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NewCity Orlando Sermons
Following Jesus in Politics | Mark 1:14-15
Senior Pastor Damein Schitter beings our July sermon series, Following Jesus in Politics, preaching from Mark 1:14-15
Hello everyone. This is Pastor Damian. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando. At New City, we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life. For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlandocom. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2:Today's scripture comes from Mark 1, 14 through 15. Today's scripture comes from Mark 1, 14 through 15. Now, after John was arrested, jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. This is God's word. You may be seated.
Speaker 1:Did the room just change. I felt it happen. Which person would you rather be, me or you? So this morning, we do start a new sermon series, and for the last few years in a row, in the month of July, we've preached a series with the title Following Jesus In. So, a few years ago, we started by preaching through following Jesus in anxiety, following Jesus in prayer, following Jesus in family discipleship and, this year, following Jesus in politics. That's the series.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, I'm well aware that we are in an election cycle, which means we're now supposed to immediately hate people more than we normally do and hate each other more than we normally do, and I recognize that. I also recognize that I have tremendous job security, and so what's job security if you don't test it every once in a while? All right, and so, in all seriousness though, this series is the beginning of a season of teaching that will include a learning event in August and podcast interviews throughout the fall, where we engage the idea of following Jesus in politics. So the purpose, then, of the whole season, and then particularly over the next four weeks in the sermon series, it's not primarily to tell you what to think or to rally you to some partisan agenda. I'm not interested in that, which means there are no voter guides coming at the end of this. Rather, it's to remind all of us of the great responsibility of living as dual citizens citizens of the kingdom of God and citizens, in this case, of the United States of America. States of America. This is serious business that requires humility and wisdom and leading of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:And on this last point, I'm encouraged and challenged by a quote that one of my heroes, john Calvin, said. It's really a warning. John Calvin said there is no worse screen to block out the spirit than confidence in your own intelligence. And it's in this fact that makes political conversations so challenging is that we all assume we're right and we're all a little bit wrong. Right, we all assume we're right, and yet we're always wrong at the same time about something. And this is not to be avoided, but it is to be respected and it is to be acknowledged.
Speaker 1:And so, as we engage the next four weeks, I ask for grace from you. I ask for grace from you. Know that I'm preaching three out of the four weeks. Ben will be preaching one of the weeks and I and he, of course, will be trying our best to seek to rely on the Spirit, preach the Bible, all while navigating a nuclear level cultural topic. So we ask for grace and we ask for you to lean in. So today might feel a little different, because I'm really setting up a whole semester. It's more than just a sermon. I'm trying to do it all on a family worship Sunday, which means there are some things I wanted to say that I can't say or I won't say, rather, and I need to try to keep it under an hour since all of our kids are in here. So, with all that being said, it may feel a little different, but I hope that we can navigate this together and that it will be a good foundation to set us up for good dialogue throughout the semester.
Speaker 1:So I have three points today. My first point is a privatized faith. Second point is a political gospel and the third point is what is it? A political discipleship, is my third point. Is what is it A political discipleship? Is my third point? Okay, so first, a privatized faith.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get to our passage here in Mark. It's a very short one. I'm sure you can still remember it. I'll get to it in a moment, but what I want to just note right off the bat is some of you are uncomfortable when you see a slide like that. For lots of reasons, lots of legitimate reasons, but one of them isn't legitimate and that is you have felt more comfortable in your life keeping your faith private, that it has no public, not only implications, but commands, and we all fall prey to this at some level. For some of us it's in our job, for some of us it's in our family, it's our personal life, it's our finances and it could be in our politics, but Jesus is Lord of all. You could say that there's a three-word worldview of Christianity which is simply Jesus is Lord, so he's Lord of everything. And yet there are ways in which we all contend to privatize our faith, and I want to speak about that just for a few moments Of just for a few moments. Of course it'll be simple, hopefully not simplistic. It certainly, in some cases, will be broad brushing, but I think we need to at least address the fact that your faith is not private. It is personal, but it is not private. It is personal and public. It has a public dimension to it.
