Religion and Politics – Peculiar Faith

Imagine Luke the Gospel writer as a filmmaker. In the snippet we heard from Luke this past Sunday (3:1-6), the camera is zooming way out for context: there we see the Roman Emperor Tiberius in the fifteenth year of his reign; zooming in a bit, we see that Pontius Pilate is the Roman governor of Judea (a province of the Empire) while Herod is the ruler over Galilee; this was the time when—zooming in further—Annas and Caiphas were the high priests of the temple in Jerusalem.

Time and place matter to Luke—they matter theologically and spiritually and not merely as scenery on the stage. The Gospel is “good news” precisely because of this: it deals directly with the material circumstances of human life and society—from the temple just down the street, to the governor on the hill, and all the way to the emperor on his throne.

To put this in another way, the Christian Gospel does not support a disembodied faith and it cannot be detached from messy entanglements with the wider world (as much as I would sometimes prefer it could be). To suppose that Christian faith is a matter of private and interior piety emerged only recently in Church history, mostly in the modern West, and among people who were perfectly comfortable with the way the world is.

But for people who believe the world must change, the Christian Gospel proclaims the God who is with us in that shared struggle for a better world—and the time is now to get to work.

That’s the good news Luke wants to tell as he launches the ministry of John the Baptist, which will prepare the way for the ministry of Jesus, and Luke frames this moment with the short glimpse into first-century geo-political realities and imperial rulers (along with a few clergy thrown in for good measure).

For Luke, “preparing the way” for Jesus stands in stark contrast to the way already charted by the likes of Herod, and Pontius Pilate, and Tiberius—and this is essentially why repentance is at the core of the message John the Baptist preaches.

Luke is the only gospel writer to give us substantial backstory for John—not only John’s familial connection to Jesus (they were something like second cousins), but also about John’s elderly mother, Elizabeth (who thought she would never have a child), and also his elderly father, Zechariah, who was a priest in the Jerusalem temple. John was born into a professional religious family, in other words, but oddly he did not follow in his father’s footsteps.

Or perhaps that’s not so odd—children of religious parents, especially clergy, tend to resist and even reject the religion of their youth. John did this rather dramatically: he didn’t just sidestep the temple; he fled Jerusalem entirely.

John goes out to the wilderness—Luke doesn’t say for how long, and he may have lived there with a community of religious radicals and social dropouts (think “hippie commune in the Haight-Ashbury of San Francisco in the 1960s,” that kind of community)—he goes out to the wilderness, exactly where so many of the prophets of ancient Israel went to discern what God is calling God’s people to do at that time and in that place.

And that’s where the lectionary picks up the story this past Sunday. God calls John back from the wilderness to go to the towns and villages of Judea, to the river valley region referred to as “the Jordan”—which was, not just coincidentally, the seat of both religious and political power in that imperial province.

God calls John to preach repentance in those towns and villages—not out in the wilderness, but in the public square and in houses of worship.

I always find it helpful to recall that the Greek verb we usually see translated as “repentance” is not merely about remorse for having made a mistake. To “repent” means to change your mind and alter your course. You’ve been headed the wrong way—it’s time to turn around!

To “prepare the way of the Lord” means turning around when you’ve been following the way of Herod, Pontius Pilate, and Tiberius.

To “prepare the way of the Lord” means removing the mountains of social privilege for a few that block access to a life of thriving for all.

To “prepare the way of the Lord” means raising up the valleys of despair to make a path of companionship for the brokenhearted.

All of this is classic prophetic language, a plea to change course, and especially for the sake of the most vulnerable among us. And all four Gospel writers weave John into that long lineage of prophetic witness, especially Isaiah.

The collection of various writings in the one book we call Isaiah stretches across several centuries, from a time of warning about impending political disaster, through the catastrophe of Israel’s exile in Babylon, and to the return of God’s people to their homeland.

Anticipating that moment of joyful return is what the lectionary gave us from the prophet Baruch on Sunday (Baruch 5:1-9). Baruch was the scribe for the prophet Jeremiah—not an enviable position, needless to say. Jeremiah was constantly getting into trouble for denouncing both the religious and political establishment of his day, and Baruch had to write it all down.

