When Sacrifice Costs More than Gummy Bears

Thoughts on Lent, ICE, and "100 million deportations"

TL;DR:
An unsettling moment—soldiers in a hotel lobby—collided with reflections on Jesus’ identity, immigration rhetoric, and Isaiah 58. As Ash Wednesday approaches, I’m questioning whether our Lenten fasts cost us anything at all, or whether faithfulness might require something far more demanding than giving up small comforts.

Author’s Note:
What follows is a brief sermon offered as part of an exercise within the Iowa Preacher’s Project, a preaching cohort I am currently part of. We were each asked to preach a seven-minute sermon for Ash Wednesday. This is a transcript of that sermon, very lightly edited for readability. I’ve added the audio below.

Sunday afternoon, I walked into the hotel that we’re all staying at. My friend, the pastor whose church I spoke at Monday morning, was checking me in to stay Sunday night onto Monday morning. And I noticed if you recognize this, when you walk into the hotel, you kind of have this V. On your right, there’s the lobby area, on your left is the desk. So I was trying to follow my friend as he was checking me in, but I was also noticing on the right, soldiers and camos to the right. And I text him after the fact, like, hey, why are there dudes in camos and fatigues in the lobby? And he’s like, oh, you know, our governor has got it hard for Trump and is bringing out the National Guard. And I thought, well, that’s interesting.

And the thought came to mind because I just read or started reading a super progressive book on the plane, that there was no, as we might hear, trigger warning or content warning sent out to the group that, hey, there’s people in camos in the hotel lobby, or you might encounter them. And the thought then also struck me that we have a group that’s very white. For better or worse, it is what it is.

The book I just finished on the plane was Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman. And in the book, he makes the point that Jesus was a Jew, something we, for, I don’t know if we forget about, but seem to downplay, at least broadly speaking, in American Christianity. So he says Jesus is a Jewish. He says Jesus was poor, as evidenced by Mary and Joseph bringing a turtle dove and what have you for the dedication. And then he says Jesus was a member of an oppressed minority group under Roman occupation.

So I had this all kind of circling in my brain, and my friend Dennis Sanders, an alum of this project last year in Ryan’s group, had sent me before we got on the planes together to come here, or before I got on the plane to come here last weekend, had sent me an image that I didn’t think was serious. I thought it was just like someone was talking about it. This image sent out, I guess on Twitter by DHS, I think of 100 million deportations. And I thought. I just assumed that was a joke.

So I’m kind of wrestling with all this in my brain and thinking about the ethnicity of Jesus and how that matters, and thinking about the ethnicity of human beings in our nation, doing the math. One hundred million deportations is quite shocking and startling and in my opinion, at least, inhumane. And wrestling with how to think faithfully about that. Dennis said to me, Loren, you should write something on this. And I don’t know what to say about that. I try not to be uber political in my things because I think that scene is widely enough covered. And also, what else can I really say on that? So I try to think theologically, at least in my mindset.

So, I was thinking about the ethnicity, the social location of Jesus and so many of those who might be under threat of that hundred million deportation, whether serious or meant to be, in my opinion, ridiculous cosplay, what that would happen or what that would look like.

Isaiah 58 comes to mind as we prepare for Ash Wednesday.

So, as we were assigned to read one of these texts, I was flipping through last night trying to think, like, what the heck am I going to say about Ash Wednesday? Or any of these texts that’s going to make any sense? And I was trying to get to sleep last night. For some reason, Isaiah 58 came to mind.

I’m going to read from the King James Version because it’s a long story, but maybe someday I’ll tell you about it. Isaiah 58:5-6 says:

Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

So I was thinking about Ash Wednesday and Lent, the beginning of Lent, and thinking about, like, how so many of us are thinking about or will be thinking about, like, what are going to be our chosen fasts? You know, something like social media fasts from social media. Great. Like, that’s going to benefit me. [Or I’ll] fast from Diet Pepsi or gummy bears. And[whose] kidding, I’m not going to fast from those. Like, I need those, you know?

But then my mind, uh, came to the other text, one of the other texts in this lectionary reading of Matthew [6] right? And Jesus says to lay up treasure in heaven. And again, as I remember in the King James Version, “where moth or rust doth not corrupt.”

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

And I thought about, like, if I’m going to lay up treasure in heaven, like, something costly has to be required of me. It has to be more costly than gummy bears or Diet Pepsi or even social media. So, like, I don’t know if this is, frankly, like law and gospel within the scope of IPP. I don’t know if this is like a “lettuce” sermon, but, like, I know this, I believe this. That, as David Wright said downstairs, like, I want to be taken by a story, not to take a story for myself. And I think the story requires for me to be taken by that story, [the story] requires more from me than Diet Pepsi and gummy bears.