Speaker 1:Now, all of us in this room are affected by the interaction of the church and culture. How could we not? Particularly in the past few decades, and as the culture in America began to experience shifts in morals, economics and many other things over the past 50, 60 years, the church in America began to respond in different ways. It wasn't monolithic, and I want to speak to two primary ways. One would be the mainline church. The mainline's response to these changes in our society was, broadly speaking, to assimilate to the culture, and this produced what sometimes is called a social gospel where the kingdom of God was equated with social action. So our social action in the world would be one-to-one with the kingdom of God, which, by direct implication, means that it's our job to bring the kingdom.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this was a mistake on one side. On the other side, what's often called the fundamentalist movement was birthed out of a complex reality of how do we deal with modern culture, how do we deal with the changes in our culture? And again, I don't want to be simplistic, but I do recognize this is simple, so I'm trying to use language like a complex reality. So it was birthed out of a complex reality, but the effect for the fundamentalist movement was basically settling on a view that the church's real job was to be saving souls and waiting for. The fundamentalist movement was basically settling on a view that the church's real job was to be saving souls and waiting for the second coming of Jesus. That was the real job, and anything that got outside of that was getting political. Or maybe you've heard this phrase. It was like shining brass on the Titanic as it was sinking right. So we need to be all about saving souls.
Speaker 1:So what this did is it produced a cultural withdrawal, and so if the mainline assimilated to the culture, a fundamentalist perspective retreats from the culture, okay. So this is just basic ways of setting it up without caricaturing it. I hope I don't mean to do that at all. Some people would call me a fundamentalist right, so I'm sympathetic. Some people would call me a social gospel person right, so I'm sympathetic to both sides and I don't mean to caricature them.
Speaker 1:But what was really interesting is, after a series of court decisions and other cultural realities, what emerged was were factions from both groups, all groups that essentially said what is happening in the United States and the culture is not okay, we have to do something about it. In other words, if this is where the culture is heading, we have to do something. And so what happened is all of these dynamics actually woke the fundamentalists up out of their world, withdrawing stance, and it transformed many of them into cultural activists, increasing their political engagement. So this is where we get the phrases and I'm just this is more me naming it, not being pejorative we get phrases like the moral majority and the religious right. It emerges out of this stand of the fundamentalists that say, if this is where our country is going, we're not going to do this. So now the fundamentalists are willing to engage, going to do this. So now the fundamentalists are willing to engage, the liberal evangelicals, and so the fundamentalists and the evangelicals. They'll even partner with the Catholics at this point. So everyone comes together around common ground, because there's nothing like a common enemy that brings about a common ground and coalition. And so, of course, what they did was this whole group joined together for the sake of legislation, to use their power and a voting block, and so on.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm actually not going to critique it, I just meant to be more of like describing it, describing the reality in which we find ourselves. That does influence people in this room at varying levels. Some of you are very influenced by the dynamics I just said. Some of you are young enough and I would almost put myself in that. I didn't grow up in the church and so I didn't experience fundamentalism in the way that many of you did, so sort of lost on me. I don't know why people get so worked up about weird things. That's my perspective. So I've had to learn from people and say let me invite you in, will you listen to me? And I've learned a lot right. So I'm trying to describe the dynamic that affects all of us at some level.
Speaker 1:But what I want to say is for the rest of the sermon today, I want to set the stage for why political engagement is not optional, but it is inevitable for Christians, and then I want to give some basic principles for political discipleship. So I'm speaking of the ways in which we've experienced a privatized faith in the area of politics. To just name that. It's in the room. That's all I'm really trying to do. It's in the room, it's here, which is one reason why you all gasped when you saw the slide. We're just acknowledging there is an elephant in the room. Pun totally intended. Okay, so we have to reject a privatized faith. Okay, we have to reject a privatized faith, but still, where does that leave us? And so, for the rest of time, two points. The second one is a political gospel.
