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Interesting, isn’t it? Often when one begins thinking about a particular subject or pondering a specific question or even praying for an individual or issue…the floodgates of information and possibilities open up! This past week, for example, I was pondering the question asked by one of our sisters, about our rationale as people of faith for being involved in politics…how and to what degree ought we, as Christians, to keep working at societal transformation, was another way she phrased her question. As I was preparing this meditation in response several relevant items crossed my path. After about the 4th or 5th one, I was humorously reminded of artist and writer Brian Andreas who has become one of my favorites with his “StoryPeople.” One of his prints hangs in my office and I’ve seen other works by Andreas as I visit your homes. The particular print I recalled is titled, “Waiting for Signs;” with a colorful woman made of bright shapes and lines, the print reads, “I used to wait for a sign, she said, before I did anything. Then one night I had a dream & an angel in black tights came to me & said, you can start any time now, & then I asked is this a sign? & the angel started laughing & I woke up. Now, I think the whole world is filled with signs, but if there's no laughter, I know they're not for me.”
Well, friends, the so-called “signs” that crossed my path this week brought laughter with them. First, there was an invitation from the California Renewal Project, which cordially invited me to participate in its Pastors’ Policy Briefing. The event is entitled “Rediscovering God in America” and features special guest Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who writes in the invitation that “there is no attack on American culture that is more destructive and more historically dishonest than the secular Left’s relentless effort to drive God out of America’s public square…” Mr. Gingrich promises an all-expenses paid conference that will “reclaim the centrality of God in American life.” Faith and politics…there it was calling out from my stack of church mail.
Then came two email invitations urging me to 1) add my name to a petition calling for worker justice at the Smithfield plant in North Carolina, and 2) to travel to Sacramento (all expenses paid) this next week as part of an Advocacy Day with other clergy meeting with state legislators on the bills before them having to do with global warming. Again, the relationship of politics and faith emerges, this time from the screen of my computer.
Finally, I was catching up on some reading in current issues of The Christian Century and saw an article about the recent UCC General Synod. The article was entitled, “UCC Seeks Faith-Politics Energy” and focused on the so-called “fiery speeches” that at times made the General Synod seem “as much a revival or political rally as a mainline church meeting.” Through the words of UCC members Barak Obama, Bill Moyers, and General Minister and President John H. Thomas, there they were: faith and politics on the floor of our beloved Synod. And in a more recent issue of The Christian Century, the editors reported an opinion poll, originating with Time Magazine, entitled, “Faith & Politics.” In this particular poll, voters were asked whether presidents should or should not allow their personal religious faith to guide them in making decisions as president. The results? Of Republicans polled, 62% said yes, presidents should allow their personal religious faith to guide their decisions, and 29% said no, they should keep faith and politics separate. Of Democrats polled, the numbers were nearly reversed: 32% said that presidents should allow their religious faith to guide their decisions, and 58% said no, they should not allow faith to steer presidential decisions.
When I turned the page to see this recent poll, I admit that I did start chuckling…“OK,” I said to God in the heavens above, “I get it…with this question of faith and politics comes a response that it is not a matter of if we people of faith are to be involved, but to what degree and in what direction our involvement should move.
Perhaps a brief survey of our denomination’s history will be useful. All of our UCC forebears dealt with this issue of the relationship between faith and politics; all four predecessor bodies which joined to create the United Church of Christ, had as a central value, their active participation in the public sphere. Their reading of scripture compelled them to do something to improve the lot of those less fortunate. Whether we are talking about the Congregationalists who fought for the rights of slaves in the Amistad experience, or the Reformed congregation that entered the political fray to secure the Liberty Bell from the invading British soldiers by hiding it under the floorboards of their sanctuary, or the German-immigrant Evangelicals who donated generously to build hospitals for indigent orphaned children, or the Christians who braved permits and building codes to provide safe and secure affordable housing for underprivileged retirees, these hearty and courageous women and men did not seem to let the first amendment of the Constitution prohibit their public involvement. Seeing scripture as their primary guide, these predecessor denominations read the same prophetic messages we’ve heard this morning. And their response was to see these messages as signs, angels in black tights if you will, telling them that they could get up and start any time now…
From the Pilgrims to the Boston Tea Party to the creation of democracy itself, our UCC ancestors were active and involved people of faith in their public spheres. These actions were rooted in the fertile ground of Judeo-Christian morality drawn directly from the ancient prophets and from Jesus himself. When we review such morality, we can see that it forms a two-way path on the journey of faith: an internal spiritual journey that fuels an external spiritual journey, and an external spiritual journey that is deeply informed by the internal spiritual journey. Both internal and external are spiritual…and both are needed to sustain the other.
