Are You as Human as I Am?

Sermon for Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026
Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12
(Readings for Epiphany 4 switched with Epiphany 3)

Eight days ago, dozens of us joined dozens of folks from St. James Methodist to offer the Free Store, now a twice-a-year event where anyone can come for a hot meal and the chance to shop for things we all need.  At this time of year, that means warm coats, boots, gloves, hats, socks – the basics I take for granted.  It’s a tremendous thing to provide that hot meal and some essentials of life for 325 people on a cold morning.  But it’s a good thing for me, too – a chance for God to form my mind a little more fully into the mind of Christ.  Just recently, I realized my winter coat was ripping out after a decade’s use, so I pulled out my phone, ordered one online, and had it delivered to my door.  That’s my life.  And it’s good for me to remember it’s not the life of thousands of neighbors of mine.

In fact, I had a brief conversation with a young woman at the Free Store waiting for breakfast.  She asked about what was in the next room, where the clothes were – most important, did they have boots?  Now, this young woman had a disability in at least one of her legs, which made walking hard in any case.  And she stuck out her twisted ankle to show me what she was wearing that frigid morning – very old bedroom slippers.  She said, with masterful understatement, “I kinda need some new shoes.”  I told her we did have boots, and I silently prayed there were still some left at that point in the morning.

It’s good to remember that my life is not the life of thousands of neighbors of mine.  In fact, it’s not just good.  It’s holy.  To practice God’s justice, we have to see the other not as the other but as a child of God.

God’s justice … now there’s a rich concept.  We heard it in the first reading this morning, those famous words of the prophet Micah.  Let me set the stage a bit for this verse we see on T-shirts and yard signs so we can know what was on the prophet’s mind.

Micah looks around at the Kingdom of Judah about 700 BC, after the northern Kingdom of Israel had already fallen to the Assyrians, and Micah sees a clear throughline.  Both these Jewish kingdoms have failed to keep the covenant they’d made with Yahweh.  God freed them from the Egyptians, gave them this land, and asked the people for their exclusive loyalty.  Although the answer at first was a hearty “yes,” the people eventually said, “No, thanks.  We’ll worship you when it’s convenient, but there are lots of other cool gods out there, too.”

So, speaking for God, Micah plays the role of prosecutor and judge, making the case against the remaining Kingdom of Judah and basically saying, Justify yourself!  Through the prophet, God says, “What have I done to you?  In what have I wearied you?  Answer me!” (6:3)  Micah then imagines how the people would respond.  What is it God wants, anyway?  Burnt offerings of calves and rams?  Maybe child sacrifice, like some other cultures?  No, Micah exclaims.  God “has told you … what is good” – your allegiance, expressed in action.  “[W]hat does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (6:8)

There’s that word … justice.  What is it to “do justice”?  In our culture, we think of it as following and enforcing the law, and there’s truth in that.  Our “justice system,” on its best days, strives to accomplish that goal.  But God’s justice is broader than that.  God’s justice is what it looks like when we live out the social order God desires.  And what is that?  Well, it does include punishment for wrongdoing, but it doesn’t stop there.  God’s justice applies to all of human interaction.  It includes intentionally caring for the vulnerable rather than assuming it’s someone else’s responsibility.  It includes ensuring that resources are accessible to all – not necessarily that everyone has the same but that everyone has access to what they need.  It presumes that these conditions are the responsibility of the community, not compartmentalized as a function of religion or a government department – but that the community is responsible for the community’s wholeness and right relationship with God.  And why would God expect all this?  Because a right relationship with God would reflect God’s own nature, which is Love.¹  So, if justice is how we express divine Love, then maybe, at the end of the day, justice depends on how you regard the other.  And to regard the other righteously, in a way that reflects the Love that God is, then you actually have to see the other.