Speaker 1:Now let's go to our passage, because we've explained our culture a little bit. That's in the room. Let's talk about what was happening in the gospel of Mark. So our passage is in 14. We just read 14 and 15. 14 is actually really important to help us here. Mark says now, after John was arrested, by the way, authorities arrest people. I just want to mention that. So this isn't a private thing, this is a very public thing. Authorities arrest people for breaking laws or they're unjust authorities, but either way, the authorities are already involved here. Mark, chapter 1, in Jesus's ministry. So after Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. Now some of us you know I try not to say this very often because I don't want to elicit envy, because I don't know how holy it would be Some of us, the leaders, got to go to Galilee last year and one of the things that I had always pictured was Galilee being basically in the country, and it really is.
Speaker 1:You go there now. There are virtually no buildings on the Sea of, and one of the things that I had always pictured was Galilee being basically in the country, and it really is. You go there now. There are virtually no buildings on the Sea of Galilee and if they are, they're kind of small and kind of far off and you just get this beautiful picture of essentially what's desert, with this lake in the middle, the Sea of Galilee. But that's not what it was like when Jesus went to Galilee and was preaching. That's very important for us to recognize. It's not what it was like at all. You see, galilee was actually the center of a humming political and commercial life.
Speaker 1:As one commentator put it, quote Galilee stood at the crossroads of the nations of the ancient world, through which the armies and the traders and the diplomats passed. There, that is, in Galilee, some of the greatest battles of the world had been fought. Galilee was the home of a thoroughly cosmopolitan population. Greek, hebrew and Aramaic would all be heard in the markets. Syrian, jew, roman and Parthian mixed freely in Galilee. It was a land of passing excitements and dangerous fashions, of a barbarous dialect and offensive manners, end quote. So when Mark says now, after John was arrested, jesus came to Galilee. That's where Jesus is. It's not Jesus carrying a sheep walking in, talking to a few people on the countryside hill. It was a very charged reality, okay. So what this does is it draws attention also to the tense political and religious scene in Galilee.
Speaker 1:That commentator goes on to say, quote we must resist the temptation to picture the beginning of Jesus's ministry as being centered in some gentle, quiet backwater. He began at a place of conflict, threat, racial mixture and busy activity. End quote. So when Jesus comes to that place, opens his mouth and proclaims the good news of God, that's the context. But how would that context have heard these words? How would the context have received, that is to say, the first hearers of what Jesus was saying? How would they have received it?
Speaker 1:These words, gospel, kingdom, repent, believe these are all words for us that queue up a certain script in our mind, especially when we're in church. If I say gospel of the kingdom and repent and believe, there are certain categories that that come to your mind. But the question is, what categories would have come to the, the first hearers of this? That's a really important question. The reason it's important is because words run scripts in our minds. We file things in certain folders in our mind, metaphorically speaking. For example, when you see these words, as I already mentioned, you probably file them in my religion spiritual folder in your brain, right? So let me illustrate how this works and how we can lean into words that we use in this sermon and beyond.
Speaker 1:So the author of one of the books that I read in preparation for this sermon series tells the story of his mom In 2012,. He gets a call from his dad and when he answers he can tell something's wrong. And his dad says you need to come to this hospital quickly. Your mom was in a terrible bicycle accident. Her life is in the balance. So he takes his wife and his one child at the time. They drive to the hospital and his mom's already in surgery. It's a five or six hour surgery to relieve the swelling in her brain and they're just not sure how she'll respond. And thankfully she recovers and she lives, makes it through the night, things get better slowly and then she eventually wakes up and she's able to speak. But you can tell, not everything is quite the way it was, so they weren't sure how things would progress from there. As it then goes on, she gains most of her functioning back just takes time.
Speaker 1:And so for over a year she's at the hospital a lot, several types of therapies, and one of the things early on that a doctor told the family was hey listen, imagine your mom's brain when it hit the pavement, like someone took the filing cabinets of her mind, all the things that she knew, and dumped them out. And now the work of collecting them and filing them in proper places is the work that begins. So now, several years later, in 2022, he says, she'll still point at things, although she virtually is back to her normal self. She'll point at things and be like what do we call that thing again, and he'll say that's an ambulance. Oh yeah, okay, that's right, that's an ambulance. So things fit, but they had to reorder them.
