The Message Was Never Meant for Empire

A sermon about scripture, survival, and speaking truth

I grew up where we loved all the children of the world.

I grew up where we loved all the children of the world.

Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight — I could sing it before I could read. Love was the operating system. WWJD on the bracelet, on the bumper sticker, on the wall of every youth group room I ever sat in.

Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. Love radically, love recklessly, love without condition.

That was the faith I was handed.

Love — but not him.

But I also grew up in Marietta, Georgia.

A town that once held a 45% enslaved population. A town where, in 1915, a mob dragged a Jewish man named Leo Frank from his cell and lynched him from a tree — and called it justice.

I learned about that lynching sideways, the way you learn a lot of things in the South. Learned that the hands that tied that rope belonged to someone's grandfather. Someone I knew. Someone whose family still went to church, still sang the songs, still said they loved all the children of the world.

Then I watched my church split.

Not over the resurrection. Not over the trinity. Over whether gay people counted as neighbors. I watched Charles Sineath choose a side. The wrong side of history. And I watched a congregation fracture because they couldn't agree on whether love meant all or love meant most.

Love your neighbor — but build a wall.

The pattern kept repeating.

Love the least of these — but not if they came from the wrong country, speak the wrong language, love the wrong person.

Every time: the words said love. The institution said but.

I went looking for answers.

I could have walked away.

But I didn't.

I went to theology school. I moved to Israel. I sat in the land where these words were first spoken and asked: What did they actually mean? Who were they written for? What happens when you read them in context instead of ripping them out and weaponizing them?

That's not reading scripture. That's looting it.

Here's what I found:

You can make the Bible say almost anything.

You can twist it until it blesses slaveholders and condemns the enslaved. You can bend it until it builds empires and silences dissent. You can wrench it out of shape until it tells the vulnerable that God wants them to submit to the boot on their neck.

People have. People do.

But that's not reading scripture. That's looting it.

Because the words weren't written for Bill Smith in Flagstaff.

They weren't a universal instruction manual to be read flat off the page by anyone, anywhere, in any circumstance.

They were written by specific people, to specific people, in specific circumstances, for specific reasons.

Written by the oppressed.

For the oppressed.

By people who had little.

To people who had less.

In a world where the empire could kill you for speaking the wrong name.

Romans 13 was a survival manual for the hunted.

So let's talk about Paul.

Paul, who wrote Romans. Paul, whose words get quoted every time someone in power wants to demand obedience from someone without it.

Romans 13: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God."

That's the verse they use. To defend slavery. Segregation. Family separation. Mass deportation.

Submit. Comply. God ordained this.

But who was Paul?

A man jailed in Philippi. Run out of Thessalonica. Smuggled out of Damascus in a basket. Beaten. Shipwrecked. Stoned and left for dead. Executed by Rome.

Paul spent more time in Roman custody than Roman favor. The empire he's supposedly endorsing eventually cut off his head.

And who was he writing to?

A tiny community of believers in the belly of the beast — Rome itself. People with no power, no protection, no recourse. People who'd already been expelled once. People who could be rounded up at any moment.

Paul is doing the math:

They're crucifying us. They're lighting us on fire. There are so few of us. If we all die, the message dies with us.

So when Paul writes "submit to the governing authorities," he's not endorsing empire.

He's teaching people how to survive it.

Stay hidden. Stay quiet. Pay your taxes. Don't give them a reason. Carry the message in your heart. Spread it in whispers. Grow in the shadows. If you get caught, everything stops. So don't get caught. Not yet.

Romans 13 isn't theology for the powerful.

It's a survival manual for the hunted.

We must obey God rather than human authorities.

Now let's talk about Peter.

Acts chapter 5. Peter and the apostles have been arrested — again — for preaching in Jesus's name. The high priest demands: We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name.

Peter's response: "We must obey God rather than human authorities."

But here's what matters:

Peter didn't seek this confrontation.

He was caught.

Dragged in. Arrested. Standing before the council with no more moves, no more hiding, no escape.

And in that moment — when there was nothing left to lose — he spoke the truth out loud.

The same truth that the hidden ones were carrying in their hearts.

Ember and flame. Hidden ones and witnesses.

This is the relationship:

Paul was teaching people how to stay alive long enough to spread the message.

Peter was modeling what to do when they catch you anyway.

Paul: Stay hidden. Survive. Carry it in your heart.

Peter: And when they drag you out — don't break. Speak. Let your witness become the message for everyone still hiding.

They're not two different strategies.

They're one message in two modes.

The hidden ones hold the truth in silence.

The caught ones speak it aloud — for everyone who can't.

