American politics and religion

I completed the following Sermon for St. John’s Episcopal Church in Murray, KY on the Friday before Federal ICE agents publicly executed Alex Jeffrey Pretti while they had him pinned to the ground. However, my sermon references similar cases of violence committed by federal agents and the propaganda of the current administration, and so I did not revise the content to mention him specifically. In addition, I recorded the sermon on Friday evening for my church in case a winter storm caused a power outage in our town.

Sermon for January 24, 2026

Matthew 4:12-23

Some of the most transformative moments in my life were the times when someone treated me better than I deserved. I knew I had failed others, but their mercy and forgiveness quickly pulled me out of my shame.

I once worked at a nonprofit with an extremely challenging director who wanted our marketing firm to send out a series of press releases to the local papers. Before doing that, our director had to give them all the thumbs up.

I was the main point of contact with the marketing firm. Yet, they weren’t replying to my emails or moving fast enough for our director’s liking.

When our director nagged me once again about the press releases, I snapped and sent him an email that was extremely critical of our marketing firm’s responsiveness. That was a teeny, tiny, HUGE mistake. He immediately forwarded my message to the marketing firm, copied me on the message, and added that we needed to work this out.

As you can imagine, I felt like an idiot—a common theme in my 20’s. I was unprofessional and threw them under the bus because of our director. I wrote a very sincere apology, and the lead copywriter immediately replied that it was water under the bridge now. We could move on.

He would have been justified to tear into me. I deserved it. But he very kindly replied immediately and moved on. In the midst of my shame over my failure, his forgiveness was a ray of light that helped me move forward.

We read today in the Gospel about Jesus being a light to people who were living in a land of darkness. I think we all want light and hope to come, but the light and hope that comes in today’s Gospel may give us pause.

While it’s true that people who lived in the ruins of the exile and suffered under Greek and Roman rule had God’s light among them, how much were things about to change? Were their lives about to become significantly better? Were they hoping for something different from what Jesus offered?

And while I’m sure the disciples Jesus called would all say that they wanted God’s light and salvation to come, they also had to make significant sacrifices. They would have to face dangers among violent leaders that made a storm on the sea appear quite tame.

And what did the people who saw this light of God’s hope think? I’m sure they were happy to experience healing and listen to Jesus, but wasn’t all of the healing just a band aid on far more serious wounds that had accumulated over time? And the message from Jesus to repent was directed at them. Why didn’t he tell the Romans to repent first?

As they experienced injustice and suffered the indignity of yet another military occupation in a long history of them, what in the world did they make of Jesus? He seemed promising, but he also was likely confusing, frustrating, and even appeared a bit dangerous. He spoke of God’s kingdom without actually challenging the Romans.

Change was coming, but was it enough?

And let’s not forget that Jesus called men who were largely unlearned, rough fishermen. These weren’t sophisticated, well-spoken, theologically astute, politically savvy men who could wow a crowd. Even after 3 years with Jesus, the book of Acts notes that their lack of education was hardly a secret. What was Jesus thinking by calling this group of misfits to support his ministry while his cousin John, a legit prophet, languished in prison?

Most people in America today have not suffered anything close to what the people of Israel endured throughout their history of military calamities, oppressive rulers, brutal exile, and the daily deprivations of military occupation. If they had any hope left for God to deliver them, it was likely quite faint by the time Jesus showed up on the scene.

The people of Israel, especially in the northern region around Galilee, had suffered a great deal over past and present generations.

And let’s admit that we can understand why they would have found Jesus perplexing. He healed people of their personal sicknesses, but did he address the sickness of their nation? He spoke of God’s Kingdom, but he left John in prison while scraping the bottom of the barrel in their society for his help.

If we let ourselves ask the hard questions that this passage demands, we can see the extreme tension of this moment. Light has come up against darkness, God’s Kingdom has appeared at a time of Roman domination, and Jesus has told the Jewish people to repent as God’s Kingdom draws near.

Jesus started a movement that could only work if his followers left behind the resources of this world and trusted in God. The more they relied on their own plans and resources, the more likely they would turn to greed, political power, or violence for solutions.

We recently celebrated the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement. While a moving quote on social media may make us feel inspired for a second before the next video clip steals our attention, let’s not forget that King and his Civil Rights colleagues were staring down some of the most concentrated, unfiltered forms of evil that ever walked on earth.

