Transcript
The Spirit Emboldens
First Baptist Richmond, August 17, 2025
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 12:49-56
I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!
In each of the churches I have served there has been a “legendary” pastor. In New Castle, Kentucky, it was Bill Hull. People would talk to me about how things had been back in “Bill Hull days,” when they had 300 people in Sunday school (a lot for that little church) and had to put folding chairs in the aisles to accommodate the crowds on Sunday morning. I was a seminary student at the time, doing all I could to build up the membership of that church, but we didn’t have anything like 300 people in Sunday school. The numbers were usually under 100. I knew Bill Hull. I admired him. But every time someone mentioned his name I cringed at the comparison. They didn’t say it out loud but they must have been thinking: “Bill Hull used to pack them in. What’s wrong with you?”
In Wingate, North Carolina, it was Dewey Hobbs. In Washington, DC, it was Ed Pruden. And here in Richmond, of course, it was Ted Adams. In each of those churches people would tell me about how wonderful things had been when those men were pastors, how the church used to be full on Sunday mornings and how they sometimes had to set up folding chairs to accommodate the crowds (what is it with these folding chairs?). Now, I’m sure that each of these men were gifted and able pastors, but it was only when I got to Richmond that I realized each of these men had served during the 1950’s, a time when going to church was—for so many people—the “Sunday morning thing to do.” When someone asked Ed
Pruden how he was able to grow such a large church in downtown DC he replied, “In those days it was a matter of opening the door and getting out of the way.” It’s certainly not that way anymore, is it? But why? Back in 2010 I wrote a little book called When the Sand Castle Crumbles where I tried to find the answer. It began like this:
The churchgoing boom in America coincided almost exactly with the Baby Boom (1946-1964). The war was over; soldiers and sailors came home and married their high school sweethearts; they moved into houses with white picket fences and began to have babies—lots of babies. Those new parents wanted their babies to grow up in the church just as they had. They came by the hundreds, by the thousands, and soon churches were scrambling to find enough nursery space, and then enough Sunday school space for all those babies, all those children!
And because their parents were coming to church too they needed bigger sanctuaries. They built them, or added additional services, and for a little while at least those sanctuaries were full, or nearly. And then, for a number of reasons, things began to change. The Fifties gave way to the Sixties (anybody remember them?). The Sixties gave way to the Seventies. Those babies who had been brought to church by their parents grew up and went their own way, and for many of them the way did not lead back to church. Since the 1950’s the world has changed in ways we never could have imagined. The cultural forces that used to push people through the front door of the church are now dragging them out. And yet there are some in our congregations who still hold on to the hope that if they could find just the right pastor, if they could find another Bill Hull, or Dewey Hobbs, or Ed Pruden, or Ted Adams…
…it would be 1955 again.i
I think there were people who had that hope when I came to First Baptist, and looking back I wonder what would have happened if I had said, “Let’s do that! Let’s make it 1955 again! Let’s sing the hymns we used to sing in those days and I’ll dig through the archives and preach some of Ted Adams’ old sermons. Let’s see if we can’t have 2,000 people in Sunday school like we used to and give half our money to the Southern Baptist Convention.” Some people might have said yes to that, as in, “Yes, yes, YES! Let’s do that! Those were the good old days!” But that’s not what I did. Instead I took the church staff on retreat where I divided them into four groups, gave each group a red-letter edition of the Bible, and then asked them to look for the clear commands of Christ in each of the four Gospels.
When we got back to church I led the congregation through the same exercise, and we identified five commands that seemed to sum up all the others: 1) Love God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; 2) Love your neighbor as yourself; 3) Love one another as I have loved you; 4) Go into all the world and make disciples; and 5) Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. We organized the staff around those commands, created the five ministry areas of Worship, Compassion, Community, Invitation, and Formation. And as we lived into that new vision we began to talk about bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to Richmond, Virginia, because that’s what Jesus seemed to care about more than anything else—the Kingdom. He asked his disciples to pray that God’s kingdom would come, and God’s will would be done, on earth as it is in heaven. First Baptist Church wanted to be an answer to that prayer.
I believe we still want to be an answer to that prayer, but we are living in challenging times. We have a president who won the election by promising to make America great again, which implies that it is not great now, but that there
was a time, in the past, when it was. And it’s only a guess, but I’m guessing that the time he has in mind is the same time when things were so good for the church—the 1950’s. For the people who can remember them, and for whom they were good years, this idea is enormously appealing. I can understand how they might say, “Yes! Let’s do that! Let’s go back to the 1950’s. Those were the good old days!” But there were some people for whom those days were not so good.
I asked my friend G (ChatGPT) to back me up with some evidence and G said: In 1955, America looked like a golden age to some. The war was over, the economy was strong, suburbs were spreading, and Elvis was on the radio. But beneath that shiny surface, the truth was far more complicated.