Speaker 1:And the reason that's a problem is because it's not just the inconvenience of forgetting a word, it's that scripts run. So our mind works on. Sometimes this is good, sometimes this is bad. It works on association. So one thing happens and our minds go really fast, but if there are blocks, then it's really hard to engage the world. And so, from this concept, think about this If I were to tell that family. If I were to say doctor, hospital stretcher, it would probably bring up images of that time, those years of being in the hospital with their mom. But if you have never experienced that, you've never been in healthcare, you've never been hospitalized, you don't know anybody who's gone through ongoing treatment in a hospital. If you hear doctor hospital stretcher, you probably think more broadly like healthcare or medical field or helping profession. Okay, so now let's come back. However you hear, gospel, kingdom, believe whatever scripts begin running in your mind.
Speaker 1:The real question for us this morning, right now, in this point, is what would have been the most likely scripts that would have run in their mind when Jesus says these words. Would it have been religion, personal belief? I want to suggest that the primary script that would have run in their mind when Jesus says the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel, the primary category would be the closest to what we would call politics. That would be the closest script that would run for them, and I'll just explore it a little bit with the little bit of time. We have the word gospel. It means good news, that's right. But the question is are Christians the only ones who use this phrase gospel? Well, no, actually, in the Old Testament, this word the Hebrew word for what's translated gospel was used often and it's used often in the New Testament. And it's used outside of the Hebrew Bible in terms of culture in ancient Near East, and it's also used in the Greco-Roman world during the writing of the New Testament. So we actually have lots of information about how people would have thought or what scripts would have been going on when they heard the word gospel.
Speaker 1:Let me give you a few examples from the Old Testament. First, 1 Samuel 31, verse nine. What you have is that the enemies of Israel, the Philistines, they actually cut off King Saul's head and then they send the news of victory to all the Philistines. And this is what 1 Samuel 39 says they sent the news of the victory. What word is victory? Gospel. They sent the good news. If someone said gospel, amen, I think someone said gospel. This is why I love family worship. I'm going to claim it was gospel. That's what I heard in my mind. The gospel was an announcement of victory, in this case, a military victory by the beheading of an opposing king. Okay, well, 2 Kings, chapter 6 and 7,.
Speaker 1:Elisha finds himself in trouble. The people of God are surrounded and he is with them by the king of Aram who lays siege to Samaria. Okay, so this is happening over two chapters. What they do is this opposing army blocks off all of Samaria's resources, their water, their food, to starve them out. Okay, that's the situation. And it gets so bad the Samaritans begin eating everything and for the sake of Family Worship, sunday, this is where I'll restrain. You can use your imagination. Go read it, six and seven, if you're curious what all they were eating. Elisha promises that God will save them. He's a prophet promising that God will save them.
Speaker 1:And the next day something crazy happens. Four messengers go out of the camp and they find the enemy's camp has been abandoned, but they've left all their tents, all their horses, all of their donkeys, and so when the four messengers come back to proclaim victory, just like Elisha said would happen what do they say? They say today is a day of gospel, today is a day of good news. So let's go tell the king's household. You see, gospel was an announcement of a political victory. Yahweh had defeated another nation to protect them. Just as Elisha said, the prophet Isaiah proclaims the gospel of God coming to rescue his people from exile. Well, who takes you into exile? Nations, political entities take you into exile. Nations, political entities take you into exile. They oppress you. And so that's why, when we read the Christmas passages in their original context, like Isaiah 52, we understand that what he's saying is God is coming to rescue his people from exile. He says the spirit of Yahweh is upon the messenger to bring the good news, or gospel, which is further defined, quote binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to those who are bound.
