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today. It's an honor and a privilege to have you and you're sharing time with us and making your way all the way in the midst of so many things going on in this country and in this world. But that's exactly why we need to have these conversations and learn from one another and learn from all the work that you do. So we are grateful to have you here.

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Thank you for joining us. I want to share with you a little bit about Reverend Dr. Lycia Harris, who is a theologian, an author, a pastor, and an anti-poverty organizer. So if you didn't know, she's the founder and executive director of the Cairo Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice.

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She's an ordained minister in the PCUSA. Wow, another for the PCUSA be proud of, Freedom Church of the Poor, and she teaches at Union Theological Seminary. So she is the author, co-author, and editor of a number of incredible publications, most recently the co-author of You Only Get What You're Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty.

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And she's the recipient of numerous recognitions awards, including the 30th Annual Freedom Award by the National Civil Rights Museum. Selma Bridge Award. Reverend Theo Harris has been organizing among the poor and low-income communities for 30 years, with organizations such as the National Union of the Homeless, the National Welfare Rights Union, the Coalition of Immokale Workers, Domestic Workers United, and many more. So the co-founder and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, where many of you know her probably, a national call for more revival.

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Reverend Theo Harris was raised in a family committed to social justice, civil liberties, and human rights, and has been involved in the movement for her whole life. And so we are so excited to welcome you to continue to learn how, so I'm going to plug a class, look at me. I'm sorry, and I forgot to say, I'm the Assistant Professor of Evangelism and Missions, Director of Latinx Studies, so class upcoming, The Church in the Streets, modeled after the work that people like yourself do that we look up to. So thank you and

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Welcome, please come and take the floor. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. It's really lovely to be here with you all.

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Thanks for showing up and showing out. And mostly thanks for inviting me to be a part of this lecture series. It feels very prestigious. It's really nice to be here on the campus and amongst at least some Presbyterians.

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I have been a Presbyterian my whole life, and these days, I like claiming that. So I titled the lecture, God Never Said My Abundance Will Trickle Down From the Rich to the Rest. And this afternoon I want to talk on the topic of good news. Perhaps my favorite gospel and my favorite pericope from the Bible is Luke 4.

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The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to free all those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of God's favor. So I named my son Luke for this passage, and because how the Gospel of Luke is sometimes called, especially among liberation theologians,

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gospel of the poor and there it is in that inaugural address because that's what Luke 4 is in this poor subjugated hometown of Nazareth Jesus proclaiming good news the good news of ending poverty and violence in a world with just too much of it I'm I'm excited to be able to share some good news from and to this place this afternoon. You know, my understanding of the Gospel, of Evangelion, of good news, focuses on the realization of that good news, not just the speaking of it, in the lived reality of the people, of the public. in people hearing and then doing, making, achieving peace and justice and the thriving of all creation in the here and now.

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I want to think for us for a moment about the space between proclaiming good news and the realization of it in the world, in the space between words whether it's speaking or preaching or teaching, even singing these beautiful words, and then making those words and visions a reality that improves the lives of God's sacred creation. I think maybe the space between words and deeds is also parallel to the space between speaking or preaching within the walls of sanctuaries, sensitive sights, scholarly walls, the walls of the academy, and then bringing this good news out to the streets, out to the public square, out into the things that matter in people's lives.

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These life and death moments. And so, I think those then bring me back to that Gospel of Luke. I want to start in Luke 1. My academic training is in the Bible, though most of my work is out in the world.

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So in Luke 1, Mary finds out she's pregnant. She visits her cousin Elizabeth, she sings this song of praise in a safe place, a place where authorities aren't going to come and drag her off, this unwed, teenage, undocumented, precariously housed mom. She's not gonna, in that space, be ran off for inciting a revolution. But that's basically what she's calling for.

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She sings about pulling the powerful down from their thrones and sending the rich away empty. And then a couple chapters later, and some decades of life, Mary's son Jesus preaches this message. out in public, in a place where the authorities can hear it, to a community where Mary and Jesus are from. He preaches a profound social and economic transformation is being realized there.