But Baruch drafted his own prophetic texts as well, beautiful texts that encourage God’s people to live with joy, the kind toward which Jeremiah’s lamentations could only point.

Here’s the truly astonishing thing: Baruch is writing to the exiles still in Babylon as if they are already returning to Jerusalem. “Take off the garment of sorrow,” he says. “Your people stand ready to rejoice at your return.”

Note this carefully: prophets have a very strange sense of time. They are not interested in predicting the future. As Baruch seems to suggest, we build the promised day to come by living it now.

We build the promised day to come by the way we live right now.

John the Baptist belongs to that long line of Hebrew prophets with precisely that posture, preaching preparation not prediction. The vital implication here is this: the future is actually wide open. Contrary to the religious formation of my youth, there is no cosmic blueprint with which world events are aligning; there is no heavenly timetable to which prophets have special access; there is no pre-determined plan unfolding in elections and markets and wars.

Quite honestly, I often think a detailed plan would make life a bit easier, especially when a radically open future feels scary. Facing an open future means we have some serious decisions to make about how we live, decisions that will shape the kind of world we will inhabit.

That word “world” can mean, as it did for biblical writers, both small and large realities—the world of one’s own faith community, or the world of the neighborhoods in which we reside, or one’s own country as a world, as well as this planetary world of many countries.

What kind of world do we want to inhabit?

That’s the urgent question prophets always ask. It’s the question religious traditions urgently pose, which they can help us answer, and then shape us to live that answer as a community of God’s people.

As I reflect on Advent this year, and the prophets, and the world in which we currently live, I am increasingly convinced about a crucial way to frame Christmas. It’s this: the coming of Jesus is God’s offer to collaborate with us on what the future will look like.

God has hopes and dreams for God’s own creation. God’s will is that all would thrive and flourish. And God is always calling and then equipping communities of faith to make these divine dreams a reality. It’s time, as John would say, to turn around and build a world with God.

John’s father Zechariah sang a song of praise for this world-building God, whose manner of arrival surprises every generation (Luke 1:68-79). That song—which Luke actually calls a “prophecy”—has since then become a Prayer Book canticle, and the lectionary invited us to recite it in worship on Sunday.

That prophetic song of praise is offered for this: God arrives not with military strength, not robed in royal majesty, and not armed with anything we might expect to be useful for a world-changing mission; God always arrives in “tender compassion.”

The “dawn from on high,” Zechariah sings—that light which will guide our feet along the way, along the good road we build together and with God—that dawning light is tenderness and compassion.

Advent invites us to live as if God has already arrived and is always arriving, not with doomsday predictions but to inspire us and to work with us to build a world to inhabit with joy—a world of peace, with justice, and thriving for all.

That work—that great work—begins with our own hearts, with our hearts being cracked open by the tender compassion of God.

How could this happen? I am absolutely gobsmacked, not only that he won but even more that the vote wasn’t particularly close. Even those who support him are a bit surprised. What do we make of this? How did we get here? Who are “we”?

I’m not a political pundit, but I am invested in politics, as every religious leader should directly admit. “Politics,” a word deriving from the Greek polis, or “city,” refers to all the many different ways we structure our societies and negotiate with others for resources and strategize for ways (hopefully) to advance the common good. In that sense, religion is by definition thoroughly political (as all of the ancient Hebrew prophets and also the Christian Gospel writers demonstrate, as well as the liturgical texts in The Book of Common Prayer).

It’s from that perspective that I’m inviting the parish I am privileged to serve to reflect on this moment in American cultural and political history and how we should now live our faith in public. I would have likewise invited this reflection had Ms. Harris won the election, but the invitation now feels laced with urgency, especially as the “common good” seems alarmingly fragile.

Who are we? I keep returning to that question, in large measure because an individual does not a social movement or a political party make. This is often difficult to keep in mind concerning Donald J. Trump, whose sheer force of personality fills a room—or an arena. Quite honestly, I haven’t wanted to suppose that Mr. Trump represents anything other than himself, someone whose public statements and moral character—in all frankness—I find reprehensible.

