Paul, Peter, Power and Politics
Yesterday's sermon at Bethesda Presbyterian (sorry about the weird formatting and typeface...they help with the delivery).
_____________________________
That passage from Ephesians…That is lectionary that a Preacher can get excited about.
And in Mississippi, when I was a kid, I attended services, of a rather enthusiastic nature….And these types of passages were favorites…
The sermon writes itself…all I would have to do is give it some life, throwing in a little showmanship, some enthusiasm….
I’ll give it a try. So, here’s a little Mississippi on hot August Sunday morning…
“Be STRONG in the Lord - says Paul…
Put on the Full ARMor of GOD…Take your stand against the Devil’s mighty schemes……
For effect, you might add the occasional question:
“Do you realize that Paul is NOT saying to struggle against your neighbor, No not Flesh and Blood, but stand against the RULERS, Against the Authorities, Against the Cosmic Powers of this present darkness.” Sniff….
For a preacher, passages like the one from Ephesians are, well……
Essentially, it’s God giving you a freebie…
_______________________________________
But wouldn’t you know it,
somehow that reading got paired with that enigmatic reading from John.
And Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him…the One who feeds on me will live because of me…”
Most Christians have heard that passage a million times, and probably don’t think about it much.
But imagine hearing it for the first time, from a man as literal as Jesus often was. When Jesus said he would feed a multitude with a couple of fish…he meant it, not symbolically, but really, everyone would eat.
Again, Jesus says, “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood…The one who feeds on me…”
John tells us that upon hearing this, many of Jesus’ Disciples said, “This is a hard teaching.” No kidding, they were probably thinking “How are we ever going to preach on Cannibalism?”
And Jesus’ explanation of his words is not exactly straightforward. Many of the disciples abandoned Jesus as a result.
I’m not sure how Christ felt at that moment, John points out that he had known from the beginning which disciples would leave and would not believe.
But the human part of him, had to be somewhat confused and threatened.
He was being abandoned by his followers, just immediately after feeding the thousands with a couple of sardines and five loaves bread
and then he walked on water.
So, a couple of serious miracles. He’s become famous, and then he says something confusing…Everybody leaves.
_____________________________
The Twelve remained. But Jesus, as a human, looked at them and asked, “What? You’re not leaving too?”
Simon Peter then says, in my mind, the most profound, amazing thing…
“Lord, to whom shall we go?”
This is an amazing statement…It is not…”Oh Lord, we understand you, you share such wisdom and put our hearts at peace,
we are showered with spiritual riches. Oh Great Benefactor, we will follow you till the ends of the earth!”
No, the disciple says, “What are our alternatives? You’re the best we’ve got.”
You know, we don’t typically think of the Gospel as a political document.
Oh, I think we draw lessons and admonitions from it to use in our political lives. · We use it as justification that poverty should be first our list of political priorities. · We pray for peace, we beseech Jesus to guide our leaders…But for us, politics and religion are separate.
But as Dan Christian pointed out a few weeks back in the world of Israel, no such distinction existed. Politics and religion were one and the same.
Jesus would not have taught that we should merely use religion to “inform” our political discourse.
I don’t disagree with that, but I think there is a difference between spirituality and politics.
And this story that John tells us. It is about politics.
There is a famous Buddhist scholar named Walpola Rahula, a man that many of us have probably read. His introductory text, “What the Buddha taught,” has been used by introductory college courses on world religions for decades, since the 60s.
As he tells it, doubt impedes the Buddhists’ progress towards eradicating - ignorance and false views which are the root of all evil. But nonetheless, there must be doubt as long as one does not understand or see clearly. But after the doubt has served its purpose, you must shed it in order to move forward.
Spiritually speaking, one cannot “believe” without having experienced the truth in some fashion or another. To have a spiritual interaction with God, you must do more than simply believe what your preacher tells you, you must feel something, you must know something, you must understand something about your relationship to the Divine, whether it came by way of intellectual reason, through answered prayer or a vision or some other mystical experience.
He says, “To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual.”
“To force oneself to believe and to accept without understanding…” In other words, you simply choose to accept something as true because you choose to trust the person that told you.
Essentially, when you just believe, you are towing the party line.
· Some examples might be, “I’m not a scientist, I don’t understand global warming, but my political party, or candidate, says it’s a problem, or it’s not a problem, and I trust my party.”
· Or I know very little about the Middle East, but my president, or my Senator or Congressman says this, and I trust them.”
These are not intellectual choices that we make, not spiritual ones, but political decisions to choose one side over the other, without fully understanding the consequences of one choice or the other.
