Sermon: The Promise of God in Partisan Times

          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

Being God’s People in a 4D World: Disestablishment, Decentralization, Demographic Shift, and Disenchantment

 

              There is a crisis in the North American church. The way we once did things, no longer works. We cling to models that were faithful 75 years ago, models of ministry that brought Gospel to millions, for generations flowing from the post-World War Two era. But now, my faith tradition, broadly speaking the mainline tradition—denominations associated with European Protestantism, who have structures in place to weed out bad actors and hold leaders to account—are heading to statistical non-existence in a decade or so.

              It is imperative that the mainline tradition, to move beyond its way of being from decades past, grapple with the world as it is. This especially means grappling with the four Ds: Disestablishment, Decentralization, Demographic Shift, and most importantly, Disenchantment.

 

Disestablishment:

          When the Baltimore Colts were a team, or so I’ve heard, they were only allowed to play football after a certain time on Sunday, on order of the Archbishop of Baltimore. Then when Baltimore got a new team, the Baltimore Ravens, the Archbishop went to the owner of the team to schedule when the team could play on Sundays, and he was gently shown the door.

          As the above story illustrates, something has fundamentally shifted in how American society treats Christianity. While America has never had an official state religion, we have often informally acted in ways that centered the Christian faith. This is an insight Theologian Douglas John Hall has famously pointed out in his own country, Canada. There were once a host of cultural norms that assisted the church, and the church has grown to rely on them. In fact, often the Church returned the favor, teaching American cultural values instead of the gospel. As long as the Church was vaguely “nice” a bunch of social organizations would help it out.

          For a variety of reasons (Bowling Alone dynamics, the end of the Cold War and the rise of the War on Terror, etc.) that reality came to an end. Some in the Church are desperately trying to claw our way back into the halls of power, others despair. I would suggest the whole situation is an opportunity.

We can now reconsider all those formal and informal cultural connections and start again. The Church has been given an opportunity to rethink how we make partnerships. One of the places doing this sort of work, at least on a building use level, is Partners for Sacred Places in Philly. The Mainline needs to intentionally remake connections with new partners. We need to re-imagine our place in society and find where the Holy Spirit is already acting in our neighborhoods (is that not the whole story of the book of Acts)!

 

Decentralization:

          Once, or so I have been told, the world was centralized. Everyone received news from a single trusted newscaster, desks in schools all faced forward looking at a teacher, organizations were very hierarchical, a top-down kind of thing. The Church too functioned in this way, top down, facing forward in your pews, trusting the Pastor as the authority on the Faith. And this all worked quite swimmingly, at least for a time.

          Now everyone gets their news from information silos, classrooms are modular and virtual, and organizations are taught to value decentralized, democratic, “leaderless” leadership, as most clearly articulated by the book The Starfish and the Spider. And probably most noticeable, the internet has flattened the world.

          And the Church has changed, some. The ELCA constitution uplifts lay leadership and democratic principles in a way predecessor bodies did not. When Covid came around we managed to get most of our congregations onto the internet. But we’re still struggling with this.

I can’t help but think of a very confused Roman Catholic who attended my congregation for a time. He had discovered from some amalgamation of the “History” Channel and chat rooms on the internet that the difference between Protestants and Catholics was that Protestants acknowledged that the Apostle Paul was a werewolf (that was the thorn in his flesh). When I burst his bubble, he wasn’t fazed. He decided I was a centralized authority figure--so suspect--who was hiding “the Truth.” Then he started attending an “Entrepreneurial” Church down the street where the Pastor agreed that mainline Churches often hide things from “the people.”

So, what do we do in a flat, leaderless, democratic, virtual, world? We harness it. We recognize that 12 disciples, inspired by the testimony of Mary and her crew, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, changed the world. “Oh no, we have small churches” can be transformed into “Wow, we have small teams of empowered people excited to be the Church in the world!”

Imagine if we took seriously the Church’s duty to equip and encourage lay folks! Imagine if we embraced holy experimentation, every congregation had a solid and sustainable internet ministry, and we met out in the world, becoming seeds thrown out into the world doing Kin(g)dom work!

 

Demographics:

The ELCA, and many Mainline denominations, identify as white and middle class. And there was a time when that seemed to serve us well. After the world wars European refugees poured into our country looking for Churches where they could belong and become American at a pace that was comfortable. In the heyday of the Mainline, middle-class jobs paid well and offered opportunities for women not to work. This meant congregations had access to lots of funds and volunteer hours.

