Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's October 10, 2004 Sunday Morning worship service.

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You can tell it is a hotly contested political season when you hear about a voter in Ohio who tried to auction off his vote on E-Bay. Somebody at ebay stopped him. Nonetheless, I hope you computer geeks and ebay junkies out there don’t get any ideas! But if you do, remember you owe a tithe of that to the Church!

But it does go to show that the Nov. 2 elections will go down as one of the most important – and contentious – in our nation’s history. Between televised debates, a poll for every issue (including a poll predicting how your dead grandmother would vote if she were alive!), the spreading of rumors and vicious attacks on talk radio, and a litany of issues from terrorism and national security to affordable health care and the economy, this election promises to be a repeat of the 2000 election when the electorate was so evenly divided on so many of the critical issues of the day. And of course now, post 9/11 and in the midst of a recession, a war, and recent reports about even more job losses nationally, the stakes seem even higher.

As I am sure you know, religious folk all across the political spectrum are not only quite involved and quite vocal in the process, but they are also quite divided over which candidate represents the best choice. Democratic challenger Kerry, a devout Catholic, has gotten in trouble with his own Church and conservatives on the religious right because he favors a woman’s right to choose when it comes to abortion; Republican incumbent Bush, an evangelical Christian, has been criticized by the religious left and his own Methodist denomination for trying to impose his religious values on the public. It would take more than several hours to even list all the issues that separate the two candidates and the ideologies they represent. Just open the editorial page of the Knoxville News Sentinel on most any day and you can get a mouthful of campaign 2004.

I suspect you are like me. I try to muddle my way towards an understanding of issues that I believe are important; I try to read, listen, and stay informed, but the truth is I don’t have adequate time to study in-depth all the issues, nor time to debate each issue with someone who has an opposing viewpoint, nor do I always even want to attempt that sort of thing. There are issues, like our invasion of Iraq and the rising cost of affordable health care and our stewardship of the environment, that stand out for me as critical, and so as I cast a vote, I will do so based on how best I believe my candidate addresses issues like these. Your issues, and your interpretation of the issues might be different than mine, but I think we share a common feeling of simply being overwhelmed by the amount of information we need to try to absorb in order to vote in an informed and wise manner.

Yet, even as polls and the pious come together in an election year, so also do the pulpit and politics come together – and not just once every four years, but if you believe as I do, and as I have said to you before from this pulpit, that the Bible and the gospel are political and that religion and politics must be kept together, then, as Christians we must figure out a way to stand with the courage of our convictions at the intersection of religion and politics. Now, when I say the”p” word, politics, I am not talking about giving or selling our database of membership addresses to the Christian Coalition as some evangelical churches have been asked to do, illegally I might add, but neither am I talking about a complete abrogation of religion’s privileged standing in our society, like some on the left might advocate.

In light of the political nature of the gospel, how do you preach the Christian faith and lead churches in an election year like this one?

I recently read an article in Sojourners Magazine, a publication advocating evangelical views on social justice, entitled “Scared to Talk Politics in Church?” Brian McLaren says you can 1) ignore the election completely (some of you might wish for that!); 2) remind the people to vote as their Christian civic duty and leave it at that (that’s easy enough – you are hereby reminded!); 3) preach on the moral issues related to the election about which your congregation agrees (that doesn’t sound too hard – everybody likes to be told they are right! or, finally, 4) preach and educate on the moral issues related to the election about which your congregation is not already in agreement (that sounds a bit more dangerous to me as it seems to imply crossing that infamous boundary between preachin’ and meddlin’!)

If we can divorce ourselves of the notion that politics is fundamentally about whether you are a republican or a democrat, progressive or conservative, for this or against that, then we can begin to understand that the Bible’s political message has a lot to do with national, communal, and individual self-examination and repentance; that the Bible’s political message clearly says something about the standing of the poor and the oppressed and the marginalized in a society; that the Bible’s political message privileges peacemaking over war making.

