Well now, y’all….The Epistle Reading for today is a humdinger.  For those of you who want to know, it’s from Acts 5:27-32,40-41.  Ya see, Peter and the Apostles were dragged in front of the powers that were (as opposed to the powers that be, but we’ll get there in a minute) and got into a heap of trouble because they had been told, in no uncertain terms, that they were to keep their mouths shut and not preach about Jesus’s love, forgiveness, salvation, resurrection, and all things Christ related.  However, rather than meekly submitting, Peter and the apostles said, “”We must obey God rather than men.
The God of our ancestors raised Jesus, though you had him killed by hanging him on a tree.  God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior to grant Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins.  We are witnesses of these things, as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”

Did ya get that?  What’s the most important thing Peter said?  He said, “We must obey God rather than men.”  For the life of me, I just don’t understand why people don’t get it.  WE MUST OBEY GOD RATHER THAN MEN.  Period.  Hands down.  However,  we frequently hear certain politicians claiming to be “Christian” and actively espousing the desire to ‘take the country back’ and to ‘put God first,’ and to make sure that the United States follows only their brand of “Christianity.”  These are the folks who distort  the Scriptures, using selective editing and mental gymnastics to claim they say things they don’t say.  Often they claim the Bible doesn’t mean what it says or they ignore the explanations given by Biblical linguists and other experts in the field.  This is hypocrisy, something Jesus repeatedly condemns.

WE MUST OBEY GOD RATHER THAN MEN.  Jesus taught us to love our neighbors — no exceptions. (How very “woke” of him!)  The Gospels emphasize this commandment in dozens of different verses about love (particularly in the Gospel of John) and lay out specific blueprints about what love in action looks like throughout Matthew 25, the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, the Sermon on the Plain in Luke, the beginning of his ministry in Luke 4:18, Mary’s song about the rich and the lowly in Luke 1, and more.

There are those who claim  that America was founded to be – and should remain – a so-called “Christian nation,” despite the clear intent of the Constitution to separate church and state and to honor religious liberty for all.   It most assuredly was not.  Many of our Founding Fathers were not Christian.  Many of them were Deists, among them were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.  (Yes, I know some of you will disagree with me.  However, check out the “Jefferson Bible” before you say anything.    Heck, check out your own Bible, in a direct translation and proper context, before you say anything.)     These same people claim to be all about defending “the Jesus that they love and worship” whilst not caring at all about those whom Jesus asked them to care:  the hopeless, the hungry, the homeless, the downtrodden, those who are “other.”  The prisoner, the immigrant.  They yell about freedom of speech without understanding what that means, and not caring, except for the speech with which they agree, and heaven forbid anyone disagree with them. 

These are also the people who advocate for oppressive legislation — rooted in far-right religious beliefs — that strips away equal rights  from those same LGBTQ folks, non-Christians, women, people of color, and immigrants, among others.  

They cry, “It’s a baby!” and then do their best to take food out of  babies’ mouths, refuse them health care, or any care at all.  They demand the 10 Commandments be posted in classrooms but shun The Sermon on the Mount as being woke.  They cry to “teach religion in our schools,” but only that bit of religion with which they agree (most of which comes from the holiness codes in the Hebrew Scriptures) but refuse to practice.  And heaven forbid any other religion but theirs be even mentioned in schools.

Where is God in all this?  Where is the love that Jesus has said that we are to show to all?  It is time to stop giving lip service to our faith and actually live it.  It is time for us to, as they say, “put up or shut up.”   It is up to each of us to conduct ourselves in a manner fitting our faith.  By all means, pray for America.  But don’t you DARE then sit back and do nothing to heal our nation. 

We are taught in Galatians 3:28 that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  That also means, by extension, no race, no nationality.  Isn’t it time we act like it?  Isn’t it time that we hold those in power accountable if this is what we wish?  We are taught in the book of James to “ show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” James 2:1-26   Further, we are taught, again in James, that faith without works is dead. In other words, if the faith inside of us doesn’t get expression through our actions and words, it will no longer be alive. If we don’t use it, we will lose it, so to speak. We have to step out in faith in order to keep faith alive.  (James 2:26:  For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.  But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.)

WE MUST OBEY GOD RATHER THAN MEN.  It is up to us, each of us, every one of us who profess to be followers of Christ, to BE the change, to work for the change, we so desperately need in this world.  Again from James:  But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.  James 1:22-25  I have said, over and over again, that WE are the only Bible some folks will ever read.  WE are the only Jesus some folks will ever see.