THE SPIRITUALITY OF POLITICS

Deuteronomy 30:15-19
Romans 12:1-2
Matthew 22:15-22

St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Rev. Gary Paterson

September 21, 2008

There is election fever in the air… a veritable frenzy, as we are faced by the challenge of change and possibility, as newspapers and magazines, TV newscasts and internet blogs clamor for our attention; and as endless phone calls interrupt whatever else we’re doing, asking for support, votes and money. It feels as if the American election has been going on forever… Hillary or Obama? Is McCain a Bush replica? And what about the Sarah Palin factor? It will be such a relief when Nov. 4th is over and done with. Then there’s the surprise… ready or not, here they come… of our National election, with the irony of our going to the polls on the very day after Thanksgiving… are we thankful yet? And, closer to home, we have the excitement of a Municipal election here in Vancouver, November 15th. I f I look a little tired this morning, it’s because I am tired, having spent last evening, past midnight in fact, at Science World, anxiously awaiting the results of the Nomination Election for candidates with Vision Vancouver. A matter of some family urgency, you understand, my spouse being one of those hopeful candidates.

Now, I have always been wary of preaching politics, apprehensive particularly because of family connections, of being perceived as overly partisan; never wanting to misuse the privilege of the pulpit, unknowingly too influenced by my own political bias and history. I remember when I was being interviewed by the Search Committee a few years ago, as they wondered about my becoming the minister here at St. Andrew’s-Wesley, I asked, “Are you worried about the fact that I am gay, or that my spouse is a NDP politician running for office in the next election?” … and they smiled tentatively, and said, “Yes.”

But last Sunday, at the door, a member of the congregation … who shall remain unnamed, but note that I’m not looking at him … he shared his… well, anxiety is too strong a word… but his puzzlement, frustration and worry with all this election fever around us; and he also spoke of his desire to be faithfully involved. He asked, “Could you preach about politics, elections and faith?” Not that he was looking for any specific advice about who or how to vote, but rather, he was asking for some thoughts about the interconnections between his faith and his politics.

Which seemed like such an eminently sensible request, this exploration of the intertwining of faith and the real world. We claim that what we believe makes a difference in our lives, our day to day reality; so surely what we believe influences our political perspectives. We hunger for a “Monday Spirituality”, so that what we experience on Sunday morning spills out into our workaday world of jobs, economics, families, social structures and politics.

Hence the title of today’s sermon, “The Spirituality of Politics.” You would perhaps have been amused to have seen me last night at Science World, at the Vision Vancouver gathering, because when we realized that the need for recounts of the almost 5000 ballots was going to lead to a loooong evening, well, I disappeared into a corner, and hauled out my sermon notes, and started re-editing… talk about an appropriate context. And you can imagine the conversations…. “Hey, Gary, whatcha doing?” “Oh, just writing a sermon.” “Uh… come again… a sermon?” Not your normal activity at a political gathering. Oh well….

For today’s sermon, I want to work out of a framework suggested by the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr in his classic book, Christ and Culture. It’s a bit dated perhaps, but I have yet to come across an analysis that lays out so clearly the possibilities for our faith, the church, Christ, to be engaged with our culture, which includes our economics and politics. I want to offer up four basic models, that I think will help us explore the spirituality of politics.

The first model that Niebuhr suggests is one where Christ blesses culture, where the church affirms a particular government or political party as an adequate or very good embodiment of the faith. In preparing for this sermon I came across a wonderful line from long-ago Quebec politics, where a priest did a short riff on the traditional Conservative and Liberal colours: “ My friends, I want to point out to you that the colour of Our Lady’s veil is blue; while the colour of the fires of hell is red. So vote accordingly!” But before we laugh ourselves out of this model, we need to recognize how frequently the Christian faith has been used to support and buttress up a particular political party or structure, regardless of its values and actions. One might think of the support that parts of the Catholic Church have offered to oppressive governments in Latin America; or we might recall how the Dutch Reformed Church preached the goodness of apartheid, and urged support for the National Party of South Africa. I think we see glimpses of this model in certain segments of the Christian right in the United States, where some politicians feel comfortable claiming that the war in Iraq is guided and blessed by God. Before we United Church folk feel too smug, we need to recall that there was a time, say in the nineteen fifties, where we assumed an overlap between our own denominational values and a government shaped by social gospel, welfare state hopes. To be United Church was to be Canadian, in the best of all possible worlds.

The great danger of this approach, of course, is the enormous, perhaps inevitable possibility of the church losing its soul, where faith is co-opted by forces of power seeking to maintain unjust, unchristian social arrangements that benefit the ruling elite. Such a situation deserves a passionate Marxist critique which sees religion as merely a means to justify the status quo of entitlement and oppression. We must always be on guard to prevent spirituality becoming the handmaiden of politics, and blessing what should not be blessed.

