Lighten Up!
January 27, 2008
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Isaiah 9:1-4; Matthew 4:12-23
This week was an interesting week for sports fans – if football is your sport, you probably watched the Packers lose a heartbreaking game in overtime, cold and snow a week ago. While I’m sure everyone felt sorry for Giants’ kicker Lawrence Tynes and the prospect of his failing at a third field goal attempt, made more difficult by kicking a cold football, nonetheless, in this state it’s hard to find anyone whose compassion extended to wanting him to make that last attempt. But he did, and the Packers lost, and God bless Brett Favre for not shifting the blame for that last interception to anyone else – he threw it badly, and he accepted the responsibility. Those of us whose sport is politics would like to see some more of that kind of responsibility and civility on our field. For those of us who are more focused on Super Duper Tuesday than on the Superbowl, it has been a lively week on the primary trail.
Mercy. Had I been drafting the bulletin on Friday instead of on Tuesday, I think I might have bypassed the scriptural themes of light and dark and gone for “Blessed are the peacemakers.” As I’ve reflected on this week’s Biblical passages, many of my early sermon thoughts sounded as if I intended a veiled reference to one campaign or another. Those thoughts were not intended as political references, but I don’t want to chance any confusion on that score.
So since it’s going to be a l-o-o-n-g political season, and since many of you already know that I have intense interest in politics, I think I am going to set aside the sermon direction I intended and share with you instead some of my thinking about politics and the pulpit, for a couple of reasons – first, I really want to be clear with you about this, and second, I had a rough week with a couple days of a stomach virus, and so I missed two days of preparing for the level of theological thinking I normally enjoy. Besides, as it happens, my thinking on politics and the pulpit, at least as it applies to my ministry, also happens to connect with this week’s lectionary passages.
The passage that Kassy read, before the choir’s beautiful anthem, is a passage that often gets read around Christmas: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined….” After the verses in today’s reading, the passage continues, “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulders and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace….” And Christians tend to hear these verses as being about Jesus – we say that Isaiah was telling the people about a future time when the Messiah would come. Biblical historians, however, think that while we can read back into Isaiah’s words and see Jesus, Isaiah probably wasn’t looking too far ahead at this point. Isaiah was likely celebrating the birth or the coronation of King Hezekiah, who succeeding his father, King Ahab, who had not been an effective king. Isaiah, at this point, is more likely playing Happy Days Are Here Again than the Hallelujah Chorus. He is celebrating the sense of hope that a new political leader can bring.
People have been interested in politics as long as there have been governments – even longer, as long as there have been groups. It’s very natural. I have been oriented to political events nearly as long as I can remember. My first memories start about age 2. My first political memories begin at age 4, during the 1960 election. I remember going to the building next to the Post Office which was being used as JFK headquarters. My mom had a little fuzzy donkey pin that I so totally coveted – being 4, my political thinking went just about as far as ‘I want a fuzzy donkey’. Next. of course, I remember JFK’s death – in a macabre coincidence, my Dad has the same birthday as JFK and my brother has the same birthday as John Kennedy Jr., and so for years I was worried about my own family and felt connected to the Kennedy’s in a spooky way.
In 1964, President Johnson came to speak at the commencement of the college in my home town, and every beagle owner in town brought their dogs to meet his helicopter. He shook my best friend’s hand, and I don’t think Nancy washed for a week. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. My father taught political science. I remember listening to the 1968 Democratic Convention on the radio in our summer home where we had no TV. I lived in Washington D.C. for one year, during the 1968 election. As high school ended, I watched the Watergate hearings with my family, as we had earlier watched Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and before that, Batman, and the annual broadcast of The Wizard of OZ. I grew up caring about politics.
For me, my patriotism requires being politically interested – I totally believe in our democratic processes, and that an informed electorate is essential to them working well, and I am intensely interested, and so I watch a lot of CNN and MSNBC, and I read the New York Times. At the YMCA, which I really am trying to attend faithfully, I watch Fox News. In Tanzania, I watched Al Jazeera and the BBC. So yes, I am interested, keenly, in politics, and this year’s campaigns are particularly interesting on both sides.
