Matthew 21:12-17
Isaiah 1: 12-17
Cowtown Christ is a sermon series that reimagines the stories of Christ in the gospels as though they were happening today, right here in Fort Worth, dealing with the issues of our times. The Cowtown Christ is Jesse, a Mexican American woman with a group of followers she calls her Close Companions.
After this sermon, we’ll take a hiatus from this series for Palm Sunday and Easter, and for the next two Sundays, I will return to my normal preaching style. But following Easter, we will finish the story of the Cowtown Christ.
Jesse, the Cowtown Christ, turned to her close companions, those who’d followed her for some time, those who had been there at Oakwood Cemetery when they saw her revealed as some sort of supernatural being, and had heard a voice say, “This is my Daughter–Listen to Her.”
Jesse turned to them and said, “Who do people say I am?”
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“Well,” Nate the community organizer volunteered, “Lots of people say that you’re just another charismatic fanatic, building a cult around yourself.”
John the megachurch pastor said, “Some people think you’re a religious self-help guru.”
Joanna the cop said, “Some people think you’re some kind of savior who’s going to make everything right in the world. That’s what the homeless folks on the street think. They think you’re going to lead some kind of peaceful rebellion or be an organizer for the poor like Caesar Chavez.”
“Who do you all say that I am?” Jesse asked.
“You are the Daughter of God,” Peter, the former gas company executive, said. “That’s what the voice said. I believe it.”
“You are going to straighten out everything that’s wrong with the world,” Joanna agreed. “You are God’s Child fixing everything that’s broken. We need that so much.”
“Yes,” Jesse said. “I am.”
There was a stunned silence. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe it. It was just that she’d never said it. And now she had.
“But you need to understand: the only way to fix what’s broken is for me to suffer. I’m not going to ride in on a white horse and save the day or lead a Poor Peoples Crusade. People are going to call me a crazy Mexican. They’re going to be threatened by me. They’ll tell the world that I’m loco. And in the end, I’ll die.”
“Good grief, Jesse, don’t say that!” Joanna gasped. “How does that solve anything?”
“You need to be careful,” Jude the psychologist said, an eyebrow raised. “That kind of talk sounds a bit, well, paranoid. The last thing you need is for people to think you’re crazy. In my opinion, now’s the time to tone down the rhetoric, not build it up. You’re under too much public scrutiny.”
“Yeah,” John said, “You don’t want to jump the shark.”
“Jump the shark?” Jesse asked. “What’s that mean?”
“It’s a Hollywood expression. It’s when a TV show is worried that they’re losing ratings, so they do something crazy to increase attention, but instead of helping, it actually hurts.”
“Oh, I see,” Jesse said, smiling a little. “Well, I’d certainly not want to jump the shark, mijo.”
But the way she said it made her close companions uncomfortable, because it sounded like she thought jumping the shark was the best idea anybody had ever had.
………………………..
A week later was the nationally televised “Day of Prayer for the Nation and World” at Cowboys Stadium. It was sponsored by a nationally known TV commentator whose main focus was that the United States needed to return to being a Christian nation. “We are disease-ridden because we haven’t followed God’s teachings,” he said. “Any population that follows God wins.”
He had as his guests two Texas proponents of what is known as the Prosperity Gospel, which teaches that if people believe in God, God will make them rich. “It’s God’s will for you to live in prosperity instead of poverty,” one of them liked to say. He told people that if they have faith, then God will help them succeed. “If we say it long enough eventually we’re going to reap a harvest. We’re going to get exactly what we’re saying….God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us.”
Guests included leading Texas politicians and sports figures. Again and again, politicians and religious speakers said that the nation’s success hinged entirely on how faithful it is to God, that the poor and needy were a drain on society, and that personal success was evidence of living a faithful life. Some former and current baseball and football players spoke feelingly about how they felt God had rewarded their faithfulness with victories on and off the field.
As millions around the nation watched, right in the middle of the TV personality’s speech, the TV screen went blank for a second. Suddenly, Jesse appeared on the screen. “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. The reward you get is just exactly what you’re after: ratings and votes. But when you stand before your judge, God in heaven, you’re going to have some explaining to do.
“Over and over again, you equate success with being faithful to God,” Jesse continued. “You imply that poor people are poor because they aren’t successful. You say that Americais on the skids because we don’t follow your ideas of Christian religious rules with the same fanaticism that the Taliban follows its religious laws. You have turned faith into a work, a thing that makes God do something that you want God to do. You have turned God into a tool of our own selfishness.
“You’ve made success the true measure of faith. You’ve turned faith into a magical power that makes God do what you want.
And then you bind up the people with the heavy burden, impossible to bear, of being faithful enough and good enough to earn God’s love and to prove how much God loves them by how successful they are. You bind them with this impossibly heavy burden, and then you don’t lift a finger to help them carry it.