It’s certainly not how Christianity started, of course, where the early Church existed in opposition to Roman power, an outlawed, persecuted, underground organization. (An aside… did you know that there were NO public church buildings for the first three hundred years of Christianity?) It is from this context that Niebuhr suggests a second model, where Christ stands against culture, where faith denounces and criticizes political culture – you want to understand what people really thought about Rome, about governments, well just go reread the Book of Revelation. The pattern here is for Christianity to turn its back on politics, to withdraw, to separate, to establish an alternative community that seeks to keep its connection to the overarching culture to a minimum, wanting to keep a safe and denunciatory distance between the faithful and the temptations and evils that surrounded them. When the Emperor Constantine, at the beginning of the 4th century, made Christianity the official religion of the state, which soon became a classic example of Christ blessing culture as church and state started their merry dance of Christendom; indeed, if you wanted to get ahead in Constantine’s world, you had to become a Christian.

There was a reaction against this fusion and blessing, as people began to experience the co-opting of the faith, and Christianty witnessed the beginnings of the monastic movement. People so upset at the intertwining of faith and politics that they pulled away, went off to the desert, to monasteries and convents, turning their backs on culture, on politics. In the Protestant Reformed tradition, we see a similar pattern, say, in the Amish communities, or the Hutterites, the Doukhobors. At times you can catch a glimpse of this in various expressions of fundamentalist Christianity, where drink, dancing, movies, modern ways, even science, are all denounced as evil. There is a withdrawal from the general culture, with communities of the faithful feeling aggrieved, threatened and powerless.

So…Christ blessing government; Christ condemning government. But then, a third model begins to emerge… “Christ and Culture” is what Niebuhr labels it, pointing to a deep separation of faith and politics, but a valuing of each. Church is what you do on Sunday, and influences your private life, your personal morality; the business of the church is saving souls. Then, on Monday, you pick up your regular work and life, and let the government get on with the business of the state. Two separate worlds, that don’t particularly intersect and influence each other. I remember being so surprised some decades ago, now, when the Canadian Catholic Conference of Bishops weighed in with an excellent public statement about the economic system in our country, with particular reference to labour and capital. A semi-hero of mine, one Pierre Elliot Trudeau, told these bishops, in no uncertain terms, to mind their own business, and to keep their focus on matters of salvation where they had some expertise. Their economic analysis was inaccurate, unhelpful and not wanted.

Often this paradigm is supported by turning to that classic Jesus saying, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God, the things that are God’s.” There it is, it’s suggested, a word that supports the separation of church and state; pay your taxes, let the politicians get on with their business; and then, engage in prayer and worship and charity… the things of God. But, of course, that is a profound mis-reading of Jesus’ intention; he always, it seems to me, spoke with more irony and subtlety than the powerful were wanting to hear. Caesar and God… yes; but pause for a minute, and ask yourself what doesn’t belong to God. Not less than everything, I would suggest… including economic, social and political arrangements; there is no separate, political, Caesar-run world which is not subject to the Spirit of God.

Which brings us to the 4th option in Niebuhr’s paradigm… Christ transforming Culture… a recognition that indeed there is nothing beyond God’s purview, and that we are called to engage our culture. This reality is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian understanding of the inherent goodness and value of creation. The world is not something to be retreated from, but enjoyed, engaged and transformed into… well, into something approximating the Kingdom of God. History matters; the focus of life is not what happens after death, but what happens here and now, in this world! It is a position reflected somewhat in those verses from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome… be in the world, although not of the world; be engaged, but work for transformation, or rather, allow God to work in and through you so that transformation happens, both your own, as an individual, but also, that of the public realm, so that more and more this world might come closer to fulfilling God’s dream for creation.

When reading the current statement on the upcoming federal election from the Conference of Catholic Bishops, I was struck by their insistence on the obligation Christians have to be engaged in politics; as people of faith we must be involved; we must vote intelligently and conscientiously as an expression of that faith. It is an important way to bring about change for the good. For instance, one might look back at the struggle to abolish slavery, rooted in the passionate faith of Quakers and Methodists. (Movie plug… go and re-rent “Amazing Grace”, a good historical presentation of the faithful Wilberforce working politically to transform his world.) I remember my long ago years of training for ministry, and talking to Jack Shaver, minister of First United. Those were the heady days when everything seemed possible, we were free spirits finding a new way in an old world. I still remember Jack turning a beady eye upon me, and insisting that salvation must include the transformation of our institutions. Well, in those days “institution” was almost a dirty word; but that’s not what Jack thought. No, institutions were part of how we humans organized together to order our lives, to bring about change. He warned us about being caught up in the illusion that only individuals contributed to change. Faith working within institutions, including the church… well that was a path towards transformation.

However, this model of transformation must be carefully distinguished from the myth of progress that has so gripped our western world, where we have so naively assumed that everything is getting better and better, and that humans truly do have the capacity to build the City of God. When we are blinded by this myth, we forget… to our peril… the reality of sin. Hard word perhaps, but very accurate. Just look at the history of the last century – such amazing increases in knowledge and technology; then watch how inevitably we use it for ever greater actions of destruction and slaughter. We are always people of mixed motives, with a deep-rooted and almost inevitable capacity to be side-tracked from the good; to be gripped by greed, fear, prejudice… you name it. We know this reality; it’s reflected even in our cliché analysis: “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

So… yes, engagement in politics, seeking transformation, guided by our faith… but completely aware of the limits of what is possible. These elections of ours… they will not result in perfection. Politics is messy, never pure; it is the art of the possible, moving in the world of compromise; a grey world, not black and white, for grey is the colour of the mind. Nevertheless, small steps are possible; things can get better; we can make a difference.

