God – About Things That Matter

What Does Prayer Mean in An Age of Empire? The Dangerous Simplicity of Pope Leo’s “Nonviolence”

Suddenly, everyone is talking about prayer and theology.

That comes as a surprise to many who, since Harvey Cox’s The Secular City, have assumed that secularization had effectively removed God from serious political consideration. Yet recent controversies have forced the issue back into public view.

The debate surrounding Pete Hegseth’s prayer about U.S. policy in Iran –so reminiscent of Mark Twain’s haunting “War Prayer” has reopened questions many thought settled.

It has even produced the strange spectacle of Donald Trump adopting quasi-messianic language, while J.D. Vance publicly disputes Pope Leo XIV about whose prayers God hears and whose God ignores.

I have addressed those developments elsewhere. Here I want to press further into the deeper issue: What is prayer? What are its political implications? And what does the Bible itself reveal about the competing claims made in God’s name, especially about nonviolence?

What Does Prayer Mean?

To begin with, what exactly is being invoked when Hegseth appeals to the Psalms and asks God to “break the teeth” of enemies, to leave women widowed and children orphaned?

And what does the pope mean when he insists that Jesus rejects such petitions outright and stands unequivocally for nonviolence?

In both cases, the underlying assumption seems the same: a supernatural being “out there,” watching events unfold and selectively intervening on behalf of one side or another.

But can such imagery still be taken seriously?

We live in the age of the James Webb Space Telescope, which reveals a universe so vast that our planet becomes nearly invisible within it. We also live in the age of quantum physics, where matter dissolves into energy and probability. In such a world, the idea of a localized deity monitoring human conflicts and deciding which missiles hit their targets strains credulity.

Is God “up there” listening? Is Jesus literally seated at the Father’s right hand, weighing petitions and choosing sides?

Or are such images relics of an earlier worldview that no longer corresponds to what we know about reality?

And Then There’s the Bible

It is true that the Bible itself often reflects that older worldview. Its language presumes a cosmos structured in ways we now recognize as outdated.

Yet that does not render the Bible irrelevant. On the contrary, its enduring significance lies elsewhere.

As scholars such as Pablo Richard have emphasized, the Bible does not present a single, unified picture of God. Instead, it stages an internal conflict– a “struggle of the gods.”

On one side stands the God of Moses: the liberator of slaves, the defender of the poor, the protector of widows, orphans, and immigrants.

On the other side stands the God claimed by kings and elites, beginning with the royal ideology of David and Solomon, a God invoked to justify wealth, hierarchy, domination, and even genocide.

The prophets– Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah– consistently take the side of the former against the latter.

Jesus clearly stands in that prophetic tradition: a marginal figure, an artisan, an outsider, a victim of imperial violence. His execution by crucifixion– Rome’s punishment for political dissidents– makes unmistakable where he stood.

In this sense, while the Bible does not address modern cosmology, it does address a far more urgent question: Whose side is Ultimate Reality on? Does Dr. King’s long arc of history really bend towards justice for the poor and marginalized?

The Bible refuses to let that question be answered cheaply.

Was Jesus Unequivocally “Nonviolent?”

This brings us to the claim that Jesus was simply “nonviolent.”

Stated without qualification, that claim risks obscuring more than it reveals. It can even function as a form of moral disorientation– especially for those subjected to systemic oppression.

“Violence” is not a single, simple category. It has at least four distinct forms.

First, there is structural violence: embedded in laws, institutions, and social arrangements that quietly destroy lives. Slavery, segregation, economic deprivation, denial of healthcare, and wars of aggression all belong here.

Second, there is defensive violence: the response of those who resist such conditions. When oppressed peoples fight back, their actions are immediately visible and condemned by the powers that be– yet they are widely recognized as legitimate, even under international law.

Third, there is repressive violence: the state’s attempt to crush resistance and restore the original injustice, often under the banner of “law and order.”

And finally, there is terroristic violence: the deliberate use of fear and destruction to achieve political ends– a practice historically employed most devastatingly and frequently by states, even as they label resisters “terrorists.”

In this light, to describe Jesus simply as “nonviolent” is not only inadequate; it risks distorting the reality of both his life and his context. The Roman authorities who executed him certainly did not regard him as harmless.

Conclusion

We are left, then, with the question that has been with us from the beginning: What does prayer mean in the world just described?

Whatever it means, it cannot be what figures like Hegseth, Trump, or even the pope seem to assume. Prayer is not a way of persuading a distant deity to intervene on behalf of our causes, bless our wars, or guarantee our victories.

Nor can the question of God’s allegiance be resolved by lifting isolated biblical texts or by invoking abstract slogans like “nonviolence,” as though such words settled anything at all.

The Bible itself will not allow that kind of evasion. It presents instead a conflict– deep, unresolved, and unavoidable– between competing visions of God, of humanity, and of justice. It exposes how easily “God” becomes the sacred cover for power.

But our problem runs even deeper. In the light of the James Webb Space Telescope and of quantum physics, the very notion of God must be rethought. The old image of a supreme off-planet being ” watching, judging, intervening, is no longer credible.

What we have called “God” must instead be understood as the creative energy of the universe– indeed, of a universe of universes– the living source in which everything participates, including the mysterious energy of consciousness itself. This is not an object among others, but the depth of reality, the Thou we may still address, not because it sits above us, but because it lives within and among us.

In biblical language, it is the Creator. In Paul’s words, it is “the one in whom we live and move and have our being.” Such a reality cannot be captured by any nation, claimed by any empire, or enlisted in any war. It recognizes no borders, no chosen peoples in the exclusionary sense, no privileged civilizations. The earth belongs to all. Its gifts are not the possession of a few, but the common inheritance of everyone– each of us entitled to no more than our one-eight-billionth share.

Seen in this light, prayer changes meaning entirely.

It is no longer a request for favors from above. It is an act of alignment with the deepest currents of reality itself. It is a way of opening ourselves to the creative, life-giving energy that stands against domination, exclusion, and death.

And so the issue returns to us, stripped of illusion.

When we pray, we are not stepping outside history. We are locating ourselves within it. We are aligning ourselves– consciously or not– with one side of an ongoing struggle between the forces that sustain life and those that diminish it.

This is not theology as speculation. It is theology as decision.

To pray is to choose.

And the choice we make– however piously we disguise it– places us either with the flourishing of the whole or with the systems that deny it.

So the question remains, now more demanding than ever:

When you pray, are you aligning yourself with the life of the whole– or with the powers that divide and destroy it?

Locked Doors: Faith After Iran, After Epstein

Readings for Second Sunday of Easter: Acts 2: 42-47; Psalm 118: 2-4, 13-15, 22-24; 1 Peter 1: 3-9; John 20: 19-31

What if life can be no different from what our senses relentlessly report? Turn on the news. Cities in Iran and beyond reduced to rubble. Children buried beneath concrete. Leaders speaking of “security” while entire populations live in fear.

And at the same time, the slow, unsettling revelations surrounding the Epstein files continue to expose networks of wealth, privilege, and exploitation that reach into the highest levels of our political and economic life. Taken together, such realities make it difficult to sustain even the most basic trust in the goodness of the world or the integrity of those who govern it.

