Proverbs 1:20-33
Psalm 19
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
Published in 1964, “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer” by C. S. Lewis[i] takes the form a collection of letters sent to a fictional friend named Malcolm. About ten years ago, Christian book publishers were revisiting this form of literature. Wm. B. Eerdmans published “Letters to New Pastors,” the Michael Jinkins foray into this genre.
Instead of one recipient, Jinkins letters are received by several. Among the recipients are a man seeking spiritual direction, a woman having difficulties in her vocation and at home, and a man suffering from burnout. The first letter is to a new pastor named Malcolm who writes in one letter that he “hates church politics.”[ii]
Jinkins answers Malcolm’s concerns deftly reminding him that he grew up in the church, his parents were elders in the church, and if it weren’t for politics there wouldn’t be a church. Jinkins calls church politics “a group of people trying to work out how we live together.” In fact that’s how Jinkins defines politics in general, “people working out their common life, people negotiating their values, beliefs, and aspirations, and the varying degrees of influence necessary to promote the values and beliefs they hold precious and the aspirations they think are worth the work.”[iii]
To Jinkins “the church is more than that, but it is certainly not less than that.”[iv]
From modern media, television, radio, papers, magazines, internet; it’s difficult for me to find similarity between what passes for politics and Jinkins’ definition. Too often all I hear is yelling. I hear emotional arguments. I have even heard people ask not to be bothered with facts while making a point. There is information and bad information. There is rumor and innuendo.
As Mark Twain once said there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Here’s my point, setting aside how we exercise our partisan political process, politics is about how we live together.
The word political comes into our language from the Greek word for city. It has entered our lives in some very familiar place names, Indianapolis , Minneapolis , and the ever popular Metropolis. Geographers use the term “megalopolis” to describe a large area that includes several major cities and their hinterlands that form a geographic economy. Simply, politics has to do with how a community operates.
I mention the difference between textbook politics and the current American version of politics because of something President George W. Bush’s second Press Secretary Scott McClellan, wrote in his book “What Happened.”[v] McClellan talks about how American politics has shifted from using power to change things and make them better to a pattern of gaining power for the sake of having power. He talks about a model of governing called “the permanent campaign” where working out our common life is forsaken in exchange for maintaining power within one political party.
Let me take a moment to point out that as McClellan noted President George W. Bush’s administration worked under the principles of the “permanent campaign;” the concept itself was created by Patrick Caddell, an advisor to President Carter in the late 1970’s. If the people who govern us are guilty of this sin as McClellan says, then it is not the failing of just one side of the political aisle, it belongs to both.
Then Jesus said, “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”
This gem came after one of the most dramatic scoldings found in the New Testament. It is heard after Jesus calls Peter “Satan” and tells him to back off. Of course, this happened because Peter told Jesus that he was all wrong about what it means to be the Messiah.
Jesus tells his disciples what it will take for him to be the Messiah, the Christ; this after Peter rightly says Jesus is the Christ. People had guessed that Jesus was one of the ancient prophets, or maybe the reincarnated John the Baptist. Peter is the one who when Jesus asked “Who do you say I am” proclaimed “You are the Messiah, the Christ.”
Jesus told his disciples what shape it would take. It would take suffering. It would take rejection by the most powerful people in the land. It would take physical torture. It would take his very death.
I wonder if at this point Peter quit listening. I don’t really blame him if he did. Yes he should have been paying more attention, but after hearing this litany of woe the internal cries of “Oh my Lord, no, this cannot be!” must have been deafening. Whether this is what was happening or not, Peter completely missed the part about the resurrection.
Peter heard that his Rabbi, his teacher, was going to be treated unbearably. Peter heard his friend was going to suffer. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. I wonder if any of us would be different, hoping and praying such wretchedness would not come to your friend and your Lord, but that is not what the life and the resurrected life of the Christ is about.
Jesus promised pain and suffering and he promised his light at the end. Then, to make his point, to make the truth known, Jesus calls all of the people with ears to hear and feet to gather and receive the truth. He calls everyone to know the cost of following him. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”
This is the problem I have with Caddell’s “permanent campaign,” there is no sacrifice. Anything that could cause controversy, anything that can cause the nation to feel the slightest distress is avoided completely. As much as can be swept under the national rug is, despite the twenty-four hour news cycle.
These days most news organizations are little more than a place for merchants to sell their goods. Each network becomes a niche for a particular set of viewers—customers. “News programs” are just the bridges that link one set of commercials to the next.[vi] So if something comes up that isn’t supported by the mission of the network or the whims of its viewers, it is often ignored or discredited.
That’s why I watch “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central. They try to discredit everything, including themselves, all for the sake of the laugh. Of course, that’s their corporate mission. This irony escapes no institution, including the church.
