Luke 9:51-56
So I don’t know about you, but I really get James and John in this story. I feel where they were. I know how they felt. Because there have been some times in my life – like last week – when I really could have enjoyed calling some fire down from heaven to destroy some people! I mean, look around you. Our country is in a mess, a red hot mess! Mass shootings are a daily event; in fact, there have been more shootings in which two or more people have been killed than there have been days in this year. Think about that. And then there are all the political divisions between people, and not just in Congress, but in towns and in churches and in families, divisions so deep that people have quit speaking to each other because of them. There are Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, maskers and non-maskers, vaccine proponents and anti-vaxers, those who celebrated the new gun regulations passed by Congress and others who cheered when the Supreme Court loosened laws regarding carrying a pistol for self-defense, those who wept when the decision was passed down overturning Roe vs. Wade and others who already had state laws in place to make abortion a crime, those who are vocal supporters of equal justice and equal rights for all people regardless of race and those who are white supremacists, and the list goes on and on and on.
Yeah, James and John, I’m right there with you. It’s all so worrisome and frustrating and it makes me angry and sad and fearful and I’d really like to call down some of that fire now if I could. But wait a minute. If we all resorted to calling fire down from heaven to destroy our enemies, there would be no one left. We’d all be dead, because everyone would call down fire and we would succeed in destroying each other. Perhaps wrath and vengeance aren’t the way to go after all. But you have to admit, it can sometimes be tempting.
We are in a time unlike anything I’ve ever seen or heard described by my parents or grandparents. Things have become so crazy that even the most absurd comments or speeches are cheered by crowds that accept the most bizarre ideas as if they were gospel truth because they come from someone they trust and support. For example, last week Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert spoke at a Christian “family camp” being held at a church in Colorado Springs. She is known for making outlandish and outrageous comments. At one point, she offered a prayer for President Biden in which she quoted Psalm 109, “May his days be few.” She didn’t read the next verse, which states, “May his children be orphans and his wife a widow,” but I am sure many of the people in the audience knew it. She went on to say in her remarks that Jesus could have saved himself from being crucified if he’d only had a couple of assault rifles at the garden of Gethsemane. She said Jesus “didn’t have enough [AR-15s] to keep his government from killing him.” That is ridiculous and theologically unsound. When the Romans came to arrest him, one of Jesus’s disciples pulled out a sword to resist, and hacks off the ear of one of the men, but Jesus tells him to put the sword away. And besides that, the point of the crucifixion wasn’t that Jesus’s government killed him; it was that Jesus died willingly to save us from our sins.
I could talk all day about the ridiculous things that our politicians are saying and doing, particularly when they get on talk radio or TV news shows. And I could also stand up here for a long time addressing the ways in which these politicians stretch the truth so far that it breaks beyond repair, twisting it into something that suits their needs at the moment. But I don’t want to do that. I just want to point out a few things that make today different from other points in our history.
First, politicians have forgotten what their job is. They are elected to govern, not to spend their entire term of office preparing for their next campaign. But not much governing actually gets done. Because from the moment they are elected, politicians seem to start campaigning for the next election. In his book, The (Un)Common Good, author Jim Wallis says, “Our politicians are always running for office, always battling their opponents, always getting ready for the next election. Their political opponents are thought of more as enemies than as colleagues, and working with them is less important than planning how to defeat them next time. Party leaders now even admit this; their goal at the beginning of an opposing party’s presidential term is simply to defeat the new president, not to find ways to work with him or her until the next election.” He also states, “Instead of promoting the common good, we see politicians holding the nation hostage for the sake of their ideological, political and economic self-interests.”
Second, politics has gotten nasty, even nastier than before. And that nastiness has spread out into the general public. As Jim Wallis puts it, “To disagree isn’t enough anymore – politicians and media pundits now attack their opponent’s character, integrity, patriotism, and even faith. And the political idea of finding compromise or working across party lines has been mostly upended on Capitol Hill, where members of different parties don’t have dinner or drinks anymore and don’t know each other’s families or even say hello or make eye contact in the hallways. Political veterans from both parties [say] this is the worst polarization they have ever seen.” He goes on to talk about how people almost demonize those who are in a different political party from them. When they think of those who are on the other side, ’They’ are traitors, bigots, disloyal, un-patriotic, stupid, snobs, rednecks, elitists, fascists, socialists, phony Christians, repressive theocrats, anti-Christian, dangerous religious zealots, atheists, fundamentalists, secret Muslims, religious right or left, mean, hypocritical, hateful, liars, without moral values, even demonic, communists, or Nazis – and ‘they’ are clearly threats to our national security, Christian civilization, and democratic society as we know it.” How could people of different political parties work together, if this is the way they think about each other? They would just as soon call down fire from heaven to destroy their political enemies!!
