How Would Jesus Vote?

Amos 7:10-17; Matthew 22:15-22

June 5, 2016 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I have to tell you that I have approached this sermon today with some fear and trepidation, and also some genuine excitement! I’m very aware that common wisdom says you’re not supposed to discuss two things in polite conversations, religion and politics, and yet that’s exactly what I want to focus on this morning. “Politics” is a Greek compound word from “poly” meaning “many” and “tics” referring to a blood-sucking parasite. (Or maybe not!) But politics and religion—topics you’re not supposed to talk about in your first ten years of a new appointment, and yet here I am, almost one year in, asking this morning’s question, “How would Jesus vote?” We’re at a point where both of the major political parties seem to have their candidates nailed down, the conventions are on the horizon, and the real battle is just beginning. It’s an important question to ask, and an important topic for us to think about as followers of Jesus.

Let me say this up front, though: if you came this morning expecting me to try to tell you how you should vote or how you should think politically, you’re in the wrong place. I’ve never been the kind of pastor who preaches a whole lot about politics, and I certainly am not one who is going to tell you how to vote or what party to belong to. When I was at Asbury, I was working at the seminary post office on one election day, and I remember a conversation I had with someone who came to the window. I asked if they had voted yet, and they said, “Well, don’t you want to know who I’m voting for before you ask me that?” And after a moment of thought, I said, “No, not really. I just want to know that you take your responsibility seriously.” Despite the fact that I have deep political convictions, it’s not my job to tell you who to vote for. Now, I do believe it’s our civic responsibility to exercise our freedom through voting, whether that’s in a local election or in a national election, such as we have this year. But my primary goal (this morning and always) is to help us all think theologically about politics and the upcoming election.

Perhaps we’ve never needed to do that more than we need to today. I don’t know that any of us remember a time when we’ve been more divided as a nation than we are today. Right and left, liberal and conservative, Christian and non-Christian, Republican and Democrat…and so on. We are living in a world of hyper-partisanship, where loyalty to our own particular party or ideology has become the absolute most important thing. Just a couple of years ago, the Pew Research Forum found that 43% of Republicans viewed Democrats “very unfavorably,” while 38% of Democrats viewed Republicans “very unfavorably.” Many folks in that survey expressed a belief that the other party (whichever one they didn’t belong to) is an actual threat to the future of America. Beyond that, another research report found that more people are worried today that their children will marry someone from the opposite political party than they are about their children marrying someone from a different religion! That’s hyper-partisanship at its most extreme, and yet that’s where we are as a nation today. We’re divided and unwilling to reach across the aisle.

Hyper-partisanship makes it difficult for us to even talk about political issues, largely because we’ve become so convinced we are right, we don’t even listen to the other person. We’re formulating our response before the other person is even done speaking. Some folks have given up on the party system altogether; those who register as “independent” is at an all-time high (43% of the population), which is part of the reason this presidential election has been so strange. At least in part, that’s a reaction to the anger and distrust people (especially younger people) see between the two major parties. Add that to the online—let’s call them “opportunities”—we have for political debate, and we find the depth of our thinking about politics reduced to 30-second sound bites and 140 characters. It’s become all about emotion. Opposing views are labeled “hate speech” and there is, perhaps, no faster way to shut down a real conversation than to use that terminology. You’re a hater, you’re a bigot, you’re whatever-phobic. We’ve forgotten the words of Abraham Lincoln, who reminded us in the years leading up to the Civil War that a house divided against itself cannot stand. The most serious threat to the future of our nation is not the other political party; it’s coming to a place where we can’t talk together or work together to find solutions for the common good.

So, this morning, I want to help us begin to think theologically about politics and to ask questions about the way we normally go about making those decisions. In light of all we just studied in the Gospel of Matthew about who we are in Jesus, and in a year where the presidential election fever is at its most intense, and in a time when the election cycle seems to have gone on forever, there are important questions we need to be asking. Do we participate in the political process blindly? Do we give thought to how our faith impacts our politics? And underlying those questions is this one: to whom or to where is our first allegiance given?

The Old Testament preacher Amos was struggling with issues of allegiance. In Amos’ time, Israel was two separate nations. They had divided politically in two: a northern kingdom, named Israel and centered in Samaria, and a southern kingdom, called Judah and centered in Jerusalem. Amos was from a little town just south of Jerusalem, but God called him to speak a message to the north (Archaeological Study Bible, pg. 1444). So when he went there, he was already an outsider, and you know how much most folks like outsiders, especially when they arrive and begin predicting destruction and exile. Not popular topics! In the passage we read this morning, Amos is apparently preaching at the “temple” in Bethel. This was not the real Temple; that was in Jerusalem. This was one of the “alternative worship centers” that the northern kingdom had set up (Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, pg. 773); the other was at Dan (where this picture was taken). You see, they didn’t want people going south for the worship festivals, because if the people went south, they would spend their money in the south, right? It’s all about the economics! So Bethel was one of two sanctuaries established by the king, by the government, not by God. In the eyes of most of the prophets, it was a false place of worship. But because it was a state-sponsored place of worship, the priests who worked there were reluctant to speak out against the king or the kingdom. Do you begin to see issues of allegiance here?

