‘Who’s got it better than us?’

LOUISVILLE — The Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, who directs the PC(USA)’s Advocacy and Witness ministries in Washington, D.C., and at the United Nations in New York, told the coming-of-age story of National Football League coaches John and Jim Harbaugh, whose father, Jack, was himself a legendary football coach at the collegiate level.

Hawkins preached during worship, the final event Wednesday of the Mid Council Leaders Gathering held this week at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville, Kentucky.

John Harbaugh, coach of the New York Giants, uses a phrase in the locker room that Jack taught his two young sons decades ago: “Who’s got it better than us?” The players shout, “Nobody!”

“The same goes for us. God wants to instill in us gratitude, resilience and a positive attitude,” Hawkins told mid council leaders during a rousing worship service that featured wonderful music and liturgy. “This is a call for positive affirmation, even in the face of difficulty.”

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“I know you are asking, ‘Who doesn’t love Presbyterians?’ Well, let’s start with other Presbyterians,” said Hawkins, who’s heard comments ranging from “I don’t know what y’all are doing in Louisville” to “y’all are just trying to close my church.”

Hawkins used Isaiah 58:6-12 and Luke 6:27-36 as texts for his sermon. He called the second passage, in which Jesus instructs his followers to love their enemies, “one of the least representative scriptures in our lives as Christians.”

“We are always finding ways to get around God’s Word in our personal lives, because Jesus is a challenge,” Hawkins said. “He’s a comfort, but he’s also a challenge in the 21^st century.”

For his Sermon on the Plain as recorded in Luke’s gospel, Jesus addresses an audience that must have been shocked to hear what he had to tell them, “for this is not an easy teaching,” Hawkins said. “Jesus is talking to an oppressed people and telling them to love their oppressors,” challenging them to meet “hostility with kindness” and “mistreatment with prayer.”

On the surface, the enemies of his hearers were the Romans, but here Jesus highlights “a new set of enemies: their own people,” because “there will be resistance from their religious leaders because they follow this young rabbi.”

Jesus “is speaking of those who hate us because we are attempting to live by his teaching — especially those that pertain to justice,” Hawkins said. Jesus himself was “oppressed, arrested, betrayed, denied, beaten, struck down and crucified — but on the third day he was raised from the dead. Toay we proclaim that he sits on the right hand of God the Father almighty.”

Rather than offering up “an abstract lesson on passivity,” Jesus tells us that by following him, “we are to reflect the mercy and the justice of God. We are called to oppose injustice whenever it appears, regardless of the cost,” according to Hawkins. “Jesus calls his followers to practice a love that goes beyond reciprocity, resentment or retaliation.”

Hawkins noted the “branding problems” the PC(USA) has endured of late. “We have been charged with anti-Semitism, due to our audacity declaring Israel is an apartheid state and what’s happening in Gaza is genocide,” he said. The Presbyterian Center features a banner outside calling for “Ceasefire NOW,” he noted, “and for years we had another that said Black Lives Matter, a very popular slogan for Christians today.” A previous banner expressed welcome to the LGBTQ community.

“Other Christians have disavowed us and have called us way too liberal because we called for an end to trans hatred and homophobia,” Hawkins said. “We dare to talk about universal healthcare, a living wage, voting rights, racial justice, affirmative action, and an end to war — period. No exceptions.”

We wouldn’t have it any other way, he said, “because Jesus has changed our lives for the better. Our identity as Christians has made us better husbands, wives, singles, fathers, mothers and siblings. Anything we have lost, any broken relationships — we have gained so much more.”

“Yes, discipleship has a cost,” Hawkins said, “but it is one worth paying.”

During the nation’s centuries of slavery, Hawkins noted, drawing from his previous book “Unbroken and Unbowed: A History of Black Protest in America,” “enslaved parents taught their children to survive in a similar manner to our [New Testament] lesson today, as children were taught the secrets of resistance.”

“Children were taught to appear deferential, to be cheerful in front of their enslavers while maintaining a true sense of self and community,” Hawkins said. “They were taught to read the temperament of enslavers and to demonstrate emotional control over themselves at all times, because a simple outburst could cost them their life. They were taught that slavery, no matter what they were told, was evil and wrong.”

“They never went to seminary,” Hawkins said, “but they interpreted from Scripture a liberation theology that used authentic Christian theology to teach an alternative morality to challenge distorted teachings about inferiority and servitude. They taught their children they were equal in the eyes of God and that their enslavers were committing sins,” and their children were taught “reliance on the extended family within the enslaved community. Children experienced this family network where all adults shared the responsibility of parenting.”

Hawkins called this New Testament passage “a call to resistance.”

“Jesus is teaching us that to follow him, we cannot rely upon the strategies of this world, for it takes emotional, mental and spiritual strength to stand in opposition to the world’s chaos and madness,” he said.

Loving our enemies means “we can love the person while holding them accountable,” he said. “Love seeks good for the other person, but it does not require us to cooperate with wrongdoing.”

“I am going to go ahead and say it: There are some people in this nation who are lying on Jesus,” he said. “We could say they are simply misunderstood or they are misquoting Scripture in this world of social media. It’s gotten so bad that Christians are saying, ‘You know, you have your interpretation and I have my interpretation.’ The Word speaks for itself! The Word still says, ‘Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’”

Racism in this land “is still wrong in the eyes of God,” he said. “As Presbyterians, we have only one million left, but we’re going to use each and every soul that God has sent our way to proclaim the Word of God,” and those in attendance began clapping. “Who has it better than us? Even in the midst of opposition, no one has it better than us, because we know that even in hardship, our God has promised never to leave us or forsake us.”

“It’s not about privilege. It’s not about comfort,” he said. “”It’s about doing everything we can to proclaim the good news of God, who loves us just as we are.”

“It’s tiring doing the work of justice. Sometimes it seems like things are never going to change,” Hawkins said. “I’m here to tell you we must stand with the prophet Jeremiah, who was called to pluck up and to plant, to speak God’s good work in good seasons and bad.”

Jeremiah went out to proclaim to the people not to resist the coming invasion. “Jeremiah was not popular at all,” Hawkins noted. “False prophets threw him down a well.” If it hadn’t been for a eunuch who threw down ropes “and said, ‘brother, I’ve got your back’ and led him out, Jeremiah would be dead.”

Jeremiah then had a little conversation with God, and Hawkins recounted it this way: “He said, ‘Look, this whole prophet thing was not my idea. This was your idea. I just got to tell you, these folks are crazy. They’re trying to kill me.’ And he complained to God: ‘You lied to me. I have been deceived. I’m through. I’m quitting you. But every time I tried, there’s a fire shut up inside of me, and I’m tired of holding it in.’”

“Do not hold in that fire within you, that passion for justice, the desire to make a difference in the world,” Hawkins urged mid council leaders. “We are the ones God has called. There are no others. We are the change that we are waiting for.”

“Therefore, let us be tireless,” he said. “Let us continue to proclaim the good news, the grace, the mercy and the love of the God who created the heavens and the Earth. In Jesus’ name, amen.”