Bartolomé de las Casas and the Sermon He Could Not Preach

In 1514, a Spanish priest named Bartolomé de las Casas sat in his study on the island of Cuba, preparing a Pentecost sermon for his colonial congregation. He was a respected clergyman, a man who said Mass faithfully and observed every feast day. He was also an encomendero — a holder of enslaved Indigenous workers who labored in his fields and mines.

That afternoon, as he turned through the book of Ecclesiasticus, a verse stopped him cold: "The bread of the needy is the life of the poor; whoever deprives them of it is a man of blood." The words cut through years of comfortable religion. De las Casas realized he had been offering God incense with bloodstained hands.

He could not preach that sermon. Instead, he freed every enslaved person under his control and spent the next fifty years — the entire rest of his life — traveling between the Americas and the Spanish court, pleading for the rights of Indigenous peoples. He testified before King Charles V. He wrote devastating accounts of colonial brutality. He became known as the Protector of the Indians.

This is precisely what the Almighty demands through Isaiah. God does not want more songs, more sacrifices, more solemn assemblies from people whose hands are "full of blood." He wants something far harder: "Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause." True worship has always walked out of the sanctuary and into the streets.