How Do You Vote Your Faith? - Week 2
October 25, 2020
Voting is a moral act that shapes the lives and well-being of the people in our nation and potentially around the world. We talked about this last week as we worked to understand that as Christians we are called to seek God’s will in all areas of life. We are called to love, have compassion, and seek justice and safety for all people, and one way of doing this is through our vote and our political activity.
I think Christians from many traditions and perspectives can agree that our faith should influence our politics. But where we may start to disagree is when our faith calls us to act, how we are called to act, on which issues, which position, and which candidate. For churches, often the rule of thumb has been that the church should stay out of politics unless it involves something that we can all agree on. Maybe we shouldn’t involve our faith in the controversial, hot-button issues, but stick with things that we can all agree on, like ending hunger. So we choose to be political only when it’s safe, and it doesn’t cause waves.
But I’m not so sure this is the right approach. If we wait to act on an important issue until everybody agrees on it, is there much point in acting? Isn’t the point of speaking out to make a statement that can help guide and lead people? Shouldn’t our faith guide us to be shapers of public opinion rather than followers?
Let me bring this morning’s second reading into this conversation. We’ll be reading a passage from Luke 4:14-30. This is near the beginning of Jesus’s ministry as it is recorded in Luke. Jesus has just started teaching, preaching, and working some miracles in a few cities. Then he comes to Nazareth, his hometown.
When Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring 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, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!” And you will say, “Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” ’
And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’
When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
You’ve heard the expression “and the crowd turned on him.” This passage is a stark example of that. Jesus is reading and teaching in the synagogue and at first the passage says they were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. That’s pretty impressive, but a short time later his words filled them with rage, and they tried to throw him off a cliff. I’ve had some bad sermons in my 20 years of ministry, and I’ve made some people angry on occasion, but thankfully I’ve never had an angry mob turn on me to throw me off a cliff.
There’s a very quick turnaround in the crowd’s attitude towards Jesus. For anyone who has ever given a speech or a talk that hasn’t gone over well, you know when it’s not working by seeing the reactions of your audience. I imagine Jesus first saw a couple raised eyebrows, “What are you talking about Jesus?” Then probably some scowls, maybe a couple loaded glances between people in the crowd. And I’m guessing eventually it became audible: People shouting out “Enough!’ or “Shut up!”
But what did he do or say that got that reaction? Why did they get angry? There are a couple of possibilities. It might have been what he said. He read from the book of Isaiah proclaiming release to the captives, sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free, and proclaiming the year of Jubliee – when debts are forgiven. Captives in prison were often put in jail because of debts they owed but couldn’t repay. Maybe the crowd didn’t like the idea of debts being forgiven without being repaid. Maybe they wanted to hear more about themselves and less about the poor and the captives.
It’s also possible that they got angry because they heard Jesus was performing signs and miracles in other towns, but for whatever reason, he refused to do so here in his hometown. Then there are the two Old Testament stories he referenced where the prophets Elijah and Elisha worked miracles for foreigners instead of for Jews. Was Jesus saying, “I may be Jewish, but I’m here for the outsiders, not just us Jews?”
Whatever the specific reason for their anger and rage, it probably had something to do with Jesus disappointing them. He didn’t say or do what they expected him to say or do. They went to hear Jesus expecting him to validate their expectations, to agree with them, to confirm their beliefs, but that’s not what happened.
One lesson we can take from this in regards to faith and politics is that God, the Bible, our faith – they aren’t always going to conform to our politics. Put another way, (pic 1 - gospel) the gospel will not always confirm your positions or politics, if it does then it’s not the gospel. There is a saying about the Bible, “Sometimes it comforts the disturbed. Sometimes it disturbs the comfortable. (end pic 1) There are times in our lives, circumstances we are in, where we are the disturbed in need of comfort, but there are other moments when we are the comfortable in need of disturbing. For white America this summer’s Black Lives Matters protest and movement was one of those times where many of us were far too comfortable and needed disturbing. If the protests were not comforting to us and we turned to scripture for comfort, a true reading of the Bible would not bring us the easy comfort desired. Instead we might be disturbed to find we had ignored the Bible’s call to stand up for and stand with the marginalized and the oppressed. Our faith should have been a call to action not a pacifier to soothe us.
Given this, there are questions that you need to ask of yourself. “What are you going to do when the gospel doesn’t tell you what you want to hear?” What are you going to do when your beliefs, your personal politics, is not supported in scripture. Are you going to listen? Are you going to think about it, learn about it, pray about it? Or are you going to look for the nearest cliff? If we aren’t willing to be disturbed sometimes then we better find a new faith.
As Christians, God disturbs us from comfort sometimes. And…there are also times when we are called to be the ones doing the disturbing. That’s what Jesus did in today’s passage. He disturbed that crowd something fierce. David Lose, professor at Luther seminary writes this about this passage:
You see, it really is all Jesus’ fault – he goes and does the one thing you’re never supposed to do, even to strangers, let alone to friends and neighbors: He tells them the truth, the truth about their pettiness and prejudice, their fear and shame, their willingness, even eagerness, to get ahead at any cost, even at the expense of another. And so, they want him gone in the most permanent of ways.