If you were Black in 1955, you lived under the shadow of Jim Crow. The law itself told you that you were not equal. You went to separate schools, ate in separate restaurants, rode in the back of the bus. If you tried to vote, you were blocked by poll taxes and literacy tests. That same year, a 14-year-old boy named Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi for whistling at a white girl, and thanks to an all-white jury his killers walked free.
If you were a woman, the world told you your place was in the home. Married women in many states couldn’t get a credit card or a mortgage without their husband’s signature. In the workplace, women earned about sixty cents for every dollar a man made. Professional careers like law and medicine were largely closed to you. And your choices about your own body were restricted—birth control was often illegal, abortion was criminal everywhere.
If you were gay or lesbian, the law itself treated you as a criminal. In those days when we believed that people chose to be gay every state had sodomy laws. The government was firing people suspected of homosexuality in what came to be
called the “Lavender Scare.” Police raided gay bars and published the names of those arrested in the newspaper, often destroying lives and careers.
So yes, America in 1955 was prosperous and powerful. But it was not great for everyone. It was a country where millions of people—Black, female, gay—were told in one way or another: you don’t belong.
I’ve mentioned this before when I’ve talked about Christian Nationalism: that if you believe America was founded by white, Christian men, then you might also believe that anyone who isn’t white or Christian doesn’t really belong here. You might even be willing to support efforts to push them out or send them home. On the other hand, if you are lucky enough to have been born in the USA, and if you happen to be a straight, white, Christian man, you might enjoy a profound sense of belonging, and the world as it existed in 1955 might look pretty good to you. And if someone came along who promised to take you back to those days you might be tempted to vote for him.
I could hardly blame you.
But there are things happening these days that weren’t happening in1955. For example: ICE agents are rounding up thousands and thousands of mostly Hispanic immigrants for something the president has called “mass deportations.” National Guardsmen have been deployed in our nation’s capital, where they are even now clearing out the city’s homeless population. It sounds as if America may not be great for brown people, or poor people, as well as those previously mentioned.
And this is where our political values can come into conflict with our religious values, because the Bible makes it clear that God is on the side of the poor, the oppressed, and the vulnerable. Here are just a few examples:
· Psalm 146:7-9 “The Lord executes justice for the oppressed; he gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous.”
· Zechariah 7:9-10 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the stranger, or the poor.”
· Proverbs 31:8-9 “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
· Luke 4:18-19 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
· Matthew 25:35-40 “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me… Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
And so we find ourselves at a crossroads:
There is the way of Jesus, which appears to be all about seeing the image of God in every person, and valuing that image, and lifting it up, and then there is the way
America is heading these days, which seems to be all about seeing the value of some people—mostly straight, white, wealthy, American men—but not others. The title of today’s sermon is, “the Spirit Emboldens,” and the Spirit is emboldening me to say that you cannot walk the way of Jesus and the way this nation is currently headed:
You have to choose.
In our Gospel lesson Jesus says, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.” He says, “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed.” And then he asks, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” And then he begins to talk about how families will be divided—three against two and two against three—and that division is already happening.
In my own family my five brothers and I were chatting on a message thread about our dad and the things we remembered about him when I suggested that maybe we could get together and do it in person, you know, have a “brother’s reunion.” And that’s when one of my brothers said, “I can’t do it. I can’t do friendly chit chat when the world is on fire, when people I know and love are being actively terrorized by the current administration, and three of y’all voted for this.” That shocked us. But maybe we needed to be shocked. Maybe we needed to see that growing up in the same home didn’t mean we shared the same values.
I’m not saying that our president is not a Christian, but I am saying that the way he is leading the country is not the way of Jesus. I wouldn’t expect it to be. Jesus is not trying to make America great again; Jesus is trying to bring in God’s Kingdom and the last time I checked the members and friends of Richmond’s First
Baptist Church were trying to help him.
One of the ways we do that is by seeing the image of God in every person and valuing that image. That’s what Jesus did. He calls us to do the same, and in the times in which we are living that may divide families. But really, in the end, whose side do you want to be on? In some of the harshest words recorded in the New Testament Jesus judges the world, and says to those on his left, “Depart from me, you that are accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” In other words, “You thought I didn’t matter, but I do. You thought these people didn’t matter, but they do.”
Here’s the thing about God’s kingdom: it’s not in the past, it’s in the future. We can’t go back to a time when God’s kingdom had come and God’s will was being done on earth as it is in heaven: we have to go forward. And I would love for us to go forward together, for us to decide right here and right now that the only way we will walk is the way of Jesus, and the only banner we will carry is his.
—Jim Somerville © 2025
