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Don’t Hold Back!
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Hespeler, February 8, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Isaiah 58:1-12, Psalm 112:1-10, 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, Matthew 5:13-20
Does this sound like a good idea to you? “Shout out; do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!” That, according to our reading this morning from the Book of Isaiah, is what God said to the prophet. But it has never really seemed all that wise to me.
I am a human like everybody else. When I see what is going on in the world, I feel things, and I feel them deeply. I get angry when I see people gunned down in the streets for protesting in non-violent ways. I am upset to see even children rounded up treated like criminals for merely existing.
Economic Challenges
I am outraged to see families and seniors evicted from their homes because someone has calculated that getting them out means that they can charge more rent and boost their income. I am angry when I see large grocery chains manipulating the supply chain and collaborating to underpay their suppliers and overcharge their customers.
And I am certainly upset to hear stories about employers replacing their workers with artificial intelligence, especially when I see how it cuts off opportunities for young people to get their lives going. I am upset at the international tensions that are being raised to the boiling point, especially when it is caused by leaders who are acting like impulsive children.
I’d Better Hold Back!
I feel all of that and more. But, like a good and responsible preacher, when I approach the sermon-writing task and prepare to step into the pulpit, what do I say to myself? “Now hold on a minute there, Scott. You’ve got to hold back. You can’t just go in there and start shouting out all that stuff.
“What if there are people in the congregation who don’t see those things quite like you do? What is more, you surely don’t understand all the complexities of these difficult issues? What if you are wrong, or someone out there might be offended by your opinion? You can’t go in there and start sounding off like a trumpet!”
Wisdom
And you know what? There is a lot of wisdom in the inner voice that says all of that. The trumpet blast will turn some people off. And so, it is just a whole lot easier to just go in and say, “Let us pray and pray earnestly for those who are oppressed,” while never naming the oppressors. “Let us pray for those who can’t pay their bills,” but let’s not mention those who are making massive profits on their backs. “Let’s pray for the peacemakers,” but we had better not name those who are getting rich selling the weapons.
It is just safe and wise to hold back. And if we can just channel all the things that I am feeling and that other people are feeling into private devotion – if I can just tell us all to concentrate on personal, spiritual well-being and pretend that that alone can heal the world, well, then we can feel as if we have done something without making any waves.
God’s Message to the Prophet
So, as I prepare a sermon for this Sunday, I take the prudent course of telling myself to just hold back. And then I open up the Book of Isaiah, and what do I read? “Shout out; do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet!”
God said that to a prophet who was looking at a very similar situation. I won’t go into all the details about the historical circumstances around the time of this prophecy. I’ll just say that the scholars do have a pretty good idea of what was going on in Judah at the time. They were facing many of the same problems that we are.
Crops had failed, and food inflation was out of control. There was a lack of housing. A debt crisis had pushed multitudes into slavery. And, yes, there were even some hostile neighbours to the south who were making it impossible for them to trade.
So, I can’t help but feel as if the prophet was having many of the same feelings that I have been having when the message from God came: “Shout out; do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.”
Prophet Unleashed
That is a dangerous thing to say to someone who has strong feelings about what is going on. God is unleashing the prophet here, letting him know that all his own thoughts and feelings about what’s going on are valid. In other words, God doesn’t need to give him the rest of the script for this prophecy. All he has to do is let out what he already knows.
He notes that the people are complaining to God. “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” They have been taking the “hold back” approach. Rather than talk frankly about all the problems they have been facing, they have been turning to spiritual practices.
Thoughts and Prayer
Fasting is one of the oldest spiritual practices. You go without food for a certain amount of time as a way of showing your God that you are spiritually devoted. Fasting is usually accompanied by prayer, asking God to do something about what’s wrong with the world.
But the prophet announces that God is mad with them for their devotion. That is why God won’t answer their prayers. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean that God doesn’t want our prayers and worship? That God hates our spiritual devotion? No.
It is a bit like what has happened with the whole “thoughts and prayers” meme in our society. As you may have noticed, many people have grown increasingly angry with politicians, celebrities and other leaders who offer their “thoughts and prayers” in the aftermath of some tragedy.
