We Fight to Fix What’s Actually Broken

Built Different, Week Two

Luke 4:14-30

August 10, 2025

David R Collins

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Megan and I love watching all these new documentaries.

There’s all the great true crime ones, but we don't like them to be too true crime-y. When they get too murder-y, the trailer is usually enough. There was Poop Cruise. That was a fun watch, though it did not inspire me to want to go get on a ship any time soon.

But my personal favorite are the cult documentaries. There was the one with the lady who turned herself blue with colloidal silver and said she was consulting with the ghost of Robin Williams. Anybody see that one? There were a couple great ones about Scientology, and that one about Warren Jeffs, and a bunch about Jonestown.

But this month we watched one that hit a little closer to home. It was season two of Shiny Happy People, and it was about this one particular youth ministry program in the 90s, and Megan and I had actually taken kids to one of their events. It turns out it was just like the entry level part of that particular organization, but it was a little chilling nevertheless. Because it wasn’t just about Teen Mania, which is the organization it mostly about.

It was about what it was like to grow up as an evangelical Christian in the 80s and 90s.

As we sat there on the couch, scene after scene felt a little too familiar: the songs, the slogans, the mullets, but especially the certainty, and urgency.

It’s weird to watch a cult documentary about our cult.

Now, if you don’t relate to that at all, I’m sorry, but also congratulations! Because while there were a lot of good parts about growing up in the world, There was also a lot of damage done.

I got off easy compared to most. My biggest damage was having to unlearn some magical thinking and shallow theology.

But you ladies had it worse. Because for so many of you, the weight wasn’t just on your beliefs. It was on your bodies. You were handed an long list of rules about how to not become “a stumbling block” to the men and boys around you. You were told exactly what your role in life could be, and it could be summed up by the title of another documentary, “Keep sweet. Pray and Obey.”

And for our LGBTQ friends, the damage often ran even deeper. You were told from the start that who you are is wrong, that your very existence is a problem to be solved. You learned to hide parts of yourself just to survive in spaces that claimed to speak for God. Some of you were shamed from pulpits. Some of you were prayed over like you were sick. Some of you were told to change, or else. And yet here you are. Still loving God. Still showing up. Still proving that nothing in all creation can separate you from the love of Christ.

At some point, every one of us had to decide whether to keep going the way we were taught or to find another way.

Some of you figured it out slowly. It wasn’t some big dramatic moment, just a series of little things that didn’t quite add up. A sermon that sounded more about fear than about Jesus. A friend who loved God but didn’t fit the mold and seemed more joyful for it. A quiet moment when you realized you didn’t believe something you had been taught, and the ground didn’t open up and swallow you, and you actually felt better for admitting it.

Some of you learned it the hard way. A church you trusted turned its back on you. A loss came that no one’s easy answers could touch. And in the middle of the grief or the anger or the numbness, you found that Jesus was still there. The real Jesus, not the one you had been handed.

And some of you learned it just by reading the Bible with fresh eyes. You saw Jesus ignoring the rule-keepers and making space for the people they left out. You realized you didn’t have to walk away from your faith to walk away from that old way of doing faith.

That’s what we’re talking about today.

This month we are talking about what Megan and I see as our values as a faith community going forward. It’s a way for us to unpack our vision statement: Love Like Jesus. And a way to talk about the fact that even though we are a church that has been here since 1882, and have a beautiful sanctuary with stained glass windows, we’re also kind of a start up church right now. We could be meeting in a school cafeteria, in a way.

Last week, Megan unpacked our first value, that we believe it’s never too late to start over. We start with grace. That God’s love is bigger than your worst day, your deepest hurt, or your biggest mistake. And that’s why you can always start over in every part of life, including your faith.

But starting over is only the beginning. Once you’ve stood back up, once you’ve taken that first breath of grace, the question becomes…now what? What do you do with a fresh start in a world like this one? Especially right now.

Because when you’re fortunate enough to get a fresh start, you don’t want to waste it. Even though God never runs out of them to give out, we do run out of time to make use of them. And right now, the best use of that fresh start seems to be, well…to fight.

We fight to fix what’s actually broken.

There’s a lot about that sentence you might like, or that you might not like. Some of y’all just love the idea of fighting. Or maybe you love that word fix, because there is so much that needs it. Or maybe you have some baggage about that word broken…maybe because of some of the reasons we’ve already talked about today.

That’s why I want to focus first on that word “actually”.

Because actually means we do not just take someone else’s word about what is wrong with the world. Not just because they are loud, or because they sound so certain, or because we used to believe them. A lot of the battles we were told mattered most turned out not to be about fixing anything at all. They were wedge issues, chosen precisely because they gave people someone to hate and a reason to rally together against them.

We see it in the battles over women’s bodies. We see it in the battles over whether LGBTQ people can belong. We see it in the battles over whose faith should control the laws. Those fights were framed as moral and godly, but they were designed to divide, to give a sense of purpose by finding an enemy. And they hurt people deeply.

So sometimes we do have to step into those same arenas, but not to keep those old fights going. We step in to undo the harm. To restore dignity where it was taken. To open doors that were slammed shut. To remind people that God’s love is bigger than the boxes someone else tried to put them in.

