February 1, 2026
Epiphany 4
The Rev. Dr. Elaine Ellis Thomas
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Essex, CT
Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12
Last Friday, I watched video footage of clergy, some of them friends of mine, kneeling outside of Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport, protesting Delta airlines deportation flights on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many of those being rounded up for deportation have no criminal record or are awaiting hearings on asylum petitions, some are children, some were born here, some are sick, some leave behind families who can’t support themselves. And so, my friends sang and knelt and prayed and were, one by one, arrested. By legal standards, they deserved it. They weretrespassing. They had violated the parameters of their permit. And they knew the risk going in.
This is always the danger, the risk, in taking a public stand for what is right, of engaging in nonviolent passive resistance. Some are simply arrested. Others are assaulted, beaten, and even shot ten times while lying on the ground.
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)
When you witness injustice, do justice.
When you witness cruelty, do kindness.
When you see people parading around an image of God indistinguishable from the rulers of this world, walk humbly with your God.
Every year around election time, and sometimes at other times through the year when to ignore the events of the world around us would be to stick our heads in the sand – at those times, we who inhabit the pulpits of the Church frequently hear the complaint of “you’re being too political,” or “I come to church to get away from all of that.”
And in this moment, this inflection point in our nation’s history, I can’t help wondering which political party is it that is the party of justice or kindness or humility. As far as I can see, justice and kindness and humility point to the Reign of God, not the United States or Republicans or Democrats or Communists or Fascists or anyone else. Justice is of God, and if we are the people of God, we will not rest until all God’s people are all clothed with justice and kindness and humility. Every time I sit down to write a sermon, I pray that it is the Good News of God’s reign that I am pointing toward.
Matthew’s gospel is all about that Reign, or Kingdom, of God. These most well-known sayings we call the Beatitudes are not talking about people who are blessed because their condition is a good thing. These are not moral standards we should try to achieve. No, these people are blessed because the Good News of what God’s kingdom looks like is for them. This blessedness is not about a present circumstance; it is about the great reversal that God’s Reign will bring. The needs of the world will be transformed in God’s kingdom, and the last will be first. The hunger for righteousness does not dismiss the physical hunger experienced by so many who hear Jesus’s words. Throughout the New Testament, the word for righteousness is the same word for justice, and justice is when hunger is no more, where poverty is no more, where fear and violence are no more, where the peace of God which passes all understanding prevails.
Last week, we heard about the calling of the first disciples, Peter and Andrew, who left their nets and followed Jesus (Matthew 4:18-22). In short order, great crowds of people are following Jesus, and it is in this context that he goes up the mountain, sits down, and begins to teach. Peter and Andrew and all the rest may have been called, but they probably had little idea what they were called to. And in these Beatitudes, Jesus is speaking to them, too, because it might just be dawning on them that this would not be a life of safety or comfort, that they risked arrest and even execution at the hands of the state. But they longed to experience what this righteousness, this justice, might be.
In the very first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, he, too, has something to say about being called:
Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1:26-31)
God chose what is foolish and weak and low and despised to bring to nothing the world as it is, where the poor get poorer, the sick get sicker, and the suffering have more suffering heaped upon them.
Over the past week, many bishops in the Episcopal Church have issued statements on what has been happening in Minneapolis, including our own bishops. Craig Loya, who serves as bishop of the Diocese of Minnesota, wrote that the people in Minneapolis are “mobilizing for revolutionary love.” Last Saturday, he ended his reflections on the events of the day with these words:
The greatest danger we face right now is not the very real threat to our safety. It’s not even the erosion of democracy. The greatest threat we face as a nation is the assault being waged on hope. We must not give in to despair. We must not be consumed by the very justified anger we feel. The only way hatred can be effectively resisted is doubling down on love. The only way darkness can be defeated is light. The only way the forces of death can be overcome is by embracing, every moment of every day, God’s unstoppable life.[1]
And these are words from our Presiding Bishop, Sean Rowe:
This is God’s call to The Episcopal Church now, and it is not an easy one. In the United States, we no longer live in a time when we can expect to practice our faith without risk, and we are confronting what vulnerable communities of faith have experienced for generations. Our right to worship freely as one church, committed to the dignity of every human being, has been curtailed by the fear that too many immigrant Christians face when they leave their homes. Peaceful protests, a right long enshrined in the Constitution, are now made deadly. Carrying out the simple commands of Jesus—feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, visiting prisoners, making peace—now involves risks for the church and grave danger for those we serve. As Christians, we must acknowledge that this chaos and division is not of God, and we must commit ourselves to paying whatever price our witness requires of us.[2]
This morning, we will/we have gather(ed) as a community for our Annual Meeting, and we will hear/have heard a lot about where we have been, the good we have done, and our excitement and hope for the future. I hope and pray that we will always keep before us these questions:
What does pursuing justice look like for St. John’s?
What does doing kindness look like for St. John’s?
What does walking humbly with God look like for St. John’s?
What are we doing to mobilize for revolutionary love?
Because these are the things, my friends, that God requires of us.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/craig.loya
[2] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffairs/from-presiding-bishop-sean-rowe-death-and-despair-do-not-have-the-last-word/