Do you remember that part in the book of Revelation where,
‘round the throne of God,
the saints all arrayed in white are singing
—then there are discordant voices,
shouts,
scuffling breaks out!
“I can’t believe you voted for THAT man!”
“You cast a ballot for that WOMAN!”
That feels like where we’re at, doesn’t it?
Electing the other candidate is the end of the world,
In an election on a knife’s edge,
a country that is 50/50 split.
Where literally billions of dollars are being poured into political ads.
Our anxiety and hackles are both up.
Burnt ballots in the Pacific North West,
and teens chasing blue haired ladies with machetes down in Florida…
And yet, it is not, I want to tell you, the End of the World…
I say that not downplaying the big and challenging issues of our day
—or the real-world implications of the choices we make this year…
For example,
I have a friend whose Trans son will be making college choices based on who gets elected. Will he stay in state, can he risk going out of state
—or does he need to look out of country, for his safety.
Similarly, another friend will decide which union to join based on the election results…
will he be making cars with internal combustion engines or electric motors
—it is literally a 10,000-dollar question for his family.
These are consequential choices,
fraught with peril and meaning and a whole lot of fear,
and that’s why it is worth considering it all in the light of eternity.
To center ourselves on the Christian witness about all these things
—that I feel can be best boiled down to two points:
1. Christian discernment, especially about secular choices, will always be done as a “Faithful, reverent, best guess.”
2. God has a promise for us, even in these Partisan Times.
Prayer
No nation is the Kingdom of God
St. Augustine wrote his weighty tome “City of God” as a reflection of the New Jerusalem in Revelation
—and also as a reflection on the tension he found between being a Roman Citizen and being a Citizen of Heaven. He spends well over a thousand pages untangling being a citizen and being a believer.
So too Luther, and we Lutherans by extension,
we make a distinction between the secular and the sacred by saying that there are “Two Kingdoms” or sometimes we use the language of “Two Hands of God.”
(As a side note none other than James Madison was a close reader of Luther, and from that reading offered our country the Establishment Clause—popularly called the Separation of Church and State)
For we Lutherans, we understand that God uses the Government to do “Law” that is,
the Government can restrain evil and encourage the good…
but it cannot do “Gospel”
—it cannot save, comfort, destroy death, bring life to the dead or comfort to the mourning.
God has authorized the Church to be His good news in the world.
Now, this time of year as a Pastor,
I always get mailers from various Religious Freedom groups,
encouraging me to endorse a candidate from the pulpit…
They say that “if every pastor did it, they couldn’t lock us all up…
Let’s break down the wall of separation between Church and State!”
To which every Lutheran Pastor ought to say,
“No thank you, fences make good neighbors,
and I’d just as soon the Church be a good neighbor to the state,
as opposed to subsidiary of it.”
As a Pastor, all I’ll tell my congregants—all of you—is “Make a Faithful, Reverent, best guess!”
No Party can bring about God’s Kingdom
It was true in Jesus’ day
—the Zealots thought through might of arms
and the Herodians through ideological purity
—that they could force God’s will…
For that matter, some partisans tried to crown Jesus King…
His reply was to slip away, saying essentially, “I’m not that kind of King!”
Or look carefully at what happens in Revelation
—how God is enthroned
—God comes down!
A Renewed world comes down!
A new Jerusalem comes down!
God comes down!
—we don’t climb up
—that’s the story of the Tower of Babel …
we don’t force God’s hand… no…
We pray “Thy Kingdom Come”
because we just hope that we’ll notice it,
when God is at work in the world
in mysterious and wondrous ways!
No party is going to bring about the Kingdom,
and when the Church forgets that,
bad things happen…
When you ride the tiger
—you end up in the stomach of the beast.
If the Church becomes a political party at prayer…
no matter the party…
is ceases to be the Church.
Now, one of the more unique duties I had at my previous congregations was marching in the Labor Day Parade (biggest one in the state).
Inevitably our float would be wedged between the Democrat’s float and Republican’s
—and always people dressed as Batman & Iron Man or the Flash,
marched between us and the political floats
—there needs to be a superhero sized space between Church and Party.
While most of us here in the building today are probably members of political parties
—that identity is always provisional in the face of our Baptism,
that choice must always be our “Faithful, Reverent, best guess”
one of those first things that shall pass away…
The Christian faith is about those things that will not pass away…
Nation and party are not the end of the world…
heck even the “End of the World” isn’t the end of the world…
what John the Revelator, and Isaiah before him,
is describing is instead the goal of the world,
the hope of God
—the Promise of God!
God is calling forth a world in which the lesser things pass away
—all those things that can be transformed into idols,
or even overpower us with vile demonic force,
evaporate and are redeemed,
they become what they ought to be in light of eternity
—where pain and mourning,
abandonment and disgrace,
the power of death and the chaos represented by the watery depths
—all redeemed!
The only death, the new life of baptism—that stream that settles the soul.
Grace enwrapping and transforming all of creation!
Tears reserved only for rollick laughter
and pain only evidence of work well done.
This transformation accomplished because God is present
—the book of Revelation is ultimately describing the same thing as the Gospels
—what it means that God dwells among us
—it is Christ’s work for this world he loves
—only complete!
That is the Revelation of John the Revelator
—John of Patmos…
he describes cosmically what John’s Gospel describes personally
—Lazarus, and all of us, brought out of our many tombs.
Lazarus unearthed, unbound
—freed to be present with God!
A whole world,
from beginning to end,
being made new!
Lazarus come out!
Elaine come out!
Mary come out!
Ron come out!
On this side of the Jordon—we see only glimpses,
we make guesses,
we discern,
we reverently and faithfully try to choose what is best
in the world as it is…
But we can trust that
the one who is the beginning and the end,
the Alpha and Omega, the A and the Z
has already chosen us,
already is transforming this beloved world
—making all things new!
A+A
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