What’s Wrong with Prayer?
Why do people criticize that? It is a good thing to keep victims in mind and pray for those who are suffering. It is just that people have noticed that saying such things has become a substitute for having difficult discussions about policies and procedures that may contribute to the tragedies. It is a way of holding back from challenging those who are contributing to our problems, or doing anything that might make a difference.
People have begun to see through that. That is why they react negatively to any leader who says anything about “thoughts and prayers.” Well, it seems as if God and God’s prophet are having the same reaction to the prayers of the people of Judah. They are losing patience because people are substituting prayer and fasting for doing anything about the causes of the problems they are dealing with.
Prayer as a Substitute
There is a place for praying when things go wrong in this world. It is a way of reaching out and supporting people when they are struggling and there is nothing that we can do to help them. It can also be therapeutic. When we are feeling overburdened by all the problems we see around us, prayer can be a way of asking God to meet us so that we don’t have to carry those burdens alone.
But when such prayer becomes a substitute for action that is within our ability, I do believe that God loses patience with us. When you pray for a family that is struggling, and you could offer them support, but you don’t, why would God hear your prayers? When you pray for the hungry while sitting on a surplus of food, don’t you think God might find that a bit annoying?
And the same would apply when we pray for a social or economic situation that is hurting people, but that our actions are supporting or that our silence is enabling.
Using Devotion as an Excuse
And so, the prophet, acting under God’s direct inspiration, is unleashed. And he stands up to challenge the people about how they are living.
“Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day and oppress all your workers… Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.” He is definitely not holding back here, is he?
Here, he is not just accusing them of substituting prayer and fasting for actually doing anything. He is saying that they are using their spiritual devotion as an excuse for abusing others. We don’t really know how they are doing this, but I imagine them making their workers feel guilty for demanding things like fair wages and reasonable workloads. They are telling their workers that, because they are doing the important work of fasting and interceding for the nation, their workers are just going to have to put up with long hours and no pay to cover for them.
It makes me wonder what prophets might say to the modern church if they weren’t holding back. Would they criticize the church for all the energy we put into maintaining our own privileges and existence while failing to speak up against the injustice that unfolds around us?
A Call and a Promise
The prophet goes on. “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”
But most of all, the prophet promises that, if they make this shift from devotion to action, God will respond. “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’”
Will God Just Fix Things?
Now, I think it is important to understand what is being promised here. Is the prophet saying that God hasn’t been answering their prayer because of some of these bad things that they are doing? Is God promising that, if they just make some changes, God will start to listen and fix everything?
No, it is not as simple as that. The prophet is saying that all they are doing is actually creating the crises that they are praying for God to stop.
Their mistreatment of their workers – the very people who harvest their crops – is driving the food shortages that are causing the inflation. Why would the workers produce more food, after all, when they see that it does not keep their children from starving?
Driving the Problems
Their greed is driving the housing crisis by demanding such high returns from their real estate investments that no one can pay the rent. It is also forcing ever more people into slavery to the point that there are no free men left who can serve in the army and defend the nation. It is no wonder, therefore, that the foreign enemies that surround them are taking advantage.
In other words, God is saying that they are actively causing the problems that they are asking God to solve! Is it any wonder that God has lost patience with their prayer and fasting?
But how many people did the prophet offend by saying such things? How much wiser would he have been to just hold back? How much easier to encourage the people to concentrate on spiritual devotion instead? So surely, I am extremely wise to keep on reminding myself to just hold back every time I start working on my sermons.
But I am warning you. God has not stopped speaking to God’s people. And to those whom God has called to warn them, the first message will continue to be, “Shout out; do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.”
God will call me and others to use our minds and intellects to look at the world that surrounds us. God will teach us to not hold back when we see that our actions are actively contributing to the problems that we are asking God to solve.
Who Are the Peacemakers?
Watch Sermon Video Here:
Hespeler, February 1, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
Micah 6:1-8, Psalm 15, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, Matthew 5:1-12
This is an interesting time be a Christian preacher. There is so much going on in the world that is distressing, and much of it is deeply political in nature. We can talk about international politics that affect us deeply, such as the tensions in NATO over Greenland and questions of Canadian sovereignty.
