Election Season, Wk 1 (Love your enemies)

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Did you know there's an election coming up? For our first election season message, Vince brings us to maybe THE Jesus teaching from the Sermon on the Mount: Love your enemies.

SPEAKER NOTES

Election season wk 1: Love your enemies

Scripture

From Matthew 5, the famous Sermon on the Mount, ::Jesus says…::

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?

Few points of interest here before I set some context:

• “You have heard it said… but I tell you…” is one of Jesus’ go-to teaching structures — which demonstrates something key about healthy religion: it is open to change, maturity, rethinking. Something we say often here at BLC is: Respecting a faith tradition is not leaving it untouched to harden and calcify; it is asking hard questions of it, trusting it to support new challenges for new times.
• The teaching itself is really the big thing here though: Love of enemy is sometimes suggested as the most distinct of all Jesus’ teachings — THE Jesus teaching. ::Scripture off::
• Finally, one last point of interest, which we’ll come back to before we’re done today: Implied in Jesus’ teaching is that expecting a reward or promise of some sort from our efforts to do this hard thing (loving enemies) is NOT a bad thing! We SHOULD look to some sort of consolation in this effort, it seems. What Jesus does seem to suggest we question is: what specific reward or promise are we putting our trust in to satisfy? If the effort is loving one’s enemy, the reward or promise is likely not going to be straightforward, because, as much as reconciliation stories are beautiful, that’s not often how enemy situations work. So a belief in the spiritual, in hope that is unseen, in a consolation or peace beyond human affirmation seems required.

Context

Did you know an election is approaching?!

I have three goals for our messages and services at BLC over the next month, given our context right now in an American city like Chicago:

• Practical Goal: for you to vote and encourage others to vote. (Not just for President! But in down ballot local elections, like did you know for the first time ever Chicago school board members will be elected this year instead of appointed?… every election people in our church share in our discord different helpful online walk-thrus of local ballots according to values we share, so you can get on our discord and watch there as we get closer to Election Day)
• Pastoral Goal: for you to experience comfort, sanity, hope, in the onslaught of information and ads and cultural warfare and, sadly once again this year, authoritarian ranting.
• Teaching Goal: for you to be able to articulate a mature vision of democracy that is explicitly Christian, because right now in America it can seem like the Christian vision of government is authoritarianism, and that (therefore) communities like ours should downplay the Christian stuff if we want to engage civically. Personally, I refuse to let authoritarianism set the public terms and talking points of Christianity, and I think you should too.

With those goals in mind: I have three election season nuggets for us today jumping off of Jesus’ “Love your enemy” teaching.

1) Democracy rocks!

::funny meme::

I’ve been on a personal journey in this. I’m a classic product of 1990s and early 2000s era politics — the paparazzi-izing of everything, including politics — Bill Clinton’s infidelities, George W. Bush’s half-truths — politics felt like this far away world that supposedly affected mine but seemed more like a reality tv show than anything else. (Little did I know we hadn’t even gotten to the worst of the Reality tv show.)

But, anyway, my general feeling was indifference. Democracy was background noise. I voted, but I never felt like I had a personal stake in democracy — like it was mine.

Maybe it’s because it feels so threatened by authoritarianism now, maybe it’s just me getting older and wiser, but that’s what’s grown in me since — a personal stake.

Y’all, democracy rocks. Granted, we kind of suck at parts of it right now, and we just can’t seem to full-throatedly admit that our first version of it in America was built on racism…

BUT, where we are now, historically speaking, we’ve got a pretty amazing thing here. You know what’s good for humanity: discourse instead of violence, a peaceful transfer of power instead of “might makes right”. ::meme off::

This long historical perspective is what makes me say democracy rocks. I’ve shared before: ::long perspective:: is often hard to see in our era of social media where we have an unfathomably wide perspective on all that is happening right now. Nothing that happens this week and this year will escape our notice but that can mean there is little space reserved for that long historical view of what’s happened before this week and this year and how that compares to right now.

So, to take that long view, I’m very compelled by the argument that some historians today are developing that Jesus’ “love your enemies” teaching is the most important ancient seed that eventually grows into Modern Democracy (like, what is “the peaceful transfer of power” if it’s not “love your enemy”?).

This historical suggestion is distinct from the traditional White Western Civilization story that valorizes Greek city states and the Roman Republic as history’s most important early experimentations with democracy. I could not agree more that it is Jesus not Greeks and Romans that we have more to thank for Democracy! The ethnic minority Jesus who taught love of enemies and was killed by state law enforcement but in so doing kicked off a movement that would change the world is SO MUCH MORE a foreshadower of the democratic values we take as a given in the Modern Era today than the violent, dominance-obsessed, Imperially-minded Greco-Roman cultures. ::long perspective off::

So, from a long perspective, democracy rocks. Vote and tell your friends and family to vote! (If you need help registering, you can let me know in private, and we'll point you to where you can!)

