Uncomfortable as it often is, naming the elephant in the room can be a risk both faithful and fruitful. I thus climb out on the limb of preaching to bring you a Word about Tuesday’s election – a voter’s guide, if you will.
Please know that I share from the heart of a pastor not a politician and from the mind of one whose spirituality challenges nationality. Scripture aims to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and as with so many friends and neighbors, I’m at once comfortable and afflicted – both saint and sinner. So, with hopes of affirmation and clarity in this our electoral time of decision and indecision, let’s join the disciples as Jesus begins his great Sermon on the Mount.
“Blessed are the peacemakers: God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called children of God.
“I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
“For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
“Therefore, be perfect – fully developed, spiritually mature, as your heavenly Father is perfect – free from any deficiency, omission, or corruption.” (Matthew 5:9,44-48, personal translation)
In what he titles “BZ’s Christian Voter Guide,” the pastor and writer Brian Zahnd suggests something quite powerful and definitely challenging: “While in pursuit of the Ring of Power, you are not permitted to abandon the Sermon on the Mount.” Rightly living a Christian life in a political world apparently does not include neatly keeping faith and practice in separate silos, never the twain shall meet.
Let me riff on a few other entries in Pastor Zahnd’s voter guide. He writes, for example: “The political process, while necessary, has little to do with how God is saving the world, [and] the fate of the kingdom of God does not depend upon political contests.”
A modern confession of the Church – written in an earlier time of community fraction and division – affirms that nations, at times, might be serving God’s purposes in history. But any one nation, or any one way of life, aligning itself uniquely and exclusively with the causes of God denies the Lordship of Christ, betrays our common calling, and dismembers the body of Christ. Committing any of those faithless acts in the name of politics is a grievous sin, and our repentance brings the salt of Christian compassion to an ugly and acrimonious moment in our common life.
The bottom line for political parties is power. But the bottom line for Christians is love. And therein lies the rub: If your political passions make it hard for you to love your neighbor as yourself – the commandment that Jesus calls the greatest, well, then, bless your heart, you need to turn it down a notch or two. It’s more important that your soul and spirit be filled with love than it is for your political team to win the game.
So much of our politics these days seems fueled by grief over the loss of what was and fear of what might be. A couple weeks ago, I suggested to you that feelings of grief are really just feelings of love with nowhere to go. But by the power of the Spirit, love finds a home by holy means that elude the understanding of mere mortals. Which brings us to a letter from the apostle Paul:
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult — fully developed and spiritually mature, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13 personal translation)
Ancient words, ever true, yesterday, today, and tomorrow – particularly so come election day and for the turbulent times that likely will follow. When casting your vote, do not abandon the Sermon on the Mount. Thus, as Jesus did, I say to you: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. … Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on All Saints Sunday, November 3, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. U.S. election day is Tuesday, November 5, 2024.