In such a moment, it is not hard to recognize ourselves in doubting Thomas centralized in this morning’s gospel. His voice is not foreign to us. It speaks from deep within: life is tragic, death wins, power protects itself, and truth is buried along with its victims. Yeshua is gone, and anyone who imagines otherwise is clinging to illusion.

More than that, Thomas’s fear feels painfully contemporary. The forces that executed Jesus have not disappeared; they persist in new forms. They still silence, still threaten, still destroy. One can almost see him glancing toward the door: Are you sure it’s locked?

Today’s Gospel reading does not dismiss that voice or treat it with contempt. It takes Thomas seriously precisely because his doubt is grounded in what appears self-evident. Dead bodies do not return. Empires crush resistance. Those who challenge entrenched power rarely prevail. In that sense, Thomas is simply being realistic. And yet, in the midst of that closed and fearful space, something happens that exceeds every expectation.

Yeshua appears again among his fearful friends. Not as a denial of crucifixion, but bearing its marks. The wounds remain visible. Violence is neither erased nor explained away; it is exposed and, somehow, rendered powerless. He turns to Thomas not with reproach, but with warmth. “Look at my hands,” he says in effect. “It’s really me.” Thomas’s response is immediate and unguarded: “My Lord and my God.”

But what is striking is not Thomas’s confession so much as Yeshua’s response to it.

There is no rebuke. No shaming. Instead, one can almost hear an acknowledgment born of shared experience. You are only human, he seems to say, and I know what that means. On the cross, my own senses told me that I had been abandoned. I too felt the darkness closing in. I too knew what it was to stand at the edge of despair. Faith, in that moment, was anything but easy.

That recognition changes everything. It tells us that faith is not the absence of doubt, nor the refusal to see what is plainly before us. It is what emerges in spite of misgivings. And from there, the Gospel moves to its most challenging point.

What truly astonishes, what truly delights, is not simply that Thomas eventually believes, but that there are those who commit themselves to God’s future without the reassurance of seeing. Those who trust life’s ultimate goodness when the evidence points in the opposite direction.

Imagine that kind of trust in a world such as ours. Imagine holding fast to the conviction that another future is possible, a future with room for everyone, when war and exploitation seem to define the present. That is the faith Yeshua blesses. It is not credulity; it is courage.

At this point, the first reading from Acts takes on a new and unsettling clarity. The description of the early Christian community is not a sentimental aside. It is a direct social and economic alternative to the world Thomas fears and we recognize all too well. They held everything in common. No one claimed private ownership. There was not a needy person among them. In other words, they organized their life together around the conviction that God’s future had already begun to take shape in their midst.

Set that alongside what we see in our own time. A world where wealth is concentrated, where the vulnerable are exploited, where violence protects privilege, and where even the exposure of wrongdoing seems unable to bring about accountability. Against that backdrop, the Acts community stands as a quiet but radical contradiction. It embodies a different logic, one rooted not in fear or accumulation, but in shared life and mutual care.

This is what resurrection faith looks like when it takes flesh in history. Not an escape from the world’s suffering, but a refusal to let that suffering have the final word. Not a denial of death, but a commitment to life that persists even in death’s shadow. The doors may still be locked; the threats are real enough. But within those very conditions, another way of living becomes possible.

That is the invitation extended to Thomas, and to us. Not simply to believe a proposition about life after death, but to participate in a way of life that anticipates and embodies God’s promised future. A way of life that insists there can, and must, be a world where no one is left in need.

Working for that world, for fullness of life for everyone even when the evidence seems to deny its possibility, that is what faith finally means. May it be ours.

Jesus’ Words: “Lazarus Come Forth” — Their Meaning in Gaza — and Iran

Despite distractions provided by the carpet bombings of Trump’s Epstein War in Iran, the genocide in Gaza continues.

For the past two years it has confronted us with images almost too painful to watch. Entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble. Hospitals destroyed. Families digging through shattered concrete searching for loved ones.

Human-rights organizations report that thousands remain buried beneath collapsed buildings—men, women, and children entombed by the violence of heartless slaughter.

The irony is difficult to miss. The state carrying out this devastation identifies itself as the homeland of the “People of God,” heirs to the biblical tradition that again and again insists that God’s special concern is for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.

Yet today the land of the prophets has become the site of mass graves of those very categories of victims buried under concrete and dust. In such a moment the Gospel summons we hear today presses itself upon us with frightening relevance: “Lazarus, come forth.” What could such words addressed to the dead possibly mean when so many lie buried under the rubble of war?

For an answer, consider the story’s details. They are a command to resist empire – Rome’s then and the condominium represented by Israel and the United States today.

Today’s Gospel

Today’s Gospel—the raising of Lazarus—may appear at first to be simply a miracle story. Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from the tomb after four days of death. But the narrative is much more than a display of supernatural power. In the Gospel according to John, the raising of Lazarus is the turning point that seals Jesus’ fate.

Notice what happens immediately after the miracle. The authorities in Jerusalem convene an emergency meeting. Their concern is not theological but political: “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy our place and our nation.” In other words, belief in Jesus is ipso facto inimical to empire.

Here’s why.

Jerusalem at the time was a colonial city under Roman occupation. Imperial troops controlled the land. Local elites—both political and religious—had learned to maintain their own authority by cooperating with that imperial system. They managed the Temple economy, collected taxes, and preserved order on Rome’s behalf. In return they enjoyed prestige, wealth, and protection.

Religion and empire were joined at the hip.

Jesus and the entire prophetic tradition he embodied contradicted that juncture. It’s as simple as that.

Israel’s Prophets (Including Jesus)

The prophets of Israel had seen this arrangement many times before.

Again and again, they warned that the covenant was never meant to enrich the powerful — much less gentile imperialists. The law of Moses insisted that society must protect those with the least power: the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the resident alien. Those four groups appear constantly in the Hebrew Scriptures because they represent people who cannot defend themselves.

Whenever rulers forgot them, the prophets spoke.

Amos for example thundered against those who “sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals.” Isaiah condemned leaders who accumulated land while the poor lost everything. Jeremiah denounced kings who built luxurious palaces through forced labor.

Those prophets were not enemies of their nation. They were faithful Israelites calling their society back to its founding vision. But because their words threatened the powerful, they were treated as dangerous troublemakers – in today’s terms, as “anti-Semites.”

Jesus stands squarely in that prophetic line.

Like the prophets before him, Jesus’ ministry constantly returns to the same themes: good news for the poor, release for captives, healing for the broken. He heals without payment, eats with social outcasts, and proclaims a God who prefers mercy to sacrifice. In him the ancient prophetic voice speaks again.

The raising of Lazarus becomes the moment when that voice can no longer be tolerated.

Why? Because Lazarus is more than a man returning to life. He represents what happens when those who have been buried—socially, politically, economically—begin to rise again. When the forgotten begin to breathe, when the oppressed stand up, when those written off as dead reclaim their dignity—systems built on injustice begin to tremble.

“Anti-Semitism” Weaponized

Throughout history, whenever prophetic voices expose injustice, the powerful rarely answer the criticism itself. Instead, they attack the critic. Jeremiah was accused of weakening the nation in time of war. Amos was expelled from the royal sanctuary because his preaching threatened the ruling class. Jesus himself is now declared a threat to public order.

From that day forward, the Gospel tells us, they decide to kill him.

