Non-prophet Preaching - Christianity Today

Anybody but me notice that this is an election year? It's an odd thing. The church—where we're supposed to be fearless, where we're supposed to challenge people on sin and be prophetic and face martyrdom—the church is also the place where we're told, "Don't talk about politics!"

Or at least we're told that in the kind of churches where I grew up. Other traditions are different. The African-American church, for instance, was for decades the one place where politics could be safely talked about, leaving a legacy that is reverberating pretty loudly this year.

Here's the problem: politics is an important sphere of human activity, and as such God is keenly interested in it. It was the Dutch theologian and politician (why don't we have more of those in America?) Abraham Kuyper who famously said, "There is not one inch of creation about which Jesus Christ does not say, 'This is mine!'"

However, as soon as human beings (including church leaders) start assuming they are in a position to pronounce God's political leanings, things get a little dicey.

Sometimes I have erred under the simple category of general stupidity. Years ago a national news story described how an East coast school district decided to distribute free condoms to public education students of an alarmingly young age. I gave a prophetic denunciation of this action in a sermon. I spoke of the problems of moral relativity, the lack of an adequate sexual ethic, of what happens when faith-based understandings of human sexuality are no longer welcome in the public square, and how all of this was resulting in the passing out of condoms in a public school.

I just forgot that it was Awana Sunday.

Suddenly I looked down and saw the open-mouthed stares of more Awana Cubbies than I could count, and I did an anticipatory imagining of all the angry letters I was going to get (an exercise in prevenient grace, without the grace) from parents of little merit-badge winners wanting to know what a condom was.

Knowing your audience before getting into public policy issues is important.

Sometimes we make the mistake of presumption. Video footage is still circulating of a prominent pastor saying that Hurricane Katrina occurred because abortionists and feminists and homosexuals had called God's judgment on America. Of course, thoughtful people want to know how he knows it was an act of judgment. And how does he know it had nothing to do with racism or materialism or (to name the sin Jesus most often went after) pride? When a church names sins only from one side of the political divide, it not only distorts the gospel, it sends a powerful message of exclusion to folks who desperately need Jesus.

In Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural, which remains the high water mark in presidential theological reflection, he notes that "Both (the North and the South) read the same Bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other."

The church historically has not done well when it gets too closely associated with empires.

So maybe a way to place politics in its proper context is with a little thought experiment. (I actually did this with our congregation, to help give folks a framework with which to think about the political arena.)

Imagine that we elected all the right people to all the right offices—President, congress, governors, right down to school board, city council members, and dog catcher (is that still an office anyone gets to vote for?).

Let's imagine that all these ideal office holders instituted all the right policies.

Let's imagine that we got all the propositions right. (In California, we vote on lengthy and complicated propositions for everything you can imagine. Nobody understands them all.) Every piece of legislation—from zoning laws to tax codes to immigration policy to crime bills—is just exactly the way you know it ought to be.

Would that usher in the kingdom of God?

Would the hearts of the parents be turned toward their children?

Would all marriages be models of faithful love?

Would greed and pride be legislated out of existence?

Would assistant pastors find senior pastors to be models of harmony and delight?

Would human beings now at last be able to master our impulses in areas of sexuality and anger and narcissism?

Let's get a little more personal.

Would you finally become the woman or man you know you ought to be?

In the words of theologian Macauley Culkin: "I don't think so."

Because no human system has the ability to change the human heart.

Not even democracy, or capitalism, or post-modern-emergent-ancient-future-missionalism.

T.S. Elliot summed up our quandary brilliantly: "We want a system of order so perfect that we do not have to be good."

Systems are important. But they're also complicated. Historian Mark Noll notes that evangelicals often fail to add value in politics because we like simplicity: good vs. evil; right vs. wrong. Political and economic arrangements are full of complexity and nuance. Well-intended legislation may lead to poor results.

When we condition people to think that every bill is a battle between the forces of righteousness versus the minions of darkness, we do not serve the process well.