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Those two scenes have been in my mind for the past few months. First the scene of Mary's song of praise, and then Jesus' inaugural address. Because I think they're more than just good stories about what God wants for God's people. They're more than just biblical quotes that we know and repeat and keep them in a faraway place at a faraway time.

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But it's history breaking into the present. good news that injustice and poverty and fear may have had their day, but their time is up. And Jesus is out here on the streets, kicking ass and taking names against the racists and the misogynists and the powers and principalities who are defrauding widows' houses and making homeless children their prey. Let's bring those biblical texts to our moment now, and hear them not as nice, tender stories, but of change and transformation, of hope in hard times, with consequences.

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Perhaps folks here have seen these shirts and signs from faith leaders in Chicago, maybe folks are wearing them here in Austin as well. were immigrant justice posters at protests and at detention centers with pictures of Mary and the words of the Magnificat printed right on them. They're in public for all to see and hear. They're quotes to call out the powerful, to defend the immigrant, to heal the sick, to feed the hungry.

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They're historically and contextually aligned with the arc of the Bible. Folks wearing that at protests today or having James on a sign saying, The wages you failed to pay your workers are crying out against you. Their cries have reached the ears of God. That's what's in our Bible.

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That's what is in our traditions and our texts. And that's what we have to be hearing in our public square today. That's true evangelism. That's the good news.

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So whether it's Advent, like in Mary's Mandificat, or at Lent, like we're in right now, or in any of the liturgical seasons of of our church, we know that we follow a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew who's homeless, an asylum seeker who comes to turn over tables, pull tyrants down from their thrones, and proclaim good news and make it happen. We're very close to Holy Week. And let's think about that week in front of us.

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Starting on Palm Sunday, where there's a Poor People's March, a mule train, right? I mean, there you have Jesus entering into Jerusalem on a mule. And then he comes into the temple and he drives out all that have been defrauding the poor. He engages in what we sometimes call in our work the first moral Monday, engaging in nonviolent direct action right there in that seat of political, economic, and religious power.

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That gets him into some trouble, as direct action can do. And he goes and finds refuge in the hood. And he has dinner with his friends. And he's anointed as Christ, as Messiah, as one who has been set apart by God to reign in, to usher in a reign of abundance for all, of everybody in, nobody out.

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Everybody in. Nobody out. And then he approaches crucifixion. Because as we all know in this room what crucifixion is, it's punishment for someone who dares to confront the powers and principalities.

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It's not the punishment for average criminals and robbers. He's crucified. And then He rises. Again, reminding us that death does not have the last word.

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Now, this Holy Week story, this should feel different in this moment. Can you feel it? Are you experiencing it? Are you living out what that would have been, what that still is in our lives today, amid the death and the violence and the impoverishment of this moment?

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The story of the resurrection is this: the resistance of the poor and marginalized. always outlasts and outdoes. And this is perhaps what is so powerful about good news in a moment like this. A pull to make the gospel relevant, to make it about justice,

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to put it all out there, be willing to pay the consequences, to bring a theology of liberation to places of power and places where those in power are being covered by a religiosity of Christian nationalism, by priests of empire. But we who follow that Jesus who announces bringing good news to the Patokos, those who have been made poor, experienced injustice because of structures. We are to be chaplains of a movement that knows its first and primary purpose is to bring good news, not the bad news of detention and deportation,

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not the bad news of more poverty and homelessness, not the bad news of the death of our democracy and the spiritual death of a nation that could be great. Our understanding of good news It has to have something to say about the pain and suffering, the fear and the hopes of people who are being overcome with darkness but who are still seeking light. It must be the good news that ending poverty is possible, that immigrant families are sacred, that we must save the earth and everything living in it and on it.

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It has to be a public proclamation and a realization of faith over fear. And where you get that message is sometimes found outside of sanctuary doors and loss. I had the opportunity to go to seminary because of a scholarship in honor of William Sloan Coffin, who was known as a kind of father of peace and justice, who was the pastor, the senior pastor of the Riverside Church of New York, just across the street from Union Seminary, where I have an office and teach.

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And he was a mentor of mine, actually, from when I was a very small child. He would often say to me that few original actions come out of thoughts and ideas, but that a lot of new ideas come from new original actions. Then I wonder about this. and whether this is the case for the good news we must be bringing in this moment.