When Peter chooses Jesus as his leader, he says, “Lord to whom shall we go?…We believe that you are the Holy One of God..”
________________________________________
You could read this interaction between Peter and Jesus as a story about faith. The story could focus on Peter as the perfect example of the faithful, that we should emulate him, that he was the first good faithful Christian.
But I’m not sure that’s the most fruitful reading. Because Peter admits that he doesn’t understand, that he really doesn’t know, when he asks “To whom shall we turn?” But he’s not blindly choosing, just because he believes.
Peter thinks that Jesus is the best alternative out there. The best leadership available.
This story, I think, is about leadership, about politics. We are to look in our leaders for qualities displayed by Jesus, the human, in these passages.
_____________________________________
A quick review of John Chapter 6 will help us understand why Peter put his trust, cast his ballot, for Jesus.
(1) Jesus’ focus was on those less fortunate; he fed those hungry in body and those hungry in spirit.
(2) After performing the miracle with the fish and loaves of bread, Jesus learned that the thousands present intended to “make him king by force.” Jesus immediately withdrew to a mountain alone. He resisted the type of power that relies on physical might.
(3) When the disciples were crossing to Capernaum afterwards, and the waters grew rough, Jesus walked out to them and led them to shore and safety.
(4) When all of his new followers asked him to explain his miracles, to explain what good works God requires, and asked him to provide them with bread from now on, Jesus responded by telling them the truth, no matter how difficult it was to hear and understand. And he told the truth, understanding the consequences, understanding that most of them would abandon him.
To sum up, Jesus focused on the needs of those less fortunate, first and foremost. · He did not succumb to the temptation of power for power’s sake or the use of force to further his power. Jesus provided leadership and vision when it was needed. And he was honest with his constituents.
[····These qualities and actions must be important, after all in the Bible and in the Western world all good ideas must come in groups of three. And here we have four….Clearly, God is trying to get our attention.
John give us four attributes of a political leader, and by way of those attributes, certain questions to ask of our political leaders.
· When we making our political choices, we can ask ourselves whether those vying for power put the needs of others, those less fortunate, as foremost in the development of their policy.
Are the needs of the poor addressed? Are the needs of the broken of spirit considered? Are the weakest, and even those most despised, the criminals, the deviants, are they treated with compassion and healed?
· Is a candidate wary of his or her own power? Do they acknowledge its corrupting influence? Do they seek to be accountable and transparent?
· Will a potential leader provide leadership when it is most needed? Not just in fair weather, but in foul as well?
And,
· Can we trust a potential leader? Does he or she speak the truth naturally?
These attributes might be summed up as the following virtues: compassion, humility, courage, and honesty.
__________________________________________
These attributes may be the armor of God that Paul prescribes in Ephesians. Using the words that Paul gives us:
· How many of our leaders today are wearing the armor of God?
· How many of our leaders are rooted and grounded in love?
· How many make as their foundation, shod themselves in the shoes of, the gospel of peace, instead of anger, violence, and war? Armoring themselves with God’s armor, and not armor of their own making?
· How many provide us with vision in the struggle against evil in the world, not against enemies of flesh and blood, but against poverty, violence, hatred, disease, greed, and ignorance?
· How many of our leaders today have fastened the belt of truth around their waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness?
Paul implores us to ask these kinds of questions. In Ephesians 5, he says “Let no one deceive you with empty words…Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.. It is Shameful to mention evil in secret, because everything exposed by the light becomes visible, and everything that becomes visible is light.”
(I guess this makes Paul the patron Saint of good journalism…)
These words have special import for citizens of a democracy.…not just because democracies work better when transparent, when we are given accurate information about and by our leaders.
No, even more fundamentally than that, in a democracy, we must not be deceived, because if we, as a nation, perform an evil act, then we as individuals are responsible. When we, as a Nation, take part in unfruitful works of darkness, then we as individuals support those barren works.
As Christians, we must demand Christ-like compassion, humility, courage, and truth from our would-be kings.
We must know how our poorer compatriots live, we must know how our enemies die, we must know how God’s creation suffers or benefits from our presence, we must know how our riches are produced, [how our gold is mined,] how our energy is drawn from the earth, how our food is grown, nurtured, harvested and slaughtered...
You cannot be a Christian in Darkness. To be a Christian, you “Live as children of Light” And the “fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.”
So, when a would-be leader, whether president or school board, wants your support. Ask yourself,
“When I need compassion, is this to whom I shall go?”
“When the world or my community needs a humble leader, is this to whom we shall go?
“When the easy decisions are the wrong ones, to whom shall we go and find courage?
And finally, “when I want to know the truth, to know if my community is engaged in Godly and fruitful works, is this to whom I shall go?”