2) Integrity tests > Purity tests

• Life in a democracy is political.
• There are times in life when we will need to ask others where they stand on a pressing matter, or what choices they will or would make in a situation.
  • And, especially if there are power imbalances, knowing where another stands can be a significant matter of safety or well-being
  • Maybe "enemy" feels like an uncomfortable word for you to use, maybe ”opponent” feels better, but at any rate, politics I think demand we return to Jesus’ “love your enemies” teaching
• When these times come, employ integrity tests, not purity tests ::integrity>purity::
  • Purity tests squeeze things into a simplification, and then ask a yes or no question
    • You either affirm this statement with me, no ifs, ands, or buts, or you’re not on my team. Do you affirm it? Yes or no?
  • Integrity tests honor complexity, and then ask an open ended question
    • This matter is really important to me because of x, y, and z, so I take this specific stand; I wonder what you would do if you were in my shoes?
• Sometimes the results of an integrity test (how someone responds to you) will yield that there is no integrity. And we must be clear about this.
  • As I shared at the start of this past summer, in the case of our present day Christian authoritarianism, hitched to the wagon of Donald Trump, I have had to say to people: “I see no family resemblance” between that and my Christianity.
  • So integrity tests don’t sacrifice conviction or clarity, which is part of the fear that leads people to resort to purity tests.
  • Integrity tests do yield the needed results to discern where there is or isn’t good faith effort, what are safe enough or not safe enough spaces.
  • BUT you will have gotten those results maintaining your own integrity, loving your enemy, rather than resorting to black-and-white, either-or thinking.
  • AND, in some cases, you will have been protected from drawing boundary lines in the name of purity that you regret later.
  • In these situations, you will discover that someone actually has a great deal of rigor to their positions, and shares many of your own deeply-held convictions, which you never would have discovered employing a purity test, because semantics or cultural baggage or a lack of nuance would have gotten in the way.
• Integrity tests are courageous because they are harder than purity tests.
  • They require loving one’s enemy AND standing for one’s own convictions at the same time.
• Rarely can integrity tests be employed in the digital world. They usually mean interaction in real life.
  • That tracks, right? As Dr. Brené Brown says: it is hard to hate up close. ::integrity>purity off::
• So rather than
  • You either affirm this statement with me, no ifs, ands, or buts, or you’re not on my team. Do you affirm it? Yes or no?
• I encourage
  • This matter is really important to me because of x, y, and z, so I take this specific stand; I wonder what you would do if you were in my shoes?

3) Regard people in terms of what they suffer

Sometimes you will operate with all the integrity in the world. But other’s don’t. What then? Is there a point at which Jesus’ wisdom to love our enemies falls on its face? It’s a fair question.

One of the greatest modern reflections on this question was done during WWII by the young German resistance theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He engaged Jesus’ “love your enemies” teaching from the most striking of circumstances imaginable: a Nazi prison camp, where he would eventually be killed for opposing the Nazis. This is from one of his ::letters and papers:: from prison:

The danger of allowing ourselves to be driven to contempt for humanity is very real. We know very well that we have no right to let this happen and that it would lead us into the most unfruitful relation to human beings. The following thoughts may protect us against this temptation: through contempt for humanity we fall victim precisely to our opponents’ chief errors. Whoever despises another human being will never be able to make anything of him. Nothing of what we despise in another is itself foreign to us. How often do we expect more of the other than what we ourselves are willing to accomplish. Why is it that we have hitherto thought with so little sobriety about the temptability and frailty of human beings? We must learn to regard human beings less in terms of what they do and neglect to do and more in terms of what they suffer. The only fruitful relation to human beings – particularly to the weak among them – is love, that is, the will to enter into and to keep community with them. God did not hold human beings in contempt but became human for their sake.

• I’m struck by the power of someone persisting in the commitment to love one’s enemy in the context of the greatest scope of suffering in modern history. The Holocaust and the dropping of the atomic bombs are in a terrifying class apart from anything we know today in terms of number of deaths. And from that harrowing context is where these words were written. So they demand attention. ::quote off::
• This was not simple for Bonhoeffer. If you know more of his story, he became involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, and the personal writings toward the end of his life do not hide the fact that he wrestled with how to square that choice, to conspire to kill someone, with what he writes here about refusing to hold humanity in contempt.
• It is complicated, and that’s what makes it human.
• Bonhoeffer offers such lessons for us today, as we struggle today to try to live out values of love and, like God, not hold humanity in contempt.
• Does being victimized make contempt okay? Does it make retaliation okay? No matter the untruths or violence the victim resorts to? Do the ends justify the means?
• There may not be any more important ethical line of questioning, domestically or globally, for our time than:
  • How do we break cycles of revenge, so todays victims don’t become tomorrow’s perpetrators?
  • How do we regard people in terms of what they’ve suffered rather than what they’ve done or neglected to do?
  • How do we love our enemies?
• When you encounter another’s egregious act or egregious neglect, can you, rather than hold them in contempt, ask:
  • What must have happened to them?
  • What must they have suffered?
  • NOT to let them off the hook, but to love them as you try to hold them accountable.
• No one sets out to be cruel. Hurt people hurt people.
• This approach will not fix all relational strains, it gets more complicated when we talk about groups and not just individuals, and the practicality of it will be different for a straight white male like me than for someone with a different social location,
• BUT regarding people in terms of what they’ve suffered is a starting point to living out Jesus’ call.
• And to me, it is a beautiful way to live, for all its risks.