And then there are the politics that may not affect us personally but that are still deeply disturbing. An outstanding example of that over the past little while has been the rising tension and violence in Minnesota and other parts of the United States over immigration matters.
As I watch these and other similar political developments, I, like most anyone else, have strong personal reactions. I go through feelings of shock, sorrow, anger and outrage. To deny those feelings would be to be inauthentic. So, the question becomes how I can be an authentic preacher in such times?
No Expert
I am not a political commentator. Nor should I be. It is not my job to tell people what party to vote for, and the church needs to be a place where we accept different political opinions.
What is more, I am no expert in politics or international laws and treaties. I do not have any special knowledge of immigrants, refugees or how their cases and claims should be handled. So, who am I to tell you what to think about such matters? If you want to understand those things, you should listen to those who have studied the issues, not me.
But what do I do when those who do claim to be experts on those matters step into my area of expertise? What if, for example, the American Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (commonly known as ICE) starts to tell us how to interpret the Bible?
Last month, ICE, which has been given a huge budgetary increase and a mandate to hire thousands upon thousands of officers, put out a recruiting video. Except it wasn’t just a recruiting video. It was a biblical commentary.
A Recruitment Video
The video showed images of ICE agents at work. Decked out in combat uniforms and employing all manner of high-tech equipment from helicopters to night-vision goggles. They are brandishing both lethal and less-lethal weapons.
Such images of ICE at work are themselves nothing new. They may be disturbing, but anyone who has been paying attention has seen them before. What caught my attention were the words – the only words – that were part of the ad.
They appeared in Gothic letters (and yes, there was a message in the font choice – there is an association with certain political ideologies). The words that appeared over the montage were taken directly from the English Standard Bible Translation of our reading this morning: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
Now, as I said, those are the only words in the whole ad other than the contact information at the end. So, you may wonder why I would call it a commentary. How can you comment on a text without, you know, commenting? But, as we all know, a picture can be worth a thousand words. The pictures that accompany these words speak volumes.
Aggression and Violence as Solutions
They are all images that convey aggression and hostility. No actual violence is shown, of course, but the potential for it seems present in every frame. And the aggressors are clearly the ones who are being called “peacemakers” in the video.
The soundtrack of the video is a particularly dark cover of the song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” And that idea that there are bad people out there who want to take over the world seems to be the only justification for the aggression and violence of the so-called peacemakers. Their aggression is the only thing that can counter the evil of everybody else who wants to rule the world.
Enemies
So, all of this amounts to a clear commentary on this one verse from the Gospel of Matthew. It is telling us, in no uncertain terms, what Jesus meant when he spoke of peacemakers.
And what he meant, clearly, is that the world is full of people who want to rule the world to destroy it. These are the enemies; they are other. They are different from us. Given that this is a celebration of the work of ICE, they are overwhelmingly immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers and members of various minority communities.
And if that is the situation, then clearly there can only be one response. Such enemies and the danger to peace that they pose can only be defeated by overwhelming violence and repression. Therefore, a peacemaker is someone who engages in that kind of violence.
This interpretation is also saying that Jesus said that people who carry out such violence are blessed. They are endowed with special divine favour.
Sons of God
It also strangely implies that they are men. As I said, this ad uses the English Standard Version. And the ESV is the only major version that translates the final part as “sons of God.” They do this, as is explained in the preface to the translation, for dogmatic and not grammatical reasons.
The word in the original context of the Gospel of Matthew means children. Even the King James Bible translated it that way over 400 years ago. But the makers of this ad chose an outlier translation for a reason. They are also declaring that the kind of peacemaking they are talking about is a masculine endeavour. It is something done by big burly men.
And because of that, the purpose of peacemaking is to use all that violence to protect vulnerable and feminine women, most particularly represented by their boss, the Secretary of Homeland Security.
That is quite a lot of content to pack into a short video, but it is all there. And I don’t think that the makers and those who approved the ad would disagree with me that that is the message that they are trying to get across.
Is That What Jesus Meant?
