Lent 2026

Like many of you, my screens have been flooded with videos and commentaries of protest and people being killed in encounters with ICE in the last month. In the immediate aftermath, there have been mind-numbing debates and political maneuvers which have mystified and further confused me. Regardless of where your political persuasions lie or your philosophies about American immigration rest, this increased exposure to human death – replayed, slowed down, argued over and politicized – ought to grieve us as Christians.

Amid the endless flow of news, I hold a general principle in leadership that a faithful response to such events does not require reactive urgency. Often, it is difficult to fully comprehend what has happened and a bit of patience goes a long way. After all, speed is not synonymous with discernment. Furthermore, there are horrific forms of political violence that occur around the world every day and one couldn’t possibly write or respond to the litany of injustice that grieve our Heavenly Father’s heart. How do you select what to respond to?

And yet the continued political violence, sometimes performed in the name of Jesus, has me asking many questions: Am I paying attention? Where is Jesus? What do the politics of Jesus look like and how do they confront our political moment? These questions have driven Christians for centuries to “hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. This Lent, we are going to ask these questions of scripture and dwell with Christ in his Sermon on the Mount.

Over the last year, one of my best companions in asking these questions has been a musician by the name of Jon Guerra. Guerra’s most recent album, entitled, “Jesus,” has been especially meaningful to our family this past year. He was recently interviewed on The Living Church’s podcast.^{Note 1}  During the interview, Guerra performed a few songs and reflected that the album emerged from the desire for “Christ to have a say in the conversation … we are having as a country and in [his] own heart.” As he thought about his desire to write such an album, he regretfully disclosed by way of a confession, he found himself thinking, “boy, Jesus always agrees with me… Jesus is always consoling me for how terrible those people are.” This honest reflection led Guerra into a deeper quest into the gospels to meditate on the call of the cross, in which Christ is both challenging, consoling and mystifying to every human person.

I love Guerra’s honesty and have been convicted of similar thinking, recognizing pride bubble out of me in various moments in our political discourse and in my life. Jesus has a way of exposing these superiority complexes, as no one seems to be able to stand up to the lofty heights of his cruciform ethic. Like the rich young ruler who leaves sorrowful after Christ calls him to give away all his possessions and follow him, we all encounter Christ and find ourselves wanting. In fact, this is one of the primary interpretive lenses to look at Jesus’ teaching; it is a mirror that exposes our sin and need for God’s mercy.

Mercy is one of the theological goals of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus puts it succinctly, “go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:13). As we begin to see ourselves properly, as people desperate for God’s mercy, we become the kind of people who bear God’s mercy in the world. In this way, the Sermon on the Mount is not merely meant to expose us, but also to direct us in how to live a truly good life. In other words, the sermon is meant to be obeyed. As the King, Jesus establishes a new political order and calls his followers to be loyal citizens.

The challenge of Jesus’ political order is that his ethics do not fit cleanly into any of the political party lines of our American party moment. Though he is used on the Left and the Right to prop up and critique, he transcends and confronts both parties. His commands are radical and unapologetic. Consider briefly his commands about money, sex, and power:

Money:

While we complain about taxes and the government’s mismanagement of money, Jesus commands us to give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s and give to God what is God’s (Matt. 22:21). The implication of Jesus’ retort is that everything belongs to God. In other words, he is no respecter of personal property because he doesn’t believe we own anything but are merely stewards of his resources that he generously gave us. This foundational idea under-girds his warning in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matt. 6:19-20). He knows that mammon is not neutral, but a very alluring and yet terrible master. Such teaching led many in the early church to sell their property and redistribute the proceeds to those in need (Acts 2:45). While Jesus does not command everyone to sell everything and follow him, he directs us to steward all our time, talent, and treasure towards his kingdom’s purpose (not our own). The point is that Jesus’ commands on our finances are challenging and not easily brushed off, nor do they fit cleanly into the American dream.

Sex:

It is commonplace in our American moment to elevate choice as the primary ethical standard regarding the sexual use of one’s body. Consent is nearly the only ethical standard provided for sexual activity in our culture’s sexual education. We are what we choose to be, we can sleep with whomever we choose to sleep with and entertain any fantasy imaginable if it doesn’t intrude upon another’s consent. These are, after all, the choices of “free” people. While consent is extraordinarily important, to be sure, it is not the only ethical standard for Christians. Jesus’ vision for sexual wholeness and true freedom is not merely the absence of constraints but the presence of covenantal fidelity. We are to limit our sexual thoughts, words, and deeds to the sacred context of covenantal marriage. Jesus reaffirms the Old Testament teaching on marriage and sexuality and raises the stakes, saying that we commit adultery even through our disordered sexual desires. Such radical teaching is compounded by St. Paul’s description of marriage as a sacrament of Christ and his beloved church (Eph. 5). Marriage is no mere chosen contract defined by the state for tax benefits; it is a sign of the most sacred relationship: Christ and his church. In this way, Paul goes on to call every Christian to sexual chastity in this vision, saying, “your bodies are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” (1 cor. 6:19-20). The point is that Jesus’ sexual ethic is challenging to all of us and does not fit into our highly sexualized culture.

