Reverend Marci Scott-Weis, MDIV

Well dear ones, today we continue our consideration of Jesus’ Upside Down Kingdom and his more radical and counter-cultural teachings. Today we are taking on both a challenging call and a hard topic. We will be working through Jesus’ call to have the last first and the first last and we will be doing that by looking at the stories and experiences of the young girls who were at the heart of the Epstein case and looking at the epidemic of sex trafficking in our world.

So, in our reading today from Mark’s gospel, the core message that Jesus is trying to get across to his disciples is a simple one. Jesus is telling us exactly who in God’s upside down kingdom should be first in God’s heart and in ours, and it is not anyone who we typically expect to be first in our society now and certainly weren’t anyone understood to be first in Jesus’ time. Then and now, the ‘first’ are the ones who think their power or status entitles them to more, to better. The ‘last’ are those who have nothing to offer, they are the weak and the vulnerable, the forgotten, and the unprotected.

In God’s upside down kingdom, however, power and status are not what matters. Instead, Jesus is essentially flipping the world’s social and spiritual “ladder” upside down. And instead, the weak, the vulnerable, the forgotten and the unprotected are the ones who are first in receiving God’s favor. And just like with the Beatitudes, this description of who in God’s upside down kingdom should be first gives us great clarity as to who, in turn, must be first in drawing our special attention and love. And it is not the first, it is the last.

Jesus’ elevation of the last as being first in God’s heart occurs throughout the gospel narratives, especially when it comes to children. He reprimanded his disciples from shushing and turning children away saying, “Let the little children come to me”. He demonstrated his protective nature when, during his ministry, he said in Luke of those who harm children: “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to sin”. Jesus placed children at the center of the kingdom, not at its margins. They were always first, never last.

And again, as Jesus teaches us about God’s upside down kingdom, we are called to make God’s upside down kingdom our reality, every day, and in every way. And that brings us to the Epstein case. And it’s hard to talk about right?

The sheer volume of names, the widespread nature of the corruption, the wealth and influence involved. What’s clear from the Epstein files is that investigations were obstructed, evidence was buried or destroyed, sweetheart deals granted, and victims silenced with threats, NDAs, settlements, and intimidation. That this was financed and laundered through shell companies and complex money trails and it was international involving multiple countries and multiple jurisdictions. The vastness of the Epstein case is so extensive, involving politicians, movie stars, financiers, CEOs, executives and many other influential people who used their positions to circumvent the laws, that it is just overwhelming to consider.

But I don’t want to spend time today talking about the details of the case or the sensational nature of the names of the rich and powerful and elite who allegedly abused these young girls. I think that unfortunately, the vast majority of the focus of this story has been on those details. And as a result of that distorted focus, we have not centered the experiences of those who were abused and their calls for justice and reform. The victims are disappearing from this narrative; they are being redacted. Out of thousands of children referenced, named, or implied in the Epstein files, only around thirty are accounted for. The rest are missing. Erased. Unanswered.

Jesus taught that in God’s upside down kingdom, those with power and status should be last. And that in God’s upside down kingdom, the vulnerable, the unprotected should be first. And so it is the stories and the calls for justice and reform from the young girls who were abused in the Epstein case, the last, that I’d like to give special attention to and focus on today.

Over the course of decades, Jeffrey Epstein trafficked and sexually exploited young girls. He oversaw a vast sex-trafficking network of underage girls. The UN and the Department of Justice have estimated that there were at least 1,200 victims, mostly females under the age of 18, most around the age of 13 with the earliest documented aged 9. Many have come forward to provide testimony and share their stories and to advocate for legal reforms to protect children from these sort of abuses in the future.

The testimonies of these women tell stories of young girls being treated as objects to be consumed rather than persons with inherent, incalculable dignity. They tell of young girls being recruited at summer camps and outside of schools, and of being groomed, coerced, and forced to recruit other children and then being transported around the world to their abusers. And the testimonies of these women also speak with voices of courage and strength seeking accountability, rejecting claims that the investigations were a “hoax” and demanding justice and reform.

Because these women know that their stories are not unique. They know that they are part of a much larger narrative of abuse. Within the last year the U.N. estimated that globally there were close to 6.4 million victims of sex trafficking with women and girls make up the vast majority of those numbers. Last year roughly 1.7 million children were estimated to be exploited in the sex trade globally and in recent years, the proportion of children among identified victims has tripled to roughly 35%.

For many months, I have been asking my peers both in person and online how they have been approaching the Epstein case and the broader implications of global sex trafficking from the pulpit and I have been met with silence. I haven’t found one peer that had addressed it. And so I kept silent as I continued holding the stories of the women and coming back to something that I said a few weeks back, ‘Silence in moments like this is never neutral. Silence becomes its own form of support’.

This we know, followers of Christ must be unambiguous: abuse of power is sin. Sexual exploitation is sin. Harming children is a sin. Harming women is a sin. Silencing victims is sin. Excusing the sin of the powerful perpetuates the sin of the powerful. If our Christianity causes us to protect the powerful and ignore the powerless, that’s when we know we are following someone other than Jesus. If we elevate the powerful and the elite to the first and regulate the weak and the vulnerable the last, we know we are not in God’s upside down kingdom.

For those of us who follow Jesus, this moment is crucial because when Christians remain quiet in the face of harm, sexual abuse, and injustice, that silence distorts the love of God in the eyes of those who have already been traumatized and experienced harm. If the church is going to maintain moral credibility, it has to choose truth-telling over silence in the face of clear moral evil.  If the world is talking about it and the church is silent because it feels politically messy or too hard to talk about, we’re missing a moment to live with integrity in God’s upside down kingdom.

Scripture tells us very clearly who in God’s upside down kingdom MUST be first in receiving God’s favor and God’s love, the weak, the unprotected, the last. Scripture then in turn tells us very clearly who in turn MUST be first in receiving our special attention and love, the weak, the unprotected, the last. Scripture tells us very clearly that speaking up and advocating for is necessary when it comes to injustices committed against those in God’s upside down kingdom who MUST be put first, the weak, the unprotected, the last.

So what does that look like? What would it mean to really put the last first in the Epstein situation and for the victims? It would mean that we would center this situation around the victims and not the celebrities. These are real people who were exploited and traumatized, not memes or conspiracy threads or gotcha moments for political foes. It would mean that we would listen to survivors stories with compassion. It would mean that we would support efforts that seek transparency, justice and reform to work to end sex trafficking and protect women and children. We must stand together, united beyond party, or politics, to end this evil and protect every child.

And most importantly, as a church, we must stand firm in saying that we give witness to the God who stands with the wounded, weeps at the sight of violence and abuse and cries out for justice. As a church, we must join our voices to the chorus demanding for justice for all who have experienced sex trafficking and who are being erased from the narratives, whose stories are being lost. As a church, we must work toward a more just and peace-filled world where every child of God is protected, is cherished and is safe.

Our call as followers of Christ, is to make God’s upside down kingdom our reality, every day, and in every way.

Our call as followers of Christ, is to make God’s upside down kingdom, a reality here and now, a reality where the last are always first, always first in our actions and always first in our hearts!

May we rise to that call!

May it be so.

Amen