A long time back, when a trending topic in the news was courthouses that displayed the Ten Commandments, a co-worker of mine asked “What was wrong with that?” He went on to say don’t we all agree to not steal or murder, etc.? And I looked at him and said, “Do you know what the first commandment is? He looked at me blankly. It wasn’t that he assumed everyone should have no other God but the Judeo-Christian one; it was that he didn’t even remember that was the first commandment.

And while the televangelists and prosperity gospel preaches may at first glance seem the obvious modern day equivalent to the money changers that Christ got so upset with, I suggest that a closer equivalent are those trying to make the U.S. a theocracy.

I’m not even talking about the evangelicals who exposed their hypocrisy in supporting the current president. They’ve proven that their so-called Christianity is a façade for their political agenda. I’m talking about the folks who sincerely think Christianity should be enforced by law.

We’ve been talking throughout this liturgical year about living as if you’re already dead. That living a Christian life is living a life of the spirit and detaching from the ways of the perishing. Enforcing Christianity by using the ways of the perishing is clearly opposed to this view of the Christian life.

You can’t force someone to detach. You can only force them to attach to something else, some other aspect of the perishing world. So it is no wonder that those inclined to force faith on others embrace the anti-beatitudes we discussed last Lenten supper: Blessed are the rich, those who make others mourn, the violent and the invincible, the proud and the powerful, the domineering and oppressive, those who hunger and thirst for injustice, those who show no mercy, the impure of heart, the warmakers, those who never stand up for justice, who do not rock the boat.

The beatitudes are not describing those that the perishing should be charitable toward. Those who live by the anti-beatitudes see those who Christ calls blessed as less fortunate than they are; missing the whole point.

Paul really gets at this in today’s Epistle. “For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.” Repentance, metanoia, the change we’re getting at, the dying and being reborn is living out God’s foolishness and weakness.

It’s worth noting that Jesus’ summary of the law does not quote the Ten Commandments. Rather they are drawn from Deuteronomy & Leviticus. The Ten Commandments are to be understood only in the context of love, certainly not in the context of a justice system based in punishment.

For Christ, the second person of the Trinity, our Lord and our God suffered under a system of punishment. Imagine how that sounded in Paul’s time; that the Messiah, the Son of God, suffered humiliation and torture unto death. That would sound foolish indeed.

But further, Christ didn’t just come to help the unfortunate; Christ said he WAS the unfortunate. God IS the hungry, the naked, the sick, the refugee, the prisoner. This is truly God’s foolishness and weakness.

So is this the life God promises - A life of hunger and thirst and imprisonment? Not in the sense that we’re to deliberately bring ourselves to ruin. In the sense of vulnerability, however, yes that is the life God promises. We’re to understand ourselves and live as if we were as vulnerable as the unfortunate.

And the truth is that the unfortunate are not actually unfortunate, they are the oppressed. Oppressed by the few who live the anti-beatitudes and who convince others to agree to the anti-beatitudes despite themselves.

Part of dying to the ways of the perishing is not only to wake up to the ways we unjustly benefit from the system, but to be conscious of the ways the oppressors do not benefit us; that we, in admitting our vulnerability before God, understand our solidarity with the vulnerable about us.

And this is where the righteous anger of Jesus in our Gospel tonight resides. As Christians, in solidarity with the oppressed, we should chase out those who want to legislate faith, and in doing so remain vulnerable, at risk. For we have already died and have been raised in this new life. Our temples rebuilt in a spiritual body, a spiritual life that endures.