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.

Look at the Stars: March 17, 2019

Year C, Lent 2                                                                         

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18                                                                     

            I started the ordination process when I was 26.  I had just finished my 3^rd year in seminary, so things were a little backwards for me.  Typically you enter the ordination process before going to seminary. Therefore, when they told me ordination was probably 2 years out (and that was only because the Bishop was supporting an expedited process), that seemed like forever.  It wasn’t-- but at age 26, it felt like forever.   People kept telling me to be patient and that, “God’s time is not your time.”  That was really annoying…because what can you possibly say to that when the vocation you are pursuing is one  that expects that not only will you trust God, but also talk to other people about the importance of trusting God?  I was told by a mentor that I needed to be careful that I never gave the impression (to anyone in authority) that I was in a hurry and certainly that I should not complain to anyone about how long it was taking. That turned out to be very good advice.      

            Thankfully God doesn’t have the same rules about complaining.  Because if God did, Abraham would never have become the father of a nation and one of the fathers of our faith. Then again, he had more to complain about than I did.  God had picked Abraham out of obscurity to be a leader.  He had promised Abraham, that if he obeyed him, he would be given land and children.   The piece about children was extra important to Abraham because by the time God called him, his wife Sarah was already considered barren, which means they were a bit on the older side.  Despite their inability to conceive, God had promised Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the dust of the earth. Yet by the time we get to our reading for today, decades have passed since that initial promise---Abraham had done everything that God had asked of him--- and he and his wife were still childless. 

            Thus, when God came to him and declared, “Do not be afraid…I am your shield; your reward shall be very great”---Abraham’s response was a little exasperated.  Now, obviously, I wasn’t there, but I imagine Abraham reacting a bit like this:.

         He essentially said, “You haven’t even come through on the first promise you gave me.  I want a child!” God’s response is interesting.  God didn’t say, “Look, your time isn’t the same as my time.  You need to be patient.” He said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.  So shall your descendants be.” He didn’t defend his promise or the lack of progress on that promise.  He expanded the promise.  He said to Abraham, this is bigger than you can possibly imagine.  Forget the whole dust of the earth analogy I used before, now I want you to imagine the stars of the sky.  That is how vast your progeny will be. 

And you know what, that was all it took for Abraham.  He believed.  He still had some complaining to do---but he believed.  Minutes later when God again promised him acquisition of land, Abraham asked him to give him some proof.  It’s not that Abraham didn’t believe God’s promise. He did.  But he needed something tangible.

            That’s when things get a little weird in our reading.  God asked Abraham for some animals that could be sacrificed.  He asked Abraham to cut the animals in two and then Abraham fell asleep.  When it was night, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the two halves of each animal.  After the smoking pot and flaming torch passed between the sacrificed animals, the Lord made his covenant with Abraham.  Really, he affirmed the covenant that he had already made.

            Let me break down the imagery of the smoking fire pot and flaming torch.  First of all the Hebrew word translated to covenant means, “to cut.” Thus, cutting the animals in half symbolized creating/cutting the covenant.  In this scene, the smoking pot and flaming torch symbolized the Lord and by passing through the cut animals, the Lord was showing Abraham that he was the one making the promise.   By passing through these dead animals, God was deepening the promise by making it about life and death.  One commentator (Rolf Jacobson) described this by giving God these words: “I pledge my very life as surety of this promise.  If I fail to keep this promise, let me be slain just as the goat, the sheep and the ram were slain.”[1]  It’s hard to get more tangible than that.

            Here’s the thing about God.  God always keeps his promises.  Sometimes it takes a little longer than we would hope.  It would be many more years before Sarah would conceive her first born.  And it would be even more years before God would make that ultimate sacrifice that he predicted that night with Abraham—sacrificing himself. 

We are in the season of Lent.  Every Sunday, Jesus comes a little closer to his death. While God did keep his promise with Abraham, God’s people did not hold up our end of the deal. We still could not commit to a relationship with God.   But God never breaks promises and God never gives up on his children.  His love is so deep and so wide, that God will do anything to redeem that love, even if it means dying on the cross.  So despite the fact that God did not break his promise, God decided that the only way we could see his love was by sacrificing himself. 

            It’s ok to complain to God.  Because if you are complaining, that means you are still talking.  If you are still talking, that means that you still have hope.  And as long you maintain that sliver of hope, God will find a way to break through and show you how deep and wide his love for you is.  When God told Abraham to look at the sky and try to count the stars, he wasn’t just reminding him of the number of ancestors he would have.  He was encouraging him to look outside of himself.  So often, we can get caught up in our own worries (or the worries of those closest to us) that we forget to open our eyes wide enough to see the evidence of God’s love that is all around us. 

During Lent we emphasize the importance of inner reflection and examination.  That is important.  But sometimes when we are doing that internal reflection, we are just talking to ourselves instead of talking to God, or more importantly, listening to God.  God’s love is deep and wide. It lives within us and beyond us.  If for some reason, you can’t feel God within you, look outside.  Maybe, do something trite like watching the sun set over the water or gaze at the stars on a clear night or listen to a particularly powerful piece of music or maybe just take a deep breath and remember how lucky you are to be breathing when for so many, breathing is agony.  Then when you have that experience, send me an e-mail or give me a call because I need reminders of God’s majesty and love as much as each of you.  Hopefully, that is what we are for one another in the church, evidence of God’s love, a love that will never give up.

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[1] Rolf Jacobson from Working Preacher: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4001