Blessed be the words of the Lord…
_____________________________
That passage from Ephesians…That is lectionary that a Preacher can get excited about.
And in Mississippi, when I was a kid, I attended services, of a rather enthusiastic nature….And these types of passages were favorites…
The sermon writes itself…all I would have to do is give it some life, throwing in a little showmanship, some enthusiasm….
I’ll give it a try. So, here’s a little Mississippi on hot August Sunday morning…
“Be STRONG in the Lord - says Paul…
Put on the Full ARMor of GOD…Take your stand against the Devil’s mighty schemes……
For effect, you might add the occasional question:
“Do you realize that Paul is NOT saying to struggle against your neighbor, No not Flesh and Blood, but stand against the RULERS, Against the Authorities, Against the Cosmic Powers of this present darkness.” Sniff….
For a preacher, passages like the one from Ephesians are, well……
Essentially, it’s God giving you a freebie…
_______________________________________
But wouldn’t you know it,
somehow that reading got paired with that enigmatic reading from John.
And Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him…the One who feeds on me will live because of me…”
Most Christians have heard that passage a million times, and probably don’t think about it much.
But imagine hearing it for the first time, from a man as literal as Jesus often was. When Jesus said he would feed a multitude with a couple of fish…he meant it, not symbolically, but really, everyone would eat.
Again, Jesus says, “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood…The one who feeds on me…”
John tells us that upon hearing this, many of Jesus’ Disciples said, “This is a hard teaching.” No kidding, they were probably thinking “How are we ever going to preach on Cannibalism?”
And Jesus’ explanation of his words is not exactly straightforward. Many of the disciples abandoned Jesus as a result.
I’m not sure how Christ felt at that moment, John points out that he had known from the beginning which disciples would leave and would not believe.
But the human part of him, had to be somewhat confused and threatened.
He was being abandoned by his followers, just immediately after feeding the thousands with a couple of sardines and five loaves bread
and then he walked on water.
So, a couple of serious miracles. He’s become famous, and then he says something confusing…Everybody leaves.
_____________________________
The Twelve remained. But Jesus, as a human, looked at them and asked, “What? You’re not leaving too?”
Simon Peter then says, in my mind, the most profound, amazing thing…
“Lord, to whom shall we go?”
This is an amazing statement…It is not…”Oh Lord, we understand you, you share such wisdom and put our hearts at peace,
we are showered with spiritual riches. Oh Great Benefactor, we will follow you till the ends of the earth!”
No, the disciple says, “What are our alternatives? You’re the best we’ve got.”
You know, we don’t typically think of the Gospel as a political document.
Oh, I think we draw lessons and admonitions from it to use in our political lives. · We use it as justification that poverty should be first our list of political priorities. · We pray for peace, we beseech Jesus to guide our leaders…But for us, politics and religion are separate.
But as Dan Christian pointed out a few weeks back in the world of Israel, no such distinction existed. Politics and religion were one and the same.
Jesus would not have taught that we should merely use religion to “inform” our political discourse.
I don’t disagree with that, but I think there is a difference between spirituality and politics.
And this story that John tells us. It is about politics.
There is a famous Buddhist scholar named Walpola Rahula, a man that many of us have probably read. His introductory text, “What the Buddha taught,” has been used by introductory college courses on world religions for decades, since the 60s.
As he tells it, doubt impedes the Buddhists’ progress towards eradicating - ignorance and false views which are the root of all evil. But nonetheless, there must be doubt as long as one does not understand or see clearly. But after the doubt has served its purpose, you must shed it in order to move forward.
Spiritually speaking, one cannot “believe” without having experienced the truth in some fashion or another. To have a spiritual interaction with God, you must do more than simply believe what your preacher tells you, you must feel something, you must know something, you must understand something about your relationship to the Divine, whether it came by way of intellectual reason, through answered prayer or a vision or some other mystical experience.
He says, “To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual.”
“To force oneself to believe and to accept without understanding…” In other words, you simply choose to accept something as true because you choose to trust the person that told you.
Essentially, when you just believe, you are towing the party line.
· Some examples might be, “I’m not a scientist, I don’t understand global warming, but my political party, or candidate, says it’s a problem, or it’s not a problem, and I trust my party.”
· Or I know very little about the Middle East, but my president, or my Senator or Congressman says this, and I trust them.”
These are not intellectual choices that we make, not spiritual ones, but political decisions to choose one side over the other, without fully understanding the consequences of one choice or the other.
When Peter chooses Jesus as his leader, he says, “Lord to whom shall we go?…We believe that you are the Holy One of God..”