A full-page advertisement in the Christian Century Magazine has at the top “God is Not a Republican.” Then, the next line “Or a Democrat.” The ad raises a series of very important questions that I want to toss out to you, including: Do the candidates’ budget and tax policies reward the rich or show compassion for poor families? Do their foreign policies include fair trade and debt cancellation for the poorest countries? Do their positions protect the creation or serve corporate interests that damage the creation? Do the candidates adopt the dangerous language of righteous empire in the war on terrorism and confuse the roles of God, church, and nation? Do the candidates see evil only in our enemies but never in our own policies? (Sept 21, 2004)

It is these sorts of questions that I believe people of faith should be asking of the candidates – not out of a desire to promote a partisan agenda, but because these are the kinds of questions that lie at the heart of the God of justice and the God of love who is at the heart of the revelation of scripture.

A good place to begin a consideration of the intersection between faith and politics is with the Hebrew prophets, those called upon to deliver God’s word of judgment and grace upon the political, religious, and social status quo of that day – and if we take scripture seriously, our day, as well.

To that end, we turn to the prophet Jeremiah who lived in a time of tremendous political upheaval and turmoil in the life of Israel. Much of Israel’s leadership had been taken into captivity in Babylon. The temple has been destroyed; there was social chaos and inadequate infrastructure for those left behind in Jerusalem.

Jeremiah delivers both the bad news of God’s judgment and punishment because the nation has strayed from their covenant obligations, but he also speaks the good news that there remains hope that beyond exile, there will be restoration; beyond judgment, grace; beyond despair, the hope of a new day dawning.

As I look at these verses from the 29^th chapter of Jeremiah that I read earlier, there is a prophetic voice that we, and indeed, the electorate, especially all in the electorate who consider themselves to be people of faith, need desperately to hear.

Verse 4 of chapter 29 makes a striking theological statement. I don’t know if you caught it when I read it the first time: God is speaking, “to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile.” Think about that. The Babylonian captivity and the exile didn’t just happen; God ordered it, arranged it; God caused it to happen. It wasn’t the doing of Nebuquadnezer and his legions, not the doing of a foreign power. God sent God’s people into exile. Why?

The answer: God was fed up with the arrogance of Israel’s leaders who thought they no longer needed God and who self-righteously defied the terms of the national covenant. The time of exile became a time for soul-searching, repentance, and renewal.

Jeremiah declares God’s impatience and frustration with the nation. It’s a lover’s quarrel, for sure, but there can be no doubt that God is angry enough to let Jerusalem fall to foreigners and for Israel’s leadership to be carted off to Babylon in chains.

What, then, could the prophet have to say to us in our own time of a contentious election season?

I would personally find it helpful if candidates could find a way to talk about those areas where God is displeased with the nation, to find a way to talk about the need for humility to overcome our national tendency towards arrogance and prideful behavior. The problem of course, is that such political talk entails a great cost because most Americans are rather content and comfortable, dare I say complaisant, in our little corner of Zion. No one likes to be called to repentance. But humility, as Jeremiah and the other prophets knew, is the antidote to the love of power and wealth.

The retired minister of the Riverside Church in New York City, William Sloan Coffin, in a sermon entitled “The Dangers of Self-Righteousness,” says that “No nation is well served by delusions of its righteousness. Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and then defends them in the name of morality . . . individuals and nations are at their worst when, persuaded of their superior virtue, they crusade against the vices of others. They are at their best when they claim their God-given kinship with all humanity, offering prayers of thanks that there is more mercy in God than sin in us.” (The Heart is a Little to the Left, 57, 58).

Would that our candidates could do exactly that.

Jeremiah also says to these exiles, many of whom had been political and religious leaders in Jerusalem, that, even in their time of exile, they are, in verse 7, “to seek the welfare of the city . . . and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” With a casual reading of that verse, one might assume that the city is the city of all cities in scripture, that is, the city of Jerusalem. But it is not. The city, here, stands for a foreign city, for Babylon, the city that is the place of exile.