We see similar dynamics in our own time. Criticism of violence, occupation, or injustice—particularly when directed toward the policies of the Israeli state—is often dismissed with the charge of “anti-Semitism.” The term properly refers to hatred of Jews as a people, and such hatred is sometimes real. But when the accusation is used to silence moral criticism of Zionist genocide, it becomes something else entirely: a political shield protecting power from accountability.

The prophetic tradition refuses such shields.

Its loyalty is never to rulers, governments, or empires. Its loyalty is to the God of justice who demands protection for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.

And that brings us back to the question with which we began.

The Threat of Resurrection

What does “Lazarus, come forth!” mean in a world where thousands lie buried beneath the rubble of Gaza – and Tehran?

It cannot simply mean a miraculous resuscitation of individuals. The Gospel is pointing toward something larger. The command is addressed to all who have been buried by systems of domination—those crushed by war, poverty, and political violence. It is a summons to life, dignity, and resistance against the forces that entomb human beings.

That is why the miracle becomes so dangerous.

Because once the dead begin to rise, the powerful begin to panic.

In fact, the irony deepens as the Gospel story continues. Not only do the authorities decide to kill Jesus. Later we are told they also plan to kill Lazarus himself—because his very existence is evidence that something new has begun.

Life is breaking out of the tomb.

Conclusion

The story of Lazarus therefore prepares us for what lies ahead. The conflict between prophetic truth and imperial power will soon reach its climax.

The cross was Rome’s instrument for eliminating those who threaten the system.But the Gospel insists that even the cross cannot bury the truth forever.

Because once the dead begin to rise, it becomes impossible to keep them in their graves.

Our call on this Fifth Sunday of Lent is clear: don’t allow yourself to be gaslit or intimidated. Recognize the burial of the innocent for the genocide it is. Name it.

Don’t be intimidated by weaponized charges of “anti-Semitism.”

What the Gospel of the Man Born Blind Says About War, Empire, and Biblical Illiteracy

Readings for Fourth Sunday of Lent: 1st Samuel 16: 1b, 6-7, 10-13a; Psalm 23: 1-6; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9: 1-41

If you have been following the news the past couple of weeks, you know that the world seems once again to be sliding toward catastrophe. The bombing of Iran by the United States and Israel represents a case in point.

Reports describe cities under bombardment and civilians trapped beneath collapsing buildings. On the first day of the conflict alone, a missile strike destroyed a girls’ elementary school, killing scores of children.

Yet amid such horrors, political leaders insist that these acts defend freedom, protect civilization, and even fulfill God’s purposes. Meanwhile a powerful current within contemporary Christianity—especially among right-wing interpreters of the Bible—assures us that geopolitical violence somehow fits within the divine plan.

None of this is new. For centuries religion has been used to sanctify empire and to bless the ambitions of the powerful. The prophets of Israel knew this. Jesus knew it.

And the readings for this Fourth Sunday of Lent expose the pattern with remarkable clarity. Taken together, they ask and answer a disturbing question: who actually sees the truth of history—the powerful who claim to interpret God’s will, or the people pushed to the margins of society?

The answer in today’s readings is that the marginalized see more clearly than the powerful.

Unlikely Choice of David

The first reading from First Samuel tells the familiar story of the prophet Samuel searching for Israel’s next king. Samuel arrives at the house of Jesse and begins inspecting the man’s sons. The eldest looks strong and impressive. Surely this must be the Lord’s anointed. But God interrupts Samuel’s expectations with a startling correction: “Not as man sees does God see. Man looks at appearances, but the Lord looks into the heart.” One after another the impressive candidates pass before Samuel and are rejected. Finally, Samuel asks whether there are any more sons. Jesse answers almost as an afterthought: “There is still the youngest, who is tending the sheep.” In other words, the boy so insignificant that no one even thought to invite him. Yet it is precisely this overlooked shepherd—David—whom God chooses.

Biblical scholars have long recognized something profoundly political in this story. Again and again the biblical narrative reveals a God who acts from below rather than from the centers of power. The decisive figures in salvation history are rarely kings or priests or generals.

Instead, they are slaves in Egypt, shepherds in Bethlehem, fishermen in Galilee, a construction worker from Nazareth. The logic of empire assumes that leadership belongs naturally to those who are wealthy, impressive, and already powerful. The Bible insists on the opposite: God’s future consistently begins among those whom society overlooks.

Lord & Shepherds

Psalm 23 deepens this theme. “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.” We often hear those words as gentle religious poetry. Yet in the ancient world they carried a quiet political edge.

Kings throughout the Near East loved to describe themselves as shepherds of their people. Pharaoh was a shepherd. Babylon’s emperor was a shepherd. Caesar claimed to shepherd the Roman world. But the psalm rejects that claim. The psalmist does not say that the king is my shepherd or that the empire guarantees my security. Instead, he says that the Lord alone is shepherd. The source of life, protection, and abundance is not the machinery of power.

The psalm imagines something very different: green pastures, quiet waters, and a table prepared in the presence of enemies where cups overflow. It is an image of a world organized around care rather than domination.

Paul’s Wokeness

Paul’s words to the Ephesians introduce another theme running through today’s readings: the contrast between light and darkness. “You were once darkness,” Paul says, “but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.” Notice how Paul defines that light. It is not merely personal piety or private virtue.

“Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness,” he writes, “but rather expose them.” In other words, light reveals what systems of power try to hide. Unjust structures survive only by persuading people that their violence is necessary and their privileges natural. But when those illusions are exposed—when reality becomes visible—the system itself begins to tremble.

What the Poor See

That insight prepares us for the extraordinary drama in today’s Gospel from John. Jesus encounters a man blind from birth. The disciples immediately ask a question reflecting the dominant ideology of their time: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

It is the ancient version of a familiar argument: suffering must be someone’s fault. Victims must somehow deserve their fate. Jesus rejects that entire framework. The man’s blindness is not the result of personal guilt. Instead, it becomes the occasion through which God’s work will be revealed.

Jesus then performs a strangely earthy action. He spits on the ground, makes clay, and spreads the mud across the man’s eyes. The gesture echoes the creation story in Genesis where humanity is formed from the dust of the earth. It is as if Jesus is re-creating the man, giving him new sight. But the real miracle unfolds afterward.

Once the man can see, he becomes the center of a storm of controversy. Neighbors question him. Religious authorities interrogate him. Even his own parents become frightened and refuse to defend him.

Why such anxiety? Because the healing threatens the authority of those who claim to interpret God’s will. If Jesus truly comes from God, the leaders who oppose him might be wrong. So the authorities attempt to discredit the miracle. They accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath. They pressure the healed man to denounce him. When he refuses, they ridicule him and eventually throw him out of the synagogue.

Meanwhile something remarkable happens within the man himself. His understanding of Jesus gradually deepens. At first, he knows only that “the man called Jesus” healed him. Later he declares that Jesus must be a prophet. Finally, he encounters Jesus again and proclaims, “Lord, I believe.” The man who began the story blind ends it with the clearest vision of all.

The irony is unmistakable. Those who claimed to see—the religious experts—become increasingly blind. Those who were supposedly ignorant perceive the truth. Jesus summarizes the entire episode in a single unsettling sentence: “I came into this world so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”

Conclusion

The pattern repeats itself throughout history. Empires convince themselves they are bringing peace even as they spread destruction. Religious authorities persuade themselves they are defending God even while they silence prophets. And ordinary people—the ones dismissed as insignificant—very often see the truth far more clearly than those who wield power.

