I wish the preacher would talk about politics in
church…said no one…ever.
Actually, that’s not quite true. According to a recent
Public Religion Research Institute survey, 18% of
churchgoers wish they heard more about political
divisions from the pulpit. So, to one in every five of
you, you are welcome! To the rest, hang in there! It
will be over soon.
For now, we’ll leave aside the thorny question of what
constitutes a political issue in church. Among some,
the color of the carpet or the words of the Doxology
would qualify. Dare I say…applause in worship? The
uncomfortable truth is we need to talk about the
political climate because political animosity is tearing
us apart and threatening our future. If you haven’t
witnessed this in your own life, God bless you, but you
have surely heard about it. A recent essay by Thomas
Edsall makes the point plain. His title is: “Gut-Level
Hatred Is Consuming Our Political Life.”
This downward spiral toward gut-level hatred should be
a cause of deep concern for all people of faith. Without
a foundation of basic understanding and empathy,
challenging tasks like cooperation and compromise
for the common good become nearly impossible. As
a pastor, I am particularly concerned about how this
animosity has invaded communities of faith. Some
churches become little more than weekly rallies for
political causes or even candidates. In other cases,
escalating disagreement devolves into open hostility,
and the Body of Christ is irreparably fractured. My list
of colleagues who have left congregations (or ministry
altogether) in the last three years because of threats or
the persistent strain of unabated conflict is growing.
For the sake of our shared future, for posterity’s sake,
something must change.
And so, we need to talk about politics in church
because we are impacted by the alarming trends
around us and for another reason as well. Pseudoreligious language is being used to bolster lies that
are not only divisive but deeply dangerous. The rise
of Christian nationalism (a topic about which we will
learn more this fall) is perhaps the most pernicious
of these lies. Trading on appeals to blatant racism
and stoking flames of fear, messengers of Christian
nationalism aim to drive wedges of division even
deeper in pursuit of political power on religious
grounds. For shame. When we are this divided and
the fires of our hatred are fed, the sad truth is that
violence becomes inevitable.
And so, we need to talk about politics in church
because, in the vacuum left by the silence of our
hushed voices, pronouncements that betray the
gospel and twist the scriptures into a weapon are
given spotlights and megaphones.
And this is not the first time that faith has been
warped in such a tragic way. The history hits close
to home. This summer, I read Timothy Egan’s Fever
in the Heartland. It is the disturbing story of the
Ku Klux Klan’s reemergence in the early Twentieth
Century, a rise centered in the state of Indiana and
made possible by the active and public leadership
of Christian clergy. On a Sunday in January of 1923,
the Reverend Aubrey H. Moore took to the pulpit
of First Christian Church in Noblesville to answer
the question from the title of his much-publicized
sermon: “Is the Ku Klux Klan a Menace to America?”
Now, Moore was no outlier; he was Noblesville’s most
popular preacher a century ago. The local newspaper
reported that the gathering in his church that day was
the largest in a house of worship in many years. The
pastor proceeded to defend, and then openly praise,
the Klan. The menace, it turns out, was its enemies.
Reverend Moore closed his sermon with a prayer,
asking God to “bless every Ku Kluxer who may be
under the sound of my voice.” And the congregation
rose with their hands in the air as the preacher
concluded, “I would rather wear a white sheet in the
dark than see my country in a shroud.”
This history stands as a warning to us—that in a time
of rising extremism and bitter division, the voice of
faith must be clear and rooted in the Gospel. The
voice of insipid fear, and the drive for power, can
cause us to veer from the paths of righteousness in
ways we might not even imagine possible. Those
Christian clergy who provided religious justification
for the KKK’s open pursuit of power were people just
like me, just like us. They were rewarded with financial
support and political influence. Those preachers had
much to gain. All they had to do was forfeit their soul.
Baptist theologian Russell Moore has been writing
passionately in recent years about the need for the
Church of Jesus Christ to repent if we are to offer
a compelling word to the world. This description
particularly struck me. He writes, “We are losing
too many of a generation—not because they are
secularists but because they believe [that deep
down] we are.” In other words, there are many today
who assume that the Church has sold its soul for
influence, and it is hard to blame them. For religious
faith captive to the quest for political power breeds
justifiable cynicism, and we are raising a generation
of religious cynics. We need to offer a courageous,
Christ-centered alternative.
It might surprise you that I think the answer comes
in this morning’s scripture passage from the Gospel
of Matthew. This is not a greatest hits text. Most
of us prefer a vision of Jesus the gentle shepherd,
Jesus the wise teacher, Jesus the patient, merciful,
forgiving savior. But the earliest Christian creed
marked a line in the sand drawn by his disciples. It
was this: Jesus is Lord.
