Sunday sermons ooze venom when, with unmitigated certainty, pastors assault the humanity of their brothers and sisters in ways the Jesus never did. Baptist preacher Justin Zhong approved of his congregation’s call for the death of LGBTQ people (“Church Doubles Down,” 2025), and Baptist pastor Dillion Awes said that gays should be lined up against a wall and shot. (Burke, 2022). Baptist Pastor Ed Young of Texas references immigrants in his sermons as “undesirables” and “garbage” (Houston SBC, 2024).
Jesus is not on record for mercurial punishment of those who transgressed. He is on record for his intervention and mercy. As men took stones in hand to kill a woman caught in adultery, Jesus wrote in the dust and then directed that he who was without sin throw the first stone (Jn. 8:1-11). The mob disappeared. The man who participated in the adultery was not mentioned. Later, readers find Peter in draconian stride as he confronts Ananias and Sapphira’s withholding of proceeds from a land sale (Acts 5:1-11). Since they were obligated to give proceeds to the community, and since they lied about their giving, the couple died as a result of Peter’s judgement. Many theologians insist that God, not Peter, killed the two, but questions remain: why did Peter not imitate Jesus’ forgiveness? Was Peter’s actions righteous because they served to warn the faithful to guard against temptation or to purify the community? Why did Jesus never punish sinners to warn the faithful or to purify the community?
Jesus both fulfills and replaces the Mosaic law that bound the people to God for centuries. Mosaic law is filled with directives against worshiping idols, rules about diet and clothing, laws how to fight wars and execute people. Its sexual prohibitions against incest, homosexuality, bestiality, cross dressing, rape, and masturbation (Lev. 18, Duet. 22) echo ancient Near Eastern doctrines that sex is for reproduction and that women are property.
The covenants between the Israelites, including the Abrahamic, Davidic, Mosaic, and Noahic, represented a unique relationship between God and the Israelites, which culminates in the assertion that God has chosen the Israelites to reveal the one true God to all nations. Fortified by the belief that they were in possession of a sacred calling and exclusive knowledge about God’s will, the Israelites maintained a tribal identity in the ancient world and behaved like other tribes. They scorned Samaritans, who were also Jews, and waged wars of expansion. The Mosaic law provided the Jews with crisp directives on how to be a truly pious and righteous Jew. It provided cultural norms that reinforced their sense of a special identity among a world of tribes.
Christians believe that Jesus represents a new covenant between God and the people, but they do not always like that new covenant. The radical covenant that Jesus announced was not tribal in nature. Instead, it was a call for all tribes and nations to the Kingdom of God, the one God of all creation. Jesus flies in the face of the letter of the law, revealing that God wants something more than obedience — something more than reflexive adherence to rituals and rules. His commandment to love one another as “I have loved you” (Jn. 15:12) is an invitation to a radical way of life. It asks more than the directive to “love your neighbor as yourself,” because we often love ourselves in ways that are selfish and myopic. To love as Jesus loved is oppositional to popular culture that constantly tells us indulge ourselves, assert our egos, and to base our sense of identity and purpose on material ambitions rather than spiritual commitments and beliefs.
Perhaps the greatest objection that many Christians have to Jesus is the rejection of the Jesus that calls upon the faithful to transform themselves and to live in the house of God’s love rather than a house of ego. To love a s Jesus loves invites the faithful to see that the love of God surpasses Mosaic laws in its capacity for compassion, forgiveness, and mercy, and that it calls on the faithful to lead with humility rather than judgment. It is much easier to follow the laws than it is to undertake a thorough transformation of self. Through the lens of law, morality is black and white, and so is the word of God. There is no need to grasp the complexity of the human condition nor for encounters with God in our conscience to wrestle with the implications for love in such complexity. A legalistic approach to God is often more socially acceptable than the approach that necessitates meditation, deliberation, education, and compassion. It is also a way to avoid picking up the cross and following Jesus, and a way to make vengeance, judgmental dispositions, and perhaps, even arrogance, the centerpiece of Christianity.
References
Burke, Minyvonne. Texas pastor says gay people should be ‘shot in the back of the head’ in shocking sermon. NBC News, June 9, 2022. Texas pastor says gay people should be ‘shot in the back of the head’ in shocking sermon
Church Doubles Down After Preacher Encouraged Prayers for LGBTQ Deaths. Newsweek, July 4, 2025.
Houston SBC Pastor Ed Young Calls Migrants ‘Garbage’ in Sunday Sermon. Feb 2, 2024. Texas Southern Baptist pastor spews anti-immigration sermon