That is why Paul’s words sound less like poetry and more like a summons: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

Lent is not simply a season for private self-examination. It is a call to wake up—to recognize how easily faith can be manipulated to justify violence, to question the narratives that normalize suffering, and to listen to voices that systems of power would prefer us never to hear.

Again and again, Scripture insists that God’s work in history begins in unexpected places: among shepherd boys forgotten in the fields, among beggars sitting at the roadside, among those cast out by respectable society.

Those who appear powerless often become the clearest witnesses to truth. And that may be the most unsettling lesson of today’s readings. The future of God’s kingdom does not depend on the calculations of the powerful. It emerges from the courage of those who have learned to see.

Which brings us back to Jesus’ words at the end of the Gospel: “I came so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” The question these readings place before us is simple but disturbing.

Are we willing to let the light of the Gospel open our eyes—even when it forces us to see realities we might prefer to ignore? Even when it forces us to see from the viewpoint of immigrants, the homeless, the impoverished, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans, Iranians, Palestinians, the LGBTQ+ community, the addicted, the imprisoned . . .?

Wells, Walls, and Manufactured Thirst

Readings for the Third Sunday of lent: Exodus 17:1–7, Romans 5:1–2, 5–8, John 4:5–42.

The readings for this Third Sunday of Lent deal with the very human question of thirst. They raise the question, what are we thirsting for — ultimately?

Our politicians give us a glib answer. They tell us that our thirst is for security — from the threatening humans that surround us. The nation is dying we are told. We have lost our greatness. We are being overrun. Scarcity is closing in.

“Make America Great Again” is not just a slogan; it is an appeal to a deep anxiety — the fear that there is not enough: not enough jobs, not enough cultural cohesion, not enough safety, not enough control.

And so we are offered a diagnosis: the crisis is immigration. The problem is those people (who happen to be the poorest in the world!). The solution is walls, expulsions, exclusion. We are invited to believe that national greatness depends on tightening the circle.

But step back for a moment. The United States has 4 percent of the world’s population and consumes roughly a quarter of its resources. The “crisis” is narrated as though the most powerful nation in human history were a fragile victim of desperate families crossing deserts.

That story itself deserves scrutiny. It feels eerily similar to another story we heard today.

Thirst in the Desert

In Exodus 17, the people have escaped Egypt — escaped forced labor, escaped imperial extraction, escaped brick quotas. But once in the wilderness, they panic. There is no water. And fear rewrites memory. “Why did you bring us out of Egypt?” they ask. “Were there not enough graves there?”

Notice what is happening. A people freed from empire begin to long for the security of empire. Scarcity produces nostalgia. Anxiety produces accusation. Moses becomes the problem. Freedom itself becomes suspect.

And they ask the piercing question: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”

That question echoes beneath our own political rhetoric. Is God present in pluralism, in equity, in inclusion? Is God present in demographic change? Is God present in movements of displaced people seeking survival? Or is God only present in the imagined stability of a past we have sanctified?

At Massah and Meribah, the people’s fear does not disqualify them. Yahweh brings water from rock. Not from Pharaoh’s storehouses. Not from a border wall. From a rock in the desert. The provision comes not through renewed control, but through trust in a God who sides with vulnerable people.

The biblical tradition has always insisted that this is the decisive revelation: God is known in history through concrete acts of sustenance for those escaping bondage. Not through slogans of greatness, but through water in the wilderness.

The Woman at the Well

Then we move to John’s Gospel, and the political charge intensifies.

Jesus is in Samaria — enemy territory. Centuries of ethnic hatred stand between Jews and Samaritans. Purity codes, historical grievances, competing temples. If ever there were a border crisis, this was it. And yet Jesus does not reinforce the boundary. He crosses it.

He asks a Samaritan woman for a drink.

It is astonishing. The one who will speak of “living water” begins by placing himself in need before someone religiously and socially marginalized. He does not begin with a lecture about law and order. He begins with vulnerability.

And this woman — doubly stigmatized as Samaritan and as female — becomes the first missionary in John’s Gospel. She leaves her jar and runs to her town: “Come and see.”

Our Real Thirst

What if the real thirst in our society is not for greatness, but for encounter? What if the deeper crisis is not immigration, but isolation? What if we have mistaken demographic change for existential threat because we have forgotten how to sit at wells with strangers?

“Living water,” Jesus says, becomes a spring within — not hoarded, not policed, not weaponized. It flows outward.

The irony is painful. The people who once wandered as refugees in the desert now fear refugees at their gates. The descendants of immigrants fear immigration. The community that drinks from a rock fears sharing water.

And beneath it all is that ancient question: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”

If God is only with the secure, then fear makes sense. But if God is the One who hears slaves, who provides water for rebels, who speaks across enemy lines, then perhaps the presence of the stranger is not a threat but a test.

Paul, in Romans, says that “the love of God has been poured into our hearts.” Poured. Abundance language. Not scarcity language. Not zero-sum logic. Poured out while we were still estranged, still flawed, still confused.

Conclusion

Lent invites us to examine our thirst honestly. Are we thirsty for justice — or for dominance? For community — or for control? For security — or for solidarity?

Greatness, in the biblical sense, is never about territorial assertion. It is about fidelity to the God who brings water from rock and who offers living water at a contested well.

The wilderness is frightening. Demographic change is unsettling. Empires promise certainty. But the Gospel suggests that life springs up not from walls, but from wells.

The bush still burns. The rock still flows. The well is still there.

The only question is whether we will drink — and whether we will let others drink too.

Donald Trump’s Nakedness, His STFU SOTU Speech

Readings for the Second Sunday of Lent: Genesis 12: 1-4a; Psalm 33: 4-5, 18-19, 20,22; 2 Timothy 1: 8b-10; Matthew 17: 1-9

The Gospel reading for this Second Sunday of Lent is about the “transfiguration” of Jesus.

It’s about how the primitive Christian community’s understanding of Jesus and his significance changed following their experience of what they came to call his “resurrection.”

After that experience, whatever it was, they came to see him clearly as the New Moses and the New Elijah. As such he would introduce a New Order that would embody liberation of society’s most marginalized (Moses) and outspoken confrontation against the given imperial order (Elijah).

Jesus himself called that New Order the Kingdom of God.

It is what the world would look like if God were king instead of Caesar.

That vision should take on new meaning for Americans in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s disgraceful State of the Union Message last Tuesday. It should even embolden the profane response STFU.

Trump’s Un-transfigured World

If you watched the speech, you know what I mean.

It seemed like the dying gasp of the ruling Septuagenarian and Octogenarian classes.

It was a flailing, lie-filled proclamation of a Golden Age that never existed and that never will be if we follow the path the failed braggart president celebrated.

It was the opposite of God’s Kingdom – a world with room for everyone.

I mean, Trump’s SOTU celebrated division, wealth and power, and a militarism while targeting the poorest people on our planet. He had the staggering nerve to tone-deafly call them what the Epstein Files are revealing the political class itself to be: lawless rapists, pedophiles, robbers, drug dealers, gang members and murderers. And Trump’s crowd are blackmailers besides.

Making those allegations, the president revealed his own nakedness and that of his mindless Maga colleagues who mindlessly jumped to their feet to applaud the beauty of the Emperor’s non-existent robes.

