In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
It’s a joy to gather each Sunday to worship the Lord. He, of course, was born of a virgin under a bright shining star. He brings salvation to all his people and peace to the whole earth, and this Good News is for all. Praise to our Messiah, Caesar Augustus, for all he does for us!
Oh, did you think I was talking about someone else? You see, the Emperor of Rome went by familiar titles such as Lord, Prince of Peace, and King of Kings. He was seen as the Savior of the world and when Rome came to a new territory, the good news was announced to the people and this good news was called a “gospel.” So when Christians talked about Jesus using the same words, when people like Luke and Matthew chose to write about Jesus and called these works “Gospels,” they were very clearly and intentionally engaging the political and power structures of their day.
To be clear, politics is built on the Greek word polis, which means city, so politics is nothing more than how we live with each other, how we structure our institutions, what sort of rules we put in place. Anytime two people are gathered together, politics are involved – your family has a political system, as does your workplace, our church, our city, our nation, and our world. Often, when people say that they’re tired of politics, they usually don’t mean that they’re tired of people and are contemplating moving into the wilderness.
Rather, what we get tired of is partisanship. And I get it – the political climate of our society has been nothing short of repulsive, disgusting, and divisive recently. I get that sometimes we want Sunday worship to be an escape from all of this. That great hymn “O God, our help in ages past” says that God is “our shelter from the stormy blast.” It seems that the rancor of politics has invaded every part of our lives, we just want an escape from it. Why can’t Sunday morning be that time?
Absolutely, partisanship is of the Devil and has no place in Sunday worship. That’s the great thing about worship – we sing together, we pass the Peace, we share the sacred meal of Eucharist – and it doesn’t matter if we agree everything, it doesn’t matter if we voted differently, it doesn’t matter if we cheer for different teams, it doesn’t even matter if don’t believe exactly the same things about God. Anything that divides us from God or from each other has no place in Sunday worship.
I listen to a lot of podcasts and I used to listen to sermons from a fairly well-known church in New York. But after a few highly partisan and very liberal sermons, I’ll tell you that I deleted it from my phone. Had I been in the congregation, I probably would have walked out of the building during the sermon. I understand that politicians and partisanship have no place in a sermon. When I preach, I pray with the text for a while. This sermon has been in my prayers and in my mind for about 5 weeks. I labor over each word to make sure that what comes through isn’t my opinion but rather the fruit of the Holy Spirit. As a mere mortal, I make mistakes. And certainly, I could avoid every topic that could ever possibly upset someone – but then I’d no longer be preaching the Gospel.
When it comes to how we live with each other, how we care for each other, how we structure our society – that’s at the core of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I mean this with all seriousness, if I ever commit the sin of partisanship, call me out on it; and when I forsake the Christian task about preaching the love of God, call me out on that as well.
Isn’t it interesting that in our Creed, each week we say the name “Pontus Pilate”? The only reason that his name is in there is as a historical marker. The Creed says nothing about Jesus’ teachings or miracles, but by mentioning Pilate, it reminds us of the political dimensions of our faith. And throughout the Old and New Testaments, there really are two major topics – learning to worship and obey God and rules for how we are to live in community. The Bible is about these two things, religion and politics. There’s that old advice that if we want to maintain pleasant company, we should avoid taking about religion and politics. And when it comes to dinner parties, that’s probably good advice. But when it comes to church, that advice is, quite literally, the work of the Devil. Consider this story we heard in Matthew this morning.
Jesus is saying to the disciples, “Fasten your seat belts, this is about to get political.” And by political Jesus doesn’t mean that he’s going out on the campaign trail, he doesn’t mean that he’s going to cause discord. What he means is that following him is going to mean that we follow God more than the Emperor, he means that being a person of faith is going to change how we relate to each other. And Jesus knows that when he preaches this message of repentance and transformation to those in power that those in power aren’t going to like the prospect of losing their power. And so Peter says “God forbid it, Lord!” He’s essentially saying, “Look, Jesus, this is a nice thing that we’ve got going – your parables are great and the feeding of the 5,000 was such a nice thing to do for those hungry people. But let’s not go to Jerusalem, let’s not get involved in political topics, let’s just have this nice little ministry.”
And Jesus’ response is “Get behind me, Satan.” To ignore the community, to ignore the oppressed, to ignore injustice is Satanic. One of the early heresies in the Church was called Gnosticism, and in it, people believed that they had special knowledge which would save them. If that sounds a bit like modern-Christians whose faith can be summed up as “Believe that Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior and you’ll be saved,” that’s because there are similarities. This was deemed a heresy because it made faith personal instead of communal. It said that Gospel wasn’t relevant to all parts of our lives. It reduced God to a personal savior instead of the Savior of all of Creation.
That’s a temptation we all face: the temptation to close ourselves off to others. Because, let’s face it, dealing with other people is hard, and those are the people we like. Spouses will often tell you that a marriage is hard work, and those people love each other. Dealing with strangers, people who we genuinely don’t like, that’s hard stuff. So it’s tempting to say, “I’ll worry about myself, let them worry about themselves.” But as Jesus says “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” If we live only for ourselves, only focused on our problems, well, we’re going to lose our life, according to Jesus.