What a radical claim Jeremiah and God make! Pray for the welfare of a foreign city, admittedly now populated also by Jerusalem’s exiles whom God has encouraged to intermarry with the Babylonians, but a foreign city, nonetheless. Pray for one’s enemies; pray for foreigners and for people who have different values, a different culture, a different world view.

Once again, God’s prophetic voice calls for a different vision of human interaction and life together: not self-righteousness or self-promotion, but a genuine sense of the intermarriage of ideals and dreams, new partnerships of understanding formed even on foreign soil in a foreign city, strangers to our way of life.

This verse speaks to the great reversal described in the Bible as a part of God’s vision for a new world order. Prayer for the welfare of the city is not restricted to a concern with our own welfare, but is always prayer and action for others, especially those whom we would normally see as enemies and foreigners.

This alternate social vision reminds us that the Bible is more than personal – it is also political. And even prayer, which can have its more private and personal dimensions, must also, at times, be a public outcry invoking and declaring the coming reign of God’s love, justice and peace.

This new vision, suggested by Jeremiah and all of Israel’s poets and prophets, calls forth a new social reality that addresses the welfare of all the citizens of the city, not just those who determine or control the status quo.

I agree with the person who recently wrote: “Today we Americans are not marching in the ways of the Lord but limping along in our own ways, thinking not of the public [good] but of our private interests. Today tax cutting is more popular than social spending, even for the poorest Americans . . . Jesus was concerned most with those society counted least and put last. A politically engaged spirituality can never neglect the plight of the most deprived and vulnerable and will insist that improving the lot of the most oppressed is the decisive test of political sincerity” (Coffin, Credo, 59, 68).

“Seek the welfare of the city . . . and pray to the Lord on its behalf.”

Would that our candidates could do exactly that.

Finally, Jeremiah warns, in verse 8, to “not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you.” It wasn’t an election year in ancient Israel at the time Jeremiah lived and prophesied, but it was no less difficult to wade through the swamp of the pundits and pollsters trying to lead you this way or the other. The prophets and diviners appealed to national pride and self-security, while Jeremiah called for repentance and the renewal of the nation’s covenant obligations to God.

Then, as now, it can be difficult for God’s voice to be heard over the din of competing spin masters. I personally find it very disturbing when I read that someone on the religious right like a Pat Robertson can actually say, and I quote, this was in January of this year, “I think George Bush is going to win in a walk. I really believe I’m hearing from the Lord it’s going to be like a blowout election in 2004. The Lord has just blessed him . . . It doesn’t make any difference what he does, good or bad.”

I don’t find disturbing that Pat Robertson chooses to vote for President Bush, that’s certainly his right and privilege, but I do find very disturbing the assumption that God had picked his candidate over all the others, that somehow one party has God’s ear exclusively. And yes, if I searched the media, I could probably find a similar quote from someone on the political middle or left who is trying to close the “God gap” for the democrats. The point is, Jeremiah warns against prophets and diviners who assign God to one side or the other, especially when they aren’t willing to face the truth of their own sin.

When we go to the polls in less than a month, we might be tempted to vote for, “none of the above,” because, “none of the above” sometimes may seem like a better option than anyone else, especially when the political climate is so tempestuous and divisive.

Yet, we have an obligation to study the candidates in light of scripture and faith, to think about issues like race relations, fair and just taxation, debt release for the poorest countries, medical coverage, and the international rule of law in terms of the witness of the Christian tradition. And perhaps, most of all we have an obligation to pray that our personal and national choices would, at least, approximate that which God would have us to be and to be doing as a nation in this election season.

So then, let us pray.

“Under your law we live, great God, and by your will we govern ourselves.
Help us as good citizens to respect neighbors whose views differ from ours,
So that without partisan anger, we may work out issues that divice us,
And elect candidates to serve the common welfare; through Jesus Christ the Lord.

Amen.”

(from Book of Common Worship)