"Who is God’s Candidate?"
Psalm 146 and Romans 13:1-7
November 4, 2012
Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404
Religion & politics. As a kid I was taught those were two topics that you didn’t bring up in polite conversation. They were simply too personal and too controversial. Better to stick to the weather.
Today I am going to break that traditional rule. This message will deal with both religion and politics. But in doing so I am actually recovering a much older tradition. In colonial New England, it was expected that Congregational Church pastors would preach what was called an “Election Day” sermon. Before parishioners went to the polls, their preacher would instruct them on the duties of Christian citizenship.
Having read some of those sermons, I can tell you that sometimes they dealt with the issues of their day in rather specific ways. One I recall was a denunciation of slavery which was, of course, quite legal at the time. It aroused quite a controversy in the congregation. And the preacher lost his pulpit!
Over the years clergy have used the privilege of the pulpit to speak to the issues of their day. In recent times some of us will recall sermons opposing the Vietnam War or supporting civil rights for African Americans. Without exception I am convinced these sermons were based on the preachers’ deep convictions about what God wanted the people to hear from the Word of God. But like all true prophets, their messages were not easily received by many people. Congregations were divided. Preachers were fired.
To be fair, sometimes preachers abused the freedom of the pulpit to advance their own partisan political views. We see this in some churches today when certain conservative, evangelical clergy identify the will of God with the platform of the Republican Party and some liberal mainline clergy seem to believe that God is a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party! Some clergy and religious groups have become so involved in partisan politics that it is difficult to distinguish them from Political Action Committees. By doing so, I believe they lose any claim to the larger vision God expects from Christian people. The pulpit is not the place for political partisanship, but Christian principles. Saying that is easy. Spelling out what it means is more difficult, but in the few moments we have together this morning, let me try.
The key is recognizing that as Christians we are always in tension with the principalities and powers of this world. Does anyone here this morning remember Charles Atlas? For those who don’t, he was the forerunner of all those exercise machines and gimmicks that are advertised today. His most famous ad was a cartoon showing a 98 pound weakling at a beach with his girl, getting sand kicked in his face by a bully. “Send away for my exercise method,” said Atlas, “and you’ll be able to handle any bully that comes along.” Since I was a 98 pound weakling myself at the time, this was a very attractive offer. Sadly, I didn’t have the money and my parents wouldn’t let me have the money to invest in the Atlas method. His method was called “Dynamic Tension” and called for exercises using a device with springs.
Dynamic tension. That’s a good way to describe a Christian’s relationship with politics. The Apostle Paul put it in more religious terms when he said that we should be in but not of the world. To put it in Augustinian terms as Christians we hold dual citizenship. We are citizens of the city of the world and also of the city of God. Both those realms place their demands upon us. We always live in the tension between those demands.
Nowhere is this tension more acute than in the relationship of a Christian with the political order. Our two biblical texts this morning demonstrate this tension perfectly. Psalm 146 warns us not to put our trust in earthly rulers. Strange advice if we think about it for a moment. Israel was a theocracy. The king was believed to have not only earthly power but divine authority. The divine right of kings was alive and well in ancient Israel! But some of the biblical writers – prophets like Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah as well as the author of today’s psalm – had come to understand that no human ruler is perfectly attuned to the will of God. They would have agreed with Lord Acton that power corrupts all rulers and the more absolute the power, the more certain the corruption.
In our time this means we should never make the mistake of assuming that any political candidate is God’s candidate. By extension, there are no Christian political parties and no Christian nations. As Christian citizens we should resist strongly those who insist that God is best served by the election of one or another of the candidates running for office. In God’s eyes, all of them have sinned before and will sin again. We need to keep a wary and watchful eye on all of them. While it is proper for us to be involved in the political process, our Christian faith should prevent us from becoming an uncritical partisan of any candidate or party.
On the other hand – and preachers always have another hand, don’t you know! – I like the story of the man who said he wanted to go to a church with a one-armed preacher because he was so sick of his pastor saying “On the one hand, but on the other hand.” Still, I’ll risk it! While as Christians we need to keep a critical distance from politics and politicians, we are also reminded by Paul in Romans to be a responsible part of the political process. Christians, of all Americans, should be known for our citizenship by voting, by involvement in political parties, and perhaps by running for political office.
At the very least, we should be known for our impeccable voting record in local, state, and national elections. While you and I should have reservations about all candidates, we should not allow our questions to degenerate into cynicism. If we want to cast a Christian vote on Election Day we should hold all candidates to the high standard that the Bible expects. And no better summary of that expectation has ever been written than the words of Micah. Let me frame his words in this way:
You and I should do our best to vote for the
Candidates we believe will do justice, love mercy,
and walk humbly with our God.
To me, that means choosing to support the candidates we believe will work for justice for all, not just for some, and certainly not just for the privileged and powerful. It certainly does not mean choosing to support those who appeal to our selfish interests. A Christian citizen should be ashamed to think that he or she would be paid off in some way by what happens at the polls.
We should also support candidates we believe will be merciful, again, not just to some but to all. The Bible is particularly clear that we are to be concerned for the weak, the poor, the helpless, the voiceless, the elderly, and the children. We should be very wary of candidates beholden to powerful interests. Whether liberal, conservative, or middle-of-the-road, the candidates we choose to support should be men and women of compassion, not afraid to risk political gain for the sake of the common good.
Finally, those we choose to support should be people of humility. The dictionary says that to be humble means to have a modest estimate of one’s own importance. I think it also means to be sensitive to the feelings and opinions of others. It means having an open mind and not a closed heart. It means that we can acknowledge mistakes, take responsibility for past failures, and accept correction. Our greatest national leaders have demonstrated that humility and have grown in stature after they were elected.
So this is my counsel as you go to the polls this Tuesday: choose those candidates you believe will do justice, love mercy, and walk humble with God and with the rest of us. Having done that, we can safely leave the result in the hands of god.