Today’s gospel reading is not a public address or
a political speech. There is no large crowd. At the
beginning of Matthew, Chapter 10, Jesus gathers his
twelve disciples. He calls them by name, and then
he prepares to send them out into the world, like
sheep into the midst of wolves, he says. Just before
this morning’s passage, Jesus says to his disciples,
“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill
the soul.” Jesus addresses his closest followers, these
twelve who have left everything behind to follow him.
And what Jesus describes, drawing on the prophet
Micah, is already the experience of those disciples.
They are living in a time of dissension, strife, and
turmoil. Their decision to follow Jesus has caused
conflict, and there will be more, because what Jesus
asks of them, what the kingdom of God demands
of them, is total devotion. Their commitment to him
must take precedence over all other loyalties. And
when they choose to make Jesus Lord, not everyone
will rejoice.
The decision to follow Jesus is a choice for change.
Following Jesus is not about seeking worldly power or
influence. Following Jesus is not about living in fear.
Following Jesus is not about claiming superiority or
standing in the place of a judge. Following Jesus must
mean living as he lived—with heartfelt compassion
for the suffering, welcome for the outcast, forgiveness
for the sinner. Following Jesus means lifting our own
crosses to embody the kind of sacrificial love that
forever changed the world. That’s what it means to
say, “Jesus is Lord.”
And there is no false advertising. Jesus is clear that
such discipleship will not be easy, in his time or in
ours, for those idols that desire our devotion will not
relent without a struggle. They will make promises,
tempting us with power, unsettling us with fears of
weakness or irrelevance. We might lose what we’ve
been told is most important.
When we are seduced into believing that our primary
identity is determined by our politics and that
our primary community is the tribe of likeminded
partisans in our echo chamber, being part of a
church says something entirely different. It must say
something entirely different.
Listen. I will tell you who you are. You are a child of
God. And so is everyone you encounter. You belong
in here not because we represent your political tribe,
but because we are trying to follow Jesus together.
Last fall, we at Second were blessed to have Father
Michael Lapsley with us for several days. Father
Michael has served as a priest for many years in
South Africa. He was an active part of the antiApartheid movement, a movement that was, in
many ways, led by people of faith. It was the inverse
of those Christian voices praising the KKK. His
leadership did not go unnoticed. Father Michael
was sent a letter bomb in 1990. It resulted in the
loss of both his hands, the sight in one eye, and
serious burns all over his body. Father Michael was
undaunted. He continued his work tirelessly. He
chose forgiveness over retribution. Michael told us,
“They took my hands, but the only weapon I’ve ever
had was my tongue. They did not take that.” One
afternoon, Father Michael and I were talking in my
office about the deep divisions in our country, and
Michael shared a joke they used to tell in South Africa
in the 1980s. It goes like this: “There are two possible
solutions to our crisis here. One is miraculous, and
one is realistic. One solution is that God will send
down holy angels and sort us all out. That’s the
realistic solution. The miraculous one is that we will
sit down and talk with our enemies.”
I found both truth and hope in that bit of humor. We
need a miracle. And we’ve come to the right place. In
here we tell stories about a God who brings life from
death, who creates new hearts and new communities
within and among us.
I am convinced that we in the church can offer a
powerful voice in the public square. And here’s how.
Our loyalty must be to no person or ideology, but
only to God. We must never sacrifice this profound
call for the polarized pronouncements of the purely
political. We must speak, whenever possible, in a
clear and unified voice. And whenever necessary, we
must love those with whom we disagree. The bitter,
rancid, rotting political climate we experience is not
inescapable. But we need beacons of moral leadership,
and we can be those beacons. We can serve and
not demonize those in need. We can confess our
complicity with systems that keep some people down,
and then we can do something to change them. We
can see gifts and not threats in our differences. We can
call forth the better angels of our nature.
I’ll speak for myself here. I am determined to speak
and act outside of this space in ways that have
integrity and align with what I confess to believe
when I’m inside this space. I am determined to preach
and live a faith that has a chance of finding a home
in the hearts of my sons. I want to give them a vision
for a better world than the one we’re passing on. And
fifty years from now, I want to rest secure trusting that
I did my very best to preach and live the love of God. I
want a politics that reflects the conviction that each of
us bears the image of God and is therefore worthy of
love for no other reason than that. I want to remember
that ultimately, I am accountable not to human
opinion but to the sovereign God who calls me.
One hundred years from now, I want to be counted
among Father Lapsley and not Rev. Moore. Now, I am
not naive. But my Bible tells me this is strength, not
weakness. There is no easy path, but my faith convicts
me of this—that only love stands a chance of repairing
what has been broken.
Only love. Only love. Let us pray.
Gracious God, tune our hearts to the rhythms of your
goodness reflected in your beloved children; turn our
hearts toward one another and grant us courage so
that we might live the truth we profess. Amen.