Matthew 5.21-26, 38-48 9 March 2008
“THE POLITICS OF THE GOSPEL”
So how are you doing with the massive MSNBC/Fox News multi-month marathon of political coverage? Does it entertain like a pennant race? Or did it wear thin after the first week? All of the innuendo, the veiled attack, the behind the scenes skullduggery? All of the ranting and raving, the posturing and preening, the bloated promises having so little to do with what will actually happen? All of the sound and fury signifying nothing? (Isn’t that a great word, skullduggery, I love it.)
My own unscientific exit interviews based on the responses of congregants rolling their eyes and throwing their arms in the air indicates people are fed up with it all. Winston Churchill said it best, “Democracy is the worst form of gov-ernment—except for all the rest.” That word politics sets people’s teeth on edge.
Maybe the only thing that gets people’s teeth grinding harder is when we hear of the church becoming political. For most people politics and religion go together about as well as ammonia and bleach. When people’s eyes flash over the church becoming “political”, I for one have two opposite reactions. The first is sympathy.
For the church, being political often means borrowing uncritically from the options of the ideological left and right. Have you noticed how nearly all American churches, in their social pronouncements, are truly little more than warmed-over Republican conservatism or reheated Democratic liberalism? Why come here to praise God and hear that? You could stay home and read the National Review or the Washington Post instead of getting all dressed up. Getting co-opted like this makes people cynical and jaded about religion. Evangelical or progressive, it just won’t do for the church to be the Republican or Democratic party at prayer, to call that “prophetic”, and expect others to receive our message as holy of God.
I know that fundamentalists have become toadies for the right wing. This makes us feel angry and self-righteous and superior. But it is no better if the mainline churches become the water-boy for the ideological left. In both cases, the church has given up its birthright. Rather than speak from the transcendent place of the cross and empty tomb, we have imported the world’s ways of thinking and doing business. These ways usually have more to do with the self-interest of people like ourselves than the heaven-interest of God’s holy reign. It waters down and dumbs down the Gospel. We import the world’s ideological fights into the church and wonder why the American church is divided? It should be no mystery to us.
But if my first reaction is sympathy to those who complain about the church “becoming political”, my second reaction is suspicion. For often the complaint about the church “becoming political” is a coded message that the church should remain silent about the vital issues of our time. Issues like war and peace, the environment and the economy, abortion and poverty and immigration. We should stand quietly at the sideline to let expert specialists decide, just as the Christian churches did 70 years ago in Europe as millions were marched to their doom.
The Sunday before the war in Iraq I stood in my Connecticut pulpit and preached three times at our three services what a bad idea I thought this war was. I hadn’t done that as we evicted Saddam from Kuwait because I didn’t feel the same way. No, it wasn’t about taking the side of the liberals. Most Democrats favored the military action. It was about bringing Christian conscience to bear upon what has become the most important issue facing our land during these years. I described Bishop Ambrose confronting Emperor Theodosius after his slaughter in 390 AD. The sermon is still posted on the website of the Connecticut Conference, UCC.
I mention this not to say, “I told you so”, nobody likes a smart-aleck. I am wrong as often as anyone. I mention this because since 390 AD, through Revolutionary and Civil and Vietnam wars, the church has boldly witnessed in such vital issues. And we cannot remain silent in public places where good and evil are at stake.
So I pose the question, is it possible for the church to embrace and elevate a politics more about the theology of the cross than the ideologies of self-interest? I do believe this is possible. Although as I attempt to do so, I know I won’t always get it right. That’s because my political imagination, like everybody’s, is so impov-erished, I can hardly imagine politics except without thinking in the categories supplied us by the left and the right. But today in his Sermon on the Mount Jesus points toward another unexplored political realm where God offers other options.
He speaks about how to deal with anger, what to do about retaliation, and how to respond to enemies. Even beyond what he says on these matters, notice the logic by which Jesus proceeds. In all three cases, he begins, “You have heard it said…” Then comes the transition point, “but I say to you.” In effect, Jesus says this is how the world has defined the issue. This is how the world has posed the question. This is how the world has provided you options out of which to respond.
Then he changes the terms, “but today I say to you…” As though to say, here is the real issue. As though to say, you can’t get right answers asking wrong ques-tions. As though to say, undreamt options exist we’ve not yet considered. The force of his logic is much like the force of his parables. For his parables slyly take the world apart with a winsome story and put it back together again in a way that challenges all of our preconceptions and certainties about how life must be.
What are the politics of Jesus? They are ancient promises to Israel being fulfilled in a way nobody expected; they are God’s impassioned rescue mission to save all peoples of the earth; they are realizing God is doing something completely new, taking up our cause by taking on our flesh; they are not about the fighting and violence of armed revolts that produce nothing but suffering; the politics of Jesus are about turning one’s cheek, going the second mile, and loving enemies.