Yes, the Files, the coverups, the sweetheart deals for Epstein and Maxwell, the redactions, the months-long failures to disclose, and the reduction of Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice to the President’s private law firm are revealing everything.

The Emperor indeed has no clothes. He’s shamelessly parading around stark naked and tiny.

And reminiscent of the Hans Christian Anderson story, it’s the little children he’s imprisoning (with their bunny ears and Spiderman backpacks) who proclaim the emperor’s embarrassing nudity.

No clothes! Naked! Tiny. Or as Joseph N. Welch put it to Senator Joseph McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”,

Jesus’ Transfigured World

The tale of Jesus’ Transfiguration tells an opposite story.

It’s the story of a poor construction worker – a former immigrant, a prophetic teacher of unconventional wisdom, the death row inmate whom empire jailed, tortured and submitted to imperial capital punishment – whose life and teaching revealed a New Order that was shining and pure because it had room for everyone.

And in today’s reading, it’s his transformed clothes and the spiritual company he keeps that tell the story.

Matthew puts it this way: “His face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him.”

That is, the one whose imperialized class status would eventually reduce him to nakedness on Mt. Calvary is perceived by his first followers as magnificently clothed.

Even more, Matthew’s account of Jesus’ Transfiguration has him conversing with Moses and Elijah.

Moses, of course, is the great liberator of the enslaved and poor.

Elijah was the courageous prophet who not only spoke truth to power but resisted false gods who take the side of the rich and powerful rather than God’s truly chosen ones, the poor and oppressed.

Don’t Let the Democrats off the Hook

But none of this should let the Democrats off the hook just because some of them refused to attend the STFU SOTU affair. Don’t let them get away with just not being Trump.

It’s time for us to echo Zohran Mamdani, the most popular politician in the country.

In my novella, Against All Odds: How Zohran Mamdani Became President and Changed America Forever, I imagine a moment like this. Not because of special foresight, but because systems built on secrecy, oligarchy, militarism, and spectacle inevitably crack. In that story, hidden ledgers surface. Blackmail networks become visible. The machinery of power is exposed. The old guard responds the only way it knows how — with louder threats, more force, and louder applause.

Sound familiar?

But exposure alone is not liberation.

Which brings us back to the mountain of Transfiguration.

That scene depicted there is not mystical escapism. It is political theology. It declares that the authority of empire is provisional — that the true sovereignty belongs to the God who sides with slaves, captives, resident aliens, and the poor.

Luke makes the program explicit: “He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor… to proclaim liberty to captives… to set at liberty those who are oppressed.”

That’s a rival social order.

And if the imperial system is unraveling before our eyes — if its nakedness is becoming visible — then what must follow is not nostalgia or revenge, but reconstruction.

In Against All Odds, the answer to systemic collapse is not personality cult or partisan fury, but the institution of a Republic of Care. It is clarity. It is the articulation of a simple, material program centered on ordinary people’s lives. Among others, the items in such a program would include:

Affordability
Universal health care
Full employment
Higher wages
Free education through college
Environmental protection
Expanded voting rights
An end to oligarchic distortions like the Electoral College
Strict term limits in every branch of government
Drastic reductions in military spending.
No endless wars
Immigration reform rooted in dignity
The dismantling of structures whose primary function is coercion at home and abroad.

In liberationist terms, none of that is utopian dreaming. Mamdani’s election proved that. The reforms just listed are what happen when the needs of the poor become the criteria of policy.

Conclusion

Trump’s embarrassing speech was the voice of Caesar defending a crumbling temple.

The Transfiguration is the unveiling of another possibility altogether.

Empires grow louder when they weaken. They shout about enemies. They celebrate force. They promise greatness. That is what dying systems do.

But the biblical tradition suggests something else: when Pharaoh hardens his heart, liberation accelerates. When Ahab clings to power, Elijah’s voice sharpens. When Rome crucifies, resurrection faith spreads.

Lent invites us to see clearly — to recognize naked empire and to imagine, without apology, a transfigured order grounded in justice for the poor.

Our petite impotent emperor is exposed.

The question now is whether we have the courage to climb the mountain with Peter, James and John to see what comes next.

Lent, Empire, and the God We Worship

Readings for the first Sunday of Lent: Genesis 2: 7-9, 3: 1-7; Psalm 51: 3-6,12-13, 17; Romans 5: 12-19; Matthew 4: 1-11.

Today is the first Sunday of Lent. Its readings begin with the creation myth in Genesis. They conclude with the famous story of Jesus’ temptations in the desert.

But let me begin not in Eden or in the wilderness, but in Washington, Brussels, and Tel Aviv — and in the shadow places of our own national story.

We live in a country that represents roughly 4.5 percent of the world’s population yet assumes a decisive voice in nearly every corner of the globe. We maintain military installations across continents. We speak of “rules-based international order” while reserving to ourselves the authority to determine when rules apply.

The war in Ukraine grinds on amid NATO expansion despite promises to the contrary. Gaza has become a landscape of genocide even as our government supplies arms and diplomatic cover.

Regime-change interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan have left instability that outlives the speeches that justified them. And at home, the Epstein scandal remains a symbol of elite circles that appear shielded from consequences that would crush ordinary people.

Whatever one’s political alignment, it is difficult to deny that we inhabit an imperial moment.

That is why the Gospel today matters. Because the final temptation Jesus faces is not about private morality. It is about his rejection of empire.

How Animals Became Human

But before we get to the desert, we must pass through Genesis. And Genesis is stranger than we usually allow. It’s a sacred myth about how the animals became human.

Nonetheless, we were taught — many of us in catechism classrooms that did not encourage too many questions — that this story explains how a perfect world fell apart because of disobedience. But biblical scholarship has long suggested something more subtle and more interesting. The story reads less like a fall from perfection and more like the painful emergence of moral consciousness.

God forms the human being from the soil — adamah — and breathes into it. The human is an earth creature animated by divine breath. The animals are already there. What distinguishes this creature is not biology but awareness.

The serpent does not tempt with gluttony. The fruit is “desirable for gaining wisdom.” The promise is that “you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The issue is not appetite; it is autonomy. It is the claim to define good and evil independently of the Giver of breath.

And here is where the text becomes theologically uncomfortable. The God portrayed in Genesis can sound petty and jealous. (In fact, as biblical scholars Mauro Biligno and Paul Wallis have suggested, the plural Elohim in today’s reading might not refer to God at all, but to “Powerful Ones” pretending to divine identity. But that’s another story.) In any case, the prohibition from on high appears arbitrary. The threat — “you shall die” — sounds disproportionate. If we read the story naïvely, we are left with a deity who seems insecure about competition.

Many Christians resolve that discomfort by refusing to wrestle with the text. We flatten it. We moralize it. We turn it into a children’s story about disobedience and punishment. That is the fundamentalism many of us were raised on — including in Catholic form — a fundamentalism that often ignores biblical scholarship and historical context in favor of simple certainty.

But the deeper issue in Genesis is not that God fears competition. It is that humans actually do become like God. In the end the Powerful Ones (Elohim) admit “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” However, the moment the earth creature claims ultimate moral sovereignty, alienation follows. Shame. Blame. Fear. Violence. The story is mythic, but it describes something real: despite God-like powers, when creatures enthrone themselves as divine, relationships fracture.