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It might not just come from inside our heads, our walls, it might instead come from life-saving public witness and action that people are being compelled into. And then from there, we can kind of understand the good news. Last week, I was meeting with a doctoral student. He's a pastor of a church of more than 10,000 in North Dakota.

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Kind of amazing to me. He's a preacher who was saying to me that it is his experience that Christians, and perhaps particularly Christian preachers, too often interpret the good news of Luke 4 to words. to having and hearing words, words about Jesus and his salvific nature, words about faith and believing in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and that for this moral leader, he wanted to focus on good news, poor, and people captive to racism and injustice need to receive. Something that's more material than words now.

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In the academy, we like words. I'm a preacher and a teacher. I like words. But what about deeds?

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This made me think about decades of my anti-poverty organizing. How in lots of towns and cities, the only homeless shelters that exist are run by Christians. And how many of those Christians insist that poor and unhoused recipients of their shelter and hospitality have to sit through religious services, often preaching and proclaiming about how they have fallen short in order to be able to receive shelter for the night or for the week or for the month. Many of those missions, the good news to the poor is not about getting out of poverty.

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It's hearing words about Jesus, often in the form of a judgment from religious leaders, about going and sinning no more. But I want to say, I don't think that's what Luke is getting at. I don't think the prophet Isaiah is all about that story either. Rather, to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim the year of God's favor, the Jubilee,

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It's about living into a reality of canceled debts, just wages, and community prosperity, where we live from the bottom and everybody can rise. So when I read or I hear Luke 4 and Isaiah 61 and Isaiah 65, I think about blowing that shofar, that ram's horn, that declares that in God's economy, as we also hear in Mary's Magnificat, Or in Jesus' inaugural address, the powerful are pulled down from their throes and the lowly are lifted up. The poor are filled with good things, and the rich and full are sent away empty handed.

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How does it change things for that to be what the gospel is? Proclaiming peace and love and truth and justice. Those are just nice words. They're about the reality that God's people are supposed to live in right now.

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It's so material. It's so concrete. It's no more death by poverty. It's an end to war.

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It's no more snap cuts or Medicaid cuts. It means the government fully funding programs of social uplift, not state sanctioned violence or detention or deportation. It means families getting to stay together and live in harmony and abundance in a state of everybody in and nobody out. And I might be repeating myself a little bit because we, for so long,

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Don't think that that's what the gospel says. I think about my relatives, some of whom were promise keepers and who would worry and worry and worry. Did I take Jesus as my Savior? Did I know the gospel truth?

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But did they, if there were people that were unhoused in their community and they were not sheltering them. Did they, if they were living in a nation, despite Matthew 25 reminding us that, What did your nation do when people didn't have enough? And that when we fail to welcome and protect and house and clothe anybody, we're failing to protect or house or clothe God, God's self.

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Sometimes I think, to understand what good news is, we have to start with a little bit of bad news. It's like, it's not this. I mean, because there's a lot of bad news in our society today. Bad news like poverty is a leading cause of death in the richest nation to ever exist.

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Billions of dollars of cuts to life-giving food and medicine is going to mean more death by poverty. It's already what's killing hundreds of thousands of people every year, 800 people today in this the richest country. Or bad news, like a thousand people are killed every year by the police. those who have vowed to protect and serve, or seven million people a year dying from pollution.

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And now, without as many regulations, how much are those numbers going to rise? Bad news is like we have fewer voting rights today than we did 50 years ago, even though ancestors fought, freedom fighters fought here in this country for those very rights. Or bad news, like there are 11 million immigrants in these yet-to-be United States who are now living in fear of detention and deportation. I got to the airport five hours early yesterday because I live in New York City.

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And as you probably have heard, ICE agents are now running things. It shouldn't have to be this way. But even with all of that bad news, and you all could add so much more, I want to say that this is not a moment to lower our standards. It's not a moment to preach a smaller gospel.

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We're not supposed to just throw up our arms and say, We know things are bad and we should just adjust to it, get used to it. I mean, it was Jesus, right, who said the poor will be with you always. No, this is not a time to say we can't do anything. Those in power are just too powerful.

