Last month, I wrote an essay about Trump’s intentions of ruining American political life for a couple of generations. I spoke of it in the context of a parable Jesus told about a man who was about to get fired and spent his last days setting himself up in the private sector. Because nothing gets you through termination better than well-connected friends who owe you favors — or 70 million voters who can’t quit chanting your name.
I wrote about the ways we in America have overlooked the criminal or treasonous behaviors of past leaders, and reflected on the ways that our overlooking has contributed to the current mess that we’re in — specifically, i noted the preponderance of confederate flags and overtly racist institutions that are a direct outcome of our too-quick forgiveness of, and re-admittance to the Union of, secessionists. (Full disclosure: I am a native of South Carolina, raised on secessionist pride.)
This is not a new rant for me, but last month I wrote it down. I published it here on my blog and in a church newsletter, which, honest to God, I wasn’t sure if anyone ever read.
Turns out, some people read it.
And here’s the gist of the complaint: church is not the proper venue for such a conversation. One person put it even more bluntly: we have a congregational policy (he said) against talking politics from the pulpit (with newsletter being an extension of pulpit, one might suppose).
To which I reply: there ought not be anything at all that we cannot discuss in church.
In my editorial, in my preaching, I did not, do not, endorse a political party. Frankly, none of them impress me that much, and none seems all that committed to the common good. I have different complaints about the two main parties — Republicans are, as a cohort, a heartless bunch committed to the wealth of the wealthy; while Democrats are a spineless, unimaginative bunch, still expending huge amounts of futile energy trying to “get along” with the purveyors of the most oppressive politics this side of Mussolini, in the face of the obstructionism of Mitch McConnell, who is in this regard in a class by himself.
Our public life is a wreck. Economically we are far afield of the vision of God that comes to us from the prophets and through Jesus — or the story, for example, from Ruth, that requires we set aside something for those living in poverty. Or the one from Exodus that tries to tell us what “enough” means. We continue to prop up capitalism, as if there is some version of capitalism that won’t destroy us. Geopolitically, we have given a particular finger to the ongoing command of God that we welcome strangers and immigrants, that we care for refugees; somehow we read the bible and come up with American exceptionalism, American isolationism, ongoing American colonialism. In our relationship with the earth, we’ve abdicated responsibility in favor of extraction and exploitation. Looking in on our communities, no one would guess that freeing prisoners was named as a priority by Jesus, Isaiah and others who speak for God. And regarding power and empire, we seem to have forsworn the entirety of Jesus’ ministry — a public ministry marked primarily by resistance.
It begs the question: What is church for?
It’s a reasonable question, and frankly a very Christmas-sy question.
We will gather shortly for Christmas Eve worship, and tell again a story of Jesus, Luke's legend of his birth that, according to scholars, is not really about Jesus’ personal history but filled with symbols and elements and titles designed to land like a thumb poked in Caesar’s eye. The story, for all its charm and children in glittery wings and flannel bathrobes, is a confrontation with power, a direct assault on the claims of empire.
As much as this is metaphorically the nativity story of Jesus, it is also the nativity — the birth — of the Jesus way. If we are people of that way, it is our birthright to keep poking that thumb in the eye of empire. It is the family business.
I know there are those who believe this is not the place of church. We are, say some, supposed to talk about the next life, or how to live kinder-gentler lives, or how to spread the gospel around the world (though I would suggest that the gospel as we’ve too often condensed it is not much worth spreading), or, less damaging but equally distressing, how to raise enough money to maintain our buildings and pastor’s salary. The means to mission have become the mission.
We’ve been sold a bridge in a desert.
There are absolutely people in the world who want church to keep its collective mouth shut, to keep its thumbs and political ideas to itself. I don’t blame them. The church has enormous power in the world, enormous power to effect a righteous world view. Sadly, only the evangelical branch of the Jesus family tree seem to grasp the value of such power — the ones who are using it to control the bodies of women, trans folks, people of color and immigrants; the ones dictating that intact family and loving relationships are for cisgender & straight people only; the ones promoting generosity as the most godly remedy for the abject poverty that necessarily results from obscene accumulations of wealth (which wealth we fetishize).
Follow the money and you’ll find the powerful ones who are most invested in our being this kind of church; follow their political promises (the actions behind the sleight-of-hand that continually undermines the common good) and you’ll find hoards of regular folks who have been duped into believing the prevailing attitude that Jesus was a capitalist, a misogynist and a bigot, or maybe just a really spiritual guy, above it all and with no interest in how we organize our common life.
Of course they wish for our silence. They wished the same thing for Jesus. Yet here we are, still in the footsteps of a prophet who wouldn’t be silenced short of death.
So, what are we to do?
Whatever the answers, whatever the political or community solutions we propose, whatever the approaches we advocate that try to address the problems we face, the required first step is that we talk — about the problems, the obstacles, and the folks getting high on power while we are praying quietly, singing our hymns of me and Jesus, trying not to offend anyone.
We talk. We call out. We name the lies. We raise the issues. We consider the resources we bring to bear and the huge cost of doing nothing. We ask what Jesus would do, and we try to be honest about the answer.
If we can’t do that in church, then what is church for?
And if no one is trying to run us off a cliff, or trying to poke our eyes out with their thumbs, you have to wonder how much we’re really like Jesus after all.
That’s not the Christmas part, but if you do Christmas right, the rest of it sort of becomes unavoidable.