical, political monstrosities pretending to be churches? Where are the faith leaders publicly calling to the masses and telling them that they owe no allegiance to men of power who turn their back on God's love for their fellow human?

Where is our resistance spirit? Where is our rebellion?

So many sermons have I read, so many services have I sat in where the preacher stands in this space and calls for calm, calls for patience, calls for offerings or praise songs - noisy gongs or clanging cymbals that they are. So many institutions out there are writing strongly-worded letters, or gathering in solemn assembly so the opinions of still more wealthy white men can be made plain while people of color, immigrants, the LGBTQIA+ community, and others still are being silenced by a bullet out in the streets

In the words of the prophet Amos,

Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!

    Why do you want the day of the Lord?

It is darkness, not light,

  as if someone fled from a lion

    and was met by a bear

or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall

    and was bitten by a snake.

Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light,

    and gloom with no brightness in it?

I hate, I despise your festivals,

    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

    I will not accept them,

and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals

    I will not look upon.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;

    I will not listen to the melody of your harps.

But let justice roll down like water

    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

God wants more than the constipation of our righteousness, backed up behind obstructions of policy, twisted theology, and outright fear. God wants justice, and God wants it to roll down like water. God wants righteous to erupt like an ever-flowing stream, not to be damned up behind sanctuary walls so that a handful of us can quietly drain it like theological cousins of the Nestle corporation.

Where is our Christian resistance? Where are our bold Christian leaders and laity, standing before the indomitable weight of the Red Sea, staff in hand, demanding that it be cast aside in the name of God?

Where, in short, the heck are we?

Well….most of us are stuck. Stuck behind this terrible, unworthy idea that Christianity requires a kind of eternal placidity in thought and action; that the peace of Christ is one defined by a lack of conflict, rather than the presence of justice. 

To be perfectly frank, MLK Jr. put this idea out there back in the 50s, so there's really no excuse for us having to workshop it now, nearly 75 years later. But we're here anyways, so we may as well take a look at it nevertheless.

What we need to understand is that nearly every part of this odd belief that Christianity requires us to invest in a permanent sort of “faithful inaction” is an artifact of American culture rather than faith. It’s something slimy, insidious, which worked it’s way into our Sunday schools along with “God Bless America” and flags in the sanctuary. But this cultural predisposition - the bread and butter of that "white moderate" to which the aforementioned Dr. King was so vehemently opposed - has long been tied to a number of specific bible verses, giving it the illusion of legitimacy. And chief among those verses, the strongest of them all, is today's second passage; the Beatitudes.

Many of us struggle to realize just how completely our interpretation and understanding of these verses has been filtered through the lens of a culture shaped by the American white moderate, the slaveholder, and the servants of power, privilege, and empire. When we read the beatitudes as we taught, that lens gives us a reading more often like this:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit - those whose spirits are heavy laden, and therefore not moved to anger or resistance - for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, as a reward for their patient endurance..

"Blessed are those who mourn - who weep rather than reap - for they will be comforted, in heaven of course, because to attempt to grant them reparation here on earth would upset the existing balance of power."

"Blessed are the meek - those who refuse to fight back at all - for they will inherit the earth, once everyone else is done with it, that is.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. By God. At a later date, probably after they're dead. From the hunger and the thirst.

"Blessed are the merciful - those who have it within them to act and stay their hand - for they will receive mercy, and be spared by the powerful for their lack of opposition.

"Blessed are the pure in heart - those whose hearts are so pure that they cannot bring themselves into conflict with anyone - for they will see God. Probably pretty soon, if the powerful have their way.

Blessed are the peacemakers - those who convince others to stand down from opposition -  for they will be called children of God.

"Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Because the powerful have already got them a first-class ticket to heaven, and are coming to deliver it today.

"Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Because bad words are the most you should expect; anything more and you're in the wrong"

Search your hearts my friends, you know it to be true. We've been taught to understand the beatitudes in this way from our earliest days in Sunday school. I know I have. But…I’m sorry to say, when we understand who Jesus is, this reading just doesn't track. Not at all.

You see, Jesus wasn't some light-skinned, quiet little dude wandering around and telling everyone to just stop fighting like an over-tired father trying to handle life with preteen boys. He wasn't going around telling people that the poor and the suffering should be less visible so the wealthy can live without discomfort, or telling people that they should not question their leaders?

This was a guy who saw the abuses of money, power, and authority, walked outside into the street grumbling and sat on the curb making a whip from nearby scraps before charging back in there, kicking over tables and screaming. This was a guy who knew that love, and mercy, and reconciliation were built on the ability to see the reflection of God shining back at you from even your most virulent enemy, but who at the same time knew that the oppressor's boot was an enemy to us all, and that none of us could ever hope survive if that boot is not first removed.

Jesus healed the sick, when the authorities had decreed that healing was not permitted.

Jesus fed the hungry, when the authorities had taken away all the food.

