Sermon by Tom Are Jr. | September 15, 2024 | Fourth Presbyterian Church

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 15, 2024

Are We Supposed to Be Talking about This in Church?

from the sermon series:
"What Being Presbyterian Teaches Us about Good Governance"

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

1 Samuel 8:4–9
John 1:1–14

The first sermon Jesus ever preached happened in the synagogue. Jesus read words of the prophet Isaiah. Everyone loved it. They said, “That’s my favorite scripture, and he reads so well.” But then Jesus told them what he thought the scripture meant for them in their day. He preached. The reaction was different then. They tried to kill him.

Not every sermon is a good one, but killing the preacher, at least to me, seems a poor choice. I hope you agree.

Now, I have no doubt that from time to time things have been spoken from this pulpit that caused your blood pressure to spike. You should know that no preacher steps into the pulpit with a desire to offend or hurt or give you reason to double down on your blood pressure meds. Such things bring no joy to the preacher. But it still happens at times, because our faith speaks to real issues in the real world. And that’s always risky.

So, sometimes the preacher will hear, “You shouldn’t talk about that. It’s not appropriate for you to talk about that.” This usually happens when, in the heart of the hearer, the sermon sounds political. Have you ever felt that way?

If you haven’t said that to a preacher, you might have thought it. “Remember the separation of church and state now; don’t talk about political things.”

It’s an old concern. My dad heard it during the civil rights era. My grandfather heard it during the years of the New Deal. Jesus’ disciples heard it when they insisted on calling Jesus by what most deemed a political title: Lord. Preacher, stop talking about politics, you should stick to the Bible! I get it.

Over the next few weeks, I want to reflect on the relationship between our faith and our civic engagement. Being Presbyterian all of my life has taught me some things, particularly some things that are needed for good governance. Presbyterians have theological convictions about how healthy decision-making happens in community. This is actually a hallmark of Presbyterian theology.

Firstly, I have learned this about you. Throughout your history, Fourth Church, you have from time to time had difficult conversations in this room — about racism, or climate change, or gun violence, or the Middle East, or challenges in family life. And I have learned that you have been both gracious and open, meaning you have given the preacher room to share the wisdom gleaned from these old texts, as he or she understands them, and even if it’s not completely how you see things, you have at least given your preacher a hearing. And to date, you have not killed any of your preachers. I checked.
That openness doesn’t happen in every church. I do not take that for granted with you. It is also my hope, that as people of faith seeking to navigate your way through the moral quandaries of contemporary American culture, that the voice of this pulpit would be one of the voices you would want to hear.

So, let’s begin with this question: What are we supposed to talk about in church? And where should the words of faith fall silent?

We are all political beings. I have my politics; you have yours. It’s not the calling of the preacher to proclaim his or her personal politics and call it holy. Christian faith is too big for that. It is the responsibility of the preacher to discern the distinction. The calling of the preacher is to proclaim the gospel, not a political platform.

But the language of separation of these two realities requires nuance.

In a few months, we will gather in this sanctuary and celebrate the central promise of our faith: that the Son of God was born. Born of woman as is every child, yet born of God’s power as no other child (from “A Declaration of Faith”). At Christmas the spirit of God took on skin and breathed the same air that we breath, lived in the same world in which we live. As John says, the Word became flesh. Theologians call this the incarnation.

The implications of the incarnation is that the work of redemption is not limited to a salvation that we know only on the other side of the grave. No, because Christ lived in this world, then the work of redemption takes place in this world. In the lives of individuals, communities, and institutions in this world. Jesus’ ministry was less focused on getting us into heaven than getting some of heaven into us. Redemption is a this-worldly work.

This is also true —

On the macro level, politics is the community’s decisions about how we will live with one another. Politics focuses on the policies, laws, and norms that give shape to our communal life.

Similarly, the Christian faith is also a vision for how we will live with one another. Christianity is evidenced in how we engage our neighbors. Christianity is not the same as politics, but both Christianity and politics are in the same conversation. Both are about our neighbors.

In Kansas City, after a sermon my friend Betty said, “Tom, you were too political today, I wish you would stick to the Bible.”

I agree. It’s not the preacher’s job to be partisan. The preacher should proclaim the good news that is found in scripture.

But, again, the teaching of scripture is not about some disembodied spiritual world. It is about how we live with one another. It is scripture that says, “I have come bring good news to the poor, … to proclaim release to the captives, … to set the prisoner free.”

It is scripture that says, “Let justice roll down like waters.”

And it is scripture that says, “Beat your swords into plowshares.”

And it is scripture that says, “Love your neighbor and even love your enemy.”