The opponents of Civil Rights included men who thought nothing of torturing and killing a person of color who wanted to vote, who bombed churches where children sat in Sunday school classes, and who resorted to any form of injustice or violence that guaranteed their continued domination in society.

Facing this sort of evil without first unloading our burdens and imperfections through repentance is like bringing a pool noodle to a knife fight. Even if the flaws in our hearts seem as nothing compared to the evil we see around us in our world, we need to be transformed by God’s forgiveness and love to live in and contribute to the kind of world God imagines.

Jesus showed us that the kingdom drawing near means the sick are healed, the hungry are fed, our wealth is shared with those in need, and we treat our neighbors with the mercy and love that God extends to us.

We’ve seen in recent days how the unchecked forces of greed, power, and violence can converge in ways that dehumanize others, divide us, oppress our neighbors, and even leave civilians beaten or shot in their neighborhoods.

We have seen the exact opposite of repentance where the victims of violence were blamed for the immoral actions of others. That is evil.

We can’t hope to face these forces of evil and injustice in our world if we aren’t first transformed by the mercy and love of God in our hearts. King and the members of the Civil Rights movement didn’t just share moving quotes to inspire us to be nice to others. They were being transformed by the love of God in order to meet the violence and injustice of their time.

God’s transforming love begins working in our lives when we repent and receive forgiveness. That’s why repentance is especially relevant today.

Speaking for myself here: From the systems of our society that benefit myself while harming others to the ways I have failed others personally, there’s a lot I can bring to God in a spirit of repentance.

Yet, Jesus didn’t want us to stay in a state of repentant sorrow. He called everyone to repent first, but then he asked them to tell others about God’s mercy and pay that mercy forward.

When we repent and receive forgiveness, especially forgiveness that shows mercy beyond what we think we deserve, we can experience freedom. A weight has been lifted from us, and new possibilities emerge in the light of God’s mercy and love.

Repentance is only a first step that sends us on a new path forward beyond our failures and imperfections. It’s the first crack of light in the darkness. And as we call out to our most merciful God, we find mercy and forgiveness.

God knows we need to carry that mercy, generosity, compassion, and love into our world. We can participate in God’s mercy we have received as we face those seeking fulfillment through power, violence, and injustice.

We can participate in the real Kingdom that rules by taking notice of the overlooked, healing the weak, welcoming those in need, and giving power away. Who in our circles of influence can we notice, serve, or welcome?

In recent weeks I have felt fear, anger, shame, and despair. The last thing I have thought about is repenting of my own sins and failings. Yet, that is exactly where Jesus began at a time of far worse injustices and violence.

We come to God to receive mercy, healing, and forgiveness because these are the very forces we can use to restore a world that is drowning in greed, power, and violence.

Photo by Jean-Baptiste D. on Unsplash

You can also view my recording of the sermon at the Diocese of Kentucky website.

Click on “Vimeo / Diocese of Kentucky Video Sermons”
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Ed Cyzewski

I’m the author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians, Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction, and other books. I write about prayer and spiritual restoration at http://www.edcyzewski.com.

Critical race theory for Christians in America

The future of early Christianity hinged in part on the merging of Jews and Gentiles into one people in Christ. A Gentile could be from Rome, Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, or another region, but all Gentiles were united in not being Jewish by race, religion, culture, and politics.

There was a lot more than race wrapped up in this division among different peoples, but there is no doubt that race was certainly part of the mix.

As the Apostle Paul left his post as a powerful religious zealot among the Jews, he became an ambassador to the Gentiles, pursuing a seemingly impossible task. He didn’t see one group dominating the other in a colonial sense. Rather, he sought to unite two very different groups as one new, equal people in Christ.

The regulations of the Jewish law no longer applied to the Law of the Spirit in Christ, but the wisdom and philosophy of the Gentiles also fell short. The history of both groups and their religious frameworks were essential for understanding both groups and for pursuing reconciliation under Christ.

In fact, the entire Christian idea of repentance hinges on an honest accounting of one’s past. Collective action of a group or system was also quite relevant beyond personal reckonings with sin.

Paul had to face the ways he had relied on his knowledge of the Jewish Law and his special place as a chosen member of God’s people before he could see the superiority of a new identity in Christ.

Gentiles had to face the ways that Christ’s foolishness overturned their wisdom and philosophy, not to mention their own sense of cultural superiority over groups like the Jews.

