A Monument and a Name: A Sermon on Protest in the House of God
Preached at Blue Ocean Faith Columbus on Sunday, January 25, 2026
Reminder: I never stick completely to my written sermon. This isn’t a transcript, but the written sermon I was using when I preached.
Friends, listen for a word from God in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the 56th chapter, verses 1-7.
Thus says the Lord:
Maintain justice, and do what is right,
for soon my salvation will come
and my deliverance be revealed.
2 Happy is the mortal who does this,
the one who holds it fast,
who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it,
and refrains from doing any evil.
3 Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
“The Lord will surely separate me from his people,”
and do not let the eunuch say,
“I am just a dry tree.”
4 For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
5 I will give, in my house and within my walls,
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off.
6 And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the Sabbath and do not profane it
and hold fast my covenant—
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar,
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.
Now listen for a word from God in the Gospel according to Mark, the 11th chapter, verses 15-18.
Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves, 16 and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written,
‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?
But you have made it a den of robbers.”
18 And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him, for they were afraid of him because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.
This is the word of God for the people of God.
A Monument and a Name: A Sermon on Protest in the House of God
Friends, week ago today, a group of protesters walked into Cities Church in St. Paul, MN, during worship. They didn’t come with weapons. They didn’t come with violence. They came with their voices, their bodies, and their grief. They chanted “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good!”
The protesters came because they learned that one of the church’s pastors also serves as the acting director of the local ICE field office. They came because worship was happening in a building where a man who leads an organization that tears families apart, an agency whose actions have cost lives and spread terror through immigrant communities, was among those claiming to speak for God.
And for this act of protest, for this cry for justice inside a house of worship, civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, school board member Chauntyll Allen, and activist William Kelly were arrested. The Attorney General of the United States announced their arrests with celebration. The Vice President of the United States promised they would go to prison. Fifty federal agents showed up at Nekima Levy Armstrong’s home to arrest her, not because she was physically dangerous, but because the administration wanted a spectacle. They wanted to send a message: Do not protest. Do not resist. Do not raise your voice, even in the house of God.
But here’s what I want you to hear tonight: Those protesters did exactly what Jesus did. They followed precisely in the footsteps of the savior and liberator Christians claim to worship, the Jesus who went into the temple and disrupted worship because that worship had become complicit with systems of oppression and exclusion.
When Jesus walked into the temple in Jerusalem, he didn’t find a quiet sanctuary of prayer. He found a marketplace. He found money changers and dove sellers. He found a system that exploited the poor and excluded the outsider. And the text tells us he began to drive them out. He overturned tables. He disrupted worship. He made it impossible for business as usual to continue.
And in no uncertain terms he proclaimed that “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
For ALL nations.
Not for citizens only. Not for the documented. Not for those who look like us or speak like us or come from where we come from.
For ALL nations.
But you have made it “a den of robbers.”
A den of robbers. Now that language is important. Jesus isn’t just talking about economic theft, though that’s certainly part of it. He’s talking about a system that robs people of their dignity, their safety, and their belonging. He’s talking about religious leaders who collaborate with empire, who use their spiritual authority to legitimize violence and exclusion, who turn the house of God into a fortress that protects the powerful while casting out the vulnerable. Jesus is convicting systems which literally rob our communities of our neighbors.
Sound familiar?
When a pastor leads worship on Sunday and then spends Monday through Friday directing an agency that conducts indiscriminate raids on racially-profiled people, that uses five-year-olds as bait for their own families, that violently detains people because they look like they might be undocumented, that arrests children alone, that persecutes protestors and anyone they see as against their reign of terror—that’s exactly what Jesus was confronting. That’s exactly the kind of collaboration between religious authority and imperial violence that made Jesus overturn tables.
And when protesters walk into that space and say “This is not okay. This is not what the house of God is for. This ends now!” That’s not an attack on worship. That’s an act of worship. That’s what it looks like to actually believe that God’s house must be a house of prayer for ALL nations.
Listen! The Trump administration wants us to believe that the protesters were being disrespectful. They want us to clutch our pearls and cry about the sanctity of worship spaces. They want us to think that the real violation was disrupting a Sunday service, not the fact that an ICE agent is moonlighting as a pastor.
They fundamentally misunderstand what holy ground is. They don’t know what true worship, true service is. They’ve forgotten that sacred space isn’t made sacred by our rituals, our buildings, or the credentials of our leaders. Sacred space is made sacred by God’s presence, and God has been very clear about where God shows up.
God shows up with the foreigner. With the eunuch. With the excluded and the exiled. God shows up with the mother fleeing violence who gets shot by an immigration officer. God shows up with the protesters who risk arrest to say her name. God shows up with ICU nurses filming ICE agents and protecting fellow community members.
And God promises to give them “a monument and a name that shall not be cut off.”
Let’s sit with that language for a moment. A monument. A name. In the ancient world, your monument and your name came through your children, through your biological family, through your inclusion in the community. But God is speaking here to eunuchs and foreigners, people who were excluded from the temple, people who either couldn’t have biological children or weren’t considered part of the family of Abraham. People who the religious establishment said didn’t belong.
And God says: I will give YOU—the excluded ones, the ones they say don’t belong—I will give you a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give you an everlasting name. I will bring you to my holy mountain and make you joyful in my house of prayer.
Do you hear what God is saying? The monument isn’t for those who maintain the status quo. The monument isn’t for those who keep the temple running smoothly while empire does violence outside the doors. The monument is for those who refuse. The monument is for those who resist. The monument is for those who say, “not in God’s name and not in our community!”