From Micah’s call to do justice, our readings take us to Jesus’ vision of justice lived out in a broken world.  The Beatitudes sketch the life of the disciple community, an alternative community – what “God’s empire” would look like in contrast to the Roman Empire.²  This series of nine blessings comes in two parts.  The first four raise up those who are disheartened – the folks who probably just want to give up because the Romans and the complicit religious authorities deplete their spirits, cause them grief, make them doubt their capacity, and make them yearn for a society that is in right relationship with God.  But in a culture that values wealth and power, God blesses those who are out of resources and out of options, a process that Jesus has begun.³  Then Jesus goes on to describe the way of life for his followers, in contrast to the Romans and the religious leaders.  It’s a life of practicing mercy, practicing right relationship, and making peace, despite the harsh consequences.  As one scholar says, “Persecution is inevitable when the powerful elite are challenged,” but “God rewards faithfulness.”⁴

So, how do we learn to live this way?  How do we learn to do justice – to practice mercy, right relationship, and peace?  I think it starts by seeing the other not as “them” but as “us.”  And, it turns out, we have a place to practice doing that six days a week.

Last Sunday, parishioner Craig Lundgren shared that our Brew Crew, the baristas who serve at HJ’s Café, have logged 10,000 hours welcoming all sorts and conditions of people for coffee.  Now, for the church as an organization, and for the baristas, and for Sarah Tepikian, our staff member at HJ’s, this is not easy.  We’ve had to put up signs at HJ’s saying you can’t lie down here or get into fights.  We’ve had to employ security, just as we do on this side of the street on Sunday mornings.  But a beautiful “both/and” happens there.  On any given day at HJ’s, you’ll find Trolley Trail bikers and hikers, members of community groups, and folks looking for a place to stay warm.  And on Fridays, we see maybe the best expression of the community that HJ’s invites when neighbors of all kinds gather to play music and drink coffee and sing together.  The tremendously cool thing is that no one at the church organized this.  It’s not a ministry.  It’s the Spirit’s work, an inbreaking of the reign and rule of God.  And when it happens, you see the other as being just a little bit more like you.

Practicing God’s contrast kingdom of mercy, right relationship, and peace – it’s the hardest work there is.  It isn’t sweetness and light; it’s messy, inconvenient, and disruptive.  Sometimes, it even spills out into the streets, as we saw on Friday.  In Minneapolis, thousands of Minnesotans turned out that day, in weather colder than ours, to express their outrage about the government’s tactics in apprehending people who may have broken immigration laws.  Now, some will argue that those people in the streets were just agitators looking to discredit the government and disrupt authority.  I’m sure you could find some people in Minneapolis who would fit that description.  But I know that thousands of others are like my friend Kathy, a priest who lives there.  She’s a few years older than I am – a mom and grandma who makes the best bars you’ll ever eat.  And she braved those frigid temperatures to stand for God’s justice.  Mtr. Kathy, and thousands more people with otherwise boring, normal lives, looked at the way their government is treating the other, and they saw a disconnect between God’s justice and the application of law.  

And then, yesterday, as the protests in Minneapolis continued, a confrontation turned deadly, with ICE agents using lethal force.  This second killing of a Minneapolis protester will continue to be analyzed deeply and, God willing, an investigation will reveal truth.  But, at the end of the day, people will believe what they see more than what they’re told.  In any event, I think it’s safe to say that othering can have even fatal consequences.

Interestingly, on the same Friday as the Minneapolis protest but half a country away, the 53^rd annual March for Life took place in Washington, where a very different crowd of protesters also saw a disconnect between God’s justice and the government’s policies.  Now, I don’t know anyone personally who went to the March for Life, but I imagine they’d consider abortion to be something that fails to care for the vulnerable and therefore denies the justice of God.  They look at a fetus, or even an embryo, and see a person.  Now, half of you hearing this will say they’re right, and half of you hearing this will say they’re wrong.  But, once again, justice comes down to personhood – on the topic of abortion, the question of personhood.  And if it’s a person there in front of you, the requirement for God’s justice pertains.

I certainly can’t solve the personhood question related to abortion, and I won’t try.  But I think it’s surprising that a core Christian principle may have been motivating protesters at both rallies on Friday: the call to stand in contrast to a culture that dehumanizes people made in the divine image and likeness.