What was Peter speaking?

The words that came out of Jesus's mouth.

Love your enemy. Blessed are the poor. The last shall be first. The kingdom belongs to the meek. Welcome the stranger. Whatever you do to the least of these — the hungry, the stranger, the imprisoned — you do to me.

That's what got him arrested.

Radical love. The kind that threatened hierarchies, toppled assumptions, said Caesar isn't Lord.

The authorities looked at that message and recognized it as dangerous.

Peter said: I don't care. I answer to something higher. Do what you're going to do.

Both men ended up in the same place.

Executed by Rome. Peter crucified upside down. Paul beheaded.

The empire they both navigated killed them both.

Paul always knew it would. He was teaching others how to delay that moment — how to survive long enough to pass the ember to the next hand, the next house, the next generation.

And he was teaching them: when they finally catch you — because they might — you become Peter.

You speak the truth that you've been carrying in your heart.

Both are faithful. Both are necessary.

This is not history. This is Tuesday.

Two thousand years later.

Minneapolis, Minnesota. Winter, 2026.

Three thousand federal agents. The largest immigration enforcement operation in American history. They're pulling people from cars. Stopping families on the way to school. Raiding homes at dawn.

Two U.S. citizens are dead.

Renee Good, shot by ICE on January 7th.

Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse. He was filming agents. Directing traffic. He saw them push a woman to the ground — and he stepped between them. Put his body in the way.

They killed him for it.

If Paul were writing today, he'd write to the Somali community in Cedar-Riverside. To undocumented families in St. Paul. To anyone with the wrong name, the wrong accent, the wrong papers.

He'd say:

Stay hidden. Stay alive. Document everything, but don't die proving a point. Go to work. Pay your taxes. Pick up your kids from school. Carry the message in your heart. Build networks they can't see, communities they can't break. The message survives if you survive.

And Peter?

Peter speaks through the ones who got caught — or who chose to stop hiding.

Through Alex Pretti, who saw a woman on the ground and couldn't look away. Who put his body in the gap. Who became the voice for everyone still hiding.

Through the churches opening their doors as sanctuary, telling DHS: We answer to something higher than your authority.

Through everyone who shows up to film, to witness, to stand — even when they're told to stop.

Both messages are alive right now. In the same city.

The grandmother keeping her head down, getting her grandchildren to school, carrying the truth in silence — she's living Romans 13. She's following Paul.

And if ICE kicks down her door. If they drag her in. If there's nowhere left to hide —

She becomes Peter.

She speaks aloud what she's been carrying in her heart.

The kid livestreaming agents on the corner — he's already crossed over. He's decided survival isn't the highest value. He's speaking for everyone who can't.

The grandmother and the kid. The hidden and the witness. Paul's students and Peter's voice.

They're not in contradiction. They need each other.

You survive. I'll speak.

You carry it. I'll proclaim it.

You keep the ember. I'll be the flame.

But here's what the faith does not hold:

The people with the badges and the guns quoting Romans 13 to demand submission.

That's not scripture. That's theft.

Paul didn't write to Rome. He wrote to the people Rome was crushing.

Peter didn't tell the Sanhedrin to submit. He told them no.

The message was never meant for empire.

It was always meant for the people empire hunts.

Which one are you being called to?

I think about the kid I was.

Singing about all the children. Believing love was the point.

I think about Marietta. The lynching in someone's family tree. The church that couldn't hold together.

I think about the years I spent looking for where the corruption entered.

And here's what I know now:

The message didn't fail.

Love your neighbor. Love the stranger. Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.

That's still the truth. That's still dangerous. That's why they're still killing people for it.

In Minneapolis right now, there are people carrying the message in their hearts. Surviving. Waiting. Following Paul.

And there are people speaking it aloud. Standing up. Becoming Peter.

The hidden and the witness.

Both faithful. Both necessary.

The question isn't which one is right.

The question is: which one are you being called to, in this moment, with what you have?

Are you called to survive — to carry the ember, to protect your family, to pass the truth to the next generation?

Or are you called to speak — to stand in the gap, to be the voice for everyone who can't?

The tradition holds both.

The faith needs both.

And the empire fears both — because it knows that the hidden become the witness, and the witness ignites the hidden, and that's how a handful of hunted believers outlasted the greatest empire the world had ever seen.

Carry it. And when they catch you — speak.

They killed Jesus.

They killed Peter.

They killed Paul.

They've killed people in Minneapolis.

And the message is still here.

Still dangerous.

Still spreading.

Still saying what it always said:

Love everyone. Especially the ones they tell you not to.

The message was never meant for empire.

It was meant for you.