From Pastor Eric’s Study - October 2024
There is such a tornado of emotions and rhetoric swirling around these days, it’s exhausting. As a pastor in the midst of a contentious election season it is always challenging to hear the call to speak truth to power and to recognize that scripture, for all of its outspoken words about politics, has a very particular response to things political. Ultimately, the message is that our faith doesn’t call us to align with any particular politic but rather to live in alignment with a renewed relationship with God. It is a narrative that is in direct conflict often enough with the politics of any age, and yet the intent is not to preach politics but to preach the call of God's love into an ever deeper and more challenging relationship with ourselves, our world, and our faith. An article that I was reading recently, “The Politics of God” by Dan Clendenin, lifted up that challenge as he recalled: “Mary’s birth announcement includes an ominous prophecy directed at the political powers: “He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble” (Luke 1:52). It’s no wonder that governments have banned Mary’s Magnificat as politically subversive – in India in 1805 by the British rulers, in the mid-1970’s in Argentina after the “Mothers of the Disappeared” put the poem on posters in their non-violent marches against the ruling government…”
Clendenin does an eye-opening job of continuing this challenge of understanding that God calls us to different way of being, a different “kingdom” with which to align ourselves. That’s hard for us to imagine in our binary culture, and it is at the foundation of our faith. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not! That’s the simplest summary. If God is in charge, then all politics are radically relativized with visions like Micah 6:8 where we are to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our Lord. Or Isaiah 58 that proclaims: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.
Remembering that call to be citizens of God's kingdom, to be bearers of God's light, can be a real challenge in a season of division and heightened political rhetoric.
In the midst of this cultural-political tornado, I have been grateful to be journeying with another charming and familiar story: The Wizard of Oz. I’m grateful to be rehearsing with our community theater group, as well as church members Becky Manthei, Mia Dornacker, and Sherry McElhatton (typecast as the Glinda the good witch). That story of Dorothy getting clobbered in the midst of the whirlwind is an apt metaphor for lots of moments in life. To watch the fanciful journey of Dorothy navigating good and evil, friendship, and trusting in what is at the core of our beings, is a powerfully rewarding story. Oh, the munchkins are adorable in their energetic dancing, and the Winkies are woefully sad and ridiculous as those who were once “human just like us” until the evil of the wicked witch transformed them into a caricature of their former selves. It is a powerful metaphor for our times, and for our journeys of faith. Each time I watch Dorothy click her heels and remember what home is, I am reminded of how our story of faith keeps encouraging in every way imaginable that we do the same.
I am not expecting the whirlwind of our times to die down anytime soon. But I am praying fervently that we can click our heels three times and keep remembering that there is no place like our home with God's grace and truth and story of a radically different way of living in our world.
There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home in God's love,