Speaker 1:Okay, now, in order to engage you, we're going to do like an interactive game. Okay, so many things coming through my mind. If you only could know what's in my mind, I think you would laugh, but I'm not sure. That's why I'm glad most of the time it stays in my mind. So here's the game. Here's the game.
Speaker 1:I'm going to read to you a short passage and I want you to think is this Isaiah or is this Jeremiah? See how well you know your Bible. Okay, is this Isaiah or is this Jeremiah? It's like a game show and you get a guess and you get a guess. All right, here's the passage, quote he has made war to cease and put everything in peaceful order, and the birth of our God signaled the beginning of the gospel for the world. Because of him, raise your hand. If you think this is Isaiah, go ahead. Great, raise your hand. If you think this is Isaiah, go ahead. Great, raise your hand. If you think this is Jeremiah, that's good, raise your hand. If you're terrified and you abstain, great, all right. Well, I'm so glad you guys trust me. You may not after this. It was neither. It was neither. Let me tell you what it was. It was neither. It was neither. Let me tell you what it was. It was from a calendar inscription speaking of the birth of the emperor Augustus. Quote the beginning of good news for the world. What it actually says is he, or Augustus, has made war to cease and put everything in peaceful order, and the birth of our God, their emperor, signaled the beginning of the gospel for the world.
Speaker 1:Because of him, the word gospel is a political word In the Bible. The word gospel doesn't just have political implications. It is a political word. Okay, jesus' message was political. There's no arguing with that. Now, what makes us nervous is when we think political, we think of partisan craziness. I'm not saying it was political. There's no arguing with that. Now, what makes us nervous is when we think political, we think of partisan craziness. I'm not saying it was that. I'm saying it was political, it was public, it was clashing kingdoms the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man.
Speaker 1:Now, kingdom is another word that we'll speak about more over the semester and it's a little more nuanced than the word gospel. Okay, because theologians for years have talked about. Well, when we talk about the kingdom because of it's already not yet now we talk about differing opinions on how the kingdom comes and how we engage the kingdom. So all I'm gonna do in terms of speaking of the kingdom is just sum it up this way, as one commentator did. I think it's helpful when we talk about the kingdom of God, we should at least view it, be able to agree on it, as a broad concept of God implementing his eternal reign in the world. No matter what you think about kingdom, it's that Jesus, god is king. Jesus is bringing the beginning of that reign and one day it will fully come and he's the king of kings, he's lord of lords and he will come and he will bring peace. Okay, but further, this commentator recommends maybe it would help us if we replace the word kingdom for our own sake with terms like kingship or reign, to express, quote, the basic biblical conviction that God is king. Okay, that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:So Jesus goes into Galilee in a hyper-charged political climate, multicultural, multi-languages, differing religions, and he says I'm a king, I'm bringing a kingdom. Repent, believe in me, repent, believe in me. This is the good news I've brought it. That is very political, and I want to say political in four ways at least, because one of the things that's challenging about the word political is, I understand that lots of things speaking of scripts are filling your mind. So we had a conversation Should we say following Jesus in public square? Should we say following Jesus in public life? And I wanted to force the issue. So I said no, let's say politics, and then we'll spend our time defining what we mean by politics, which is the historic way of politics, which is how do you order society for the flourishing of common good? Does Christianity have anything to say about that? How might we order society for the flourishing of the common good?
Speaker 1:So four ways that Christianity is a political message. One Jesus declared himself to be king and demands our ultimate loyalty above all other loyalties. Okay, two, jesus's message is a public message, not merely a revolution in personal values. It's not a privatized faith. It's not merely even a personal faith. It's not less than that, but it's a very public faith. This is why people still get thrown into jail for being Christians. It's a public, political, all-encompassing reality. Three politics speaks of public life and the ordering of society, the enacting of justice and the arranging of common goods, and Jesus has something directly to say about that when he says his kingdom has come Not just to Christians, by the way, to non-Christians. And then, fourth, christian politics concerns how we integrate our confession that Jesus is Lord with our call to love our neighbors as ourselves. So Jesus calls people to a new way of life, a new society and a new community, and all of these things have public realities, political realities. So the question though I know that you're asking probably is okay, but what's the church's mission in the midst of all of this? And we will talk about that over time.