As for many of you, some of my political passions flow from my understanding of faith: I believe that God calls us to reach out to the poor with more than charity. I believe Jesus showed an interest in people on the margins that should cause us to work toward radical inclusion. I believe that the stewardship ethic taught in the Bible means that the fate of the earth should be a driving concern for us. I believe that Christians should be environmentalists because God created the earth (not, by the way, in 7 24-hour days, but in amazing processes over a great deal of time which the Bible describes poetically through the 2 different literary accounts in Genesis). I believe in science, and that science describes God’s universe. And I believe that both the Old and New Testaments teach us to reach beyond our tribal, our religious, and our national boundaries to care for all God’s children. I believe that Jesus was a pacifist who died showing that non-violence was the way. My faith definitely impacts my political understanding – just as I expect the faith of everyone here impacts your political understanding, just as Isaiah was speaking out of his faith when he expressed the hope that a new king would mean that God was bringing his people out of a period of darkness into a period of light.
My faith also tells me that I am a citizen of God’s kingdom before I am an American, and that the bonds I share with God’s children throughout the world transcend national differences. And so my faith says that in this room, we are Christians before we are Americans. And my understanding of ministry tells me that when I step into this pulpit, I have been entrusted by you, by the Presbytery, and by God with the privilege of bearing what I believe to be God’s Word to you.
And so, when I am speaking from this pulpit, I will be making every effort to keep my own partisan political beliefs out of my preaching. But I will also try to be faithful in speaking about issues I believe to transcend partisan politics, issues that I believe to be deeply moral and spiritual issues: issues such as racism, environmentalism, the equality of all people before God, the right of all people – gay and straight – to be in loving, faithful relationships, the right of all people to food, education, and medical care, the right of all children to safety. I will make every effort not to speak in a partisan political way, but I do not want my desire to avoid politics to keep me from speaking God’s truth clearly, as I understand it.
I know that in this congregation we are Republicans, Democrats, and Greens. We have had members who are not Americans. We have people who aren’t interested in politics. We have both Bear fans and Packer fans, Cub fans and Brewer fans. And as in many families, where we learn to respect one another despite our differences, I hope that in our church, we can be a place where we can learn to listen to differing political perspectives with respect. Unfortunately, most of us are much better at arguing than at listening respectfully.
And yet, the crew that Jesus gathered as his disciples included a tax collector and a zealot – the zealots were the radical revolutionaries fighting for independence and the tax collectors were collaborators with the Roman empire. Jesus included fishermen and townspeople. He included a diverse group who not only didn’t agree with each other all the time (like the Zebedee brothers who were reported in more than one Gospel as squabbling between themselves) – the disciples also didn’t always agree with Jesus. As I have said before, and will say again and again (get used to it) – a hallmark of Presbyterianism is that we listen to each other. We mistrust just one person’s authority as a spokesperson for God – that’s why we don’t have bishops, and why every member is encouraged to study scripture, and theology, and to reason things out in conversation with each other.
My preaching is not the final word, but it is a prayerfully considered word. And I promise you I will make every effort to keep partisan politics out of my preaching. But some of what I believe to be integral to Christianity as I understand it – care for the poor, opposition to war, care for the earth – will come up from time to time. I won’t tell you who to vote for (at least, not from the pulpit, or in my job), but I do believe that our faith should impact our understanding of moral issues, and I will speak to those issues. If you think I am being partisan, or if you think I’m wrong about some of these issues being faith issues, come talk with me. I promise I’ll listen to you, as long as you talk with me and not at me. I’m not much for being yelled at, and so I promise I won’t yell at you either. Let’s be good Presbyterians and trust the conversation. Let’s listen to one another, and listen for God in each other’s words as well as in our own thoughts and words. One of the things I love about the Men’s Study Group is that sense of respectful listening. I have learned a lot from these guys. But listening, and valuing your opinion, doesn’t mean that I’ll end up agreeing with you. People misunderstand this sometimes. It is possible top really listen, and really hear what someone says, and yet continue to disagree. Listen doesn’t guarantee agreement.
