A SERMON FOR THESE TIMES
‘The Politics of Truth and the Sin of Silence’ | april19.2025
The Rev. Brad Davis is pastor of the Welch Charge of the United Methodist Church, a group of five churches in McDowell County, West Virginia. He is also founder and co-director of a grassroots, faith-based, coalfield justice oriented movement called From Below. Find out more about that effort at wvfaith.org. He gave this sermon on Palm Sunday 2025. The sermon appears formatted somewhat like a long-form poem and there’s a practical reason for that, he says: “That’s the way I format my sermons because it’s easier to read in the pulpit for me like that.” To reduce its length and make for an easier read on the page, I’ve combined some of the lines and made some minor formatting changes, but retained its mostly poem-like form. It is a powerful and pointed sermon for the times that we are living out—right now, this week, this day, all across America. Please pass it forward.~ Douglas John Imbrogno, editor
“The Politics of Truth and the Sin of Silence”
A Palm Sunday sermon based on Luke 19:28-40 | By the Rev. Brad Davis
Just so happens that this year, Holy Week,
kicks off just a few days after the
anniversary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s death,
the German theologian executed by the Nazis
in April of 1945, just a couple weeks before
Allied troops liberated the facility
where it happened.
A follower of Jesus
who was killed by the state
for refusing to be quiet in the face
of the state’s crimes against humanity.
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil,”
Bonhoeffer once said.
“God will not hold us guiltless.
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.”
In other words silence
in the face of evil
is nothing less than sin.
Again by mere coincidence, or perhaps by divine fate,
this year Holy Week begins with Luke’s account
of Jesus’s Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem.
A version of the story much different than the one
we find in the other Gospels. If for no other reason
because Luke is overtly political in its truth telling.
But this is a version, as Pastor Micah Cray says,
that includes: “No palms, no hosannas,
just cloaks and cries ...”
A version where along with those cries,
silence takes center stage.
You see, in this version, the cries of
the multitudes marching with Jesus down
the Mount of Olives toward the Holy Temple
are met with calls for silence from
the religious leaders.
Why? What on earth can be so controversial
as to merit such a demand? When you think of
great displays of power, what comes to mind?
From the perspective of empire, be it that
of Rome in Jesus’s day or our own
in contemporary times, displays of power
are usually a show of force.
A military parade, such as the one
Jesus and his disciples are satirizing here,
and one a certain contemporary emperor
wants for his birthday, to the tune of
billions of taxpayer dollars.
Or a huge police presence,
fully decked out in riot gear,
at a protest on a university campus,
ready to crush unarmed students.
Or the intentional humiliation
Of deportees to foreign torture prisons.
Dropping bombs on the heads
of the poorest countries on earth
And the band plays on …
But from the perspective of God’s kingdom,
power is on display when:
The sick are healed.
When the hungry are fed.
When the thirsty receive clean water.
When the abandoned and silenced receive flood relief.
When strangers and the imprisoned are cared for.
When evil is cast out.
Yes, in God’s kingdom
these are the real displays of power.
This is Jesus’s ministry.
This is why his followers
cry out on this day:
“Blessed is the king,
Who comes in
the name of the Lord.”
Not the emperor,
not King Herod.
Not the American President.
Not the Governor of West Virginia.
But the real king,
the true king.
The Sovereign head of God’s rule.
“Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven.”
Not the blasphemous notion of
“peace through strength,”
propagated by the empire,
but peace on earth and goodwill to all,
as proclaimed by the angels
upon the Savior’s birth.
And this is why the religious folks
want the crowds to shush.
What they are shouting
is a subversion of the empire
and its modus operandi.
A subversion of
its upside down values.
Of profit over people,
Death over life.
Where not even access to clean water
is viewed as a right
It is a subversion of its
carefully crafted narrative
that the emperor is lord,
Jesus is not.
And, more to the point, it’s a subversion
of the religious establishment’s marriage
with the empire and their proximity to power.
It’s a threat to the institution.
“Be quiet!” they say.
“The emperor might hear you!”
“Be quiet! The church
might lose its status!”
They hold dear all the things Jesus
turns away from in the wilderness
that began our Lenten journey last month.
Self-interest.
The lust for the state’s
version of power.
The misuse and abuse of
their positions of privilege
As we near the end
of our own wilderness journey,
our own opportunity to follow
Jesus’s lead and turn away from
the world’s power and toward God’s rule,
Holy Week invites us to ask of ourselves:
What kind of king do we want?
What kind of kingdom?
What kind of Christianity?
Are we hungry for state power
with all its violence that brings death and
breaks the world and its people apart?
Or God’s power
which brings healing
and wholeness.
Are we willing to speak up and speak out?
Disrupting the false narrative that
pervades every aspect
of a society so sick that it is
thoroughly convinced that:
Only might makes right.
Only the strong survive.
There can only be strength
By casting the weak aside?
Are we willing to preach
the politics of truth?
Or commit the sin of silence?
We are confronted this week
with such a choice and are invited
to choose God’s restorative power
for a world saturated by the violence
of an empire that only knows
how to deal death—a fact we’ll be
starkly reminded of come Friday.
So who do we want to be in this story?
Jesus’s followers, who refuse to be silent
in the face of the empire’s evil,
injustice, and oppression?
Or the religious institutionalists.
Who prefer silence in order to protect
their own self-interest?
Rest assured, should we choose the latter,
God will find someone or something else
to bring good news to the poor,
and the proclamation of liberation
to the hungry, those thirsty
for clean water and a mucked-out house,
the homeless, those being kicked off
their healthcare, the immigrant,
the prisoner, the least, the last,
the lost, the lonely.
Because we’ve ceased being the church.
Indeed, even the rocks will cry out
that Jesus is the true king
of God’s true kingdom
Perhaps my favorite Bonhoeffer quote
is one where he explicitly tells the church
its proper response to the sins of the unjust state.
He says that the church isn’t called simply to:
“… bandage the wounds of the victims under
the wheel of injustice, but to
jam a spoke in the wheel itself.“
We jam up the wheel of injustice by
refusing to be silent in the face of its
incessant grinding of the vulnerable
and take action to stop it.
By carrying out the same deeds
of true power as did our Savior —
deeds that heal, restore,
cast out evil, and bring life.
Even in the face of death itself,
the demonic face of the empire.
So that the whole world might see
the very face of God
In the name of the Creator,
Redeemer, Sustainer God.
Amen.
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Power preaching! Please publish more!
Yes Yes Yes to everything Rev Brad Davis preached in this sermon. 🙏🏽