Today, friends… today I’ll talk about tacos. Well… here’s your sermon outline:

• Tacos
• My high school best friend
• A racist picture on my sister’s wall
• What patriotism is
• Nixon’s Southern Strategy
• The widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian
• Throwing Christ off a cliff
• Traffic lights, automatic elevator doors, Super Soakers, heart valves, and color TV
• Why tacos are awesome and why they signal the Kingdom of God

It’s a full agenda, so we better get to it.

As I mentioned last Sunday, I was a weird kid. Which prompted Julie Gilliland to say, “Weird kids make the best adults.” That’s why she’s a great confirmation mentor. As a weird kid, I didn’t like tacos. I had a very short list of things I would eat. Mostly hot dogs and cheeseburgers. When my family would go to an Asian restaurant or a Mexican establishment, I wouldn’t eat. Or I’d try to get “American food.” I was fearful of it. No real reason. I find this strange now as an adult.

Of my childhood, I mostly remember being hungry all the time and my knees hurting, both signs of growing very quickly. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that my best friend challenged me about the whole “I don’t eat tacos” thing. My buddy was from Colombia. He knew a thing or two about tacos.

He was genuinely confused by my hesitation. He had seen me put away more than my fair share of cheeseburgers. He had witnessed the destruction of many a bag of Doritos at my hands. And then he said something that changed my life:

“If you take a cheeseburger, replace the bun with Doritos, you have a taco.”

When he put it like that, the world opened up. I became less fearful.

His mom was a physical therapist. She came here seeking a better life, fleeing the civil war in Colombia. She later sent for my friend. He arrived in eighth grade and had to learn a whole new language and culture. Our football is not like his fútbol. We only touch our football with our feet about ten percent of the game. Unless you’re the Browns and you spend most of the time punting, but that’s the worst-case scenario and proven not to win you a Super Bowl, let alone a trip to the playoffs.

I helped my buddy study to become an American citizen. And doing so made me love my country more. It helped lock in facts of our civic life that I still value and now teach my own children.

My family, generations back, was also an immigrant family. We have Scots-Irish blood. My grandfather was the first child born in this country to parents who immigrated from what was then Czechoslovakia. We were strangers in a strange land once, so it was my joy to help welcome this stranger, who became my best friend.

He taught me to love tacos. And in my life, my diet became more expansive and a lot healthier. It has taken me a long time to wonder why I feared food in the first place. What was going on there? The answer is this: it was what I was marinated in.

I was reminded of this while thinking about a picture that hangs on my sister’s wall. It showed a family examining a shotgun. It was purchased at the Medina County gun show. I remember going with my mom and a friend to get it. He collected it because it was marketed as the type of shotgun used against Civil Rights marchers.

There’s a story about two fish. One fish swims up to the other and says, “How’s the water today?” The other fish replies, “Water? What’s water?”

Why would someone collect a weapon like that? The short answer: white supremacy. A desire for a particular brand of America to be true. One where only the white, European parts of our history are lifted up, and the contributions of African, Asian, Indigenous, and Latino Americans are ignored or minimized. Or when they do speak up, we collect artifacts that helped silence their voices.

I was marinaded in those waters and it took a long time for me not to be so reactionary and brittle with history. We still see this impulse today whenever cultural expression becomes politicized. When diversity is treated as a threat rather than the fact and gift it is.

Nationalism wants to sweep this complexity under the rug. It wants to deport. It wants to claim that America has always been white. But it wasn’t. Not from the beginning. The Spanish were in Florida long before Plymouth Rock. Indigenous peoples lived on this land long before any Europeans arrived. And we know that lie for what it is.

Patriotism, by contrast, is loving your country for what it is, warts and all. I’m proud to be an American. I was born here. I love this country. And I can also face its mistakes. We had dishonest dealings with Native peoples. We participated in the enslavement of Black bodies. We have historically run roughshod over the poor. And yet, we hold on to the American Dream: that anyone from anywhere can make a life here. The idea that no one is above the law. I am free to practice my religion as I see fit, and I can learn from my neighbor who is free to practice theirs. I find that remarkable. I think that’s a dream worth fighting for even though I am unsure how to help heal the sins of the past.

We are an imperfect union, yet we endeavor to form a more perfect union, so that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth. It is a republic, if we can keep it. Yet these days, that dream feels in peril. Misinformation. Partisanship. Fear.

The divide goes back to the roots of our country. Those who owned human beings and those who fought for abolition. We fought a Civil War. After it, we attempted Reconstruction, but never fully reckoned with the divide as a society. Instead, we doubled down on Jim Crow and Lost Cause mythology. The Ku Klux Klan rose, and the South promised to rise again.

These forces were once housed largely within the Democratic Party, under the banner of the Dixiecrats. Then Richard Nixon had an idea. Appeal to these voters and bring them into the Republican coalition. This became known as the Southern Strategy, and it reshaped American politics.