Our Gospel reading today began with the arrest of John the Baptist. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that John had been proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Today’s reading closes with the sentence, “From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” Hmm, sounds familiar. Jesus is preaching the same message as John, so we know from the beginning of this story that the preaching of Jesus is going to get him into trouble with the authorities – the message of Jesus, while absolutely spiritual, was also intensely political. It is impossible for us to be spiritually faithful without engaging with political issues. The ministry and teaching of Jesus shows us that God cares deeply about what happens in this world. God cares about suffering, God cares about the poor, God cares about justice, God cares about humans who are living in the real world. But as the very wise bumper sticker says, “God is not a Republican…or a Democrat.” And that’s not because God is a member of the Green Party, or because God is apathetic. It is because political solutions, as fascinating as I find them, can only go so far.
Humans make governments, political processes are human processes, humans are frail creatures, and my faith rests on the final power in the world being God’s power. I believe in the power of God to change human hearts. I believe in the power of God to work miracles among individuals, within families and communities, and even among nations. I believe that God wants justice, wants freedom, wants fairness more than we do, and that if we allow God to truly govern our hearts, if we allow ourselves to trust in the power of love more than the power of fear, the power of hope more than the power of power, the power of light more than the power of darkness, the world can be changed. As Psalm 27 says, “I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” I believe that in God each of us lives and moves and has our being. And so I believe that truth will win, that justice will prevail, and that a better day is still, really and truly, on the way.
And I believe that the church has a role in bringing about this better day, that as we stand for what we believe, and work for a world where God’s love is lived out in the way we care for one another, that as we teach our children that each person is a child of God, therefore worthy of respect and care, that as we speak truth to power, that God’s kingdom comes into view. I believe that a new world is coming into being. I believe that by our actions, by our passion, by our faithfulness, we are extending the very kingdom of God, and that this is a mission worth preaching, worth teaching to our children, worth living, and if necessary worth dying for. And because it all matters so very much, because each hungry child saddens God, because every life matters to God, because we’ve allowed the world to deal altogether too much death, I have to care about politics. And because I can’t believe in the power of God to change the world until I let God change me, it all comes back here, and to how I let God reshape my heart each day. I believe that Jesus is still calling us, not to argue over belief in him, but to follow him, in our actions as well as our words, and that as we do, the light really will conquer the darkness. Amen.
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Isaiah 9:1-4; Matthew 4:12-23
This week was an interesting week for sports fans – if football is your sport, you probably watched the Packers lose a heartbreaking game in overtime, cold and snow a week ago. While I’m sure everyone felt sorry for Giants’ kicker Lawrence Tynes and the prospect of his failing at a third field goal attempt, made more difficult by kicking a cold football, nonetheless, in this state it’s hard to find anyone whose compassion extended to wanting him to make that last attempt. But he did, and the Packers lost, and God bless Brett Favre for not shifting the blame for that last interception to anyone else – he threw it badly, and he accepted the responsibility. Those of us whose sport is politics would like to see some more of that kind of responsibility and civility on our field. For those of us who are more focused on Super Duper Tuesday than on the Superbowl, it has been a lively week on the primary trail.
Mercy. Had I been drafting the bulletin on Friday instead of on Tuesday, I think I might have bypassed the scriptural themes of light and dark and gone for “Blessed are the peacemakers.” As I’ve reflected on this week’s Biblical passages, many of my early sermon thoughts sounded as if I intended a veiled reference to one campaign or another. Those thoughts were not intended as political references, but I don’t want to chance any confusion on that score.
So since it’s going to be a l-o-o-n-g political season, and since many of you already know that I have intense interest in politics, I think I am going to set aside the sermon direction I intended and share with you instead some of my thinking about politics and the pulpit, for a couple of reasons – first, I really want to be clear with you about this, and second, I had a rough week with a couple days of a stomach virus, and so I missed two days of preparing for the level of theological thinking I normally enjoy. Besides, as it happens, my thinking on politics and the pulpit, at least as it applies to my ministry, also happens to connect with this week’s lectionary passages.