Too often it seems that we project our own sense of ambivalent, shady righteousness, our own propensity to sin… we project this onto our politicians. We live in a cynical age, quick to criticize the women and men who are willing to take public office, suspecting that they do so only for the benefit of their own egos or pocketbooks. I say differently… and this comes not just from my own family connections… I believe we owe a great debt of gratitude to all those willing to enter into the world of politics. For the last decade, I have had the opportunity and privilege to meet many of these folk, and believe that most of them, most of the time, are people of fine character who are seeking to do their best. On the other hand, I know that they are regular human beings, like you and me, and there will be times they mess up; and there will be occasions when their own brokenness will lead them down murky paths. Mixed with our gratitude must be vigilance, and a respectful calling to account. And more… last Sunday, the person who asked for a sermon on politics pointed out that the sermon of that day, on forgiveness, actually was of help; as he said, the people that we elect are the same people that are going to have to forgive further down the road. And he’s right.

But the great danger in our times is to surrender to cynicism, and diminish the importance of politics. You know the old joke, “Don’t vote; it only encourages them!” And take a hard look at the percentage of folk who will vote in any given election. I say again, our very Christian faith demands that we go to the ballot box on October 14th and November 15th. For as the writer of Deuteronomy said so clearly, so many thousands of years ago, we must choose. “I put before you this day, life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live….” I sometimes wish that the choices were clearer, and that I could be more certain of what is right, what is wrong, which way is life, which way is death. But I also know that has never been easy or straightforward; the Biblical accounts that we have received that seem to offer clear cut choices, well they were usually written after events took place, and wisdom in hindsight is always easier to attain.

But recognizing complexity and the dilemmas of choice never gets us off the hook. We are called to do the hard work of discernment…. And it is hard work!! In the midst of election fever, we must look at individual candidates and at parties; we must become informed as to their policies and promises; their track record and accountability. And…as we do this, we are called to use the interpretative lens that is offered by our faith, particularly, I think, the prophetic tradition, that speaks so passionately of God’s care for the most vulnerable, those with no power, on the margins, the least and poorest. You have heard me many times say that the true assessment of a community, a city, a country, is rooted in how they treat the weakest in their midst. Of course there will always be distinctions and differences in wealth, but our goal and vision must always be an equitable distribution of what is needed for life; there must always be enough for the everyone. Just listen to these words from the prophet Isaiah, to hear what I am talking about; here is something who knew in his heart the spirituality of politics:

[Thus says God:]

Is not this the fast [the worship] that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up quickly… …

 

if you offer your food to the hungry

and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

then your light shall rise in the darkness

and your gloom be like the noonday.

The LORD will guide you continually,

and satisfy your needs in parched places,

and make your bones strong;

you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water whose waters never fail.

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

the restorer of streets to live in.

(Isaiah 58:6-12)

With such a vision in our hearts, what would happen if we took the time to engage with those women and men who are running for political office, to ask them questions about their position and policy on concerns of justice and, yes, righteousness. The National United Church General Council Office has prepared a “Federal Election Kit” – you can find it on the web… just google United Church and follow the links. However, I’ve photocopied 50 copies of the Kit and they’re back on the sermon table. I invite you to take one home with you; and read it carefully. The church has focused on a number of key issues facing us in this federal election such as Aboriginal Rights, Homelessness, Climate Change, Poverty; there is a brief theological analysis of these issues, and then there are a few questions that you might choose to raise up at an All Candidates Meeting. Yes… work; an investment of time and energy; a willingness to come out on a rainy evening perhaps, and discern.

Specifically, just for instance, you might choose to turn up on Wednesday, October 22nd, right here at St. Andrew’s-Wesley. Our Homelessness and Mental Health Action Group is organizing a public discussion and debate on Homelessness in Vancouver, and our two mayoralty candidates, Peter Ladner and Gregor Robertson, have agreed to come and speak, and to open themselves up to questions. Spirituality and politics… it will be happening right here that evening; you need to be here.

For choose we must… October 14th, November 15th; country and city. But remember, Election Day is only one more step in the journey; it sets a direction, but then the work, our faithful work continues, to ensure that promises made in the heat of election passion are kept; that we continue to seek action that will help our communities move ever more slightly closer to God’s dream, and is so doing we shall be called the repairers of the breach, restorers of streets to live in.

This Sunday we made promises to little Mickhail, who was baptized. We promised to support him and his family; we implicitly promised to support all the children in our community. That promise is not confined to the walls of this church, with Sunday School and personal support of families. No, one of the most powerful ways to embody those promises is to join together your faith and your politics, to work for the betterment of this world; for the children’s sake; for God’s sake. And trust that your desire to be faithful is precisely the channel that God will use to bring about transformation.