Politics and Church: March 16 2025

 Year C, Lent 2                              Luke 13:31-35                                                              

                 When I interviewed for my first ministry job almost 20 years ago, the rector asked me if I could avoid talking about politics from the pulpit.  This was a time when the Episcopal Church was really wrestling with the reality of gay marriage and ordained LGBTQ+ people. It was obvious to me that he wasn’t asking if I was going to preach about politics, he was asking if I was going to talk about controversial things that would upset people.  At the time, I probably had 10 sermons under my belt and I found it relatively easy to agree that I would not preach anything controversial.

Ever since then, I have been struggling with what that means…what it means when people talk about politics in the church.  The word political can mean a lot of things. It can mean something very general, like anything related to the government.  It can mean “the art of science of government.” For many people in means talking about our political leaders. Often when people use that word when talking about sermons, what they really mean is, “Are you going to say something that will upset me?”

For almost every interview for any church job, I have gotten some version of the question about how I handle politics in my preaching.  My answer goes something like this: “I preach the Biblical text. I am open to where the text and the Holy Spirit take me. Some people will perceive that as too political and some people will perceive it as not political enough.”

          The debate over politics from the pulpit is connected to the debate as to whether Jesus was political or not.  To me, that is who we should always return to when having these conversations. Unfortunately, we probably can’t agree on the answer to that question either. I bet we can all agree that Jesus shares whatever allegiance we associate with.  Are any of you voting with a political party you think Jesus would oppose? I didn’t think so.  I am pretty sure that no matter what congregation I asked that question to, no matter what their political affiliation would be, they would all be convinced they were voting with Jesus.

          Was Jesus political? It comes down to how you define politics.  If you are asking whether Jesus was critical of government officials or the actions of the government, the answer would be yes, he was political. We see that in our text today.  Herod was a leader appointed by the Roman government.  He was not popular with the Jewish people.

When the Pharisees told Jesus that he needed to leave the area because Herod was trying to kill him, Jesus said, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.”  Calling someone a fox was not a compliment.  In the Hebrew scriptures, foxes were described as destructive.  This was a critical statement of a political leader.  However, he didn’t say, “And here is a letter where I map about my recommendations about how to lead the government with more compassion.”  He wasn’t afraid to speak the truth, but he also didn’t seem overly concerned with Herod or what he was doing.  He basically said, I have more important things to do. I am casting out demons and curing people and no one will stop me from doing that.

          One of the things that we have to consider when we debate how political Jesus was or wasn’t is the kind of government they had in Israel at the time.  It was not a democracy.  They were being occupied by a foreign power, the Romans.  They couldn’t organize and get better people in leadership. No grass roots campaign was going to change the government. Their only option was a violent revolt which would have cost countless lives and have been unsuccessful.  We know this is true because 30 years after Jesus died and ten years before the Gospel of Luke was written, the Jews tried to overthrow the Romans and failed.  It was catastrophic for the Jewish people. The temple was destroyed, countless lives were lost and the Roman occupation became even more oppressive. 

Many people like to emphasize that Jesus was a revolutionary and that he was killed by the Roman government because they feared him. He was revolutionary when it came to many things, but there is no evidence that he supported overthrowing the Romans. The Romans were afraid of him because they didn’t understand him. They thought that anyone with the following and power he seemed to have would inevitably seek military power.  That was not who Jesus was.  He wasn’t a fierce animal. He wasn’t even a fox. He described himself as a mother hen longing to gather the children of God under his wings so he could protect them.  That is the kind of leader Jesus was.

The other thing we have to consider about this question is what was going on when the Gospel of Luke was written, because it was written about 40 years after Jesus died.  The Christian church was brand new.  At this point, it wasn’t being persecuted by the Romans and many people wanted to keep it that way.  It’s possible that Jesus was much more outspoken then what we read in the Gospels.  However, the author of Luke might have been trying to keep peace with the Romans and therefore didn’t focus on the negative things Jesus might have said. 

We have no way of knowing because the Gospels only contain a fraction of what Jesus said.  We could spend time hypothesizing on what a man like Jesus might have said about an oppressive Roman regime, or we could focus on what is recorded in the New Testament.

One thing that we can say for sure is that Jesus didn’t fear those in leadership.  He knew that he would die and he knew when it would happen. He wasn’t going to be threatened by people like Herod, even though Herod had killed his cousin for speaking against him.  (If you want a political preacher, look at John the Baptist.)

After Jesus left the desert where he was tempted by the devil, his very first public act was to go to the temple and read this verse from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” He then added: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, I am that person who will make these things happen.  He said a few more things alluding to the fact that gentiles would also be recipients of the good news and as a result the people listening tried to run him off a cliff.  That was this kind of thing that made Jesus revolutionary. It was his preaching and actions that showed God’s love and grace was for everyone, that everyone was worthy of God’s love.  That was one of the things that made people really angry.  Could we interpret this politically? I think we could and sometimes, we should.

If you are thinking, wait a minute, she didn’t actually answer the question, then you are kind of right.  What I am hoping is that we can all see the various sides of the argument, not so we can win the argument, but so we can understand one another. Because that is what we are missing in our political discourse today, understanding those who are different.  I am not even sure we are trying to understand. 

If Jesus was here now and was involved in politics, he would absolutely be talking to people who disagreed with him, he would even be loving them. The other thing he would be doing--he would be doing God’s work without any regard for what the current administration is doing.  The work might change a little depending on who is in charge---it might change a lot, but God’s work on earth can and will continue as long as we can endure.  And God’s people can endure. We have to endure.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he says, “But our citizenship is in heaven.”  That doesn’t mean that we stop worrying about what is happening on earth.  However, it does mean that we belong to something far greater than the United States of America.  We belong to the Kingdom of God, the one that we work to bring to earth and the one that awaits us in the next life.  Again, that doesn’t mean we stop working for justice on earth. It just means we have more reasons to hope, more reasons to endure and more reasons to love God and our neighbor.