The passage that Kassy read, before the choir’s beautiful anthem, is a passage that often gets read around Christmas: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined….” After the verses in today’s reading, the passage continues, “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulders and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace….” And Christians tend to hear these verses as being about Jesus – we say that Isaiah was telling the people about a future time when the Messiah would come. Biblical historians, however, think that while we can read back into Isaiah’s words and see Jesus, Isaiah probably wasn’t looking too far ahead at this point. Isaiah was likely celebrating the birth or the coronation of King Hezekiah, who succeeding his father, King Ahab, who had not been an effective king. Isaiah, at this point, is more likely playing Happy Days Are Here Again than the Hallelujah Chorus. He is celebrating the sense of hope that a new political leader can bring.
People have been interested in politics as long as there have been governments – even longer, as long as there have been groups. It’s very natural. I have been oriented to political events nearly as long as I can remember. My first memories start about age 2. My first political memories begin at age 4, during the 1960 election. I remember going to the building next to the Post Office which was being used as JFK headquarters. My mom had a little fuzzy donkey pin that I so totally coveted – being 4, my political thinking went just about as far as ‘I want a fuzzy donkey’. Next. of course, I remember JFK’s death – in a macabre coincidence, my Dad has the same birthday as JFK and my brother has the same birthday as John Kennedy Jr., and so for years I was worried about my own family and felt connected to the Kennedy’s in a spooky way.
In 1964, President Johnson came to speak at the commencement of the college in my home town, and every beagle owner in town brought their dogs to meet his helicopter. He shook my best friend’s hand, and I don’t think Nancy washed for a week. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. My father taught political science. I remember listening to the 1968 Democratic Convention on the radio in our summer home where we had no TV. I lived in Washington D.C. for one year, during the 1968 election. As high school ended, I watched the Watergate hearings with my family, as we had earlier watched Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and before that, Batman, and the annual broadcast of The Wizard of OZ. I grew up caring about politics.
For me, my patriotism requires being politically interested – I totally believe in our democratic processes, and that an informed electorate is essential to them working well, and I am intensely interested, and so I watch a lot of CNN and MSNBC, and I read the New York Times. At the YMCA, which I really am trying to attend faithfully, I watch Fox News. In Tanzania, I watched Al Jazeera and the BBC. So yes, I am interested, keenly, in politics, and this year’s campaigns are particularly interesting on both sides.
As for many of you, some of my political passions flow from my understanding of faith: I believe that God calls us to reach out to the poor with more than charity. I believe Jesus showed an interest in people on the margins that should cause us to work toward radical inclusion. I believe that the stewardship ethic taught in the Bible means that the fate of the earth should be a driving concern for us. I believe that Christians should be environmentalists because God created the earth (not, by the way, in 7 24-hour days, but in amazing processes over a great deal of time which the Bible describes poetically through the 2 different literary accounts in Genesis). I believe in science, and that science describes God’s universe. And I believe that both the Old and New Testaments teach us to reach beyond our tribal, our religious, and our national boundaries to care for all God’s children. I believe that Jesus was a pacifist who died showing that non-violence was the way. My faith definitely impacts my political understanding – just as I expect the faith of everyone here impacts your political understanding, just as Isaiah was speaking out of his faith when he expressed the hope that a new king would mean that God was bringing his people out of a period of darkness into a period of light.
My faith also tells me that I am a citizen of God’s kingdom before I am an American, and that the bonds I share with God’s children throughout the world transcend national differences. And so my faith says that in this room, we are Christians before we are Americans. And my understanding of ministry tells me that when I step into this pulpit, I have been entrusted by you, by the Presbytery, and by God with the privilege of bearing what I believe to be God’s Word to you.
And so, when I am speaking from this pulpit, I will be making every effort to keep my own partisan political beliefs out of my preaching. But I will also try to be faithful in speaking about issues I believe to transcend partisan politics, issues that I believe to be deeply moral and spiritual issues: issues such as racism, environmentalism, the equality of all people before God, the right of all people – gay and straight – to be in loving, faithful relationships, the right of all people to food, education, and medical care, the right of all children to safety. I will make every effort not to speak in a partisan political way, but I do not want my desire to avoid politics to keep me from speaking God’s truth clearly, as I understand it.
I know that in this congregation we are Republicans, Democrats, and Greens. We have had members who are not Americans. We have people who aren’t interested in politics. We have both Bear fans and Packer fans, Cub fans and Brewer fans. And as in many families, where we learn to respect one another despite our differences, I hope that in our church, we can be a place where we can learn to listen to differing political perspectives with respect. Unfortunately, most of us are much better at arguing than at listening respectfully.