What do we do with that?  My point isn’t whether the two rallies were morally equivalent.  My point is that we each have to ask ourselves, “Who’s the other to me?  Is that other as fully human as I am?”  If the answer is “yes,” then we have work to do to see that other the way God sees them: fully human, broken and beloved, and worthy of being taken just as seriously as we’d take any other child of God.

1.      Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 3, 1127.

2.      New International Study Bible, 1754 (note).

3.      Ibid.

4.      Ibid.

 

Look Up and Look Around

Sermon for Epiphany (transferred,) Jan. 11, 2026
Matthew 2:1-12

It probably won’t surprise you to know that, in college, I didn’t take a lot of science classes.  But I had to take a couple, and one I chose was astronomy.  In fairness, that was primarily because my girlfriend loved astronomy, and she was a lab assistant, and I knew an opportunity when I saw one.  I don’t remember much of the class content now, but it made me appreciate the grandeur of the skies, the beauty and wonder we encounter by looking up.

Even now, 40 years later, I can still find Orion and the Big Dipper and the North Star.  And as I walk in the dark of the early morning, I look for them, always.  But in the 40 years since my class, the beauty and wonder of the skies have been joined by an even deeper sense I get when I look up.  It’s Love.  When I step out into the early-morning darkness and see the moon and the stars greeting me, what I feel is Love, with a capital L.  That Love is God.  You know, depending on one’s mood and the happenings of our lives in a given season, the natural world can seem dark and foreboding, even violent and dangerous.  But, to me, what shines through the early-morning darkness is divine Love.  It’s an assurance that I’m not alone, regardless of what yesterday may have brought.  It’s not just that God is there; it’s that God is welcoming me, traveling with me, guiding me into what’s next.

It’s amazing what can come from looking up.

These “three kings” we’ve welcomed this morning – they were professional lookers-up.  As you probably know, they weren’t kings; the biblical text calls them magi, “wise men” in Greek.  They were the naturalists of their day – astrologers in a time when astrology and astronomy were one and the same, more scientists than fortune tellers.  They were most likely from Parthia, modern Iran and Iraq, east of Rome’s province of Judea – in fact, a land beyond Rome’s dominion.  For the Jews, it might as well have been the kingdom of Far Far Away.  These magi were probably court officials, scholars telling their king what the natural world said about the divine will and how a wise king should govern as a result.

The story tells us these magi from the east had seen something new and surprising in the sky – a star in the west, from their perspective, heralding the birth of a king who would fulfill the divine will in a whole new way.  Apparently, they knew enough of the lore of the Israelites to know the Jews were waiting for a king who would bring back the days of David and Solomon, defeating the Romans and ruling directly as God’s own viceroy, bringing the reign and rule of Love to the earth.  So the magi needed to see for themselves if they were right about the meaning of this sign in the sky.

So, they set out, following the new star.  We don’t get any details about their trip, but it wasn’t a quick jaunt.  They would have taken a trade route west, toward Judea – as Mtr. Jean said last week about the Holy Family, the magi, too, would have traveled in a caravan because wise men don’t try to go a thousand miles through the wilderness on their own.  It would have taken a few months to get from Parthia to Judea.  So, this was no impulsive sightseeing trip.  This was a pilgrimage, which by definition doesn’t just take you somewhere but changes you in the process.

As emissaries of their king, the magi made their first destination the palace of the local king, Herod.  Now, Herod was Caesar’s minion in Judea, the local mob boss, whose rule was as far from God’s way of Love as you can get.  Herod was a Jew ethnically, but following God wasn’t exactly the M.O. of this small man who built himself up by tearing others down, including killing his own heir when he felt threatened.  Even the Roman Emperor, Augustus, noted Herod’s taste for blood, saying it was better to be Herod’s pig than his son.¹

Herod listens as the magi ask about some baby who’s been born to be king of the Jews, and all Herod can hear is a threat.  He slyly asks the magi to go find the baby and bring word back so Herod can find him, too – and have him murdered.

So, the magi, undeterred by evil, keep following the star toward Love.  They find Mary and Joseph in a house like anybody else’s, no palace at all.  They find the little toddler king, and they bring out their famous gifts that say, “Your own king may want you dead.  But in nations far away, when we look to you, we see the light of divine Love.”