And let’s face it; that’s pretty much the way it usually is. Because this text, and Luke’s whole gospel for that matter, isn’t about Jews or Romans, it isn’t about Nazarenes or Jerusalemites. No, it’s about every race and nationality, about all the crowds of every time and place who, when they meet one who tells them the truth about themselves, will go to almost any length to silence the messenger. For from the prophets of Israel to our own prophet, Martin Luther King, Jr., it’s not just the keepers of the dream that get rejected, beaten, and shot, but the tellers of the truth as well.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a teller of truth, Jesus was a teller of truth, we are called to be tellers of truth, even if it’s not a popular truth, even if it disturbs people. I wonder - if someone isn’t trying to hurl us off a cliff every now and then, are we really living the gospel and speaking the truth, or are we just after our own comfort, like the people in Nazareth? We know what happened to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when his faith led him to stand for justice and equality for Black Americans, but he wasn’t alone.
(pic 2 – statue) This statue, entitled “Three Ministers Kneeling,” is in a park in Birmingham, AL. It depicts the moment when three ministers, John Thomas Porter, Nelson H. Smith and Alfred D. King, kneeled to the ground to pray when confronted by Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor and the Birmingham police. The ministers and others were there to protest the jailing of civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. By kneeling, they took a stand as Christians. With the help of their faith, they disturbed the peace, because justice needed to be done.
Now we should never set out simply to make people angry, just to disturb people, it should always be for a purpose. We speak out and sometimes act up when other means of advocating for change aren’t working. Our passage today begins with Jesus following the customs and traditions of the day. It was the sabbath, and Jewish men were expected to go to synagogue, expected to read from the scriptures when asked to. They were expected to stand to read and sit to teach or comment. Jesus did all these things, he got along with people…until he didn’t. And when he didn’t, it was because the matter at hand needed to be addressed, even if it was difficult or made people angry.
There is a time and a place where our faith calls us to stand up, speak out, take to the streets, or call a congressperson. The hard part is knowing when we are called to do so. The highest governing body in the Presbyterian Church is the General Assembly, made up of hundreds of ministers and church members from across the country, In 1958 the General Assembly met and affirmed a statement on the need for the church to speak out and confront difficult issues, and when it is necessary to do so.
(pic 3 – GA) The General Assembly “affirms its conviction that neither the Church as the body of Christ, nor Christians as individuals, can be neutral or indifferent toward evil in the world; affirms its responsibility to speak on social and moral issues for the encouragement and instruction of the Church and its members, seeking earnestly both to know the mind of Christ and to speak always in humility and love; reminds the churches that their duty is not only to encourage and train their members in daily obedience to God’s will, but corporately to reveal God’s grace in places of suffering and need, to resist the forces that tyrannize, and to support the forces that restore the dignity of all men as the children of God, for only so is the gospel most fully proclaimed; . . .” (1958 Statement – PC(USA), p. 537). (end pic 3)
This statement gives us guidance and help for understanding when it is important to stand up and speak out. If staying silent means being indifferent or neutral to evil, then it’s not a time to be silent. When the values of our faith - love, compassion, justice and safety for all - when those values provide guidance on social and moral issues, then we should speak humbly and offer that guidance. If political action can be taken to address suffering and need, especially of the most marginalized, then it is our time to act. The church is called to be at work to support forces that restore the dignity of all and resists forces that tyrannize.
Forces that tyrannize. In the mid 1930’s in Germany the Nazi Power and Adolf Hitler were on the rise. Their government pressured the churches to “aryanize” there congregations by expel any of their members of suspected Jewish ancestry. Churches were also pressured to accept what was called, “the Fuhrer Principle,” which, stated simply said: Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler. Hitler alone can save Germany and whatever he does is right and successful. The Fuhrer Principle even went as far as to say that Hitler has a divine blessing from God.
Many Christian churches in Germany went along with this, but some churches led by theologian Karl Barth, pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and others did not. They wrote The Barmen Declaration which rejected any claim of leadership of the church other than God and Jesus. The Barmen Declaration spoke against those German churches that yielded to and even endorsed Hitler’s plans which were clearly against all that Christ stood for. Bonhoeffer and others who wrote and endorsed the Barmen Declaration, stood up and stood against Hitler and the Nazi party. For that, they were imprisoned and executed in concentration camps.
Today, our lives are not in peril if we speak out, but we are still called to take a stand for the dignity of all people, and like the Barmen Declaration we reject calls to put our ultimate faith and hope in any candidate or party, especially if they claim they are the only one who can save us. Our ultimate hope lies in Jesus.
Election day is nine days away. I ask you to be in prayer for our country, in prayer for all its elected leaders and candidates for office, in prayer for us as citizens. And when you vote, I pray that your vote will be an act of faith. Expressing all that God wants for our country and for our world.
Let us pray: God, we thank you for the freedoms we have in our country, including the freedom to determine who will govern us. Guide us and help us discern how to serve you in all areas of our life. In your name we pray, Amen.