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“The Journey to Justice: Politics”
Matthew 17:1-9
Transfiguration Sunday
A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Today’s message is the last
in a series of sermons about our journey to justice. The journey takes many aspects from race to
gender to economics to politics. Heck,
there are a whole lot more issues for us to tackle. We shouldn’t think that we can get to all of
the aspects of justice in these four sermons.
We also ought to know that economics, race, gender and politics are
intertwined. When you add religion to
the mix, then it gets even more enmeshed.
It is true that God does not have a political party. Why would God limit the divine self to one
political faction?
In preparation for today’s sermon, I
did my civic duty and attended a town meeting with our elected officials. I took our daughter Amanda with me to give
her a taste of how politics works. I
told her it’s a lot like student council.
Our elected officials are supposed to take what we say and use this
information to set policy. Betty Shaw
reminded us at our Peace and Pizza meetings that political decisions are made
by those who show up.
We found ourselves seated on
Thursday night next to our neighbor and coconspirator Delane
Welsch who attended here pretty regularly when his
wife Kay was UBC’s interim pastor. After the perfunctory statements by the
state senator and our house representative, the floor was open for
questions. They went in predictable
directions: how are we going to pay for our schools? How are we going to restore the budget cuts
that have already been made? How are we
going to stop the property tax increases?
I wasn’t going to say anything until one of my neighbors stood up and
encouraged both representatives to support amending the constitution to bar
same-sex marriage. He couched it in
moral terms. That got my goat and I just
couldn’t let it go. Big
surprise, eh?
I introduced myself, said I was a
pastor and that I was in the morality business.
I said that I differed with my neighbor in that I said that we should
not amend our constitution to support bigotry.
I implicated all of you in this too, because I said that serve a church
which supports gay marriage and that amending the constitution to support
intolerance is beneath us as a state.
But not wanting to be single-issue, I then said that our representatives
were in the morality business, too. I
asked if the shift in legislative balance might see us get a more moral and
progressive tax policy in this session.
As we drove home, Amanda told me,
“Daddy, I liked what you said the best, even though I don’t remember what you
said.” I told her that happens in church
all the time.
There are some who say that we
shouldn’t talk about politics in church.
But if we were to do that, we would need to ignore large swaths of the
Bible, including all of the prophets, most of the historical sections, most of
Exodus, all of Revelation and certainly many of the teachings of Jesus.
In today’s scripture, Peter, James and John saw an amazing event. Make no doubt about it, it was a political
event. Or at least it has political
implications for us. They went up to a
high mountain with Jesus, the chosen among the chosen. It is no wonder they are the only disciples
with Biblical books attributed to them.
As they were talking Jesus’ appearance changed. How this happened, I don’t know, but he
became illuminated, enlightened.
Dazzling brilliance is an apocalyptic symbol for the presence of God. Revelation describes Jesus’ appearance to John
in the following manner: “His head and his hair were as white as wool, white as
snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire…”(
After Peter, James and John’s eyes adjusted to the light, they saw that
Jesus was not alone. Moses was there
too—the one who had led the people through the wilderness and up to the verge
of the Promised Land. Moses, the
liberator and law-giver, the originator of the supreme law of God upon which
the entire Jewish legal system was built, Moses represented the law party of
Jewish politics. But he wasn’t the only
party there.
Elijah was there, too. Elijah
represented the prophetic party. The
brutal arrogant slayer of his enemies, the take-no-prisoners “I and only I am
holy” one that everyone respected but no one really liked—that Elijah. These two parties were there and Jesus was
there with them. The question was, to which party did Jesus belong?
Peter tried to build them tabernacles so that he could rescue the
moment. But in doing so he missed the
point. I can relate to Peter a lot. I’m kind of impulsive. My faith doesn’t always stay on the same
path. I want to fix things when I see
something wrong. I want people to see
what I have seen. I want to preserve the
mountaintop experiences. We try to fill
the gaps of our lives with words, with activities, with distractions. All the while, we might just be asleep to
what is really happening.
A voice comes to from the cloud saying “This is my beloved son”—the
same words that came at his baptism. But
added are the following words, “listen to him.”
It is the listening that the disciples cannot and will not do, try as
they might.
A few verses before, Jesus had
rebuked Peter because he couldn’t deal with the fact that Jesus was going to be
persecuted for being, doing and spreading the Good News. Peter didn’t like the fact that Jesus told
him he was going to be thrown in prison, tortured, executed and on the third
day rise again. Peter didn’t sign up for
that part. He signed up for the
glory. But God said, “listen
to him. The life of faith is more than
the glory. It’s more than winning
elections. It’s more than currying
favor. The life of faith requires
listening to Jesus.” If we would just
listen to him, we might have some wisdom.
Listen to Jesus is the message from
the cloud. It didn’t say listen to Moses
or Elijah, although their presence showed Jesus was no slouch. Jesus was a fulfillment of the law and the
prophets, but much more, too. “Listen to
him.”. I think
it is the message that needs to inform our politics as well.
In order to be healthy and
responsible religious and political players in today’s world we need to do
three things:
Listen to authority
Hold people accountable
Be careful of misdirection.
