A large crowd assembled on a hillside.
Then Jesus (or a guy who greatly resembled him) sat down to teach them all, saying:
“Blessed are the damn-givers, for they will lose a lot of sleep these days. They will find little rest.
Blessed are they who don’t care:
About a ceremonial Sunday faith displaying its hollow righteousness once a week in buildings where not everyone is welcome.
About sugary lip service claiming to hate the sin and love the sinner, while showing no love.
About fake news religion of flags and anthems and America’s greatness.
About sky-is-falling alarms, impending apocalypse urgency, and fierce damnation wielded like a hammer.
About phony white persecution complexes and manufactured culture wars designed to make straight caucasian martyrs.
About a nationalistic fervor that claims sole ownership of goodness and morality.
About professional grifters and hucksters peddling division to dupe the easily deceived and the already angry.
About fear-mongering bigotry that erects taller walls instead of building bigger tables.
These things are all false idols; glittering, gilded facades covering an empty faith that serves only itself.
The world is filled with such people and they are not of me even though they will attempt to commandeer my name and claim to speak for me.
No, brothers and sisters, blessed are they who give a damn:
About refugees, traversing stifling miles carrying their children, braving churning oceans in homemade rafts and crammed into blazing cargo beds in order to escape the living hell that is their home.
About parents of terribly sick children who have to choose between keeping their kids alive or keeping a roof over their heads.
About young black men born into a prison-industrial complex that profits from their incarceration and from a brutality and disregard by law enforcement that declares that their lives do not matter.
About brown-skinned, migrant toddlers taken from the arms of their parents and treated as war criminals.
About transgender teenagers living in bodies they do not feel at home in, standing outside churches that offer them no respite from the cruelty they live exposed to.
About single mothers making wages that can never sustain any semblance of stability and health—that will leave them perpetually under water and forever in the red.
About second graders forced to do active shooter drills and high schoolers worried about dying in their hallways, because powerful men love their guns more than someone else’s children.
About Muslim families treated as threats and terrorists because opportunistic preachers and politicians have painted them with such a brush.
About the full, expansive breadth of humanity that is made in God’s image and deserves full access to freedom and opportunity and love and sustenance.
Be diligent and listen carefully in these days.
Those who give a damn will be my clear, gentle voice cutting through a cacophony of resounding gong and clanging cymbal Christians, letting the outsiders and the invisible and the oppressed know that they are welcomed and seen and loved.
They will be the unapologetic carriers of the common good news; joy and rest for the poor, and the powerless, and those once pushed to the periphery.
Do not be fooled. Those who give a damn will not have it easy here. They will face the slings and arrows and incendiary sermons of those privileged, coddled, and entitled few who do not want the ground leveled; those who will fight like mortally wounded animals because they see diversity as a threat and equality as oppression.
But you who would follow after me need to keep going—because goodness is needed most when bad men have the greatest power.
Many will come and claim to be of me, but do not fall for their clever deception or their flowery prayers or their show piety.
Those who love me will be those whose lives yield compassion and mercy, whose actions welcome in peace and usher in justice, those who care for others as much as they care for themselves.
Blessed are the damn-givers—for they will bring Heaven down to earth.”
And after he had finished speaking, many were overjoyed and moved to tears. There was great jubilation and dancing.
But a few of the wealthiest and whitest among them burned with anger, because they realized the end was near—the meek were finally inheriting the earth.