And because they’re wise men, these royal emissaries heed the voice of Love in their dreams, going home by another way.  Herod, still scared enough to kill, decides to murder all the toddlers and babies of Bethlehem.  But the wise Joseph listens to his dreams, too, and the Holy Family flees as refugees.

What can we take from this story?  I think these wise travelers have at least two crucial insights to share with us today.

Here’s the first:  Look up.  Like I said, it makes a world of difference for me to start my day in the darkness looking up to find the light of Love.  Sometimes, the sky is stunning – the moon blazing full or a crescent, rocking just above the horizon.  There’s Orion the hunter welcoming me to set out for whatever this day’s hunt will bring.  And there’s the Big Dipper arcing through the sky and pointing to the North Star.  Looking up, I get my bearings again.  I remember, “Oh, right – regardless of what’s eating away at me, regardless of how tired I may be, regardless of the Herods who may be waiting down the road – oh, right, there’s Love, walking with me, again.”  Now, of course, sometimes the clouds mask it all.  Sometimes, you look up, and it’s simply darkness.  But that reminds us of something holy, too: that the Love who fashioned creation, and who died to give us life, and who walks alongside us every day – that Love is there, whether we see it or not.  The clouds can’t keep Love at bay.

So, the magi’s first insight:  Look up.  And their second?  Look around.

Now, we don’t know much for sure about these travelers from the east.  The story gives us few details, and history offers even fewer.  But we do know this much:  Magi is a plural noun. To represent the nations surrounding God’s chosen people, the story doesn’t give us a lone ranger.  It’s not some cowboy alone on his horse who brings gifts to the baby king.  It’s not a magus but magi – several wise people, traveling together across the wilderness.  We don’t know how many; the tradition tells us it’s three because three is a magic number – the perfect symbol of community, just right even to reflect the deeply relational nature of God.  So, the magi are a community of pilgrims aching to glimpse the divine; and, somehow, they know they can only do that together.  They know each other’s strengths and foibles.  They have each other’s backs.  They learn from each other’s wisdom.  They’re individuals, certainly, each with their own gifts and their own brokenness.  But they look around, and they see each other, and they know:  They’re at their best together.

So are we.  And this year, you’ll have the opportunity to experience that kind of community in a new way here at St. Andrew’s.  In Lent, we’ll be starting something we’re calling Companion Groups – small, monthly gatherings to help us grow in faith through intentional spiritual companionship.  And why would we do that?  Because the Christian life is meant to be lived together.  Spiritual maturity isn’t just about learning the Bible or prayers or theology; it’s about learning to walk with God and with one another.  And we do that best in safe, prayerful spaces where we can share our stories, listen to each other, reflect on life, and discover Christ walking alongside us.

Companion Groups give us a way to create that safe, prayerful space, and you can sign up for one today.  With a few other fellow travelers, you can connect, reflect, grow … and realize you don’t have to do this on your own.

You know, we are children of a culture that equips us very well to provide for ourselves.  Rugged individualism can be a great strength, in the right time and place.  But as a paradigm for life’s journey, it’s a way that leaves us vulnerable to the bad guys lurking behind the rocks.  Maybe even worse, that rugged individualism also can keep us from seeing heaven all around us.  If salvation is only about making it through this life so we can find eternal rest and reward later, then we’re missing heaven in the here and now.  Think about the old Appalachian spiritual, “Wayfaring Stranger”:

I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger
A-travelin’ through this world of woe.
But there’s no sickness, toil, nor danger
In that bright world to which I go.
I’m going there to see my mother,
I’m going there no more to roam.
I’m just a-goin’ over Jordan.
I’m just a-goin' over home.

That’s the theme song of the spirituality of rugged individualism – a lament that I know heaven’s out there somewhere, if I can just hang on long enough in this life to get there on my own.  But, as good as the heaven of chapter 2 will surely be, it’s not the beginning of our eternal life.  This life is – this life of looking up, and looking around, and knowing that divine Love walks alongside you every day.

1. https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/it-is-better-to-be-herods-pig-than-son