But the question is, is that a good interpretation of the verse? Is that what Jesus really meant when he said it? Finally, all my years of training pay off, and I have something relevant to say! First time for everything. I don’t know if I can handle the pressure!
So, is that what Jesus meant when he spoke of peacemakers? Was he talking about people who use violence to eliminate those who are different and who disagree with you? Can you achieve peace by silencing dissent and suppressing those who resist? It may seem as if that can result in a state where there is no conflict. If that is not peace, then what is?
Pax Romana
Such an idea of peace certainly did exist in the time of Jesus. They called it the Pax Romana, or the Roman Peace, and it had been established by none other than Caesar Augustus.
Augustus had sent his legions all over the world, and using the latest in military tech, they had destroyed anyone who disagreed with him. And when no one can oppose what you want to do, there aren’t any wars. Augustus proclaimed that he had established universal peace, the Pax Romana. He even built himself a massive peace prize, which he called the Altar of Peace in Rome.
And that was the world that Jesus lived in – a world under the Roman Peace. In that world, anyone who opposed what Rome wanted to do or withheld what Rome wanted to take was brutally eliminated. So Jesus knew such a concept of peacemaking. He could have embraced it. But is that what he is referring to in this verse?
What Jesus Was Talking About
The answer, quite simply, is no. The peacemaking that Jesus was talking about was not something that could be achieved through the violent defeat of those who threaten the tranquillity that you want.
We see that in the very word that Jesus used. The word is εἰρηνοποιοί, and it has a dual meaning. It is as much about doing peaceful things as it is about bringing about a peaceful outcome. And that means that you can’t make peace without being peaceful – at least, not the kind of peace that Jesus is talking about.
This becomes clear when you see the same word used in the Letter to the Ephesians. There the writer declares that Jesus himself is our peace and that he made peace (that is the same word) by breaking down the dividing wall and bringing people together with God in a new humanity. Most importantly, it states that Jesus made this peace by sacrificing himself on the cross. (Ephesians 2:14-16)
So, the kind of peace that Jesus is talking about can only be made by bringing people together, not by exclusion or segregation. And it can’t be made by acts of war, but only by acts of peace. It cannot be made by insisting that everyone do things your way, but by acts of self-sacrifice and mercy.
A Bad Commentary
So, let me speak today with clarity and from my own area of expertise and declare that this biblical commentary made by American Immigration and Customs Enforcement is just plain wrong. Let me further suggest that federal agencies should avoid trying to interpret the Bible. It seems to me that such efforts will not only lead us to bad interpretations, but also to some pretty dark places!
But I can hear their objections from here – maybe even some of yours as well. The objection is that, if that is what Jesus means, well, Jesus must be wrong. The objection is that you can’t make peace without knocking a few heads together because that is just how it works in the real world.
Objection to the Passage
That is, in fact, the objection that is always made to just about everything that Jesus says in this entire passage that we read from the gospel this morning. None of it is practical; none of it seems like it would work in the real world.
The poor in spirit seem neither happy nor blessed because of their situation. The meek hardly seem to be poised to inherit the earth. On the contrary, the aggressive and violent seem to be actively taking it over right now.
And when people actually hunger and thirst for righteousness sake – when they stand up for someone who is being harassed or arrested because their skin is darker or because they are different – what happens. We’ve seen it. They are not blessed. They get shot down in the street.
Rejecting the Wisdom of the World
What Jesus says in this whole passage is contrary to all of the wisdom of this world. So, if you want to reject what he says, you are not going to be alone. I fully expect that the world will continue to try and make peace by violently attacking those who would oppose it.
But, for my part, I will continue to believe that those who try to create peace on earth using the weapons of war may be able to create, for a short while, a bit of space where they get to do whatever they want and no one dares to challenge them. And I will continue to acknowledge that the strong and wealthy will inherit the earth (or so they will think) by their exercise of power.
But I will know that they will ultimately fail. Their peace is never a lasting peace because Jesus was right. You can’t make peace that way.
Jesus came to announce a different way of doing things – a different kind of kingdom. And maybe if we could just get past denouncing his approach and declaring that it could never work, we could get the kind of peace that can last because it is the kind of peace that transforms the whole world from the inside out.