When Nekima Levy Armstrong walked into Cities Church and raised her voice, she became a monument. When Chauntyll Allen and William Kelly stood with her, they became monuments. Later in the week when over 100 faith leaders were arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport protesting complicity of several airlines with ICE operations, they became monuments.
These acts of holy resistance, these moments when people put their bodies, their freedom, and their reputations on the line to stand with their neighbors, these ARE the monuments God’s talking about. These are the names that will not be cut off.
And here’s what we need to understand: This isn’t about being politically progressive. This isn’t about left or right, Republican or Democrat. This is about following Jesus, and following Jesus has always required this kind of resistance.
Jesus didn’t write letters to the temple authorities politely requesting reform. Jesus didn’t wait for the proper political moment. Jesus didn’t worry about being too disruptive or making people uncomfortable. Jesus walked in and overturned tables because the house of God had been turned into a den of robbers, and that couldn’t stand.
And Jesus paid the price for it. The religious leaders and the Roman authorities collaborated to crucify him. They killed him for this. They killed him because he insisted that the house of God must be for ALL people, because he stood with the excluded and the marginalized, because he refused to let religion become a cover for empire’s violence.
So when you see protesters arrested for doing exactly what Jesus did, when you see the full force of federal power brought down on people who dared to say “not in God’s name,” when you see religious leaders claiming that protest in church is inappropriate while saying nothing about a pastor leading an agency of deportation and death, remember whose side Jesus was on. Remember who Jesus said would receive the monument and the name.
Many people are publicly saying and even more are thinking: “But can’t we find a more respectful way to make our point? Can’t we work within the system? Can’t we have dialogue?”
And I want to be gentle with that question, because I understand it comes from a good place. In fact, in the past I’ve often been the person discouraging protests inside church buildings and particularly during active worship. But I also want to be clear: these questions and these hesitations often come from privilege. It comes from those of us who can afford to wait, who aren’t in immediate danger, who have the luxury of gradualism.
Renee Good and Alex Pretti didn’t have the luxury of waiting for dialogue. Undocumented immigrants and anyone thought to possibly be an immigrant right now doesn’t have the luxury of polite conversation. The children watching their parents be disappeared by ICE and often being detained themselves don’t have the luxury of respectful disagreement.
And here’s the other thing: they tried dialogue. Nekima Levy Armstrong called for the pastor to resign. She explained publicly why it was a “fundamental moral conflict” for someone to lead a congregation while directing an agency whose actions have cost lives and inflicted fear. She asked for accountability and investigation. And what was the response? Silence. Dismissal. Business as usual.
So, they did what prophets do. They showed up. They made the moral crisis visible. They made it impossible to pretend everything was fine. They refused to let worship continue as normal when worship was being led by someone participating in systematic violence against immigrants.
That’s what Jesus did. That’s what the prophets did. That’s what following Jesus looks like.
And following Jesus means we have to act. Not just believe the right things. Not just have the right theology. Not just talk about justice in our sermons. We have to put our privilege on the line. We have to put our bodies on the line. We have to put our reputations on the line. We have to stand with our neighbors, even when it costs us something.
Especially when it costs us something.
That’s where God is. God is with the protesters being arrested for crying out for justice. God is with people fleeing violence. God is with the families hiding from ICE raids. God is with those the religious establishment calls disruptive, inappropriate, and disrespectful.
God is always with those whom empire excludes, and God is always against those who use religion to legitimize that exclusion.
So, here’s my question for us, friends: Where do we stand?
Do we stand with the temple authorities who prioritize order over justice, who value respectability over faithfulness, who collaborate with empire while claiming to worship God?
Or do we stand with Jesus, who overturned tables, disrupted worship, and insisted that God’s house must be for ALL people, even when that cost him everything?
Do we stand with those who arrested the protesters, who brought fifty federal agents to make a spectacle, who promise to send them to prison for saying the names of people killed by ICE?
Or do we stand with Nekima, Chauntyll, and William? Do we stand with those who understand that sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is raise your voice in the house of God and refuse to be silent?
The administration is conducting mass deportation operations across this country. They’re terrorizing immigrant communities. They’re tearing families apart. They’re using the full force of federal—and often state and local—power to punish anyone who resists. And they’re doing it while wrapping themselves in the language of faith, while some church leaders stay silent or actively collaborate.
This is the moment we’re in. Many churches have become the dens of robbers Jesus was talking about.
And this is the moment when God is looking for people who will be monuments. People who will risk something. People who will act, not just believe. People who will follow Jesus, even when following Jesus means disrupting the comfortable religion that’s made its peace with empire.
So, I’m commissioning you today. I’m commissioning you to be monuments. To be witnesses. To refuse complicity. To put your privilege, your bodies, and your reputations on the line for your neighbors.
Maybe that means showing up at protests. Maybe that means opening your home as sanctuary. Maybe that means using your resources to support legal defense. Maybe that means risking arrest. Maybe that means having hard conversations with family and friends who want you to just stay quiet and be nice.
But it definitely means refusing to let worship continue as normal while our neighbors are being hunted. It definitely means refusing to accept a Christianity that collaborates with empire. It definitely means following the Jesus who overturned tables, not the domesticated Jesus who tells us to be polite while people are being deported and killed.
God is giving you a name and making you a monument.
God is calling you to be part of the house of prayer for ALL nations.
God is asking you to stand where Jesus stood, with the excluded, the exploited, and the ones empire wants to cast out.
Will you answer that call? Will you be the monument?
Will you follow Jesus, even when following Jesus requires holy resistance in the house of God?
That’s the question before us. That’s the commission we’re receiving. That’s what it means to worship the God who stands the oppressed, the marginalized, and the disinherited.
May we have the courage to answer. May we have the faith to act. May we become the monuments God is calling us to be.
Amen.