But often we specialize in polarizing. No parachurch organization with a political agenda ever sent out a fundraising letter noting that a bill that was likely to do "40 percent more good than harm."

Yes, we ought to be engaged in the political process. We ought to vote, be educated, be involved. And we should do it in a way that is civil and respectful and redemptive. (I saw a cartoon recently where a guy showed up at the pearly gates to hear St. Peter say: "You were a believer, yes. But you skipped the not-being-a-jerk-about-it part.")

One way to do this is through prayer. There is a very old tradition in the church of praying for nations and political leaders. Ironically, this tends to be done much more in mainline/liturgical services than it does in the looser evangelical churches in which I grew up. Perhaps its because we generally want prayer that will focus on our needs or move us emotionally, and praying for the president and congress gets a little dull.

And one of the great problems we all have is wanting to dislike people we disagree with—especially on politics. And it's just harder to dislike someone when you pray for them regularly.

Another opportunity to teach civility is to offer people the opportunity to repent of hatred, contempt, and the desire to believe bad things about political leaders with whom they disagree.

Sometimes the conflicts take place within the church. I think, for instance, about the old "flag in the sanctuary" question. While part of this issue is theological, I think it is just as much generational. Chuck Klosterman wrote of a study where two groups of people were given a personality description of a person of the opposite sex, and asked if they would be interested in dating such a person. The personality descriptions given to the two groups were identical except for one difference: half the descriptions said the person was "very patriotic"; the other half did not. The "very patriotic" profile lost a LOT of dates.

For people who grew up in the forties, liking the flag was cool. For those who grew up in the sixties, it was uncool, much as liking Oldsmobiles or disco became uncool. Teaching about generational differences when it comes to expressing patriotism is another chance to form a healthier congregation.

The church where I serve has many folks who are intensely involved in politics at an individual level. But it has a long (and I think wise) legacy of not allowing the church to be co-opted by political groups (through spreading pamphlets, say, or claiming air-time at services.)

It has tried to remember that the church is not called to be one more political interest group.

The human race needs an administration of another kind.

There is one possibility.

Someone needs to be in a position to say: "The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News."

Scholars remind us that these words were politically loaded. They deliberately echo or parody the claims of Rome—that Caesar was lord, that his kingdom was Good News.

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright spoke at our church not long ago and gave a masterful message that was politically prophetic but not partisan. Through the lens of history, he reminded us that in the early centuries of the church, its finest years were when it was marginalized in the life of the Roman Empire. When it got cozy with Rome, when it became identified with Empire, things went south in a hurry. A warning for the church in America.

The Gospel of the early church was, among other things, a deliberate in-your-face to the empire. Pretty cheeky when you remember that the church had a few thousand ragged cohorts, and the Empire ruled 65 million hearts.

It was pretty clear which horse to bet on.

But here we are, two thousand years later, and we give our children names like Peter, Paul, and Phoebe; and we call our dogs Caesar and Nero.

These gospel words of the early church were deliberately politically loaded. But they were not to be co-opted. They are to stand above every human party and candidate and political platform. The church historically has not done well when it gets too closely associated with empires.

The gospel words must transcend higher to go deeper.

My daughter got a CD for me recently from an old Broadway show called Camelot.

Richard Burton is singing at the end, when the dream of Camelot is about to perish in a great battle.

And he sings/speaks in a tone of unbearable wistfulness:

"Don't let it be forgot, That once there was a spot, For one brief shining moment…"

I wondered why that was so evocative.

Until I remembered. There is a longing. But it is not really about Camelot, or King Arthur, or Shangri-la, or Constantine, or whomever your favorite candidate is.

The longing is for a carpenter-turned-rabbi, who once ran for Messiah, and got crucified.

So we read about the issues. We debate. We learn about policy. We pray. We speak respectfully in the public square. We vote at elections. We serve on councils and cabinets. We preach about God's concern for peace and justice and generosity and righteousness.

But we always remember: this is something we do while we're waiting.

John Ortberg is pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California, and editor at large of Leadership.