The serpent’s whisper — “you will be like gods” — does not remain in the garden. It scales upward into civilizations.

Empires are what happen when that whisper becomes policy.

Jesus’ Temptations in the Desert

Which brings us to the desert. Matthew tells us that Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. The temptations escalate. First, appetite: turn stones into bread. Reduce humanity to consumption. Then spectacle: throw yourself from the temple and force divine validation. Manipulate religion to secure legitimacy. And finally, the decisive offer: all the kingdoms of the world and their magnificence — in exchange for worship.

This is the climax. Empire is offered as destiny.

And here the contrast with Genesis becomes luminous. The first humans grasp at godlike autonomy. Jesus refuses it. He refuses to reduce life to bread. He refuses to weaponize God. And he refuses political domination secured by kneeling before a lesser power.

“The Lord your God shall you worship, and him alone shall you serve.”

That sentence is not pious abstraction. It is a political declaration. It means that no nation, no military alliance, no economic system, no leader can claim ultimate allegiance. It means that empire — however benevolent it imagines itself — is not God.

This is precisely where much contemporary Christianity falters. Christian fundamentalism, whether Protestant or Catholic, often aligns itself enthusiastically with imperial power. It baptizes national projects. It equates military strength with divine blessing. It reads Scripture in a way that reinforces dominance rather than questions it. The same tradition that once rejected liberation theology for being “too political” now blesses drones, sanctions, and occupation without hesitation.

And yet the Gospel we read today shows Jesus rejecting the very thing many Christians defend.

He rejects empire as diabolical.

Paul & Psalms

Paul’s letter to the Romans reframes the story. Through one human being came sin — the pattern of grasping autonomy. Through another came obedience — the pattern of trust. The contrast is not between sexuality and purity, or rule-breaking and rule-keeping. It is between self-deification and worship.

Psalm 51’s cry — “Create in me a clean heart” — becomes, in this context, a plea for undivided allegiance. A clean heart is not one that never doubts. It is one that refuses to kneel before false gods.

Lenten Conclusion

Lent, then, is not about chocolate or minor self-denials. It is about allegiance. It is about whether we will continue participating in systems that assume the right to dominate the earth and dictate history — or whether we will align ourselves with the one who refused.

If Genesis tells the story of animals becoming human through moral awareness, the desert tells the story of a human refusing to become a god.

And that refusal leads to a cross, because empire does not tolerate rivals or dissent.

We begin Lent in a world intoxicated with power. The kingdoms are still on offer. They are offered to nations. They are offered to churches. They are offered to each of us in smaller ways — security in exchange for silence, comfort in exchange for complicity.

The question is not whether temptation exists. The question is before whom we will kneel.

Dust breathed upon by God does not need to become divine. It needs only to remain faithful.

And that, perhaps, is the most subversive act of all.

The Commandments and the Epstein Revelations: Whom Does God’s Law Really Protect?

Readings for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; Matthew 5:17-37

Let me say it straight out: the Epstein affair is not primarily about sex. It is about law. It is about whether the commandments — and the legal systems supposedly derived from them — apply equally to everyone.

For decades, Jeffrey Epstein moved among billionaires, politicians, royalty, financiers, academics, and cultural elites. His crimes were known. Complaints were made. Investigations occurred. Yet he received an extraordinary plea deal. Associates remain shielded. Documents remain sealed. Networks remain largely untouched.

Meanwhile, poor defendants fill prisons for far lesser crimes – and in the case of immigrants and asylum seekers, for no crimes at all. Petty theft, drug possession, probation violations, and “illegal” border crossings — these are prosecuted with relentless enforcement of law.

If you want a relevant commentary on such two-tiered systems of “justice,” look no further than today’s liturgical readings. They are explosive in their contemporary application.

Sirach: God Commands No Injustice

Start with Sirach 15: 15-20. There the book’s author says: “If you choose, you can keep the commandments… He has set before you fire and water… life and death.”

At first glance, that sounds like individual moral exhortation. Choose good. Avoid evil. But Sirach adds something devastating: “No one does he command to act unjustly; to none does he give license to sin.”

That line destroys every attempt to sanctify unjust systems like ours. I mean in the United States, injustice is routinely protected by law. After all, Epstein’s plea deal in 2008 was legal. The shielding of his powerful associates has been legal. Non-disclosure agreements are legal. Sealed records are legal.

But Sirach says God commands no injustice.

If the law functions to shield predators when they are rich and well-connected while punishing the poor with mechanical severity, then the issue is not simply moral failure. It is structural perversion.

Liberation theology (i.e. non-literalist biblical interpretation supported by modern scripture scholarship) reminds us that “choice” is structured. The poor do not choose within the same field of protection as billionaires. There, fire and water are not distributed evenly. Life and death are not equally accessible.

The commandment is not merely “Don’t sin.” The deeper question is: Does the legal order reflect God’s refusal to legalize injustice?

Psalm 119: Blessed Are Those Who Follow the Law

Now look at today’s responsorial psalm. It’s refrain proclaims: “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.”

But what is the law for?

As José Porfirio Miranda and Norman Gottwald argue, the Decalogue emerged not as abstract piety but as social protection. It arose among people resisting royal systems that accumulated land, wealth, and power in elite hands.

Both theologians remind us that biblical law was a shield for subsistence households. “You shall not steal” originally meant: the powerful may not confiscate the livelihood of the vulnerable. “You shall not covet” meant desire backed by power must be restrained.

In that light, now ask the uncomfortable question: when billionaires operate in networks of mutual protection and the law seems reluctant to expose them fully, is that still Torah? Or is it what the prophets called “corruption at the gate?”

Psalm 119 blesses those who follow God’s law — not those who manipulate civil law to protect privilege.

Paul: The Wisdom of the Rulers

In the same spirit of Sirach and Psalm 119, Paul speaks of “a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age… who are passing away.” He also adds something chilling: “None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

The cross was a legal execution. It was state-sanctioned. It was justified under Roman law and enabled by religious authority.

That’s Paul’s point.

The rulers always believe their system is rational and necessary. Franz Hinkelammert reminds us that ruling ideologies present themselves as inevitable. Markets are inevitable. Elite networks are inevitable. Certain people are untouchable.

When the Epstein affair reveals how proximity to wealth and power appears to blunt accountability, we are witnessing what Paul calls “the wisdom of this age.” A wisdom that protects itself.

The rulers crucified Jesus legally. Legality is not the same as justice.

Jesus: Fulfilling the Law by Protecting the Vulnerable

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus declares:
“I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.”

Then he radicalizes it. “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not kill.’ But I say to you, whoever humiliates…”

Jesus’ point is that dehumanization precedes violence. When victims are dismissed because they lack status, when their testimony is doubted because they are young, poor, or socially marginal, contempt is already at work.

“You have heard it said… You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, whoever looks with lust…”

Could these words be more pertinent to the Epstein Affair? In a world where wealthy men are allowed to treat vulnerable underage girls and women as property, lust backed by power means coercion. Jesus targets the interior logic of such domination.

His teaching on divorce does the same thing. It sides with the economically vulnerable spouse. Legal permission did not equal justice.

Notice the pattern: every intensification of the commandment in today’s readings closes loopholes that allow the powerful to exploit the weak.

That is fulfillment of the law. If a legal system permits exploitation through influence, money, and secrecy, it has not fulfilled the law. It has hollowed it out.