Speaker 1:But the way I want to frame it is to use the word engagement. I don't think this is a simple word. I think it's a tricky word, although we're used to using the word engaging the culture. The reason I think it's tricky and I will use it, but I still think it's tricky is because when we say engaging the culture, to me it implies an option of not engaging the culture. And the reality is is that you don't live in a bubble with, unless you live in a bubble with no inputs, the culture is encroaching on you, it's discipling you, it's forming you through movies and podcasts and TV shows and social media and cable news. It's just happening and so you are engaging it already. It's just is it passive or is it active and thoughtful? Okay, so when I say engage it, I mean let's move toward recognizing the deforming reality of culture on us and let's try to be more thoughtful together over this next year of engaging culture more wisely.
Speaker 1:So here's a question Does that cultural thoughtful engagement talk more about submission to the government, as some passages do, or resistance to the government, as other passages might and we're going to talk about that next week, but I want to put it out there and let me use an illustration to try to cultivate the ground before I start planting seeds of inception in your mind. Okay, so again, does it make us think about submission or resistance? I think it's paradoxically both and it depends, is the answer. But there are guardrails, and we'll talk about those next week. But here's the question I want to ask this morning as we move, hopefully more quickly than this. We will engage this more in the next few weeks, but here we go. Here's an illustration. Okay, what did Jesus do? He came into a world that already existed a political and religious world, a multicultural world and said I'm bringing a kingdom. We have a small envoy now, but there's a bunch more where this comes from. It could sound threatening or maybe it's lost on you. So here's the illustration.
Speaker 1:Imagine, in the distant future, a spaceship parks over New York City, not too dissimilar to Will Smith and Independence Day. Okay, so it comes and it's over New York City and a group of we'll call them humanoids debored, claiming they are from a distant world with a different kingdom. They're a strange group, though they look like humans the way they walk, with upright two legs, they have smaller heads, no hair and a bluish tent. So everyone already is a little. These guys are weird. No hair and a bluish tent. So everyone already is a little. These guys are weird.
Speaker 1:They begin to tell earth, humans, that they represent a new era, a new kingdom and a new king, but they're just a delegation. There are thousands of ships on the way and they claim that this new era will change how we live for the good, and in fact they say more than that, and so obviously earth humans would be nervous about that what this means. It sounds like these humanoids want to colonize the earth, but then the humanoids go on and they explain no, no, we, what we have is as a communication tool. We have a message that will make everyone's lives better. Justice will reign, reign, everything will be fair, no one will be left out. In fact, they go further than this and they say we're actually going to invite people weekly as we gather proclaiming that message, to view glimpses of this reality weekly, and we're going to talk about how to live like the future is already present and these humanoids go to great lengths to actually connect with these earth humans.
Speaker 1:I know that this is confusing. They begin dressing like them, eating like them and, in some respects, acting like them, though assumptions begin to spread about insurrection, and some of them are invited onto cable news and asked pointedly do you affirm or support the current governing authorities and will you submit to them and some of them are invited onto cable news and asked pointedly do you affirm or support the current governing authorities and will you submit to them? And they say yes. But when asked whether they will continue to support the governing authorities when the rest of their fleets and the new king comes, will you still submit? What they say is well, when that happens, everything will be accomplished. That is what the government has been trying to do all of these years. Will be accomplished, but in the meantime, we're happy to support them as long as they preserve social I'm sorry society until our gift arrives with our king, right?
Speaker 1:If something like this happens, I think we would have mixed feelings. In one sense, it sounds like a great threat to society, right? And in another sense, it sounds like they genuinely want to do good. They said they would support what's happening now, but they also have this weird vibe to them. Listen, that is what we are Essentially. We are these aliens from a future reign that now are living under a new king, yet in a current reality where we have dual citizenship and people want to press us, are you with us or against us? Neither, at least that should be our answer. It's often not, and so as Christians we are now ambassadors of a coming regime.