On Friday, Harriette, Tom, Lisa, and I were in Fort Worth for the Presbytery meeting. By the way, if you ever considered hating church politics, this was the time. The meeting featured two major pieces of business, one of which included a “Covenant Agreement” in its appendix. The agreement reads:
In order to: promote the ongoing faithfulness of our members in the work of the Mission of God through Jesus Christ; exercise “mutual forbearance”; treat others with respect regardless of theological and ecclesiological differences; and work for fairness to all parties in our decisions, therefore, the Presbytery Council of Grace Presbytery and the congregation of the space for congregation name Church of space for name of city, Texas covenant to follow this Procedure and abide by its terms as a way of discerning God’s will for the relationship between the congregation and Grace Presbytery.[vii]
After this paragraph there is space for this document to be dated and signed by the congregation’s pastor and Clerk of Session, the Presbytery Council’s Moderator and the Stated Clerk of the Presbytery. The proposal attached to this covenant did not pass. If it had, I would not have signed it.
The reason comes from the Ordination Vows taken by every Elder, Ruling Elders and Ministers alike. One of the constitutional questions we all answer is “Will you fulfill your ministry in obedience to Jesus Christ?” My vows do not ask me to fulfill my ministry in obedience to a piece of paper.
Elders are also asked if we will, “sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do,” and “be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God under the authority of Scripture, and be continually guided by our confessions?” This piece of paper and its covenant do not carry the weight of the essential tenets of the faith. Neither will you find such a document or a place to sign on in any of our confessions.
Elders are also commended by ordination vows to “be governed by our church’s polity, and abide by its discipline.” We are also to be “a friend among your colleagues in ministry, working with them, subject to the ordering of God’s Word and Spirit.” (Sounds like our Call to Worship from James, doesn’t it?) Friends, if I will not abide by the polity of the denomination and the rules of the presbytery, surely one more sheet of paper will not secure my allegiance.
Friends, when I am not a gracious Elder, one more sheet of paper will not make me that way.
Our vows, the vows all elders take, detail ways which make us better Elders; enabling and encouraging us to live into these vows, spreading the Gospel, and being better children of Christ.
This covenant, even more than adding one more layer of “assurance” in a world filled with uncertainty and sin, is warned against in Matthew 5:37 when Jesus says to the crowds “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’” In the case of this “Covenant Agreement,” the Presbytery was being asked to take an oath to a process written by men.
This I could not in do. If push had come to shove and I was required to sign this paper, it could have been at the expense of my ordination. I do not think it would have, but it surely could have been taken to Presbyterian courts which can suspend or revoke my ordination. But Jesus asks “For what good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Is it worth the integrity of the Word to sign a piece of paper promising to obey a policy that deals with what Jesus calls “the things of men,” above “the things of God?” I say no.
If you wondered what all of the hullabaloo is about, I’m not saying. In fact I have not told you what it was about. I have even taken the name of the procedure out of the covenant. The reason why is because it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter what this whole thing is about. It doesn’t matter because if it’s not one thing it’s another. If it’s not one “thing of men” it’s another. It doesn’t matter because if I am not asked to sign a loyalty oath today, I may be asked to sign one tomorrow.
This is the bad side of the nature of politics, sometimes we are asked to set aside our convictions, our beliefs, our values for someone else’s. To our Lord this is not important because we are being called to a standard more important than “permanent campaigns” and “loyalty oaths.” We are called to lose our lives for the sake of the gospel because that is the only way we can save our lives.
Jinkins ends his letter to Malcolm paraphrasing the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: “Politics is the arena where conscience and control meet, where ethics and power collide, and where we must work out the tentative and uneasy compromises that make it possible for us to live together.”[viii] In the church, the only source of political power, the only judge of how we live together is the Lord our God.
My sermon title today comes from the realization that our world is political. Considering that the world and the church is nothing less (but surely more) than how people work out living together on God’s good earth that should be evident.
What our faith is not about is partisan politics along the lines of how it is demonstrated in our nation. God is sovereign above all, certainly sovereign above our political parties. God is not bound to our partisan ways. God works to bring reconciliation to the world, which is contrary to the permanent campaign that seeks to do nothing more than hold and gain power for its own sake, not for the sake of citizens. It is when we see beyond our divisions that we begin to work together, not ashamed of the Son of Man, becoming an instrument in the coming glory of God.
[i] Lewis, C. S., “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer.” (1st American ed.), New York : Harcourt, Brace & World 1964.
[ii] Jinkins, Michael, “Letters to New Pastors.” Wm. B. Eerdmans: 2006, 39-44.
[iii] Ibid p. 40, italics original to the text
[iv] Ibid p. 40, italics original to the text
[v] McClellan, Scott, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington 's Culture of Deception.” New York : PublicAffairs, 2008.
[vi] This point was actually made about all television in Dan Jinkins book “Life Its Own Self, the Semi-Tougher Adventures of Billy Clyde Puckett and Them.”
[vii] Grace Presbytery Stated Meeting Docket, Vol. 33, No. 4. Book 2, inserted page.
[viii] Jinkins, Ibid. p. 44. Jinkins footnotes this reference to: Neibuhr, Reinhold, “Moral Man and Immoral Society.” New York : Scribner, 1932, 1.4.
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