I hear what you’re thinking: “that’s sweet, Dale, but it’s pie in the sky by-and-by. It has little to do with the hard political realities of an armed, dangerous world.” What did Henry Kissinger say about politics? “If you don’t like how sausage is made, don’t come into the kitchen.” Politics are ugly because they must be ugly.
But I say to you, do you recall by in the 80s when everyone assumed that change would be impossible in South Africa without massive bloodshed? Well, a bishop with an impish smile named Desmond Tutu came along and the church mediated the overthrow of apartheid and new freedoms there without immense bloodletting
Those are the politics of Jesus. Do you recall 20 years ago when not one expert in our State Department suspected the Berlin Wall could fall without great loss of life? A pope from a communist nation had more to do with bringing down that wall than any self-congratulatory Prime Minister or President. And a pastor, Lazlo Tokes, of a Hungarian Reformed church in Romania, ignited this change as he refused to let his communist-puppet bishop relocate him to an irrelevant place. The people of his church wrapped themselves around him. Soldiers fired directly into the crowd. People were outraged. Transformation followed in the eastern bloc, with candles, roses and singing. Those are the politics of Jesus, the politics of the cross, dying for what you believe in, not killing. They are not pie in the sky by and by. They are at work for good in hospitals, prisons, schools, and councils.
Let me clarify, the politics of Jesus are not about position papers, platforms and a party running for office. Gospel politics are more like becoming a body politic. Of course, that Greek word, “polis”, means gathering of people, like Indianapolis or Minneapolis. Wherever people gather, the different groupings have unique ways of ordering their life together. Politics are nothing more than how those groups order their common life. If you’ve ever coached a Little League team or led a Girl Scout troop or headed a PTA, you know those positions are intensely political.
The church is one more such gathering or polis. Except that following Christ, we differ from every other polis. How do we order our life? How do we engage the world? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, this is what God looks like. He gives us snapshots or windows so that we can gaze upon the divine nature. That way, if we wish to live in God’s image, we imitate his look: forgiving, forbearing, compassionate, intolerant of lies, and willing to speak the truth when it is costly.
So rather than overexplain, receive this image evoking the Sermon on the Mount. Perceive the politics of the Gospel not by stances and position papers, but in the body politic of the Amish after the Nickel Mines, PA tragedy of Oct., 2006. You recall a milk truck driver, Charles Roberts, stormed a one-room schoolhouse. He lined up and murdered execution-style five sweet girls before troopers rushed the school and he turned his gun upon himself. How did they cope with this tragedy?
First of all, they grieved as community more than individuals. They sang hymns, prayed together, and ate meals of grilled chicken, potatoes, and Whoopie pies. Within hours of the shooting, the Amish reached out to Roberts' family, offering condolences, hugs and support. In the following days, they continued to visit, bringing gifts and food. They invited Roberts' widow to their girls' funerals and half of those present at Robert’s funeral were the Amish. They five families touched his family again, creating a fund to support them from the millions of dol-lars donated worldwide to sustain the Amish families. The families verbally ex-pressed to Robert’s family their forgiveness of him. They refused to degrade him.
Can you see how the five families formed a political counterculture to our worldly politics? There felt no entitlement to be angrily destructive about this heinous act. They felt no obligation to hit back and hit hard than they had been hit. They felt no hatred of their “enemy” only to burrow into a life of bitterness and resentment. Such transcendent values as these are graciously subversive to worldlier politics.
Those are the politics of the Gospel. They apply to the neighbor next door and the neighbor nation at our border. They ask us: what kind of people do we wish to become? People made in God’s image? If so, our way of doing business and our goals will be in stark contrast to most. Forgiveness will be way, way up there. Holy Week, next week, reminds us of that. May this angel-tinged brand of politics leave a better taste in your mouth. For God reorders this world by these lofty and loving designs of his coming reign. Those, friends, are the politics of the Gospel. Amen.
Holy God, as high as the heaven are above the earth, so much higher are your ways above ours, as far as the east is from the west, so far are we from treating each other in the image of life as your intended it, and as you restore our rela-tions. Indeed the majesty of your ways far surpasses our richest imagining. Your forgiveness is so full and profound, that its graciousness leaves us utterly baffled.
But, Lord, we pray that your kingdom might come here and now rather than just waiting for things to be different after we die. We pray that you would be our Lord before Caesar, but we lack the spiritual imagination to envision how you would have us order our common life, treat one another, make and lift up our priorities.
O God, have mercy upon us, who can scarcely comprehend how vast your love is and how surely your dominion advances over all of the earth. Thank you for standards of forgiveness that far surpass human standards of forgiveness. And as with forgiveness, so also with love, compassion, mercy, endurance and grace.
