"God's Politics" - Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

God’s Politics
Lent 5 – Narrative Lectionary 4
April 6, 2014
Grace, Mankato, MN
John 19.1-16a

In 2005, Jim Wallis dropped a bombshell into the religious and political arena with book called, God’s Politics, about the interplay between religion and politics. The subtitle is, Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. His thesis is that the Right has hijacked the language of faith to further its own political agenda. The Left, on the other hand, has largely ignored faith, separating moral ethics from public policy. The Right insists God’s way is their way, while the Left an unrealistic separation of religious values. The consequence is a false choice between ideological religion and soulless politics.

I mention this not because I want to start a debate about Right vs. Left or even to talk about religion and politics, as helpful as these may be. Rather, it is to point out that false dichotomy from almost ten years ago is also operative 2,000 years ago for the religious leaders and Pilate. In our gospel reading there is a choice between ideological religion and soulless politics. For example, I think that the religious leaders of the day are so focused on getting it right they get it wrong. To be fair, the religious leaders are people of principle and they seek to scrupulously following them in their dealings with Jesus. But they get so wrapped up in thinking that they need to protect God they sacrifice their integrity to maintain their principles. Isn’t it ironic, that they are so preoccupied maintaining their ritual purity in order to eat the Passover lamb they sacrifice the Lamb of God? The religious leaders are so busy trying protect their idea of God they can’t see God in their midst. There are too many modern day examples, but the one that quickly comes to mind is that of Fred Phelps, whose “church” protested military funerals as God’s punishment on our society for tolerating homosexuality. They think they are protecting God and are so focused on getting it right that they miss what God is doing.

Pilate is in a different, but no less difficult and dangerous place, because he just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t realize that the system of absolute power and authority he wields actually renders him powerless. The same system that brought him to power and keeps him there isn’t controlled by him; it controls him. Power doesn’t just corrupt, as Lord Acton reminds us, and absolute power doesn’t just corrupt absolutely. Power catches us in a system that limits us. I just finished Margaret Truman’s book, Murder on Capitol Hill. One of the characters, a senator, took money from special interests that he was able translate into generating power through influence. In the end, it also made him beholding to the powers and rendered him powerless. John’s gospel wants us to know that there can be no response to Jesus that does not surrender the securities of this world.

This text poses some hard questions to us about where we get it wrong or just don’t get it. How are we so like the religious leaders, so bent on getting it right that we don’t see what God is up to in our world? Where do we focus so much on our principles we forget faith is a person? Similarly, what kind of systems do we buy into, what alliances do we form, what company do we keep that seem to work, yet in the end force us to sacrifice our integrity and make bad choices? When do we turn our backs on an offer of grace because we can’t let go or see any other way?

Jesus, of course, rejects both ways of operating for a different way, the way of self-giving love. God doesn’t need protecting, even if we could, which we can’t, because God is on the loose in our world. And Jesus reminds us that any power we have comes from God, but real power is given away. Jesus calls us out of the romanticized past we yearn for to remind us that God is doing new things among us. We are reminded that the way we’ve always done it or the ways others do it may not be God’s way for us.

Jesus gets sacrificed and crucified to break us out of the two destructive paths of getting it right and not getting it. He does so to show us a different way of living that brings us a better kind of power. The life worth living is the one lived outside of ourselves with and for a God loves us. This week, look for where God might be inviting you to color outside the lines. In the end, it’s not about getting it right, and it isn’t even about getting it at all. It’s about following the one who was committed to loving us to the end. Amen.