Leaders, and Saviors, and Us. Oh My.

Amos 8:1-12; 1 Timothy 2:1-7

September 18, 2016

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s an election coming up soon. The rhetoric is hot and bothered and as uncharitable as ever – maybe more so than ever – and truth is in retreat.

I don’t think many of our fellow citizens got the memo on “prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings” for our leaders and those in high office. I’m pretty sure the leaders, themselves, also missed the memo. Somewhere in Amos’ words about a “basket full of summer fruit,” there’s a real political zinger, I’m sure, but I’m not going to go there.

The good news in all of this is that there are now only 50 more shopping days left until election day.

That’s not the only good news. There’s this: despite what you may have heard in the overheated campaign, the results of November’s election will neither bring about the apocalypse nor usher in the kindom of God. That’s really important to remember, no matter which side of the partisan divide we find ourselves.

This is not at all to say that elections don’t matter, much less is it to say that policies don’t matter. Of course leadership is important, and of course we aim to elect leaders who will champion causes that reflect the deepest values of our faith.

Our faith is lived out as we try to follow the way of Jesus in the world. What does that look like? Feeding the hungry, liberating the captives, pursuing peace, doing justice, and doing all of that with a preferential option for the poor. That is to say, our faith compels us to support policies, programs, and plans that respect the poor, that treat the poor with honor, that hold the interests of the poor higher than the interests of the comfortably middle class much less the rich and powerful.

Amos was clear about what angers God: when we “practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” In other words, when we misuse and abuse the poor, God gets angry.

When you start from that place, it’s easy to understand why I’ll say the same thing in every single election season: God is not a Republican … or a Democrat. God is certainly not a Libertarian, and God is also not a Green.

Indeed, listen to the candidates for most political offices in the United States these days and ask yourself, “how often do any of them speak of putting the needs of the poor first?”

You’ll hear, from most of them, a great deal about the middle class. When was the last time anyone ran for Congress or the presidency not promising some kind of “middle class tax relief”? Now, when was the last time anyone ran for one of those offices on a platform that championed, that made central to the entire campaign, the cause of the poor?

There may have been such candidates, but none of them got elected president, and maybe a small handful made it into congress, but none of them made the cause of the poor, the imprisoned, the outcast, the most vulnerable members of our society central to the national conversation about the direction of the country.

Even if you can, for the sake of argument, name a congressperson or two who has consistently championed the cause of the domestic poor, I’m fairly confident that the list dwindles to pretty much empty if you add in the cause of the poor who are not Americans. That is to say, when was the last time you heard a politician whose positions reflected the admonishment of the Presbyterian Church’s great Confession of 1967? A half century ago, our denomination called on the nations and their leaders “to pursue peace even at risk to national security.”

In other words, we declared that our confession of faith in Jesus Christ compels us to pursue peace with regard, first and foremost, to the victims of war who are vastly disproportionately poor. Their cause must be our first priority, even if it risks whatever we think of as “national security” because, and here’s another truth we tend to overlook, God is not an American.

Needless to say, this is not a winning campaign strategy when the baseline requirement of any political speech is that it must end with the phrase, “God bless America.”

Why don’t politicians focus first and foremost on the concerns of the poor and downtrodden? Well, first off, most of the poor in the U.S. are children and they don’t vote. So it’s lousy politics.

Beyond that basic electoral reality there’s this: we don’t elect saviors.

That sounds so obvious that it seems trite, but we tend to behave as if it were not even true, much less obvious. When we make the mistake of believing that we’re electing someone who is going to save us, someone who is going to usher in the kindom, or even someone who going to make us great again, then we walk away from the voting booth believing our work is done. We’ve elected a savior, so now it’s going to be pie in the sky and streets paved with gold, and all we have to do is stroll those streets and eat that pie, all while giving no thought to anything as trifling as the condition of the pie bakers or the gold miners.

That is true no matter who wins. I’m quite mindful of this, because I was deeply involved in the peace movement beginning in Cleveland when I arrived there in 2001, and continuing when we moved here in 2003. I saw the energy drain from that movement when Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

Some of that was the result of the partisan nature of some of the peace work. That is to say, some of that effort was aimed more at opposition to President Bush than it was toward authentic peacemaking.

But more even than the partisanship, there was a current of energy that was sparked by the notion that the nation was electing a savior not a mere chief executive. We don’t use that language, mind you, but our behavior reveals the truth.

When you put all your eggs in one basket, then hand that basket to your newly chosen savior, you’re going to be disappointed when that savior turns out to be a human being, and then that person stumbles and some eggs get broken. Such disappointment leads either to anger or to apathy, and neither of those is particularly helpful.

More to the point, when we elect a savior we don’t need to do the hard work of salvation. Electing a savior gets us off the hook.

When the apostle Paul noted that “we are working out our salvation day by day in fear and trembling,” he underscored the hard work, the risks, and the responsibility of people of faith for living into the promise of salvation. He also underscored the multiple meanings o          f salvation: the here-and-now yet also always-yet-to-come, the already but not-yet nature of salvation.

Salvation, according to the sweep of scripture, is about wholeness, about well-being, about right relationships among creatures and with the Creator. It is never fully accomplished in our own time, yet we are invited to live into it day-by-day.

Thus, while elections matter and leaders make a difference, salvation is not on the ballot this fall. Salvation is the ongoing work of God and of the people of God no matter who the voters of the United States elect as president.

Let us pray. Holy One, we live in a divided time as a divided people longing to be one people. Help us to remember that we are, first and always, your people.

We give you thanks for the individuals who respond to the people’s voice and offer themselves as leaders. We pray today for Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and all of the other women and men who offer themselves as public officials. Give them wisdom, courage, strength, and humility. Open their eyes to the plight of the poor; open their hearts to the brokenhearted; open their ears to the cries of the oppressed; open their hands to welcome the stranger to our land; open their minds to the way of peace.

Gracious God, give each of us discerning minds as we choose leaders. May we remember what matters to you: the cause of the poor, comfort for those who mourn, welcome for the stranger, liberation for the imprisoned, healing for victims of violence, and solidarity with those who suffer the individual consequences of systemic injustice. Give us the courage to speak this truth to those who exercise power, and grant us the strength to love even in times marked by hateful rhetoric.

Oh, God, you know us well, and thus you know that even in the midst of extraordinary events, we live out our days filled with the ordinary concerns: the joy of sharing meals with family and loved ones; the sorrow of grief; the discomfort of illness; the challenges of work; the rest and restoration of Sabbath play. We walk through our days, trying to be mindful of you as we witness the beauty of your creation. In our mindfulness, we ask simply, Lord, hear our prayers.