And yet, the crew that Jesus gathered as his disciples included a tax collector and a zealot – the zealots were the radical revolutionaries fighting for independence and the tax collectors were collaborators with the Roman empire. Jesus included fishermen and townspeople. He included a diverse group who not only didn’t agree with each other all the time (like the Zebedee brothers who were reported in more than one Gospel as squabbling between themselves) – the disciples also didn’t always agree with Jesus. As I have said before, and will say again and again (get used to it) – a hallmark of Presbyterianism is that we listen to each other. We mistrust just one person’s authority as a spokesperson for God – that’s why we don’t have bishops, and why every member is encouraged to study scripture, and theology, and to reason things out in conversation with each other.
My preaching is not the final word, but it is a prayerfully considered word. And I promise you I will make every effort to keep partisan politics out of my preaching. But some of what I believe to be integral to Christianity as I understand it – care for the poor, opposition to war, care for the earth – will come up from time to time. I won’t tell you who to vote for (at least, not from the pulpit, or in my job), but I do believe that our faith should impact our understanding of moral issues, and I will speak to those issues. If you think I am being partisan, or if you think I’m wrong about some of these issues being faith issues, come talk with me. I promise I’ll listen to you, as long as you talk with me and not at me. I’m not much for being yelled at, and so I promise I won’t yell at you either. Let’s be good Presbyterians and trust the conversation. Let’s listen to one another, and listen for God in each other’s words as well as in our own thoughts and words. One of the things I love about the Men’s Study Group is that sense of respectful listening. I have learned a lot from these guys. But listening, and valuing your opinion, doesn’t mean that I’ll end up agreeing with you. People misunderstand this sometimes. It is possible top really listen, and really hear what someone says, and yet continue to disagree. Listen doesn’t guarantee agreement.
Our Gospel reading today began with the arrest of John the Baptist. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that John had been proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Today’s reading closes with the sentence, “From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” Hmm, sounds familiar. Jesus is preaching the same message as John, so we know from the beginning of this story that the preaching of Jesus is going to get him into trouble with the authorities – the message of Jesus, while absolutely spiritual, was also intensely political. It is impossible for us to be spiritually faithful without engaging with political issues. The ministry and teaching of Jesus shows us that God cares deeply about what happens in this world. God cares about suffering, God cares about the poor, God cares about justice, God cares about humans who are living in the real world. But as the very wise bumper sticker says, “God is not a Republican…or a Democrat.” And that’s not because God is a member of the Green Party, or because God is apathetic. It is because political solutions, as fascinating as I find them, can only go so far.
Humans make governments, political processes are human processes, humans are frail creatures, and my faith rests on the final power in the world being God’s power. I believe in the power of God to change human hearts. I believe in the power of God to work miracles among individuals, within families and communities, and even among nations. I believe that God wants justice, wants freedom, wants fairness more than we do, and that if we allow God to truly govern our hearts, if we allow ourselves to trust in the power of love more than the power of fear, the power of hope more than the power of power, the power of light more than the power of darkness, the world can be changed. As Psalm 27 says, “I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” I believe that in God each of us lives and moves and has our being. And so I believe that truth will win, that justice will prevail, and that a better day is still, really and truly, on the way.
And I believe that the church has a role in bringing about this better day, that as we stand for what we believe, and work for a world where God’s love is lived out in the way we care for one another, that as we teach our children that each person is a child of God, therefore worthy of respect and care, that as we speak truth to power, that God’s kingdom comes into view. I believe that a new world is coming into being. I believe that by our actions, by our passion, by our faithfulness, we are extending the very kingdom of God, and that this is a mission worth preaching, worth teaching to our children, worth living, and if necessary worth dying for. And because it all matters so very much, because each hungry child saddens God, because every life matters to God, because we’ve allowed the world to deal altogether too much death, I have to care about politics. And because I can’t believe in the power of God to change the world until I let God change me, it all comes back here, and to how I let God reshape my heart each day. I believe that Jesus is still calling us, not to argue over belief in him, but to follow him, in our actions as well as our words, and that as we do, the light really will conquer the darkness. Amen.