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It's not a place or a space to wait and hope that others are going to stand up. We're the leaders that we've been looking for. This is also no moment to get into like a defensive crouch to fight off just the worst things without putting forth a vision of the world that we'd actually like to see, a world where everyone's needs are met with real programs, not divisionary rhetoric or scapegoating. We're God's children, made in the beautiful image of God.

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And we have to proclaim that everywhere and then make it a reality. You know, I'm emboldened by the words of Jesus in the Bible that it's not that poor people are sinners. It's that poverty is a sin. It's a sin against God.

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And if we want to honor and worship God, we are called to commit our lives to fighting poverty. in the public square. We're supposed to cry justice. We're supposed to pray freedom.

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And we're supposed to remember that in the Bible, God does not say, I didn't make enough food for you all to eat. Nowhere is my abundance full, trickled down from the rich to the rest. It doesn't suggest that God's only beloved children are white, rich Christians of the United States of America, nor, I want Peter to have to rob Paul to be able to pay our bills. Jesus doesn't say, Get a job to the homeless of our society, nor, You shall not be able to express your true self to the LGBTQ youth of our communities.

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The Bible does not proclaim that a little charity is as good as it gets, nor that the powerful should be exempt from taxes, but the poor shall pay for the business escapades and pleasures of the rich. God, the Creator of all, does not say, Drill, baby, drill to this great green earth, nor does this God say, your body, my choice to the woman of the day. And Jesus never once, not one time in that whole Bible, suggests charging lepers a copay or to stop protecting and vaccinating our children from deadly diseases.

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Nowhere does he talk about cutting tens of millions of people from accessing health care. He travels around the countryside, setting up health care for all. It seems that in biblical times of the past, and again in Jesus' day, there have been political, economic, and religious authorities, powers and principalities, who are hurting the people, shortening the lives of their followers, and allowing for unneeded death. But this is not the way of Jesus.

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This is not the will of God. This is not what follows if we listen to the good news of Jesus's life and ministry. No. Jesus is clear that whoever comes by him will be safe and free and cared for.

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He reminds that we are all, in the words of the welfare rights movement that I come from, we all have the right to thrive. and not just barely survive and so in thinking more about what it's going to take to realize this good news one more story from Luke's Gospel comes to mind Luke 18 the parable of the persistent widow and it's really one of my favorites I don't know if you can picture the scene in the parable Jesus is charging his followers to pray without ceasing. But then, instead of offering a specific prayer or ritual, he tells the story of a woman who persistently petitions a powerful judge to grant her and her community justice.

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Now, this judge is really interesting to me in this text, and I was in the Supreme Court this week hearing the most substantial case on asylum and seeing those justices poised to overturn it. So I was thinking about powerful judges, and the text tells us in this case that this judge doesn't give a damn about other humans and does not fear God. But still, somehow, This woman who has lost everything keeps coming back and coming back.

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And it's not that the judge sees the error of his ways and says, Oh, I'm going to do something good and righteous. It's not that there's a happy ending because he sees that he's wrong or he starts loving humanity or fearing God. But this woman is so darn persistent that she organizes herself and her community, and she wins justice.

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Now, I think it's a beautiful model for this moment. Instead of just waiting for others to save us, instead of wanting those who oppress and hurt to see that they're wrong, what does it look like when we act like a persistent widow? And we pray without ceasing. But that prayer takes a form of advocacy and organizing and marching and mutual aid and solidarity and coming back and coming back and coming back.

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Now, there's a famous saying that says that you're crazy if you do the same thing and you expect a different result. But in organizing, if you're not a little crazy, You're not going to win. This is a moment where we're being called to be a persistent widow.

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And when I travel around the country, I meet a whole lot of them. Folks who are not stopping in their insistence that everybody's got a right to live. And so, to me, if we're going to think about this problem, this question of good news in these bad times, I think we're asked to be and to identify more persistent widows.

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That's my charge. That's the conclusion of this lecture. Will you join in a mighty uprising of people in this holy season to actually bring good news?

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And will you do it over and over and over again until the resurrection happens? and death no longer Trump's life. Amen. Amen.