So it’s fairly clear that that we need to be involved in the affairs of the community. Some call this “politics” others call it “being a part of humanity,” but whatever you choose to call it, the question is how are we involved? Are we adding to the division and discord? Are we hiding our head in the sand? Or do we bring the light of the Gospel? Because that’s really the question. You can run, but you can’t hide from questions about how we live in community with each other. But we can decide to bring the light of Christ into our interactions with others.
As we’ve been reading through Romans this summer, we’ve read about how St. Paul wrote about the power of the grace of God to transform our lives. As Paul moves towards the conclusion of his letter to Rome, in today’s passage he begins to offer some practical ways to live into this grace. You might even call this passage the political manifesto of St. Paul. He starts with “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection.”
That phrase “Let love be genuine” really is the starting point. By genuine love, Paul means that love ought to be sincere and not hypocritical. So, we don’t say that we love each other and act as if we don’t. Love is about word and deed. Then Paul tells us a bit more about what this love looks like. It it’s about honoring and respecting each other. It’s about being hopeful, patient, and steadfast in prayer. It’s about helping those in need and showing hospitality to strangers. Love compels us to bless, not curse, those who persecute us. It’s about rejoicing with the joyful and weeping with the mournful. So we celebrate the call of our new Director of Music Ministry at the same time that we weep over the flooding in Houston. In the politics of Paul, we are to live in harmony with one another, not being haughty but being with the lowly. We are humble and we never repay evil with evil or snub for snub. Instead, we feed the hungry, even if they are our enemies. We leave the work of judgment and vengeance to God and live peaceably with all. This is the what love looks like in community – call it following Jesus, call it politics, call it the Gospel, call it whatever you like, but let love be genuine.
The thing is, we don’t like disruptions or conflicts, but everything about Jesus is a disruption and the Cross is the result of a conflict. God broke into time in Jesus. Jesus disrupted the effects of Sin and Death by his Resurrection. He disrupted the present age and ushered in the Kingdom of God. And the thing is, Jesus saves us not only from Sin and Death, but Jesus can and does also save us from ourselves – from our destructive behaviors, from our short-sightedness, from our divisions. Believe or not, if we give him enough space to work, Jesus can even redeem politics. If the love of God can raise Jesus from the dead, why can’t the love of God save our relationships, our society, our political system?
In the same way that Jesus transforms death to new life, he can transform partisanship in City Hall, Raleigh, and Washington into the good and holy work of taking care of the community. Jesus can restore our faith in humanity, Jesus can make politics to be noble work instead of a dirty word. But if we deny him access by saying “Politics has no place in the church” or “God forbid it, Lord,” as Peter did, then we might not encounter the depths of Jesus’ peace and redemption.
And this is important work right now. Our society is looking to you, to the Church to see how we respond. If we’ve been redeemed, then shouldn’t we act like we’ve been redeemed? If we profess that the love of God saves us, shouldn’t the love of God be evident in our lives? The reason why people are turning away from the Church isn’t because they don’t like our music or they don’t find power in the Sacraments, but it’s because they find the church to be un-genuine. We all long for peace and a political system that works, but when all the Church seems to do is fight with each other, people assume that salvation isn’t found here.
I heard a clergyperson in Charlottesville say that during the protests there, that some young people came and joined the clergy in non-violent presence. They got to talking and asked where these young adults went to church. They said “Oh, no, we’re not like that. We don’t believe any of that stuff, but we know that more violence isn’t the answer, and we figured a group of Christians was the only sure place to find non-violence.”
This is our evangelical moment as the Body of Christ. Our society is looking to us for moral leadership, for courage, for unity. We can’t throw this opportunity away because we’re afraid to engage with hard questions or political topics. We can’t ignore the hunger that people have for peace and reconciliation. Because right there, on that altar, is what people are searching for. Maybe you’re even hungry for it. God had blessed us with the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. We have access to God’s inexhaustible supply of mercy, healing, peace, and love. And our communities, our political systems, our schools, our businesses, our households, even our churches need to feed on the bread of life and drink of God’s saving grace. Because there is another way than partisan division, and that is the way of Christ. The way of Christ isn’t liberal and it isn’t conservative. It doesn’t line up with any political platform. The way of Christ is the way of the Cross, the way of genuine love, the way of the Gospel, the Good News that God loves us, that Jesus is risen, and that the Spirit is active in us. The world desperately needs this way of Christ to be a viable option and it needs to see this way manifest in us.
St. Augustine once said to his congregation as they were preparing to receive Eucharist to “become what you receive.” In just a few moments, we will receive the bread of life and the cup of salvation. May God grant us to become those things for our community. May God’s peace so fill our souls that we bring that peace to our relationships. May God’s mercy so fill our minds that our society is redeemed by compassion and humility. May God’s love so fill our hearts, that God’s love in us be genuine. Amen.