Some real talk to close

• Now I want to close with some real talk to clarify what I am saying, and what I am not saying — in specific about partisanship: the progressive - conservative divide in America.
• Demographic data shows that America is becoming increasingly sorted by political leaning. Progressive-leaning people move to places that are already progressive leaning, and Conservative-leaning people move to places that are already conservative-leaning.
• And that means the idealistic picture of our country with democrats and republicans holding hands is getting more and more challenged
• Because I’m a pastor in church leader conversations, one scripture I often hear evoked to talk about the mission of churches in partisan America is in Galatians in the Bible: in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free… and then we imply neither democrat nor republican.
• Have you heard that passage evoked that way before?
• There’s that longing for the idealistic picture of America - democrats and republicans holding hands
• Early on as a minister I was really drawn to this picture too. Yes, I thought, that’s a mission statement for churches.
• BUT since 2016, gradually what has formed in me is a more nuanced mission statement.
  • Obviously Trump was elected
  • But also, it got more personal for me — in 2016, there was a person in our community who, after repeated patient intervention from our pastoral staff, refused to respect the views of those in our community more progressive than him, and even then when to the point of trolling my family in our church’s online spaces.
  • It’s the only time we’ve ever had to tell someone: you cannot participate in our community anymore if you can’t play nice with others.
• Maybe that’s left me burned, or maybe it’s left me wise. I’m not sure, but my wondering is:
• What if we just can’t get to R’s and D’s holding hands right now, meaning in our generation? Like it’s just not possible in this current moment?
• What if maybe our children MIGHT get there (I’m not saying it’s a bad vision!), but we, this generation, just can’t get there?
• What if we have to be humble about our sins that have put us here?
  • For sure the authoritarian leanings and the refusal to play nice and the trolling of the Religious Right, which I experienced.
  • I think it is fair and important to say clearly the Right is more responsible for where we are right now,
  • BUT we can say that AND acknowledge the Left has contributed too with our purity tests.
• So what if we have to be humble about our last few generations’ sins that have put us here?
• There is no magical, immediate healing for this societal sickness. It’s going to take a treatment plan, over time.
• BUT, what if that makes what God is calling us to do IN SEQUENCE, RIGHT NOW, BEFORE the next generation comes of age ALL THE MORE CLEAR?
• If that’s what we want for our children and nieces and nephews, where do we start?
• I wonder if the first sequence of the treatment plan (for our time) is, that while we’re stuck in our partisan corners, we must teach our own to love our enemies.
• Then, down the road, formed for many years by such a commitment, perhaps our kids can see D’s and R’s holding hands, and have a better-functioning democracy.
• As a result of my shift in thinking about this since 2016, we’ve become more comfortable explicitly communicating that we are a church for those who feel more comfortable in progressive settings, and accepting the reality of the demographic sorting of America along partisan lines. We can’t fight that.
• We are not pretending that conservatives will feel as comfortable here as progressives will.
• BUT that is NOT so we can “preach to the progressive choir” and pat ourselves on the back for how friggin awesome we are, and how rotten “those people” are.
• It is, in my view, because such a time as this calls for us to teach our own to live out Jesus’ words: “You have heard it said love your progressive neighbor, and hate your conservative enemy. But I tell you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you."
• I’m not going to lie to you: doing that AND standing up to the injustice that conservatives of bad faith in power perpetrate and swindle many to get behind — walking that line is not going to get you many wins of human affirmation on social media. It’s too nuanced. It’s too unfriendly to algorithms, because it’s so human.
• But maybe there really is that unseen reward and promise that Jesus implies in his teaching. Maybe there is a peace beyond human affirmation that can satisfy me and you deeply — a feeling of connection with God and God’s purpose — that, for the next generation, can flower into something a bit more like Paul’s vision where “there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free”… democrat nor republican.
• But for this generation starts with teaching our own to love our enemies.
• So let’s commit to our part in the sequence.

Guided Prayer

One of the ways I have felt that deep, satisfying connection with God is by practicing Lovingkindness meditation, a prayer we often guide people through here. I can often feel my heart soften when I do this.

Join me…