We need to listen to authority. What are our authorities these days? The authorities that matter in an ultimate
sense are authorities like Jesus that lead us to justice, mercy compassion and
peace. Any other authorities are not the
ones we need to pay attention to with as much power as we do Jesus. Remember that Jesus always bucked the system
of his day. Jesus always called us to a
higher and a better morality. The voice
from the cloud said, “this is my beloved son, listen
to him.” Do we listen to Jesus as much
as we listen to other people or other media messages? If not, then our priorities might be out of
whack.
The second thing we need to do is
hold people in positions of authority accountable. If you want to have a moral discussion, then
let’s talk about the morality of environmental degradation, the morality of the
rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the morality of first strike
and the doctrine of preemptive warfare, the morality of de-funding our schools,
the morality of racial profiling, the morality of an immigration policy that closes
our borders to all but the most well off and the most white. Remember, this is not a partisan
discussion. Gore Vidal said a number of
years ago that we really only have one party in the
The final thing we need to do is
watch out for the magician’s trick of misdirection. We know what that’s about. It’s when a magician diverts your attention
to one hand while he or she does something with the other hand. It’s the plot of the movie Wag the Dog where the characters make up
a war to divert attention from the president’s infidelity. Machiavelli said that if you want to fight a war, you
have to convince the populace that you are doing so by divine mandate, but you
must never see yourself as accountable to God. That’s misdirection.
The recent talk about expanding gambling in
Hear what commentator Randy Holhut says about
Social Security “reform” and misdirection.
“By diverting part of the money we currently pay in Social Security
taxes into the stock market, Americans will become part of what conservative
strategist Grover Norquist calls “the investor
class”…If privatization becomes a reality, every issue from that point on can
be framed as a potential threat to people’s retirement funds. Environmental laws. Labor laws. Corporate taxes. Liability laws. The
whole regulatory framework of modern corporate
We need to listen to authority.
We need to hold our leaders accountable.
We need to be savvy enough to be aware of misdirection.
In my weekly e-mail, I spoke about the graffiti leftover on the lounge
whiteboard when I returned from vacation.
It was from a forum where UBC’ers asked
important questions. It was where you
confronted your own biases and your comfort level with listening to Jesus. You remember what they were,
WWJD—What would Jesus do?
WWID—What would I do?
WWJDIHHAM—What would Jesus do if he had a
mortgage?
WWJDIIHK—What would Jesus do if he had
kids?
WWJDIHHNHI—What would Jesus do if he had no
health insurance?
Jim Ketcham sent me an e-mail from
I think we need to take seriously the political implications of the
morality debate. By and large, we don’t
know the Bible. We don’t know what Jesus
said. We don’t know how to counter an
argument when someone waves a Bible in our faces. I think the challenge that has been laid at
our feet in this past election is to know the Bible. To listen to Jesus. And then to respond in a way that is faithful
and healing to our broken world.
During Lent, we will have a Thursday night study led by myself and Dr.
Elli Elliott entitled, “Reclaiming Morality: Family, Empire and
Christianity.” I hope you’ll attend and
add your voice to the fray as we try to navigate this politically and religiously
charged topic.
Listening to Jesus means looking at
the Bible. It means studying the Bible,
too. It means paying attention to the
differing messages in the different gospel voices. In Mark, Jesus is a prophet. In Matthew, Jesus is a Rabbi. In Luke, Jesus is a teacher and a priest. In John, Jesus is God. The perspectives of each gospel color what we
know of Jesus. Most people know very
little about Jesus from the Gospels.
Most of the political statements about Jesus are from the letters of
Paul or from John’s Gospel. This is why
Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer says that we need to reclaim
the missing Jesus from Christianity.
The missing Jesus was politically
active, was murdered by the state as an insurrectionist criminal, had the
audacity to befriend the friendless and stand with the outsider when he knew it
would get him killed. He said in the
Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard it said you shall not commit murder, but I
say to you, you should not even be angry with your brother or your sister;
You have heard it said your shall not commit adultery, but I say to you it’s more
than actions, it’s about feelings, too, including looking with lust.
You have hear it said don’t swear
falsely but I say to you don’t swear at all.
You have heard it said love your
friends and hate your enemies, but I say love your enemies and pray for those
who persecute you.
This is the savior who brings us resurrection. Listen to him, says the voice from the
cloud.
Realize in the story that Moses and
Elijah are not the ones transfigured.
Jesus is the one who glows. Moses
and Elijah aren’t lecturing Jesus, they’re talking to him. The voice from the cloud says we are to
listen to Jesus.
The season of Lent is upon us, I can
think of nothing more subversive, more political, more enlightening, more empowering than to read the Gospels again for the first
time. Encounter Jesus. Listen to him. See how he dealt with the politicos of his
day.
Then you can answer for yourself,
not only what would Jesus do, but what wold I do. If you do that, then you are on your journey
to justice with Jesus along side you.
How does Jesus want us to travel on
the road to justice? Listen and you will
see, like a light transfiguring your world.
And we will never be the same again.
Thank God.