Jesus was concerned about the health of our communities. In this way, he was political. Not partisan. But he constantly spoke about the health of communal life. That’s political. And when we talk about that in church, we are not being partisan, it seems to me. We are sticking to the Bible.

Am I making sense to you?

Faith and politics share a conversation, but they play different roles. And the distinction of the roles is a judgment call. I may interpret those roles differently than you; no doubt I will from time to time. And I may be in the wrong; I no doubt will be from time to time. There is a misstep if the pulpit crosses the line from conversations about the teachings of faith regarding communal life and devolves into conversations about policy and partisanship.

But the preacher is not the only one with a responsibility here. When you sit in the pew or join online, you have a responsibility as well. Keep listening.

I have said there is a misstep if the preacher becomes partisan. But there is also a misstep when our partisanship attempts to silence the proclamation of the faith.

None of us purely align our politics with the life of Jesus. None of us do. Our greed and fears and simply limited understanding of the world all get in the way.

So, when we discover that our political convictions may not align with our faith, it is not our political convictions that rule. If they do, scripture would say that’s what idolatry looks like. Our politics have begun to shape our faith, rather than our faith shaping our political convictions.

Let me give you a horrendous example.

In December of 1861 a gathering of Presbyterians was held in the First Presbyterian Church of August, Georgia. The Reverend Joseph Wilson hosted the gathering as pastor of First Presbyterian August. Reverend Wilson’s five-year-old son, Woodrow, would later become the twenty-eighth President of the United States.

This gathering was the first gathering of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States of America, later simply called the PCUS, or Southern Presbyterian Church. A hundred years later, the Southern Church would teach me that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.

During this Assembly in 1861, Reverend Wilson joined theologian James Henley Thornwell, who was perhaps the most significant theological mind in the Presbyterian church at the time. They penned an open letter to the world offering theological justification for the enslavement of human beings.

Their most significant argument was that slavery was an institution of the state, a political entity, and as such, it did, and I am quoting, “transcend the sphere” of the faith (Armstrong, Loetscher, Anderson, ed., The Presbyterian Enterprise: Sources of American Presbyterian History, p. 215). The concerns of the faith, they said, were spiritual, not civic. So, when it comes to the institution of slavery — a matter of overwhelming injustice, what Condoleezza Rice has called America’s original sin — when it comes to the institution of slavery, the Presbyterians argued, God has nothing to say.

We can’t talk about it in church.

It was idolatrous, because their political conviction had become their god, and God had become a tool for their political conviction.

Now, I know there is no one in this room who would share their view. But having a different perspective does not mean we are free from their temptation to silence the faith when it challenges our worldview.

None escapes that temptation.

This has always been hard. But there are particular challenges making this hard for us in these days. Let me speak to one.

Walter Cronkite was the anchor of CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. He was often called the most trusted man in America. In 1963 he told us that President Kennedy was dead. In 1968 he told us that we were losing the war in Vietnam. In 1969 he shared our wonder as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. In 2009 Walter Cronkite died, and there were grand memorial services in New York. But this Midwestern man returned to his roots and was buried next to his bride in a cemetery in Kansas City. In a twist of circumstance, I was asked to officiate his graveside service. It was family only. After the service, I asked his son, Chip, “If your dad was breaking into the business today, where would he be?” Chip responded, “He would probably be unemployed. Maybe on PBS.”

One way the world has changed for us since those days is there is no shared civic narrative. Americans have chosen divergent civic narratives, which not only divide us but, as of late, seemingly make us enemies of one another.

This makes it very difficult for you or for me to talk about anything that really matters without being challenged by some civic narrative or another.

America’s lack of shared civic narrative has resulted in what George Packer calls “two countries.” He describes that in the last election, one country of America “believes we narrowly averted the overthrow of democracy, and the other believes we saw its brazen perversion in a massive fraud. Each views the other as an existential enemy with whom compromise would be betrayal” (George Packer, Last Best Hope).

Does that sound right to you? It does seem like we are treating one another as enemies. That our political convictions are identifying the other as the enemy, and maybe they are. And the world out there says enemies are real and must be destroyed. So, belittle them. Dehumanize them. Eliminate them. And live toward an America where your side alone is victorious. Because your side is the real America, and their side is a threat to America.

That’s what we are taught about enemies out there. But in here, our faith tells us when we go out there, we are called to love our enemies. We are to listen to them. We are, as St Francis said, to seek to understand before we are understood. We are to remember that every last one of them is a child of God, and that redemptive work of God happens in this world. In individuals, in communities, and in institutions. We are to remember that every last one is a child of God. And in this nation these children of God also happen to be Americans, with whom we are charged to find a way to share in good governance.

That day seems pretty far off right now. But if I understand the texts — all of the biblical texts — if we are going to draw closer to that day, we will need to talk about it in church.