Amaziah was, apparently, the high priest at Bethel, not because he was a member of the priestly tribe but because he had been appointed by the king (Smith, NIV Application Commentary: Hosea/Amos/Micah, pg. 369). His job was twofold. He supervised what happened at Bethel, and he protected the sanctuary from false preachers, people who might interfere with its state-sponsored religious activities. So Amos comes along—Amos who is not paid by the king, Amos who is not a hired prophet, Amos who is free to say whatever he wants—and he preaches a sermon like this: “Jeroboam [the king] will die by the sword, and Israel will surely go into exile, away from their native land” (7:11). At least that’s the way Amaziah reports it to the king. Amos’ actual sermon is found in verse 9: “The high places of Isaac will be destroyed and the sanctuaries of Israel will be ruined; with my sword I will rise against the house of Jeroboam” (7:9). Suddenly Amos is public enemy number one, and he is banned from preaching at Bethel. “This is the king’s sanctuary,” Amaziah tells him, “and the temple of the kingdom” (7:13). The king’s sanctuary. The temple of the kingdom. What’s missing here? What does Amaziah not mention? Keep that thought for a moment, because we’ll come back to it.

A few centuries later, a Jewish rabbi (whom some thought of as a prophet), in what turns out to be the last week of his life, finds himself surrounded by religious leaders who are trying to pull him into a political debate. The Pharisees, one of the Jewish religious groups or political parties, come to Jesus in Jerusalem and they ask, “Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?” (22:17). As you might guess, taxes have always been a hot topic, but it was different then than it is now. Tom Wright describes the first century situation: “Imagine how you’d like it if you woke up one morning and discovered that people from the other end of the world had marched into your country and demanded that you pay them tax as the reward for having your land stolen!” (Matthew for Everyone, Part Two, pg. 86). The Roman taxes made everyone upset, even more than ours do today. On top of that, Jews weren’t supposed to use coins that had faces on them (graven images, they called them), and Roman coinage (which they were forced to use in daily affairs) had Caesar’s face stamped on it, along with these words: “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, high priest” (Carson, “Matthew,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 459). The very coins they were expected to use to pay a tax they hated were blasphemous. So Jesus is asked, “Should we do it or not?” Should we participate with the government or not?

A few years before, one of the most famous Judean revolutionaries had led the people in a revolt against Rome, part of which was about not paying the taxes. In response, the Romans had come down hard. They crucified the revolutionaries and left them all over the countryside, dead and dying. The message was clear: taxes were not an option. Jesus probably saw some of those crucifixions when he was a boy. So, you see, the Pharisees are asking a dangerous question. The last “prophet” who refused to pay the tax ended up on a cross (Wright 86-87). And I love what Jesus does. He asks them for a coin, which they give him—which means of course that they are carrying around the very coinage they say they despise! They’re already participating with the government. And if that isn’t enough, Jesus drives his point home when he gives his answer: “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (22:21).

We usually interpret that as Jesus blessing the paying of taxes, or, more broadly, his blessing of the political process. But what does he actually say? He’s not giving a blanket blessing on civil authority for all time, as if whatever the government does, we should go along with. Rather, Jesus is reminding the Pharisees that there are levels of allegiance. We owe only a certain allegiance to Caesar: the coins that are already his, for instance. But we owe a greater allegiance to God. The Pharisees were guilty of the same omission Amaziah was. The Pharisees were so busy fighting over whether or not to pay taxes, that they forgot the bigger question: have you given to God what belongs to God? Have we given to God our primary allegiance? That’s what’s missing in Amaziah’s conversation with Amos. He talks about the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom. But shouldn’t the sanctuary be about God? Shouldn’t it be about God’s kingdom? Caesar created the coins, so give him the coins. God created our very life, so we give back to God what already belongs to him. Our primary allegiance goes to God, the creator of the universe, the ruler over all rulers. And when we have that straight, then everything else begins to take its proper place in our lives.

The message Amos preached points to the message Jesus would live out: that our ultimate allegiance is not to a particular political party, not to a particular ruler, not to any government or platform of this world. Our ultimate allegiance is to God and God’s kingdom. In our sharply divided political world, in our world that calls us to pick a side, we need to hear that once again. Liberal and conservative, red states and blue states, Democrat and Republican—we far too often define ourselves by our labels. In the last thirty-five years or so, Christians have found their political voice, which is a good thing. We should be engaging our culture and not standing on the sidelines. We should be speaking a winsome word into our broken world, seeking to bring light into the darkness, and engaging the world in issues that matter. The negative side effect of this engagement, though, has been Christians lining up with one particular party or the other and claiming (loudly) that God is on their side. But Jesus is not a Democrat or a Republican. Jesus calls us, instead, to swear our allegiance to a higher kingdom. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but, more importantly, give to God what is God’s. And it all belongs to God.