Speaker 1:So this is a political gospel that even when we speak the gospel, it does have political implications today, even though, because of the privatizing reality that I started with, we don't hear it that way. And then we're confused why those who aren't Christians hear Christians talking now and they feel threatened. Well, it's because it's very political. It's a way that we believe society should be organized for the common good. The question is, how will we live with them, how will we love them? And that's the next two weeks. I want to end here. What does political discipleship even look like? And I have just a few principles. I think political discipleship has to follow Paul here, to do everything in love, from 1 Corinthians 16.
Speaker 1:So here are four important features of engaging political discussion in love. First, following Jesus in politics happens in relationships. It has to. We approach politics as we approach other people, that is not mainly ideas or other sides, but as people in real relationship. You see, when we do this, we see people as image bearers. And when we see people as image bearers, we see two things we see the goodness of the image of God and we see the ugliness of what happens when people turn from the goodness and image of God. This is what we see, but we only see that in relationship. That's it. That's why we've got to engage in relationship. Disclaimer that does not mean that we have to engage every idea or person as a friend, just like the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Speaker 1:Second, love and affirmation are not necessarily the same thing. Love and affirmation are not necessarily the same thing. To assume that love always affirms the other person is a modern mistake, not a biblical pattern. Parenting should not go this way. Public engagement should not go this way, because love is against what is wicked and wrong for someone else. Again, we're talking about a disposition of the kingdom of God which we'll talk about in the next few weeks. But I'll say it again, love and affirmation are not necessarily the same thing. So engaging with love is far from blanket affirmation. And I think some of you get really nervous when you start talking about love as the rule because you think that means blanket affirmation. It doesn't. But you know, what it also doesn't mean Is a one-speed gearbox of biting, satire and ridicule of the other side. Love is not either of those things. Love rejects not opposition or disagreement that will happen. Love rejects willful misrepresentation, and we often engage in willful misrepresentation. It aims not to avoid antagonism but to go wherever love leads, even if it is to heated debate. Such a willingness to follow where love leads is what author Alan Jacob calls intelligent charity.
Speaker 1:Third principle engaging with love requires first being loved. Hurt people are going to hurt people. You can't actually love people unless you first are loved. The one who God loves does not have to justify herself or himself through their reading humor or scoring points to prove their superiority. In some new cultural debate there are these stats that show the more educated people are, the more ignorant they are, because they think they have to have an opinion. And that's most of us in this room. The Christian cultural critic's identity is found in Jesus, not in cleverness in God, not in one-liners and I know that sounded like a one-liner, so that seems very incongruent. See, I have to. I don't have very many illustrations today, so I have to bring the humor so you don't fall asleep. Third engaging with love requires first being loved. Okay, I'm going to skip, for the sake of time, to the last one.
Speaker 1:Fourth to engage with love is to seek to understand before you critique. Understand before you critique. Cs Lewis argues that quote. The true reader reads every work seriously, in the sense that he reads it wholeheartedly. What does he mean? Well, by this, I think he means we should prepare to encounter other views when we read, because not everyone is like us. And when we do that, we need to seek to be hospitable to that view, to understand where it's coming from. It's an intellectual hospitality, in Lewis's terms.
Speaker 1:Christian engagement, quote, involves putting ourselves in the other person's place and thus transcending our own I love this phrase our own competitive particularity. We're all so idiosyncratic Ah, you didn't say it like that. He's not one of us anymore. She's not one of us anymore. You put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable. You clearly are not in Like. We do weird things like this, and Lewis goes on to call this bulverism.
Speaker 1:I don't know what that means, but what he says it means is this allows the Christian to engage to the point to where they can see why those who hold a given view or see the world in a given way might want to do so. In other words, do you even know why they think it's beautiful, or are you just so convinced you need to tell them. They're wrong. They're human beings. Have you done the work to know why they think this might be beautiful? Have we done the work to know why this might sparkle to them, why this might woo their hearts, might sparkle to them why this might woo their hearts or not? Because until we do that, essentially all we're doing is articulating a worldview.