To be clear the above description was never that neat, just talk to old timers, especially the women and immigrants, or talk to non-white Lutherans, they have a whole different story to tell. But, granting the above story, it didn’t last.

On one hand, immigration from traditionally Lutheran countries tapered off. On the other hand, being middle class shifted. Those who think of themselves as Middle Class are now time poor, and financially poorer, than early generations, just read Reich, or Steve Bannon for that matter. Hence new members aren’t beating down the doors, there are fewer volunteers, and donations are down.

Luckily what is a “traditionally” Lutheran country has changed. Ethiopia has the second largest Lutheran population in the world, followed by Tanzania. For that matter, Guyana has a thriving Lutheran tradition, and if you’ve ever been to a Guyanese wedding, the first thing you notice is how racially diverse the country is. So, sometimes I tell folk, invite anyone who looks Guyanese to Church, because that’s a way of saying, invite everyone! Throw away those preconceived notions of what a Lutheran looks like!

For that matter, we need to take a hard look at what middle class practices of the past serve us well, and which don’t. And, the impoverishment of the Mainline should refocus us on poverty and point us to how Church is done by impoverished people!

 

Disenchantment:

 Finally, behind all the above there is a larger challenge we face, Disenchantment, as described by Richard Beck. The way the average American lives makes it hard to believe in God at all. Our habits and focuses point us to the material and secular things of this world. We have trained ourselves to notice the ball, but miss the gorilla.

So, what to do? Reenchant the world! Encourage:
Holy Friendships—prayer partners and chancing “God Conversations”

The Romance of the Faith—passionate preaching, feeling as well as thinking, encouraging people to reflect on their own faith stories, and the wisdom therein.

Practice Gratitude—reflect on the “roses and thorns” of your day, and give thanks for the roses,

Embracing Beauty—paint murals on churches, reflect on iconography, create new pretty singable music.

 

Conclusion:

              As we bring Gospel to God’s world, I pray we do so clear eyed, ministering to the world as it is, not as it once was, or as we would like it to be. Interpreting our ministry in light of the 4Ds may help us to not fall back into nostalgia. Facing the world as it is can be a challenge, but might bring forward previously unseen opportunities. Seeing our world more clearly might allow us to see the Spirit at work, patiently waiting for us to join in.

Listening Wisdom into Existence

               On multiple occasions in the summer of 2023, I sat with my parishioners. We read portions of the Wisdom Corpus: Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. I said a few words about the books, asked the central questions of each of the books, and then listened with a tape recorder. From those conversations, I harvested theological gems and set them back into the context of a booklet. What came of it is: Wisdom from Spruce Run, which we then gave to our confirmation students on Reformation Sunday.

              I pray that this book is useful for shaping the generational imagination of the confirmation students, and my congregation at large. After all, the big questions of Wisdom: “What is success? How do you deal with crisis? How do you end a thing well?” are perennial questions. How they are answered, and that they are answered at all, can give a person a glimpse of a faith life that is not yet their own, but could be. Such answers can be mentors on a page, a sense of new possibilities, and a window into yet to be experienced realities of the life of faith. A 15-year-old, newly affirming their faith, can dream about what being a Christian might look like at 85 or 42 or 20. For that matter, an 85-year-old can remember back to the faith struggles and joys of yesteryear and think anew about what that might look like in the present, and in so doing be more fully present with younger Christians.

              Bonhoeffer once wrote:

“Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too.”

              I think this method of Bible Study, where listening is the primary goal, is a challenging but good one, especially for clergy folk like me who tend to step into role of the expert teacher/information wielder, sometimes even when unbidden to do so. What we did in this bible study echoes the Liberation Theology insights about indigenous communities in conversation, that they have all the expertise they need, that lived experience can inform reading of scripture as readily as extensive lessons and seminary expertise. Hearing the wisdom already present in my place of ministry was itself a sort of ministry to me. It reminded me of my tradition’s commitment to “The Priesthood of All Believers.” Not that my being set apart for ordained ministry is unimportant, but it is not the only means, or even the primary means, by which God speaks in my congregation!

              All that to say, the next time you lead a Bible Study, make sure you do so with your ears open. For that matter, if you’d like to do a similar type of Bible Study to “Wisdom from Spruce Run” please reach out, I am developing resources that would help!