Power:

Finally, Jesus radically undermines our imagination of power. In the Kingdom of God, might does not make right, but rather power is perfected in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). This is most evident in Jesus radical command for us to “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us” (Matt. 5:44). Some Christians have received these commands and embraced a political expression of pacifism. While there is a robust tradition of just war within the Great Tradition of the church, one must wrestle with Jesus’ non-violent reaction to his own persecution and calling to “turn the other cheek” (Matt. 5:39). Even in the medieval church amid the crusades, clergy required soldiers who were returning from war to blunt their swords on the cornerstones of the church before receiving communion, as a reminder that the weapons of this world do not fit in the Kingdom of God. Such commandments weigh upon our political rhetoric, which has become more diabolical. We use words like repugnant, repulsive, disgusting, and evil to describe our ideological opponents. How do these descriptions fit within Jesus’ ethic to love our enemy? The point is that Jesus’ view of power is cruciform not coercive; it challenges our every instinct and does not fit cleanly in any political party.

Jesus’ teaching and commandments in the Sermon on the Mount expose, challenge, and drive us to God’s mercy. The good news is that the God revealed in Holy Scripture is, as the prayer of humble access conveys, a God “whose property is always to have mercy.” Our God is the fount of mercy who extends his mercy to all seeking him and whose mercy functions like a wellspring in those who receive it, overflowing and spilling out to the watching world.

In one of my favorite songs on Jon Guerra’s album, “Treasure in Heaven,” Guerra describes his experience of seeking to conform his life to Jesus’ teaching. He writes:

“There’s a day that’s been spoken of,
when the thirsty can come
Come buy without a dime and eat
Where bread and wine and milk
cost nothing
But, Lord, if I’m honest,
I’m scared to death
That if I give my fish and loaves
there won’t be anything left
For me and my parents,
for my wife and my kids
I was born the only child of
child immigrants
I never knew that I was different
until I made friends
So I faked it till I made it,
but the pill was poisonous
Now I’m looking for the lilies
who neither toil nor spin
Father, plant one in my heart
and make it grow to be a garden”

I deeply resonate with Guerra’s testimony. It echoes of a prayer in the gospel, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” (Mk. 9:24). When we surrender and submit to the life-giving call to follow Jesus in this life, we are going to see the gap between God’s perfect love and our imperfect attempts to follow after him. While Jesus does not let us off the hook in his calling, he does extend mercy to us in our earnest plea for help. The key is to ask; to move from, “if I’m honest, I’m scared to death…” to “Now I’m looking for the lilies… Father, plant one in my heart and make it grow to be a garden.” These lyrics serve as an example of humility, which is the soil necessary to grow a saint.

Living faithfully as citizens of God’s kingdom will challenge our political loyalties, on both the Right and the Left. Neither party fits cleanly within God’s kingdom ethic. As Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon put it. “Many Christians do not fully appreciate the odd way in which the church, when it is most faithful, goes about its business. We want to claim the church’s ‘oddness’ as essential to its faithfulness.”^{Note 2}  Such a political undergirding shapes how we see and respond to events like the ones in Minnesota.

Several weeks ago, I referenced in a sermon a recruiting advertisement for the Department of Homeland Security that showed images of ICE agents in military uniform jumping on airplanes and kicking down doors. Scattered throughout the images were the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God” (Matt. 5:9). Given some of the cruel and violent measures taken by ICE, one can hear Jesus’ lament echo into our moment, “would that you, even you, had known this day the things that make for peace” (Lk. 19:42).

To be sure, the work of governance, guarding borders, and mapping out a realistic path to citizenship is abundantly complex. It is not inherently cruel to enforce borders or laws about citizenship nor is it inherently just to expel people who are here illegally; the ends do not justify the means. There are good arguments and reasons to debate about all kinds of political issues; the work of governance is extraordinarily difficult and deserves our attention and prayer. That said, as Christians, we take our cues from Jesus and his way of the cross. He sets the terms and relativizes the pundits on Fox and NPR news or any political leader.

Amid growing political violence and hostility, I pray that Christ Church would become weird to the watching world; that our neighbors would not be able to fit us into a box. May we humbly pursue Christ in the path of the cross, attempting to embody the mercy and justice of his perfect love.