The Wrong People: A Homily for Americans Tired of America

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

1 Peter 2:9-10, NRSV

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

John 14:1-2, NRSV

God keeps choosing the wrong people.

Not the wrong people morally. The wrong people strategically. If you were building an empire, you wouldn’t start with slaves in Egypt. You wouldn’t bet on a stuttering prophet or a shepherd boy or a teenage girl in Nazareth to save their people.  You wouldn’t, on the night before your state-sanctioned execution, look at a tired, worn, weary, and hopeless band of fishermen and tax collectors and tell them they were going to change the world.

But that’s precisely what God does.  Again and again. God reaches into the place of greatest suffering and says, “You, You’re the one(s) I want.

This is scandalous.

It is scandalous for this reason: God is not attracted to power. God is most attracted to our need.

We are taught by the world, by the market, by the American gospel of self-sufficiency, that need is weakness. Need is failure. Need is something to be hidden, overcome, and ashamed of.

But God is not American. And God is not impressed with power.

God is drawn to the empty.  The vulnerable.  The rejects. The marginalized. Refugees seeking shelter from the dark.

And here’s the thing about refugees: they know something the comfortable don’t know.  They know that home is not guaranteed. They know that safety is not a birthright.  And they know that when you have lost everything, the only thing left is God.

Peter knows this as he writes to a scattered community.  People without political power, without legal standing, without the protection of the empire. And what does he tell them?

He tells them they are royalty.

The audacity.

You are a royal priesthood.

You who cannot vote. You who are not counted. You whose voice is gerrymandered into irrelevance.  You whose children are sent to fight wars that the powerful wage, and the powerless die in.

You are royalty.

Not because the world treats you as royalty. But because God has conferred upon you a dignity that no court can revoke, no legislature can amend, no war can destroy.

And the powerful don’t like this. The powerful prefer a God who works to enhance their own selfishness and greed. A God who blesses their wars without question and sanctifies their wealth without scrunity. The powerful want a God who stays in Her lane. A chaplain to empire. A mascot, not a Lord.

Seldom do the powerful remember that the God of the Bible is unmanageable. They conveniently forget that God looks at the ones the world counts as nothing and says, “These are mine.”

“A chosen people, a royal priesthood.”

And the God of the Universe refuses to let the abandoned be abandoned.

And this is why the words of our Lord Christ are comforting and threatening.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

Lord, have you watched CNN lately?

What do you mean, do not let your hearts be troubled?

The trouble we experience is real.  Jesus does not deny it. But the trouble we experience is not final. And Jesus encourages us to simply keep heart when the world falls apart.

You see, the untroubled heart is not the heart that feels nothing. In fact, I’m deeply suspicious of people who feel nothing.

No. The untroubled heart is the heart that feels everything and is still not shattered.

It is the heart that can weep over the news without being crushed by it. A heart that can rage against injustice without being consumed with rage.

This is not easy, America. It is not natural. It requires practice, discipline.

But, every day we must choose what will occupy the throne of our hearts. Every day, the world will nominate candidates: Fear. Despair. Rage. Cynicism.

And every day, we must say: NO.  The throne is occupied. And the One who sits there is not shaken, and therefore I will not be shaken.

This is what it means to not let your heart be troubled. It is a daily act of resistance. A daily insurrection against the powers that would love nothing more than to colonize our inner life after they have already colonized so much else.

But remember that the colonizers of this world are afraid.

They are afraid because they know that history is not on their side. They know that every empire that has set itself against the purposes of God and Her Kingdom has eventually crumbled. Egypt. Babylon. Rome. The Confederacy. The Third Reich. The Soviet Union. And soon, the fascist, Christian Evangelical White Supremacist Empire of America.

They all thought they were permanent. They were wrong.

And because they know this, they try to grab what they can while they can. They suppress votes because they cannot win them. They wage wars because they cannot wage peace. They build walls because they cannot build bridges.

But here is what they don’t understand: you cannot wall out the Kingdom of God. You cannot gerrymander the Holy Spirit. You cannot suppress heaven’s vote.

The arc of the moral universe is long, Dr. King preached, but it bends toward justice. And it bends toward justice because God is the one bending it.

Now this doesn’t mean we sit back and wait. God’s bending requires our hands. We must find a way to vote in masses. We must organize. We must resist. We must do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.

But we do all of this with untroubled hearts.

Untroubled because of the words that Peter uses to encourage his scattered and suffering congregation.

“Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.”

Once. But now.

That is the grammar of redemption. That is the rhythm of grace. That is the heartbeat of the Gospel.

Once you were not a people. Once you were scattered, frustrated, angry, hungry, alone, forgotten. Once, you were defined by what you lacked, what you lost, what was taken from you.

But now!

Now you are a people. Now you are God’s people.

Friends, there is a “but now” coming. In fact, it is already here. Live into this week as “but now people.”

Not as victims, though you have been victimized.

Not as survivors, though you have survived much.

But as witnesses. Witnesses to the fact that God has already begun to make things new.

Through the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus,

Amen.

“Called Out Of Darkness into Her marvelous Light.”