You see, no political party in our day is perfect. No party has a platform or an agenda that completely aligns with God’s kingdom. As Christians, we are interested in truth, not in agendas, and so, as a church, we seek to remain fiercely nonpartisan, which leaves us free to ask the tough questions: what does God want in this situation? If our ultimate allegiance is to God, then no political party and no political candidate is above being measured by God’s standards. Abraham Lincoln again speaks to our situation. He said our task is not to use religion or the name of God to claim God’s blessing on our national policies or practices. We’re not able to claim without doubt that God is on either side. Rather, Lincoln said, “We should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God’s side” (Wallis, God’s Politics, pg. xvi).

So when someone asks us where we stand politically, maybe our answer should be, “What’s the issue?” Because there are elements of truth and falsehood in each of our political parties. And if we find truth, it’s God’s truth, no matter what political party is advocating it. John Wesley taught that whenever we face a decision or a choice or an issue, there are four resources we should turn to in order to help us. First and foremost is Scripture. What does the Bible say? If we believe God is revealed in the pages of this book, then our first response should be to find out what God says. But to know what God says, we have to be immersing ourselves in the Scriptures. It’s not enough to rely on what preachers and teachers and authors and radio and TV personalities say the Bible says. It’s irresponsible faith if we rely solely on the interpretations of others rather than our own reading of the Scriptures. One of the gifts of the Reformation was the returning of the Scriptures to the people, and we’ve taken that gift for granted. The second resource we have is the tradition of the church. We did not invent Christianity. There are 2,000 years of history we have to draw from. Not all of it is good. The church has made mistakes. But we still can learn from the tradition, from those who have come before us. They continue to speak to us through their sermons and writings and prayers. The third resource is our reason. We don’t check our brains at the door of the church. We think things through, reflecting on our reading of Scripture and our understanding of our tradition. We recognize that there are some issues today that Scripture or tradition don’t talk about—the internet and social media simply wasn’t an issue for the Biblical writers or for John Wesley, for instance. So we think it through and seek to come to a conclusion that is consistent with Scripture and tradition, using our reason. And the fourth resource is our experience. But notice it is last, because our experience can lie to us. Our experience can be very “me-centered.” It needs to be tempered by the other resources. Scripture, tradition, reason and experience—those four things can help us as we seek to live in and work through various political issues, as we consider whom to vote for this fall, as we seek to pursue truth in light of our ultimate allegiance to God. We should vote. We should participate politically. But political allegiance must not outweigh our primary allegiance to the maker of all things. Amos taught that; Jesus lived that out.

Politics and political scheming were at the heart of that last week of Jesus’ life, which you’ve been reading if you were following our final part of the Matthew reading plan this week. Jesus, of course, had these disciples, a bunch of men who had a wide range of political and religious views. Many of them were from Galilee, so they were poor, oppressed, ignored and neglected by Rome. They were thought of as nobodies, peasants, country bumpkins. Judas, however, was not from Galilee. He was from Kerioth, which some think was in Moab, a country that used to be Israel’s enemy (Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, pg. 406). At least one of the disciples was a zealot, part of the political party that favored violent revolution against Rome. Many of them were probably more inclined to favor the Pharisees, because it was the Pharisees who taught in their synagogues.

And then came the last week, when those same disciples were fighting with each other about who was the greatest, maybe even about whose political views were right, and the powers that be were gathering so as to prosecute Jesus as a political enemy. “If you let this man go,” the religious leaders told Pilate, the Roman governor, “you are no friend of Caesar’s” (John 19:12). They would accuse Jesus of being a king in order to get Rome to crucify him. All of that was building during that last week, and so on the last night Jesus spent with those disciples, Jesus did something radical. He turned the political world on its ear and showed that real power is found in allegiance to God’s kingdom. Jesus did all this by getting up from the table and washing their feet (John 13:1-11). He showed them that their life was to be about servanthood, not about worldly greatness or political power. Around that table, Jesus brought together disparate groups, unlikely allies. Maybe that could even happen again today. Is it possible that the church can be instrumental in bringing people together, in reaching across the proverbial aisle to find common ground, seeking to work on what we can agree upon? Is it possible that the church could be an agent of healing in our politically divided world? Maybe the important question isn’t so much, “How would Jesus vote?” as it is, “How will Christ’s church lead in this broken world?” Let’s pray.