Actually means we look at what is truly broken, not what is convenient to point at. And we tell the truth about it, even when it is uncomfortable.

Which is the way Jesus showed us how to do it. Let’s look at Luke 4 together.

Luke 4:14-30

This is right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Luke. He just got back from his temptation in the desert and went straight to his home town to preach.

14 Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
 to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
 and recovery of sight to the blind,
  to set free those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

The year of the Lord’s favor’ is Bible shorthand for Jubilee. In Leviticus 25, God tells Israel that every seventh year is a sabbath year when the land rests and debts are cancelled, and after seven of those cycles the fiftieth year is Jubilee. In Jubilee, fields that had been lost return to the original families, those trapped in indentured servitude go free, and the whole economy gets a reset so that generational inequality doesn’t harden into destiny. This is the passage that Jesus chose as his sermon that day, and if you look at the rest of his ministry, he chose it as his mission statement. It’s a pretty radical concept. And they have to be wondering what he’s going to say about it.

20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Which is kind of an ambiguous interpretation. They don’t really get what he means, but he hasn’t said anything that sounds threatening yet, so they nod along and take it as good news.

22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”

And Jesus could have left it there. He could have let people who he was about to challenge think that they were all on the same page. He could have accepted the hometown applause, walked out with everyone proud of their local boy made good, and been invited back to preach again. But instead, he does the opposite. He pushes into the part they won’t like. He tells them that God’s mission, the one he just read from Isaiah, is not just for them. It’s for outsiders. It’s for people they see as enemies.

23 He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ ” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.

25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land, 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.

Which feels like a huge overreaction, right? But look around. That’s part of what’s actually broken today. This rage at foreigners being beloved isn’t just a first-century problem. We still see it in our politics, in our churches, in the way people talk about immigrants, refugees, or anyone who does not fit their picture of who belongs. It is the same fear that if God loves them, somehow there is less love left for us. The same lie that our worth depends on being ahead of somebody else.

That is why Jesus would not let it slide in Nazareth. Because if you let that kind of thinking live unchallenged, it eats away at everything God is trying to build. But Jesus also shows us that it’s okay to tick the right people off and then slip out the back, jack. Fighting to fix what’s broken doesn’t mean you have to willingly get punched in the process.

30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

So Jesus names the real issue in the room, refuses the mob, and keeps moving toward the people who need him. He is not addicted to conflict. He is faithful to his mission. That is our cue… we do not pick fights for the thrill of winning, we step into them because a neighbor is hungry, a worker is stuck in debt, a family is shut out, a kid is carrying shame. And someone somewhere is claiming that God is okay with all of that.

Repair is not quiet.

Jesus did not only feed, free, and heal… he also named what was wrong, who was being harmed, and who was doing the harming. That is part of actually. We do the work on the ground, and we also say out loud what is false and harmful, and what God values instead.

You can’t fix everything, but you can fight to fix what is actually broken.

In the World

You can fight to fix what is actually broken in the world, not just posting, not just arguing, but adding practical help to your advocacy. If you care about poverty, find one family or one cause you can tangibly support. If you care about what’s happening to immigrants right now, get to know them right here in our community. If you care about justice, make sure your efforts lift up real people, not just a position. Don’t settle for performative outrage when God is inviting you into real repair.

In the Church

You can fight to fix what is actually broken in the church, too, by telling the truth about where it’s gone wrong, even when that truth is uncomfortable, even when it sounds like a scene from one of those documentaries we talked about earlier. Those “cults” didn’t start out looking like cults; they started out looking like churches. We can’t just shake our heads at them from a distance while ignoring the same seeds all around us: the authoritarianism, the silencing of questions, the belief that protecting the institution matters more than protecting the people. Jesus didn’t play along with that, and neither should we.

If you see something, say something. When you hear it, challenge it. When you sense it in yourself, repent of it.

In Yourself

And, you can fight to fix what is actually broken in yourself. You can see clearly that the crack that runs through everything runs through you too. And that you are saved just by God’s grace in Jesus Christ, not by fixing yourself.

And if you struggle with shame and guilt, especially because of religious trauma, I hope you will come to realize that that shame and that guilt were things that were done to you, not things that you did. Jesus doesn’t just forgive sins; He removes false shame. He says, That’s not yours to carry anymore. So drop it. If you need help, we’re here to help.

Imagine if we all lived this way. If every one of us chose one fight this week that was worth our strength, our time, our prayers, and our love.

Imagine what could happen in our city if we all fought to fix what is actually broken in the world, not from behind a screen, but shoulder to shoulder with neighbors, refugees, single parents, and struggling families. Imagine the kind of healing and hope that could ripple outward if God’s people showed up with open hands and willing hearts.

Imagine what could happen if we fought to fix what is actually broken in the church, not just this church, but the church everywhere. If we were the kind of community that loved truth more than reputation, that guarded the vulnerable more than our own comfort, that refused to be silent when Jesus would speak.

And imagine what could happen if we fought to fix what is actually broken in ourselves, not with self-condemnation, but with the grace and freedom of Jesus. So that the shame someone else put on us no longer defined us, and we walked into the world lighter, freer, more ready to love than ever before.

We can’t fix everything. But if we all fought to fix what is actually broken, what a community this would be. What a blessing we would be to each other, and to this world.