But Christians are called to help demonstrate that our life together in this country can be better than this. We need to live out the kind of life that Jesus referred to as the kingdom of God. If we do that, we can offer hope to the world, hope for a new kind of existence. Wallis writes, “The Christian mission is to proclaim and live the kingdom of God: ‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ That is what we pray … The heart of the message of Jesus was a new order breaking into history, changing everything about the world, including us. That is why we can offer such hope to the world. The church is supposed to be saying, and the church is supposed to be showing, that our life together can be better … Jesus is indeed calling us to a completely different way of life that people are supposed to be able to see. He called it the kingdom of God … that better way of living was meant to benefit not just Christians but everybody else too.”
That same kind of idea was described in the book Uncommon Ground, written and edited by Timothy Keller and John Inazu. They proposed that by following the advice of Ephesians 4:1-2, Christians could set an example for how we might all live together in a different and better way, to get along with each other better. Ephesians 4:1-2 (NASB) reads, “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love.” They emphasize that it is through practicing humility, patience, and tolerance that we build better relationships with each other.
First, they consider humility. Humility, they write, “recognizes that in a world of deep differences about fundamental issues, Christians and non-Christians alike are not always able to prove whey they are right and others are wrong. Christians are able to exercise humility in public life because we recognize the limits of human reason, including our own, and because we know we have been saved by faith, not by our moral actions and goodness. That confident faith anchors our relationship with God, but it does not supply unwavering certainty in all matters.” In other words, we cannot be sure that we are always right about things, so we should be humble enough to admit that perhaps the person we disagree with just might be right, or at least may have some truth in what he or she is saying. That humility can help us maintain an open mind.
Second, they write of patience. “Patience encourages listening, understanding, and questioning. Patience with others may not always bridge ideological distance; we are unlikely to find agreement on all the difficult issues that divide us. But careful listening, sympathetic understanding, and thoughtful questioning can help us draw closer to others as we come to recognize the shared experiences that unite us and the different experiences that divide us.” We can get to know each other through patience, as we listen deeply to what others say to us, as we try to understand their point of view and hear their story, as we ask questions to help us clarify how they came to their beliefs. And when we know each other better, it is less likely that we will demonize those with whom we disagree.
And third, we need to practice tolerance. As Keller and Inazu write, “Tolerance is a practical enduring of beliefs and practices that we do not share. It does not mean accepting those beliefs or approving those practices … Every one of us holds views about important matters that others find clearly misguided. There is no way that anyone can embrace all the differing and mutually incompatible beliefs. But we can do the hard work of distinguishing people from ideas, of pursuing relationships with people created in God’s image, while recognizing that we will not approve of all their beliefs or actions. Christians can demonstrate tolerance for others because our love of neighbor flows from our love of God …” In fact, as Christians we can do more than just tolerate those with whom we differ; we can love them. We have been called to love everyone as Christ loved us, including not only our neighbors, but also our enemies.
Instead of calling fire down from heaven on our enemies in order to destroy them, I would propose a second option. I would suggest that we try to build bridges between us and them. In fact, I would hope that we could somehow reach a point where there is no more “us” and “them,” at least in our attitudes towards one another. Shirley V. Hoogstra, President of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, wrote in an essay, “Building bridges is an act of love: love of neighbor, love of peace, love of God. But maintaining a posture of love in today’s world requires more than willpower. It requires the Holy Spirit’s power …” Well, I say, let the Holy Spirit come! Give us some power! Give us the power to love! Give us the power to practice humility, patience, and tolerance. Give us the power to demonstrate a better kind of living in our nation, a better way to treat each other, a better way to do politics. Give us the power to bring God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