Speaker 1:But love begins to see why people think something is good and beautiful and why they would tenaciously defend it, why they would feel threatened if you speak against it. You understand why and you seek to be able to articulate that desire better than they can. That's true love. That's far from blunting any criticism or rejection. I'm not saying we don't reject and criticize, but I'm saying political discipleship that loves and listens in the way I just described produces negative judgments that are more likely to carry persuasive weight. I'll end here.
Speaker 1:The opposite of love is not hate or indifference, but using others to your own end. And so often in political engagement we read others, take sound bites, use it for our own end. We use them to prove our own beliefs, to double down on what we already believe. We willfully misunderstand a text or a tweet or a comment to discredit or belittle the creator simply because they are in the other camp. Whatever Jesus means by political engagement, whatever that can mean, it can't be that, because that's fundamentally not loving our neighbor. So one note before we close.
Speaker 1:Some of you, I know, are feeling really good about yourself right now. You're thinking well, I don't engage in these negative behaviors, I don't even watch cable news. Okay. But listen, it's possible that you're actually living in a false neutrality. You think you can't engage these things and you're like, yeah, but my relationship with my parents has been strained since 2016 or 2020 because of politics, but I just don't deal with it. Okay, that is a false neutrality. You can say I lost my best friend or I left the church in 2020 because of all the COVID stuff, but I don't engage in this political stuff Okay, that's false neutrality. If you have broken relationships and you don't know how to repair them, that is not you disengaging from politics. Listen, no disciple gets to stay out of the fray of loving their neighbor, and loving our neighbor is fundamentally a public and political dynamic. But how do we not be partisan? That's a question. Maybe, further, how do we not only love our neighbor, but how do we love our enemy, as Jesus commands us. Now listen. Ultimately I'll end here Christ is the perfect image of all these principles.
Speaker 1:He loves the Pharisees, even when he excorciates them as a brood of vipers seeking to raise their consciousness to the danger of their hard hearts. He loves the Pharisees and the Sadducees when he treats their questions with suspicion and refuses to give them a straight answer. And he also loves the woman at the well when he deals gently with her failings, not systematically correcting each one, but seeking instead to help her understand the fundamental truth of her identity. This is all love that Jesus engages in. He does all of this in relationship, not from a distant keyboard or a happy hour surrounded by people who always agree with him, but he left heaven to engage real people in the real world. And he loves all of us by being against that which is bad for us, but always committed to us. This is the good news. He's not satisfied with simply dominating our minds with arguments or bending our behavior into submission through new legislation, but he wants us. He woos our hearts in allegiance by his life and, ultimately, his death for us. He takes our condemnation so that we can receive his life and love, and it's in receiving this love that it shapes our love and engagement in political discipleship. This is what the church can be. This is what we can be.
Speaker 1:Let's pray, father. I pray you would prepare us over these weeks to hear from you that you would prepare us to receive your love fundamentally, that we would receive your love so that we would love others. And I just think, as we enter in this time of reflection, holy Spirit, I ask that you would bring uncommon unity to what you speak to us, that we would experience, even though we all have different opinions, that we would experience unity around Jesus, you as king, and a desire to receive your love so that we can better love others. And it's in Jesus' name we pray amen. Now, this is the time, right after our sermon, where we take a few moments to reflect, and so today, I just want to invite you to reflect on two things prayerfully.
Speaker 1:One is how did you feel when you saw the following Jesus in politics sign? How did you feel, because that is a dashboard indicator Did you feel anxiety? Did you feel anger? Did you feel heightened? Did you feel like I'm checking out, Like I'm gonna act, like I'm going to the bathroom but I'm leaving? What happened? What happened in you when you saw that slide. I want you to reflect on that, and then I want you to prayerfully reflect on Lord Jesus. However I reflected, what do you want to teach me in this season? Where'd you start and what do you want? Let's pray, and we pray that in Christ's name, amen.