05/03/2022
Paul's Letter to the Churches of the United States of America:
From Paul, an Apostle of Jesus the Christ, raised from the dead by God the Father, to the churches of the United States of America.
I have not had the pleasure of meeting you in person, or preaching to you with my own words, yet I have heard that you have read my letters and consider me one of your teachers despite us never having been able to break bread together at the same table. If this is true, I hope you will continue to heed my words, and perhaps also remember what you have already read rather than continue on this path of removing freedoms rather than recognizing that what God offers in Christ is meant to offer us grace, not restrictions and hardships.
The empire offers these things, not God. And indeed it is the empire that does so, without question, but they do so in God’s name, and with the support of those who claim to be doing the work of God and doing the work of the church in the name of Christ! Say it isn’t so!
How the church can side with the same entity that crucified our Christ, that hung him on the cross, that condemned him to die in such a manner, is beyond my understanding.
You are there, I am not, perhaps you can explain it to me. But remember, it is written, “You must not follow the practices of the nation”
The laws of empire are not the laws of God, especially since the laws of God can be summed up in a single statement, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
What some in the church are doing in God’s name is not loving, siblings. When you are trying to control others, when you are trying to force others into your views of how they should live, you are not loving them.
You say that you have read my letter to the church in Galatia, and yet you do the same thing here that I yelled at them about then! Making medical decisions about the body for others whether circumcision for men or abortion for women have anything to do with the Gospel is wrong! Anyone who does this is preaching a false Gospel!
But, Paul, is it not written, you shall not murder?
Of course! I agree! Yet denying a woman an abortion can kill a woman.
And yet a fetus is not yet alive. It is written, “Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.”
God tells us when life begins, it begins when we take breath.
It is written, “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life.”
And it is written, “Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”
We live when we breathe.
Why do some pervert the Gospel to try and control others? The same reason that they did when they did so in Galatia. They control others for their benefits, to raise themselves up, they push others down.
In this case, controlling women, using a lie to manipulate God’s people to further their own agenda to further own ability to consolidate their power and have control over all of you, placing you more in the power of Empire, when God sent God’s own Son to free you from the grasp of Empire
Why do you place yourselves more solidly in its grasp so willingly?
Don’t let the false Gospel take you down the path toward the very road that Christ walked and died to free you from.
When you find yourself aligned with Empire, when you find yourself aligned with laws that harm rather than lend themselves towards love of neighbor, when you find yourself benefiting the rich instead of the poor, when you find yourself closing off your lands instead of opening those lands to refugees, when you find yourself ignoring every single one of the things that God has called you to do: peace and hope and love, and the greatest of these is always and forever love, you can know that you have begun to follow something other than the Gospel of Christ.
You claim to be members of the Church, but much of what you stand for seems alien to me, siblings.
You seem so aligned with Empire. The true Gospel seems lost to so many of you.
I wish there were a way that I could come to visit you, but I am afraid that I would not be allowed in to your country.
I fear that I would be stopped at your border.
I fear that I would be seized for the color of my skin.
I fear that I would be held for the lack of a passport.
Like so many, many of them children, I would be put into a cage, and not for the first time in my life.
I would not be able to try and introduce to you the true Gospel.
I would not be able to preach to you the true Word of God.
I would not be able to give to you the true fruits of the Spirit.
I would not be able to tell you of the freedoms that God offers, that you have so willingly turned your backs on for the so-called comforts of Empire.
For the so-called comforts of war.
For the so-called comforts of capitalism and inflation.
For the so-called comforts of bigotry and hatred and division.
I am praying for you, churches of the United States of America.
But more-so, I am praying for all of those you have hurt.
I am praying for the women who are unable to afford adequate healthcare as you instead focused on calling yourselves pro-life while people died at unprecedented rates as you made weapons available at unprecedented rates and ignored the problems with systemic issues with policing among so many other problems causing loss of life.
I am praying for the poor and the unhoused that you have neglected as you instead focused on yourselves and your magnificent sanctuaries.
I am praying for the refugees and the immigrants who feel afraid and unwanted as you instead focused on protecting your borders and strengthening your position on the world stage.
I am praying for the LGBTQ community and especially for the trans children who are fearing for their safety and worse, taking their own lives, because you took my arguments against idolatry as being arguments against human sexuality to unprecedented extremes and have further removed peoples’ freedoms out of your own bigotry while blaming it on God.
I am also praying for you church. I am praying that your hearts are softened and that your eyes are opened and that your ears are able to listen to God crying out for you to hear the true Gospel rather than continuing to listen to this false Gospel that you follow now, this Empire-inspired selfish version that speaks of personal salvation instead of loving your neighbor and bringing about the reign of God to the here and now.
When God raised Jesus from the dead, the reign of God began. God’s reign is not yet fully here, and yet it has begun. It is part of our calling, as siblings of Christ, to help bring about that reign, as those baptized by the Spirit, followers of Christ, raised through his resurrection to New Life with him to reject Empire and live into a new reality, one that lives counter to the old world and the old ways, that does not fall into the traps of binaries of male and female, or liberal and conservative, or pro-life or pro-choice. We are for Love, and we are for Gospel, and that means we are for each other, we recognize that not every situation is the same and each person must make hard decisions for themselves, but ideally with the love and support of the community standing behind them, because that is what we do as siblings with and for one another as church.
Not judging, but loving. When did we ever get away from that? Why did we ever get away from that? If we are truly to be church should we ever want Empire to make these decisions for our people or would we want our people to make these decisions for themselves along with the doctors that are trained to best handle these sorts of questions and situations, while we do what we are best suited to do. Love.
I wish I could be with you in person. I wish I could see you all face to face. I wish I could meet you and we could truly become siblings in Christ, so that the differences we have could vanish as quickly as snow does when spring arrives.
Know that I pray for all of you as I pray for all throughout the world. May the grace of God and the grace of Christ find everyone alive and all those still to come. Amen.