Look to Amos, the bold and dramatic prophet from the 8th-century BCE. A lowly shepherd from Tekoa in the southern kingdom of Judah, Amos travels to the north to deliver God’s clear message. Today, we would call that message “political,” for Amos encircles the Hebrews, moving in with rapid-fire precision to tell the chosen ones that God is not pleased with their spin on the relationship between faith and politics.
Like an actor building to a memorable climax, Amos begins God’s message by passing judgment on all Israel’s surrounding neighbors. First Damascus will be punished because they have trashed the land. Then Gaza will be punished because they exiled whole communities of citizens. As Amos’ voice gets louder, you can almost hear the Israelites cheering in the background… “Yes, God, get ‘em…hunt ‘em down and kill ‘em…they are, after all, our enemies…” After Gaza, comes Tyre and Edom, followed by the Ammonites and the Moabites. These neighbors of Israel will be punished by God because they refused to care for the poor, they pursued and killed brothers and sisters with the sword, they failed to respect burial grounds belonging to others, they slaughtered pregnant women in nearby communities in order to extend their own land holdings and protect their national interests, even if it meant trespassing on other people’s territory.
With every naming of every neighbor, Amos’ message spirals closer to home. Finally, his words hit too close, as Israel’s southern neighbor and sibling in the faith Judah is on the chopping block for their misdeeds of injustice. Judah, too, has failed to embody God’s justice by caring more about profit than people, by leaving the poor to fend for themselves, by pushing the afflicted out of public view, and by drinking to excessive and embarrassing behavior.
Keep in mind that we heard passages from only the first two chapters of the book of Amos. Virtually the entire rest of the book’s nine chapters are dedicated to a litany of judgment by God directed at the chosen Israelites. For the same injustices—for the same failure to do something in the public sphere to improve the lives of the suffering, the poor, the physically and mentally afflicted, the soldiers returning from battle, the children, and rather because they chose to spend their wealth on food and drink and housing for the already-wealthy—Israel will be severely punished by God.
Turning to the gospel readings selected for today, we have a varied picture of Jesus. At once railing against the religious leaders for their inaction on behalf of the poor, and then again not even a whisper in the face of Pilate before whom Jesus could have spoken a deep spiritual and political word. Here, in the face of our question about the relationship between faith and politics, is an inconsistent response at best.
Where is the angel in black tights, you may ask. Where is the hope for Israel, for Pilate, for the poor, the needy, the afflicted, and by extension, for us? God’s mother tongue is always one of hope. This last week, I was struggling to hike up Vail Mountain in Colorado; my walking companion kept stopping to wait for my tired, wobbly legs and empty lungs to catch up. As we were nearing the peak, she turned back to me, smiled and said kindly, “Come on, Sharon, there’s always hope!” To be sure, in the realm of God’s world, there is always hope. And today, friends, when we are pondering our place as people of faith in the political world, we can be sure that God’s hope resides in us internally and God’s hope is also made real and visible through our actions.
Evangelical and Reformed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr preached a sermon in 1943 that suggested this two-way path of spirituality by introducing the world to the now famous Serenity Prayer: “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” Accepting what cannot be changed is the result of a lively internal spirituality, and as a complement, having courage to change the things that should be changed results from an equally-vibrant external spirituality.
However, we need not wait for an angel visitant appearing to us in our dreams telling us we can start anytime now. Nor do we need search for any other signs from the heavens assuring us that our participation in the public sphere is both acceptable and needed. The signs are all around us. An invitation to add our name to a petition that will make life better for a worker in North Carolina…Or an article we can send along to a neighbor and spark some lively discussion…Or a commitment to being a member of one city commission or participating in one local issue or helping to alleviate the horrors of one national crisis… We need only look to the joy…the joy that our action can bring to the lives of others and the joy we experience as we serve…if there is laughter and if there is joy calling you as a person of faith to participate in any aspect of the political realm, please do not slam the door on that little angel in black tights. Open wide your arms to embrace the public service that will bring strength to your spiritual journey…for this is a two-way spiritual path we travel…an internal journey of prayer and meditation that will grow weak and narcissistic without the external. But this is also an external journey of spirituality that, with the strength of the internal, will continue bearing fruit in the public sphere. For this two-way journey, we are given whatever is needed to remain strong: a belt of truth, a shirt of righteousness, a shield of faith, and coins that bear the likeness of our leaders, with whom we sometimes spar and for whom we at other times pray. Welcome, all of you angels in tights, welcome to this journey. And yes, like your UCC ancestors before you, you can start any time now.
Amen and Blessed Be
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