The Politics of Jesus: Incarnate Grace

Luke 4:16-21

October 28, 2012

Today is Reformation Sunday, that Sunday when we remember that we are heirs to the Protestant Reformation and that we follow in the footsteps of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin. As John Buchanan wrote in his editorial earlier this month in Christian Century, “The Reformation led to a full embrace of the radical political implication of a humanity created in the image of God – each individual with God-given dignity and value. And as a consequence it led to political rights, to a new recognition of justice in the civic and political arena, and to a stress on grace as the fundamental word that God has spoken and on gratitude as the essential response of one who has received grace.”[1]

I’m glad Reformation Sunday comes when it does for it’s always good to remember that legacy in the days just prior to an election. It gives me hope for the days that come after the election – days that cannot arrive too soon in my book!

Anybody else here who will be glad when the ads and calls and canvassers go away for a while? And I don’t just mean Wes and Don because they work at the board of elections!

Personally, I can’t wait for the presidential politics to be past, for a while, because perhaps then we really could turn toward the Reformation-inspiring politics of Jesus. They are surely not the same thing! I read all about the third presidential debate, but I could find no mention in anything that I read about either candidate saying anything about loving enemies and praying for those who spite America.

Each candidate may believe that he has been anointed for this time, but I haven’t heard much from either of them by way of good news for the poor, in spite of the fact that there are millions of Americans living in state-defined poverty and billions of human beings suffering in abject poverty around the globe. I haven’t heard much from either of them about proclaiming release to the captives, despite the fact that the country they want to lead imprisons more of its citizens than any other country on earth. And the only real jubilee that national politicians seem to favor is for financial institutions deemed “too big to fail,” all while so many of our fellow citizens teeter on the brink of financial calamity.

No, the politics of the presidency bears precious little relationship to the politics of Jesus, so let’s just get on with the election and be done with it.

The politics of Jesus is waiting. It is waiting for us. It is waiting for the ones called to follow the one who was anointed to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, liberation to the oppressed and jubilee to all.

The politics of Jesus is waiting for us. It is waiting for us to embody it, moment by moment in every aspect of our lives, because the politics of Jesus is all about grace incarnate in this world.

In a practical manner, this means that each of us, in every aspect of our lives, is called to follow the same calling Jesus proclaimed in that initial public appearance. It means setting aside narrow political concerns for a much broader understanding of politics – politics as the ways and means that power is exercised in the city for the purposes of justice and shalom.

Such a politics compels us to embody grace always, because power gets exercised in the city not just on the first Tuesday in November, but in every single moment of every single day.

Take a deep breath. Breathe in. Without getting into the details of air quality indexes and suspended particulate matter, suffice it to say that the stuff that is in the air you just inhaled is there because of the ways that power gets exercised in the city – for better and for worse.

How many of you ate breakfast this morning? Again without getting into the nitty gritty of food production, processing, and so on, it is enough for now to say that the entire food system and agriculture economy is what it is – for better and for worse – because of the ways that power gets exercised in the city.

How about the clothes you’re wearing this morning. Without looking at all the tags, I’m willing to bet that most of us are wearing at least some item of clothing about whose manufacture we simply do not want to know. It is enough to say that those manufacturing conditions are what they are – for better and for worse – because of the ways that power gets exercised in the city.

The politics of Jesus invites us to live each and every aspect of our lives with eyes wide open to the realities of the exercise of power, and to pay particular attention to those who are powerless or who are the victims of power exercised without regard to justice and shalom.

To do that in every aspect of our lives – in our most intimate relationships, at home, at school, in our neighborhoods, at work, and, perhaps it goes without saying, within this community – means to embody the grace we have been given. The politics of Jesus is the embodiment of grace in the city – and city means where ever human beings live and move and have their being.

The purpose of the church – and on this day of a congregational meeting during which we’ll talk about visions and ministry and mission it’s good to recall the purpose of the church – is to be the provisional embodiment of that grace lived out in community.

We embody grace in response to the grace that has been freely given us. In receiving grace, we are called to respond in gratitude by living lives worthy of the calling we have received with that grace.

What this means, in practical terms, is that there are no relevant distinctions or spheres in our lives such that we might say, “this is the faith part of my life and this is the work part of my life, or this is the church part of my life and this is the political part of my life.”

No. There is just “my life,” given to me as a gift from the Creator of all life, and every aspect of my life is both opportunity and responsibility for embodying grace, for making it real, giving it flesh, incarnating it in the world.

If there is a part of your life where this is not true, then change it. Does the work that you do embody grace into the world? If not, then change it. Does the way that you interact with you most intimate beloved ones embody grace into the world? If not, then change it. Does the way you treat your neighbor embody grace into the world? If not, then change it.

It’s all that simple; and all that hard. But then nobody said that the politics of Jesus would be easy!

Indeed, do any of you recall what happened to Jesus right after he preached that inaugural sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth according to Luke’s gospel?

Yeah. They took him out and tried to throw him off a cliff.

Why would they do that? After all, all he said was, “I’m here to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, liberation to the oppressed.”

Commentators offer all kinds of suggestions about why the people got so angry with Jesus so quickly, which is to say that this, like so much of scripture, is open to various interpretations. I believe that at least part of what is going on is that the people, like most of us, did not want to be reminded of the ugly truth that marred their city and, perhaps, of their own complicity in that truth. They preferred the happy talk of the powers that be over and against the strange and poetic challenges of this marginal prophet who saw the facts on the ground and was willing to name them honestly.

The facts on the ground – the facts of our own lives – when honestly confronted will often disturb and provoke us for they do not always reflect the grace we are called to embody. Sometimes the political is also deeply personal, and the politics of Jesus always makes deeply personal demands on us.

That’s where the grace of God comes in. None of us will live into our several callings well all of the time. We are frail and broken vessels, jars of clay and sometimes more like shards. The best of us is capable of acts of great ugliness and violence, and you need look no further than our presidential politics to know that is true.

Fortunately, we do not rely solely on our own capacity to exhibit grace in the world; we rely upon the grace of God.

Responding to that grace, we can embody it in the world, as a community committed to constant and consistent concern with the ways and means that power is exercised in the city for the purposes of justice and shalom. For though the presidential political season is almost over, the politics of Jesus is for all seasons. We enter each and every season trusting the grace of God – a mighty fortress, a bulwark never failing, whose reign is forever and whose grace is from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.

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[1] “Luther’s Legacy,” John M. Buchanan, in Christian Century, Oct. 17, 2012, 3.