Two Systems

The Epstein affair is not an anomaly. It is a revelation.

It reveals what liberation theology has long argued: sin is social as well as personal. Structures can be sinful. Systems can crucify.

When poor defendants encounter swift prosecution while elite networks encounter delay, protection, and opacity, we are not witnessing isolated moral failure. We are witnessing two systems.

Sirach sets before us life and death. The death-dealing system is one where law bends upward. The life-giving system is one where law protects the vulnerable first:

“Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.”
Blessed are those who refuse to equate legality with justice.
Blessed are those who demand that commandments function as protection for the powerless.
Blessed are those who see through the “wisdom” of powerful elites

Jesus did not abolish the commandments. He sharpened them until they pierced hypocrisy.

Before us remain fire and water. The question is not whether we personally avoid wrongdoing.

The question is whether we will accept a system where justice is negotiated by wealth — or insist that the law once again become what it was meant to be: protection and good news for the poor.

Why Isaiah and Jesus Sound Like Marx (Again)

Readings for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Isaiah 58:7-10; Psalm112:4-9; 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; Matthew 5:13-16.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been saying (here and here) something that makes some people nervous: that the teachings of Jesus and the practice of the earliest Christian communities contain themes that can only be described as Marxist, socialist, even communist. Not in the caricatured sense tossed around on talk shows. Not in the Cold War sense. But in the deeply biblical sense—rooted in shared bread, structural justice, and God’s bias toward the poor.

Today’s readings don’t retreat from that claim. They double down.

Let’s start with the prophet and then move on to the Psalms, Paul, and Jesus.

Isaiah 58: God’s Politics of Bread

In Book of Isaiah 58, God is not interested in private piety detached from public justice. Isaiah says: Share your bread with the hungry. Shelter the oppressed and the homeless. Clothe the naked. Remove oppression from your midst.

This is not charity as a hobby. This is social reorganization. The prophet does not say, “Pray more and the hungry will be spiritually nourished.” He says: share your bread. Bread is economic. Bread is material. Bread is about who owns what and who eats.

The prophet assumes something structural: hunger is not accidental. Homelessness is not random. Oppression is not an individual moral failure; it is embedded in systems. And the remedy is not spiritualization—it is redistribution.

Psalm112:4-9

The Responsorial Psalm is often read as describing personal virtue. But listen carefully.

“Lavishly he gives to the poor.”
“He conducts his affairs with justice.”

The psalmist describes someone whose economic behavior is transformed. The just person lends without exploitation. He is not shaken by “evil report.” He is steadfast in justice.

This is not the portrait of a nationalist strongman obsessed with dominance. It is not the image of someone defending borders, hoarding wealth, or equating divine favor with market success. It is the image of someone who destabilizes unjust systems by generosity.

Franz Hinkelammert, the German-Latin American economist and theologian, warned that modern capitalism turns the market into an idol—demanding sacrifice of human lives in the name of “efficiency.” Hinkelammert argued that when profit becomes sacred, people become expendable.

Psalm 112 offers a different sacred center: the poor.

The just person’s heart is firm not because he has secured his investments—but because he trusts in the Lord while giving away resources.

That is profoundly anti-idolatrous. And therefore, profoundly political.

Paul in Corinth: Power in Weakness

In First Epistle to the Corinthians 2, Paul says something revolutionary:

“I did not come with sublimity of words or wisdom… but with Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

The crucified one is not a nationalist hero. He is an executed victim of empire. (Crucifixion was the form of capital punishment reserved for insurrectionists.) Paul refuses rhetorical domination. He refuses identification with the elite. He centers the cross—an instrument of state terror.

Liberation theology has always emphasized this: the cross reveals God’s identification with victims. God is not neutral between oppressor and oppressed. God is found among those crucified by history.

Paul’s refusal of “persuasive words of wisdom” is also a critique of ideological manipulation. Faith must not rest on elite rhetoric, but on divine power manifest in solidarity with those empire hates and kills.

That is why Christian nationalism feels threatened by the cross.

Christian nationalism prefers triumph. It prefers cultural dominance. It prefers flags draped over crosses.

But Paul gives us a broken body instead.

Jesus: Salt and Light

Now the Gospel.

In Gospel of Matthew 5, Jesus says: “You are the salt of the earth.” “You are the light of the world.”

Salt preserves from decay. Light exposes what is hidden.

This is not a call to privatized spirituality. It is a call to public transformation.

Notice: your light must shine so that others see your good deeds.

What deeds?

Isaiah has already told us: feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, dismantling oppression.

Jesus is not inventing a new ethic here. He is intensifying Isaiah’s.

A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. This is a communal image. It evokes not isolated believers but a visible alternative society.

The earliest Christian communities took this seriously. They held goods in common. They redistributed resources so that “there was not a needy person among them.” That sounds dangerously close to socialism—because it is.

And here is where we must address the tension with voices like Charlie Kirk‘s, which argue that Christianity is fundamentally about individual salvation, private morality, and national strength.

In that framework, the market is sacred, property rights are absolute, and any talk of structural redistribution is labeled “Marxist” as if that ends the conversation.

But here’s the irony: Isaiah sounds more Marxist than the commentators who condemn Marx. Jesus sounds more socialist than the pundits who wave Bibles at rallies.

When Christians share bread, dismantle oppression, and organize communal life around the needs of the poor, they are not betraying the Gospel. They are embodying it.

Why This Theology Was Targeted

This is why liberation theology (i.e. authentic biblical theology informed by modern scripture scholarship) was perceived as dangerous.

In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration and policy strategists behind what became known as the Santa Fe Document explicitly identified liberation theology as a threat in Latin America. It aligned peasants and workers with biblical faith. It exposed structural injustice. It challenged U.S.-backed regimes.

So, it had to be neutralized.

The strategy was twofold: (1) Portray liberation theology as “Marxist infiltration,” and (2) Promote a privatized, depoliticized Christianity compatible with neoliberal economics.

The result?

U.S.-sponsored death squads.
Assassinations of priests, nuns, and catechists. (Recall the slogan in El Salvador, “Be a patriot; kill a priest.”)
A generation of Christians taught to fear the word “justice” if it implied systemic change.
A generation trained to equate patriotism with piety.
A generation suspicious of any theology that speaks of class.

And so, the Left weakened—because it surrendered theological imagination — and often faith itself. Meanwhile, the Right grew strong—because it wrapped market ideology in biblical language.

But Isaiah is still there.

Paul is still there.

Jesus is still there.

And they continue to say: share your bread. Remove oppression. Shine with good deeds.

The Conflict Today

The conflict is not between Christianity and atheism. It is between two versions of Christianity. One blesses empire. The other stands with the crucified. One Christianity defends borders above human beings. The other remembers that Jesus himself was a refugee. One Christianity fears the language of class. The other recognizes that the Bible is saturated with it—rich and poor, debtor and creditor, slave and free.

Christian nationalism proclaims, “Make the nation great again.” Biblical theology proclaims, “Make the poor visible again.”

Christian nationalism identifies God with power. Biblical theology identifies God with victims.

And today’s readings make clear which side the biblical text leans toward.

Salt That Has Not Lost Its Taste

Jesus warns: salt can lose its taste.