“Liars and hypocrites! You convince people that personal success, not loving their neighbor, is what God wants most for all of us. You don’t say at what spiritual cost wealth and success will come. You find the ten verses in the whole Bible that make it sound like wealth is a reward from God and miss the over 700 verses that warn us that wealth is a danger and that God is especially sensitive to the needs of the poor!
“Then you tell them that the nation will be judged by how often people say God’s name or whether gays and lesbians and poor pregnant girls or addicts obey your strict unbending rules, but I say to you that all nations will be judged as the Bible says: Do we do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with our God? It’s as the Prophet Isaiah said: ‘All your pious talk and self-righteous rules have become a burden to me, says the Lord. I weary of bearing them. Learn to do good, says the Lord! Seek justice! Correct oppression! Defend the fatherless! Plead for the widow!’ (Isaiah 1: 14-17)
“I tell you, when the judge of history comes, He will say to you: ‘When I was in the hospital and helpless, facing death; or in prison, suffering for my crimes– did you visit me? When I was poor and didn’t have clothes or a home or healthcare, did you give me a home? When I was hungry and unable to get a job, did you sit me at your table and feed me?’
“For whenever we see the least, the last, the poor, the suffering, whenever we see the losers of the world–we’re seeing God.
“But you mislead people with your lies, telling them that least among us are the cause of all our problems. You warn them over and over of an impending apocalypse when poor people and non-Christians will cause the nation to collapse; and you tell people that unless they are always afraid, unless they’re always looking out for Number One and taking care of themselves, even if it’s at cost to everyone else, then they are in trouble with God! You’ve promoted a bomb shelter mentality, and you have terrified people into selfishness.
“But it’s you who need to fear the apocalypse, because you have misled the people for your own personal gain; and God’s goal of a society of love and peace and mercy and justice, la Ciudad de Dios, the City of God, has been thwarted by you making people twice as selfish as you yourselves are.”
Jesse then spoke to the millions of stunned viewers. “But all of you watching: hope in God. I want to assure you, you need not fear God, for God loves you. You need not fear failure, because God has a special place for you when you admit your weakness, your uncertainty, your doubts, your failures and disappointments and sins. ‘A broken and contrite heart, O Lord, thou wilt in no way cast out,’ the Psalmist says. Believe it, because it’s true.
“The voice of God does not tell you to fear your neighbor, but to love your neighbor.
“It doesn’t tell you to carry more and more burdens, but says, ‘Come unto me, all you that are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.’
“Don’t believe anyone who tells you that God wants us divided, or God wants us to hate, or God cannot forgive. God’s voice doesn’t divide us: it says, ‘Love one another, for love is of God.’
“God’s voice says, ‘Love your enemy.’
“God’s voice says, ‘I forgive you.’
“God’s voice does not say, ‘Because of your sins, I am far from you,’ but says instead, ‘Because of your sins, I give myself to you.’
“The City of God is here, it is among you, if you only reach for it, the city of love and peace and oneness with one another and with God. Believe it, for God sent me into the world to proclaim it. As I am God’s Daughter, so you are all Children of God. Believe it.”
The screen went blank. Then it returned to the stunned faces of the TV personality and the evangelists and the politicians.
And all of Jesse’s close companions were sitting in her living room with her, watching it. They turned and looked at her in shock.
“How did you do that?” Jude asked, stunned.
“It was pre-recorded,” Jesse explained.
“I helped her,” Peter said.
“Me, too,” said fifteen-year-old Mary. “I’m pretty good with a computer.”
Jude said, “I’ve never heard you so—angry. You’ve always talked about love.”
“Sometimes you have to say some harsh things in the name of love,” Jesse said. “You have to hold them accountable.”
There were sirens coming, getting louder. Commentators were on TV, wondering how Jesse could have interrupted a national broadcast.
“Jesse,” Joanna the police officer said, “That was illegal. I have no idea how many FCC laws you must have violated. Federal laws, Jesse.”
“I know,” Jesse said. “You have to arrest me.”
“I can’t arrest you, Jesse!” Joanna replied furiously.
“Yes, you can, Joanna, unless you want to resign from the force right now and get arrested as an accomplice. And that’d be a loss to the police department and to the community.”
“Jesse, you can’t—don’t do this to me,” Joanna had tears in her eyes.
“I broke the law.” Jesse held out her hands with her wrists together to Joanna, who was still wearing her uniform, including her belt. “Read me my rights and cuff me, mijo.”
They could hear sirens outside and screeching tires.
Joanna said, “What is the point, Jesse? What does all this prove?”
Gently, Jesse wiped off Joanna’s tears. “If I’m going to say that God is on the side of the losers, and not the winners, then I need to prove that I believe it. I need to be the biggest loser there ever was.”
The next day the Star-Telegram ran a picture of Joanna escorting Jesse, handcuffed, through a crowd of police officers and reporters. The headline read, “Fort Worth Evangelist Disrupts Television Airwaves; Arrested by Her Own Disciple.”