________________________________________
You could read this interaction between Peter and Jesus as a story about faith. The story could focus on Peter as the perfect example of the faithful, that we should emulate him, that he was the first good faithful Christian.
But I’m not sure that’s the most fruitful reading. Because Peter admits that he doesn’t understand, that he really doesn’t know, when he asks “To whom shall we turn?” But he’s not blindly choosing, just because he believes.
Peter thinks that Jesus is the best alternative out there. The best leadership available.
This story, I think, is about leadership, about politics. We are to look in our leaders for qualities displayed by Jesus, the human, in these passages.
_____________________________________
A quick review of John Chapter 6 will help us understand why Peter put his trust, cast his ballot, for Jesus.
(1) Jesus’ focus was on those less fortunate; he fed those hungry in body and those hungry in spirit.
(2) After performing the miracle with the fish and loaves of bread, Jesus learned that the thousands present intended to “make him king by force.” Jesus immediately withdrew to a mountain alone. He resisted the type of power that relies on physical might.
(3) When the disciples were crossing to Capernaum afterwards, and the waters grew rough, Jesus walked out to them and led them to shore and safety.
(4) When all of his new followers asked him to explain his miracles, to explain what good works God requires, and asked him to provide them with bread from now on, Jesus responded by telling them the truth, no matter how difficult it was to hear and understand. And he told the truth, understanding the consequences, understanding that most of them would abandon him.
To sum up, Jesus focused on the needs of those less fortunate, first and foremost. · He did not succumb to the temptation of power for power’s sake or the use of force to further his power. Jesus provided leadership and vision when it was needed. And he was honest with his constituents.
[····These qualities and actions must be important, after all in the Bible and in the Western world all good ideas must come in groups of three. And here we have four….Clearly, God is trying to get our attention.
John give us four attributes of a political leader, and by way of those attributes, certain questions to ask of our political leaders.
· When we making our political choices, we can ask ourselves whether those vying for power put the needs of others, those less fortunate, as foremost in the development of their policy.
Are the needs of the poor addressed? Are the needs of the broken of spirit considered? Are the weakest, and even those most despised, the criminals, the deviants, are they treated with compassion and healed?
· Is a candidate wary of his or her own power? Do they acknowledge its corrupting influence? Do they seek to be accountable and transparent?
· Will a potential leader provide leadership when it is most needed? Not just in fair weather, but in foul as well?
And,
· Can we trust a potential leader? Does he or she speak the truth naturally?
These attributes might be summed up as the following virtues: compassion, humility, courage, and honesty.
__________________________________________
These attributes may be the armor of God that Paul prescribes in Ephesians. Using the words that Paul gives us:
· How many of our leaders today are wearing the armor of God?
· How many of our leaders are rooted and grounded in love?
· How many make as their foundation, shod themselves in the shoes of, the gospel of peace, instead of anger, violence, and war? Armoring themselves with God’s armor, and not armor of their own making?
· How many provide us with vision in the struggle against evil in the world, not against enemies of flesh and blood, but against poverty, violence, hatred, disease, greed, and ignorance?
· How many of our leaders today have fastened the belt of truth around their waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness?
Paul implores us to ask these kinds of questions. In Ephesians 5, he says “Let no one deceive you with empty words…Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.. It is Shameful to mention evil in secret, because everything exposed by the light becomes visible, and everything that becomes visible is light.”
(I guess this makes Paul the patron Saint of good journalism…)
These words have special import for citizens of a democracy.…not just because democracies work better when transparent, when we are given accurate information about and by our leaders.
No, even more fundamentally than that, in a democracy, we must not be deceived, because if we, as a nation, perform an evil act, then we as individuals are responsible. When we, as a Nation, take part in unfruitful works of darkness, then we as individuals support those barren works.
As Christians, we must demand Christ-like compassion, humility, courage, and truth from our would-be kings.
We must know how our poorer compatriots live, we must know how our enemies die, we must know how God’s creation suffers or benefits from our presence, we must know how our riches are produced, [how our gold is mined,] how our energy is drawn from the earth, how our food is grown, nurtured, harvested and slaughtered...
You cannot be a Christian in Darkness. To be a Christian, you “Live as children of Light” And the “fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.”
So, when a would-be leader, whether president or school board, wants your support. Ask yourself,
“When I need compassion, is this to whom I shall go?”
“When the world or my community needs a humble leader, is this to whom we shall go?
“When the easy decisions are the wrong ones, to whom shall we go and find courage?
And finally, “when I want to know the truth, to know if my community is engaged in Godly and fruitful works, is this to whom I shall go?”
Blessed be the words of the Lord…
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