What does that mean? It means faith can lose its transformative power. It can become bland, domesticated, harmless. When Christianity ceases to confront structural injustice, it becomes tasteless. When the Church fears being called “socialist” more than it fears ignoring the hungry, it has lost its saltiness. When Christians defend systems that produce homelessness while quoting Scripture about personal morality, the light dims.

But when bread is shared, light breaks forth like dawn. When oppression is removed, darkness becomes midday. When communities embody economic justice—God says, “Here I am.”

That is the promise of Isaiah.

That is the power of the cross.

That is the calling of salt and light.

Conclusion

For the past two weeks, I’ve suggested that Marx did not invent concern for the poor. The prophets did. Jesus did. The earliest Christians did.

Marx analyzed exploitation. Isaiah condemned it. Jesus embodied resistance to it.

To acknowledge this is not to baptize every socialist experiment in history. It is not to deny the complexities of economics. It is simply to be honest about the text.

The Bible does not defend hoarding. It does not sanctify inequality. It does not idolize the nation-state. It calls for justice. And justice, in Scripture, is not abstract. It is bread, shelter, clothing, and dignity.

So, if someone says that such preaching is “Marxist,” perhaps the better question is: why does Marx sound like Isaiah?

If someone claims that Christian faith is about national power, perhaps we should ask: what do we do with the crucified Messiah?

If someone insists that the Church should avoid politics, perhaps we should re-read Isaiah 58.

The readings today are not subtle. They do not whisper. They’re about salt and light, bread and justice, capital punishment and resurrection.

They do not endorse empire, domination or nationalism disguised as faith. Instead, they announce that authentic worship is inseparable from economic justice.

And when that justice begins to take shape—when bread is shared, when the afflicted are satisfied—then, Isaiah promises, “your light shall rise in the darkness.”

May we have the courage to let it shine.

When Even Liberals Deny The Communism Present in the Bible

Readings for Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13; Psalm 146:6-7, 8-9-10; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31; Matthew 5:12a

Not long ago, Bill Maher dismissed Zohran Mamdani by calling him a “straight-up communist,” as if that were the end of the conversation. No serious engagement with ideas. No discussion of wages, housing, healthcare, or workers’ rights. Just the word — used the way it has been used in this country for a century: to make people afraid and to shut down debate.

What’s striking is that this kind of reaction no longer comes only from the political right. It now comes from a whole class of well-off “liberals” who pride themselves on being socially progressive while remaining fiercely protective of the economic arrangements that benefit them.

They’ll support diversity. They’ll support tolerance. They’ll support every cultural reform that does not threaten concentrated wealth.

But the moment someone starts talking seriously about class, about exploitation, about systems that generate poverty in the middle of abundance, suddenly the conversation becomes “dangerous,” “extreme,” or “un-American.”

And that tells us something important: even liberal politics in this country has very strict limits when it comes to challenging economic power.

Which makes today’s readings deeply inconvenient — not only for conservatives, but for comfortable liberals as well.

Because Scripture is not neutral. And it is not polite.

In today’s first reading, Zephaniah tells us that God’s future is not secured by elites, but by: “a people humble and lowly… who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord.” The future belongs not to those the world considers “winners,” but to a remnant of impoverished survivors.

And the responsorial Psalm leaves no ambiguity about divine priorities:

The Lord secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets captives free, protects strangers (immigrants and refugees), sustains widows and orphans, and thwarts the way of the wicked.

That is not cultural progressivism. That is economic and social judgment.

Then Paul says something that should make every “meritocracy” uncomfortable: Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth.

In other words, the Church did not begin among the educated, affluent, and influential — and it was never meant to become their chaplain.

God, Paul says, deliberately chooses the weak and the lowly in order to expose how hollow our usual standards of success really are.

That is not a message designed to reassure people who are already doing quite well.

Then Jesus goes up the mountain and does something extraordinary: He does not bless hard work. He does not bless ambition. He does not bless entrepreneurship.

He blesses: the poor, the grieving, the meek (humble, gentle, non-violent) and those who hunger and thirst for justice.

And Luke strips away any remaining ambiguity: He has Jesus say directly “Blessed are you who are poor.” Not “poor in spirit” (Matthew’s version). Not “poor but virtuous.” Not “poor but patient.” Just poor.

This is not charity language. This is political language.

Jesus is announcing that God’s future does not belong to those who win under present arrangements. It belongs to those who have been pushed aside by them.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.” Not the landlords. Not the corporations. The meek (humble, gentle, non-violent).

Which raises an obvious question: inherit it from whom?

From those who currently control it.

That is not spiritualized poetry. That is social reversal.

And then Jesus adds: Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you because of me.

In other words, if you stand with the poor and challenge systems that benefit the powerful, do not expect bipartisan approval. Expect mockery — including from people who otherwise think of themselves as progressive (like Bill Maher).

Because nothing makes respectable liberals more uncomfortable than the suggestion that their comfort may depend on someone else’s suffering.

Now let’s talk again about that word: “communist.”

Karl Marx was not writing self-help books for the wealthy. He was analyzing why workers who produce society’s wealth often cannot afford to live securely in it. He was naming class as a structural reality, not a personality flaw.

And the society he imagined was one marked, at least in theory, by: shared abundance, no permanent classes, and no state serving as guardian of elite interests.

Now again, Jesus is not Marx. But when Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of God, what he describes is a world where: no one hoards while others starve, no one is reduced to a disposable labor unit, no one’s worth is determined by productivity or profit.

And that is not just talk.

Acts tells us that the first Christians: held all things in common and distributed to each as any had need.

That is not symbolic. That is economic practice.

And yet, in modern American Christianity, we are told again and again that faith has nothing to say about economic structures, only about personal morality.

Which is very convenient — for those who benefit from those structures.

Now add one more truth we cannot afford to forget. Jesus was not only poor. He was not only from a peasant class. He was also a refugee.

Like so many at our borders today, his family fled across state lines to escape political violence. His survival depended on being welcomed as a stranger in a foreign land.

Which means that when today’s political debates treat migrants as threats, burdens, or criminals, they are not simply ignoring Jesus’ teachings — they are contradicting Jesus’ life.

Borders were not sacred and inviolable for Jesus and his family. Saving their own lives was.

And that should matter a great deal when Christians start speaking as though national security is more sacred than human dignity.

So, when I hear wealthy comedians and pundits sneer at movements for economic justice and immigrant dignity as “communist,” what I really hear is anxiety — not about ideology, but about the possibility that the moral center of society might shift away from protecting privilege.

Because let’s be honest: the Beatitudes are far more dangerous to entrenched wealth than Marx ever was.

They do not simply criticize exploitation. They declare that God’s future belongs to those who suffer under it.

And that is precisely why even “liberal” societies work so hard to tame Jesus, spiritualize his words, and turn Christianity into a religion of personal decency rather than structural transformation.

But Scripture refuses to cooperate. From the prophets to Paul to Jesus himself, the message is consistent: God sides with the poor. God challenges the powerful. God imagines a world beyond class domination and enforced scarcity.

And if that vision makes polite society nervous — if it earns ridicule from television studios and think tanks — then perhaps it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

Because Jesus said: Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
and speak evil against you falsely because of me.

And this not because suffering is good, but because standing with the poor has always been the place where God’s kingdom collides with human empires — including empires that call themselves liberal, enlightened, and even Christian.

And that collision is not behind us.

It is very much still unfolding.