“God’s Kingdom Politics” Easter 7 May 4, 2008

(First, read the passage for this sermon: Acts 1:6-14)

Do you remember a more interesting presidential campaign? Senators Clinton and Obama are in a death grip that seems never-ending and mutually destructive. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Senator McCain is getting an unopposed free ride during these months, but he’s not raising much money, and nobody even seems to be enthusiastic about him.

And now there’s been the spectacle of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retired pastor of Barack Obama’s church in Chicago. Having spent two years working in a south side Chicago black church while in seminary, I was not astonished (as many people were) by those first taken-out-of-context sound bites of six year old sermons. I recognized that simply to be the rhetorical style of a type of black preaching which draws directly from the model of the prophets in the Old Testament. And, a week ago Friday night, I was very impressed by the Rev. Wright during the broadcast of the extended, intelligent, nuanced conversation he had with Bill Moyers. But, obviously, what he has said this past week is another thing entirely! It’s certainly not been in service of the Word of God. It’s been egotistical, irresponsible performance art, and it’s inflamed deeply held racial fears among many white folks. What we’ll watch for this week is how badly all of this has damaged Obama’s candidacy.

Mixing together religion and politics is like combining nitrogen and glycerin. It is incendiary! That’s because political operatives have found it effective to use religion to cause polarization. In past campaigns, some Republican candidates have sharply defined being Christian to mean being opposed to abortion and to gay people. Preachers who have spoken out in favor of such candidates have often literally demonized those who disagree, as not being followers of Jesus. Democrats in the past have not felt comfortable enough talking about religion to even know how to respond. As Jim Wallis subtitled his 2005 book, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It.

Here are a few paragraphs that Wallis writes, to introduce his book:

"Dare we search for the politics of God? It’s much easier to just use God to justify our politics. Yet, if we look, really look into our biblical and other holy texts, we find a God who speaks about “politics” all the time, about what believing in God means in this world (not just the next one), about faith and “public life” (not just private piety), about our responsibilities for the common good (not just for our own religious experience). And here’s the big news: the politics of God call all the rest of our politics into question.

"The place to begin to understand the politics of God is with the prophets, the ancient moral articulators in the Scriptures who claimed to speak in “the name of the Lord.” What were their subjects? Quite secular topics, really – land, labor, capital, wages, debt, taxes, equity, fairness, courts, prisons, immigrants, other races and peoples, economic divisions, social justice, war and peace – the stuff of prophets.

"Whom were the prophets often speaking to? Usually to rulers, kings judges, employers, landlords, owners of property and wealth, and even religious leaders. … [T]hose in charge of things were the ones called to greatest accountability. And whom were the prophets usually speaking for? Most often, the dispossessed, widows and orphans (read: poor single moms), the hungry, the homeless, the helpless, the least, last, and lost. Is God into class warfare? No, God wants the “common good”… "

What the Old Testament prophets are doing, in other words, is speaking words from God to advocate in favor of those who need to be protected so that there can be a common good. Wallis writes:

"… Clearly the politics of God is different than ours – from the Republicans and the Democrats, the liberals and the conservatives, the Left and the Right. The politics of God makes them all look pretty bad and points the way to some very different directions – but some very hopeful ones."

What this means is that God’s politics are not partisan or polarizing or even nationalistic. Instead, they express the yearnings of God’s people all over the world. They are politics of the kingdom of God. They express what will be reality when our Lord’s Prayer is fulfilled, as we pray each week: “Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

Of course, American political operatives are not the first ones who have tried to domesticate God to support their political position. Look, for instance, in this morning’s story from the Acts of the Apostles. Notice that some of Jesus’ followers expect that the risen Jesus will act in a nationalistic way! Jesus has risen. Jesus has been talking about the Spirit that will empower mission in Jesus’ name. And we read this: So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?"

This is an understandable nationalistic longing! For centuries, Israel has been oppressed and occupied and overrun by a succession of superpowers: the Assyrians and the Babylonians and now the Romans. Here’s the question: Is Jesus the messiah as God’s people had understood and expected that the messiah would be: the one who would restore the nation of Israel to political and military strength?

This is not the first time that people have wanted to make Jesus a king! But at each occurrence of that, in the gospel stories and here in Acts, Jesus’ response is to open us to understand that God’s kingdom politics cannot be reduced even to one nation, let alone to a partisan position advocated by one political party.

What are God’s kingdom politics? Well, we name them – each week, in the words we sing and speak in worship. Indeed, the kingdom of God is reality right now, when God the Holy Spirit forms us by what we are doing, and by what we are singing and speaking, in this time of worship.

Last Sunday morning, I asked the adult class to compare what is prized in our culture, as contrasted what kind of people our worship would form us to be. Here are some of their responses. As opposed to the individualism; and the striving after status; and the aggression; and the promotion and marketing; and the selfishness that our culture encourages, worship calls us to collectiveness and community; to our equality in God’s eyes; to strength expressed in gentleness and love; to openness in being drawn by God’s invitation; and to an openness to the needs of the world, so we can be servants to those in need. When the Holy Spirit forms us to live in these ways, the kingdom is becoming reality!

When we take a Sunday morning sabbatical from the relentless cultural pressure for efficiency and productivity, we can be opened to God’s grace-filled invitation into God’s kingdom. To use more examples from the liturgy, God’s kingdom is where people are willing to confess weakness. (How counter cultural is that!) Living in the kingdom means praying for mercy, and receiving forgiveness. There is good news of God’s compassion and salvation in the kingdom! There is prayer for all who are in need. There is awareness of the need for justice which is rooted in God’s compassion. There is generosity: we give ourselves away, and so there is abundance. There is feasting!

Our worship is full of these things! Through our worship God forms us in these kingdom politics.

And, of course, Jesus the Christ did not rise from the dead just for us, here in our little congregational gathering. God came in the flesh of Jesus Christ for the world that God is creating; the world that God loves! And so, God forms us in God’s kingdom politics, so we can e active in the world.

Diana Butler Bass refers to this as “Compassion enacted.” She writes, “Mercy is the beginning of justice, the first footsteps toward God’s kingdom….Justice is not a program, a political platform, or a denominational position on social issues. No, justice is the pilgrimage of the beloved community, the journey toward the establishment of the Kingdom of God.”

Community; the equality of all people in God’s love; strength expressed in gentleness and love; servanthood to those who are in need; the humility that allows us to confess weakness and to receive forgiveness; the good news of God’s compassion and salvation; justice which is rooted in God’s compassion; generosity and abundance and feasting: those are God’s Kingdom politics!

In the name of God who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia