Say the Hard Thing

There are moments in ministry when you know, before the words even leave your mouth, that people may not stay to hear the end of the sermon.

I have lived that moment.

Years ago, while serving on the Southern Oregon Coast, the movement for Black Lives Matter was growing in visibility across the country. Conversations about race, justice, policing, and history were becoming louder, more public, and more divisive. Many churches avoided the topic entirely.

It feels safer that way.

But I could not reconcile silence with the Gospel.

That particular week, I had been attending the Northwest Leadership Institute, and we were talking about re-forming who we were as Christians. Not reformation as an abstract theological concept from 500 years ago, but re-forming ourselves right here, right now. One of the speakers, Rev. Shalom Agtarap, said something that stayed with me:

“We judge and deny the creation before we even create it.”

That line lodged itself deep in my spirit.

So that Sunday, preaching on John 3, I moved beyond the comfort of John 3:16 and into the harder verses that follow — the verses about judgment, light, truth, and the ways we reveal ourselves by how we respond to one another. I preached about how Christians are often far more eager to condemn others than to examine ourselves. I spoke about the sin of superiority. About how easy it is to dehumanize people whose stories we have never bothered to hear.

And then I named something painful.

I told the story of Alonzo Tucker, a 28-year-old Black man lynched in Coos Bay in 1902 — the only documented racial lynching in Oregon’s history. Documented. I'm certain there were others. I may have said that verbally in that sermon. A mob shot him, hanged him from a bridge, and no one was ever held accountable.

I also named the racism and hate still present in our communities (10 years later similar situations are still occurring): a gay teenager beaten near a school path. Latino students told to “go back to Mexico.” Children learning prejudice before they have even learned compassion.

Fifteen people walked out of worship that morning.

Not after the sermon. During it.

I remember watching them leave. Of course, they made a fuss as they were leaving. And only two met with me following their leaving - the rest ghosted myself and the church as is often the case when disagreements happen.

And if I am honest, it hurt. But I wasn't surprised. I could have handled it better - I knew it was about their own unsettledness with racism, and yet I took it personally.

Pastors are human beings. We want people to like us. We want worship to feel hopeful and warm and inspiring. We want to believe that if we explain ourselves clearly enough, people will understand our hearts.

But ministry is not about maintaining comfort.

The Gospel has never been particularly concerned with our comfort.

As a cradle United Methodist, I grew up steeped in a theology of prevenient grace — the belief that God’s grace reaches toward us before we are even aware of it. This grace is about God's action and has nothing to do with our own. It is truly available for all people. I was raised believing in an open Communion table where all are welcome, without regard to difference or status or worthiness. I learned that faith is not simply about “acts of piety” — prayer, worship, scripture reading — but also “acts of mercy”: caring for the sick, confronting injustice, feeding people who are hungry, and working toward a more compassionate world. At its best, the church has taught me that God’s love is expansive and available to everyone.

And yet, the church has not always lived up to the beauty of its own theology.

The denomination I love has caused real harm — particularly to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color through colonial systems and missionary practices that often centered power instead of partnership. LGBTQ+ people, despite being beloved children of God, have too often been told that their relationships, identities, and even their calls to ministry are somehow incompatible with the life of the church. It is impossible to preach grace honestly without also acknowledging the places where the church has failed to embody it.

I remember a moment that shifted something permanently in me. I was pregnant with my son and chatting casually before worship one Sunday when a congregation member overheard me say that I would love my child no matter what — including if they someday identified as LGBTQ+. Apparently, even that simple statement of unconditional love was too much. The person sat through the beginning of worship, stewing in anger, and then stood up in the middle of my sermon and walked out loudly, never to return.

That moment clarified something for me.

Up until then, I had often softened my language in sermons. I used broad phrases like “God loves everyone” and hoped people would fill in the blanks themselves. I avoided specificity because specificity can make people uncomfortable. But after realizing that even saying “I will love my child no matter what” was apparently controversial, I stopped hiding behind vague language designed to preserve comfort. I started naming marginalized communities directly. I stopped pretending that “All Lives Matter” was the same thing as saying "Black Lives Matter" in a world where Black lives have repeatedly been treated as disposable. I spoke openly about LGBTQ+ inclusion and ordination because real people’s lives were at stake.

Ironically, the more specific I became about love, the more resistance I encountered.

More people have left my churches over my support of inclusion of marginalized people than over almost anything else. And when I preached about the lynching of Alonzo Tucker, some well meaning folks told me afterward, “You shouldn’t talk about that in a sermon, Pastor. Did you see all the people leave?”

But where else should we talk about it?

If the church cannot tell the truth about hatred, violence, exclusion, and injustice — if we cannot bring those realities before God and wrestle with them honestly — then what exactly are we doing? I cannot believe that violence toward others is of God. The Gospel was never meant to exist apart from the real suffering of real people. Jesus did not minister in abstraction. Jesus spoke directly into systems of oppression, fear, exclusion, and power. And if we claim to follow Jesus, then we cannot only preach grace when it is comfortable or convenient.

Jesus consistently erred toward welcome. Toward grace. Toward the people others excluded, dismissed, judged, or feared. Over and over again, Jesus crossed the boundaries society insisted should remain in place. Samaritans. Tax collectors. Women. Lepers. Foreigners. The poor. The sinner. The outsider.

And somehow, the church still struggles to understand that love without justice is not really love at all.

What I have learned over the years is this: saying the hard stuff as a pastor is not about being provocative for the sake of attention. It is not about political posturing. It is not about trying to “win” some ideological argument.

It is about asking whether the world knows us by our love.

Because if our theology does not make room for the humanity of other people, then it is not what Jesus has asked of humanity.

When I preach about racism, LGBTQ+ inclusion, immigration, disability, poverty, or injustice, I know there are risks. I know some people will disagree. Folks will say I'm being "too political." Some will leave. Some will send emails. Some will quietly disappear.

But I also know who is listening.

The teenager wondering if church is safe for them.

The immigrant family trying to decide whether Christians hate them.

The exhausted parent of a disabled child wondering whether their child belongs.

The person carrying shame because of who they are or who they love.

The person who has only ever experienced religion as judgment.

Those people are listening too.

And I would rather err on the side of welcome than exclusion every single time.

I would rather stand before God someday having loved too broadly than having drawn the circle too small.

Because the Gospel keeps insisting that God so loved the world.

The whole world.

Not just the people who think like us, vote like us, worship like us, or make us comfortable.

The whole world.

And if the church cannot say that clearly — not just privately, but publicly — then who will?