American evangelicals, once largely apolitical, were drawn into this movement through appeals to moral panic and a desire for cultural dominance. Leaders like Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich helped engineer the merger of conservative evangelical Christianity with nationalist politics, creating what we now call Christian nationalism. This history is well documented by scholars and explored in the film Bad Faith, which we will show on Good Friday. It tells the story of how parts of the American church betrayed Jesus, often unknowingly, by aligning faith with power.

Theology matters. Our Secretary of Defense (now rebranded to War) is a Christian Nationalist who says that the war in  Iran is to bring Jesus back. Like Bombing a country will bring back the Prince of Peace. Toxic theology kills.

Which brings us to our text.

Jesus delivers his first sermon in his hometown synagogue. He reads from Isaiah and proclaims good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, release to the captives, and freedom for the oppressed. At first, everyone speaks well of him. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they ask.

Then Jesus pushes the boundary. He invokes the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian.

Zarephath was in Sidon, a Phoenician region outside Israel, associated with enemies and outsiders. Elijah was sent there to a widow whose son died, and God restored that child through the prophet. Elisha, Elijah’s disciple, cleansed Naaman, a foreign military commander from Syria, a political and military rival of Israel.

The crowd does not like this. They become so enraged that they attempt to throw Jesus off a cliff. We always seem to want to throw Christ off a cliff when he reminds us of the expansive love of God. We persecute the prophets when they dare suggest that God’s mercy extends beyond our boundaries, beyond our tribes, beyond our political aisles.

I say all this as a descendant of Scots-Irish ancestors. I love Celtic Christianity. I’m proud of my heritage. I’m not saying don’t be proud of where you come from. What I am saying is: allow others to be proud of where they come from too.

When folks celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, suddenly everyone’s Irish. When our neighbors celebrate Black History Month or Juneteenth, join the celebration. You’ll learn something. You’ll hear great music. You’ll meet your neighbors. When our Mexican friends celebrate Cinco de Mayo, I see no harm in celebrating alongside them. Does Paul not tell us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep? Right now, many of our Hispanic and Latino neighbors are weeping amid fear, raids, and needless violence.

Nationalism is a sin. It denies the image of God in our neighbors and ignores the shared story we are part of.

Which brings me to traffic lights. Automatic elevator doors. Super Soakers. Heart valves and color TV. These everyday technologies come from Black and Hispanic inventors. They keep us safe. They heal our bodies. They bring joy. They move us through the world with dignity.

And that’s why tacos matter. When I look around this world, I see that God delights in diversity. There isn’t just one kind of tree. There are maples, oaks, elms, pines, spruces. There isn’t one type of anything. Definitely not people and culture!

Looking around the square, we see that diversity is delicious! We have Irish food. Italian food. German and Eastern European food. Mexican food. Pan-Asian cuisine. This is not a threat. These are our neighbors.

Music! There’s not one genre! Classical, jazz, Mo-town, Blues, R&B, Rock, Country, Hip hop and more! Sometimes we might not like a certain genre but there’s always an exception and when that song comes on, we nod our heads or just get up and dance.

With the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, Jesus keeps expanding the boundaries of God’s love. At first, we rejoice. Then old prejudices awaken, and fear takes over. So the question remains: are we open to others sharing in the bounty of God’s diversity, healing, and deliverance?

For some, it’s not heaven if someone else isn’t in hell. And they keep a list. That list is what put Jesus on the cross. The Spirit blows where it wills. It crosses fences and property lines. It doesn’t make lists.

What more might God do with us if we were ready to transcend the boundaries we’ve erected? I think we’d sit at more tables. We’d eat food we didn’t grow up with. We’d share recipes we know by heart. We’d beat swords into plowshares, because who has time for war with a full social calendar and a neighbor who just made an incredible meal last week? Such is the Kingdom of God. It is all around us, if we have eyes to see and taste buds brave enough to try.

For God so loved the world. We can take pride that God does indeed love and bless America. Because America is in the world, which God loves. May we love it, too.

Bibliography

Bad Faith. 2024. Documentary. Directed by Stephen Ujlaki. Accessed March 3, 2026. https://www.badfaithdocumentary.com/.

Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. New York: Liveright Publishing, 2020.

Fugelsang, John. Separation of Church and Hate. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2021.

Lynn, Jan G. What’s Wrong with the Christian Right. Brown Walker Press, 2004.

McClellan, Dan. “What is Christian Nationalism?” YouTube video. Accessed March 2, 2026. https://youtu.be/HTYCjRLw1n8?si=AcABUmoBgZwxHk_0.

Talarico, James. “James Talarico Delivers Sermon Against Christian Nationalism.” YouTube video. Accessed February 27, 2026. https://youtu.be/Blph_2RSBno?si=tSnk3wQJrfqaUp_O.

Vest Her Podcast. “Confronting Religion, Christian Nationalism and the Push for Women’s Submission.” YouTube video. Accessed March 2, 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WhiHkCN3-8.