Never could I have imagined a convicted felon and instigator of insurrection running for President of the United States (much less actually winning), a man who mocks disabled people, advocates violence, and sexually assaults women.

But no, putting my attention there, on one person’s moral failings is a mistake. The election wasn’t about him; it was and still is about our neighbors. Focusing entirely on him risks distracting us from the vital work ahead in a deeply divided country—I mean, the work of trying to understand our neighbors, and in this case, “neighbors” for me refers to those who voted for Mr. Trump.

The week before the election, the New York Times Magazine published an essay on the work of Robert Paxton, a leading historian of fascism, whose award-winning 1972 book on the French collaborators with Nazi Germany analyzed the emergence of Vichy France during World War II.

Paxton was at first reluctant to apply the term “fascism” to the MAGA movement in the Republican Party but now believes we should, though with caveats (the character of this moment in world history is not the same as it was in the 1930s, for example). Whatever else we want to say about “Trumpism,” Paxton said, we need to note carefully that this is a “mass phenomenon” from below, and the “leaders are running to keep ahead of it.” This isn’t really about Donald Trump at all—he’s mostly a convenient means to an end. Paxton’s point about this is quite startling (if not alarming): “Trumpism,” he notes, has a much more solid and broader base of support in the American electorate than either Hitler did in Germany or Mussolini did in Italy.

Paxton also cautions against thinking of fascism as an “ideology” or a kind of “party platform.” That approach obscures the action-oriented character of a movement that is not rooted in any coherent philosophy but instead fills the void in a cultural system that has broken down or failed. This is why, in part, Paxton is still somewhat hesitant about the fascist label, which implies more stability for a cultural moment than likely exists. This, it seems to me, is a large part of what makes understanding my neighbors so challenging: not everyone votes the way they do for the same reason.

While David Brooks urges us to see in this election a resounding No to “liberal elites”—and there is likely some truth to that analysis—I worry that this framing of the outcome reduces our social complexity to a single cause, or even worse, perpetuates what has been a long trend of American anti-intellectualism, as if “education” leads inevitably to tribal betrayal.

As Paxton would suggest, this moment is manifesting a multiplicity of convictions, grievances, aspirations, and motivations, some of which likely stand in opposition to the others even though they all inspired the same vote. The working poor in rural America may feel mostly abandoned by politicians but that’s hardly cause for common cause with high-tech billionaires who want to erase government regulations.

As I sort through all of this (and more) for my work as a parish priest, I keep returning to what has always been the focus of my vocation: the Eucharistic Table. While it’s important to keep saying that “all are welcome, no exceptions” (which I say every single Sunday at the beginning of worship), I now worry in ways I haven’t before about whether this invitation covers over the differences among those who gather at the Table—and some of the differences are clearly deep and profound.

I worry, in other words, about turning the Eucharist into a ritual of avoidance, a kind of shared denial about what keeps us separate and segregated. (This has of course always been the risk concerning racial differences in a white supremacist society as well as the differences of gendered sexuality in a patriarchal world.) If table fellowship amounts to merely a superficial unity, then “church” is not much more than a cultural cliché.

I certainly do not mean that how one votes matters for how we gather at the Table, but I do mean that how one lives matters after we leave the Table. And that’s why the difference between “partisan” and “political,” though subtle, remains so vital.

I believe Eucharistic formation shapes Christian people to stand in solidarity with the poor, advocate for the vulnerable, work for peace with justice, and commit to a lifelong path of ongoing conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ—whose body we ourselves become at that Table as Christian people. The Table also reassures us of divine forgiveness when we fail to live as Christian people, and also the never-failing love of God, which is always freely offered regardless of how we live.

More succinctly: Eucharist welcomes everyone and leaves no one unchanged.

Eucharistic fellowship is, apparently, just as complex as American electoral politics. This has likely always been true, but now, perhaps, we know it in a new way.

But who, exactly, are we?

Tag: Religion and Politics

Who are “We” at the Table Now?