The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 16), August 17, 2025

Jeremiah sees himself as a truth-teller to a lied-to population. He wants to distinguish his words from the bloated number of supposed prophets who have short-sightedly coddled the Hebrews in exile during the reign of the Babylonian Empire. The tone of Jeremiah’s words feel like: “Are we just going to sell false hope because it’s hard to talk about the truth?! Is not our God a God who is going to treat people like adults and be real?!”
While Jeremiah’s content often entertains a controlling view of God who is punitively punishing the Hebrews suffering in exile — something that a process-relational Christian message should problematize — Jeremiah’s tone is a huge asset to a process-relational Christian message. We, like Jeremiah, in today’s urgent matters of injustice, dehumanization, and precarity faced by common working people all over the globe, cannot fathom selling false hope about a superman God, outside of time, coming to intervene and magically save the day. We refuse to prophesy lies in God’s name. Rather, we want to speak truth, hard though it may be, about what it will take to partner with God to bring about justice, fair economic distribution, restored relationships between peoples, and restored relationship between all people and the land.
Today’s psalm, Psalm 82, portraying YHWH before the council of heaven, grounds a vision of genuine hope, instead of false hope. What we gather from this Psalm is that the God of the Bible is NOT merely another warrior god (so representative of Ancient Near East conceptions of the divine). The Biblical God presides over all other gods (or powers) NOT because this God won in a scrum for domination. No! The Biblical God presides over all other gods (or powers) because this God is a God of Justice. Psalm 82 calls those who wish to spread genuine hope to, like the supreme God of Justice, take sides with the weak, the orphan, the humble, the needy, the poor. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, “taking sides” is often presented as the definition of justice. This comes with consequences for the status quo.
Jesus’ startlingly revolutionary words in Luke 12:49-56, (today’s Gospel passage) corroborate Psalm 82. Justice, indicates Jesus, is not about balancing scales and everyone holding hands in perfect harmonious “peace”; justice is about taking sides with the oppressed. Some speculate that Jesus’ mention of “peace” in Luke 12:51 (“Do you think I came to bring peace?”) is a reference to the Roman Imperial propaganda of “Pax Romana” or “Roman Peace”, which was no peace at all; it was law and order and fist and spear, that suppressed any dissent to give a veneer of peace.
From a process-relational view, we can call the God of Side-Taking-Justice the God of “power with” rather than “power over”. We tend to reflexively think of “power over” (Babylonian or Roman domination) as the “most powerful power”. Even if we are skeptical of it, we still often concede this point. But according to Psalm 82 and Luke 12, it’s “power with” that is the “most powerful power” — and, more precisely, power with the oppressed.
Jeremiah’s rhetorical questioning can also be read to drive at the point that “power over” is lesser than “power with”: Does God not fill heaven and earth? Nearby and faraway? Is God not present to the whole world? For Jeremiah, it is omnipresence not omnipotence that speaks to God’s character. For Jesus, a vision for the world that is an alternative to the Imperial vision is one based in the justice that comes from “power with”, not in the domination and control that comes from “power over”.
Today’s Hebrews passage, picking up where last Sunday’s re-telling of Abram’s story left off, moves to suggest that “a justice that takes sides with the oppressed” is a theme behind the stories of so many Biblical characters who (like Abram) courageously, by faith, stepped out into open, uncertain futures. The descriptions of shutting the mouths of lions, quenching raging fire, escaping the edge of the sword, winning strength out of weakness, long-suffering chains and imprisonment, etc. all point to oppressed overcoming oppressors.
Finally, the writer of Hebrews bring us to Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter” of this faith that takes sides. Reading from a process-relational perspective, the references to ”the joy set before Jesus” and “the race set before for us” are not about pre-ordained stories, but about powerful story archetypes that help our own still-unfolding stories find expression.
These passages are an excellent opportunity to connect a Process-Relational Christian message to the popular stories in culture today (TV, film, literature) that are likely already providing our communities with archetypal models of facing hard truths, taking sides for the sake of justice, and thus providing a modicum of genuine hope. To put it more bluntly: what are so many of our congregants ending so many nights of their week with? Another story! Another episode in a show! Another chapter in a book!
The best of today’s popular stories can be beautifully tied to the Biblical witness. For example, the latest Star Wars series Andor develops an incredibly layered story about domination and rebellion. What if preachers recommended watching Andor as a primer to reading the Gospels? Do not our stories today draw from and build upon stories that have come before? To elaborate on Jeremiah, is God only a God of the past and not also a God of the present?

Vince Brackett pastors Brown Line Church, a progressive Christian community with a healthy sense of humor and humility, named for Chicago’s Northside “L” train. His background is in education and he is especially interested in the intersection of theology and sociology. Things that bring him joy include: playing guitar and singing with his wife, following the NBA and English Premier League, diving deep into “hero’s journey” stories, and working with audio/visual technology. He and his wife (and their four kids) have enjoyed living communally with housemates for the last 12 years.