The impact of racial divisions and the underlying challenges of racism in the laws, practices, and institutions at the time of Paul simply couldn’t be overlooked when trying to create one people in Christ.

There is no escaping a phrase like Critical Race Theory in America today, especially in the political realm. Conservative media and politicians have generally emptied the term of any real meaning and stuffed it with every fear, reaction, and grievance of white American culture for the purposes of political activism.

We are living at a time when allegedly small government “conservatives” want to regulate what teachers can talk about in schools, to the point that they are willing to ban discussions of Critical Race Theory. It’s a shocking overreach of the government, especially for people who supposedly dislike an overreaching government.

Even worse, the mere attempt to ban discussions of Critical Race Theory is based entirely on bad faith, unserious misrepresentations of what it is. If such conservative politicians actually presented the reality of Critical Race Theory, their Christian constituents would be forced to reckon with a very uncomfortable reality: Critical Race Theory rightly identifies many of the systemic sins in America.

If white American Christians aspire to live with their black brothers and sisters as one people in Christ, there is a lot more to reconcile than personal racism or racist attitudes in one’s family history. There are systems and cultural histories in America that have afflicted black people in ways that white people would find intolerable.

Mind you, there are enough white Americans who find merely talking about the suffering of black people in America intolerable. Can you imagine what these white Americans would do if they had to face actual discrimination and systemic injustice.

The uncomfortable truth for white American Christians is that a Christian like Paul would have likely loved Critical Race Theory. It succinctly and quite accurately labels the structural sins that black Americans face.

In the hope of cutting through some of the fog and misunderstanding of our times, let’s pause to consider what Critical Race Theory actually is. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s website:

Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is an academic and legal framework that denotes that systemic racism is part of American society — from education and housing to employment and healthcare. Critical Race Theory recognizes that racism is more than the result of individual bias and prejudice. It is embedded in laws, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce racial inequalities. According to CRT, societal issues like Black Americans’ higher mortality rate, outsized exposure to police violence, the school-to-prison pipeline, denial of affordable housing, and the rates of the death of Black women in childbirth are not unrelated anomalies.

Let’s ask ourselves a few frank questions.

Is it God’s dream for anyone to receive inferior education based on the color of their skin?
Is it God’s dream for anyone to be denied the purchase of a home based on the color of their skin, as has happened often with red lining in cities?
Is it God’s dream for anyone to be denied a job, higher wage, or promotion based on the color of their skin?
Is it God’s dream for anyone to suffer higher infant mortality rates due to inadequate healthcare?
Is it God’s dream for anyone to suffer harsher treatment from the police or legal system based on the color of their skin?

I can’t imagine anyone affirming these afflictions as good, and there is no denying the fact that these things have happened regularly in America for generations and still continue in some communities. Sometimes even worse things happen based on the color of someone’s skin.

For Paul, who sought to join different races together as one people in Christ and who believed that confession precedes repentance, I can imagine him finding CRT’s clear articulation of cultural and systemic sins quite helpful.
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It’s awfully hard to be unified with people who deny your pain and who can’t comprehend your personal story. Critical Race Theory is one tool we can use to simply articulate the pain of a group of people in America who are God’s beloved children and who have an equal share with every other race in God’s Kingdom.

It’s not controversial to say that God’s Kingdom includes all races. However, it is unfortunately controversial to say that some races have suffered and are suffering a great deal more than some others. To deny the suffering of black Americans by turning Critical Race Theory into a political punching bag only drives enormous wedges among God’s people.

Acknowledging the suffering of black Americans at the hands of some in white America isn’t anti-white or reverse racism. This is an opportunity for knowledge and wisdom, to learn and to grow so that we can repent of the systems that have caused a lot of suffering.

The goal of someone like Paul wasn’t to drag down or diminish the Jews or Gentiles. He simply critiqued where the two cultures got stuff wrong and identified how their cultural assumptions about race prevented them from becoming one people in Christ.

I don’t believe it’s God’s dream to tear anyone down. God doesn’t want us to hate our race. Such unfounded fears have been drummed up in bad faith and prevent us from acknowledging the pain of others.

We have an opportunity today to pursue the joining of different races together as one people in Christ in a way that both acknowledges the failures and the pain of the past and elevates everyone to an equal position as beloved children of God. Acknowledging the truth of our past through a tool like Critical Race Theory can help us get there.

Photo by Sam Balye on Unsplash