Jesus saw a public execution of a woman, and placed himself physically in between her broken body and their armed-and-aimed rocks, turned his back on them to care for her first, then turned, looked authority in the eye and said, bet. 

If you want to get through her, you'll have to go through me.

I absolutely dare you.

This is the Jesus we find, truthfully, presented in the gospels. This is our Messiah, the embodiment of love, and mercy, and that justice which is not at all the absence of conflict, but the presence of a justice brought about by righteous conflict, intentional and restrained but above all absolutely necessary in order to remove the oppressor's boot from the neck of the suffering.

And if that is who Jesus really is, how then should we read the beatitudes?

"Blessed are the poor in spirit - those who want to help, but whose are so heavy laden that they cannot rise - for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, the greatest prize we can think of, because those who suffer the burdens should not be the ones tasked with relieving them.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Now. By the great mass of compassionate lovers of God surrounding them with care, and by the whole of us who stand with God's justice, grace, and mercy for the mourning preferentially turning to power and demanding that it grant them relief from their mourning. Comfort. Reparation.

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Now meekness is often misunderstood in our time, often thought of as "someone who lacks the will to confront or stand up, but who submits out of fear." But that's not meekness at all; that's fear. Justified or otherwise, that's fear. No, meekness are those who - I'll admit, very much unlike me - take to conflict out of necessity, but with a quiet insistence and a determination borne of resignation rather than strength. The average, usually white, American Protestant Christian sitting today in their pews looking for a justification to call inaction virtue is not meek. When you think meek, think Mister Rogers - the closest thing Protestantism has to a saint - a man who spoke quietly and lovingly, but insistently, determinedly, and intentionally. This was a man who spent his life using everything he had to convince all people of their inherent value, but who also stood before Congress to insist that they do the same, who went toe-to-toe with the Klan, and far more besides. THAT is meekness, and if we all pursued justice with that same kind of quiet strength, then we would all indeed inherit the earth.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. A straightforward statement of what is going to happen, what MUST happen. Their hunger will be filled not in some abstract afterlife, not in a better world, but NOW. Here. TODAY.

"Blessed are the merciful - those who see suffering and are moved to alleviate it, not simply those who stay their hands - for they will receive mercy.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, those who look at the world with the simple and pure love of a child, who looks at these things and say unafraid that it is wrong for the weak to be snuffed out by the indignation and indifference of the powerful, that it is wrong for the poor to be pushed to the sides so the wealthy may prosper, that it is wrong for anyone to go without in a world where no one need want for anything - for they will see God.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. The peace makers. Those who look upon a world bereft of love, bereft of compassion, bereft of mercy and drowning in war, division, anger, and hatred, where the powerful oppress and so very many suffer, and say "If not by my hand, then whose? If not in my lifetime, then when?" Those who have the will to create peace, the peace that is the presence of justice, by causing justice to come into being rather than simply waiting in church and praying for the day it might come.

"Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness - all the victims - for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not those who do the persecuting mind you, but those who suffer under it.

"Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Christ calls you to a ministry of love for your neighbor, and as our colleagues and friends in Minnesota today can attest when you act in that love, when you stand for that love, the powers and principalities that rule over us and oppress us will call your love an abomination. They will call you a terrorist, call you a threat, call you a liar, call you anything they possibly can to try and convince the world that the love you bear is not to be trusted. Because that love is a threat."

All of us, every one of us, wish that these things need not have happened in our time. As do all who live to see such times as these. I told you earlier that it was my most fervent prayer that the question of “when could there ever be a time for war” would never, in my lifetime, be answered. 

But we have arrived at a time when those who serve the risen Christ can accept the felling of our neighbors no more.

We have arrived at a time when those who serve the loving Christ can accept the brutalization of our neighbors no more.

We have arrived at a time when those who serve the God of life can suffer death no more. 

We have arrived at a time where our voices, our hands, and even our bodies themselves, must not be stopped or stayed. 

The late Pope Francis famously said, “You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That's how prayer works.”

We pray for peace. Then we go and make peace. That too is how prayer works. 

The followers of Christ are called to be peacemakers. So let us make peace. Let us go into those places where peace has been abandoned, and forge it with the hands, the feet, and the very body of Christ.

And because I know that you would all be terribly disappointed if I made it all the way through a sermon without a single Star Trek reference, I would like to leave you with the one thing that every strongly-worded letter from religious leaders, including the one just released by our own denomination, has been sorely lacking: a call to action. And I leave you with that in the words not of some great Captain, or a moralist, or a teacher, or a lecturer, but with a slight paraphrase of the words of a deeply flawed character instead; a man who was himself once counted among the privileged, a drunk, and a cheat, and a murderer, who one day realized that the only way to forge a better world was if imperfect people like him stood against the tide of cruelty and oppression, raised their hands, and said no more. 

“Resist. Resist today. Resist tomorrow. Resist, until the very last oppressor has been driven from our soil."

I pray that all of us deeply flawed, imperfect people, can find the strength to resist.

There are so very many people counting on us.