A Christian in the Voting Booth, Part 1: Wesley and Voting

 

Service of Worship

October 11, 2020

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray:

God of all our days, of all our thoughts, of all our fears, of all our priorities: be with us. Made known to us in the person Jesus, walk beside us in this season. Put our hands and feet where you would put yours. Hear our prayers for help and guidance, and then put our prayers into action, for the sake of your Kingdom. Amen.

Philippians 4: 1-9

Closing Appeal for Steadfastness and Unity

1Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!

2I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. 3Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.

Final Exhortations

4Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

8Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Exodus 32: 1-14

The Golden Calf

32 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods^[a] who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

² Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” ³ So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods,^[b] Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

⁵ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” ⁶ So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

⁷ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. ⁸ They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’

⁹ “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. ¹⁰ Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”

¹¹ But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? ¹² Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. ¹³ Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” ¹⁴ Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

 

A Message

“A Christian in the Voting Booth, Part 1: Wesley and Voting”

I’m about to date myself and share a Millennial reference with you. It has to do with an alternative rock band called Everclear that was moderately popular when I was in high school. Just in time for the General Election of 2008, Everclear released a song titled “Jesus was a Democrat”. To be clear: I DO NOT expect you to agree or disagree with anything you’re about to read, but I invite you to just consider the thoughts expressed in these lyrics:

I think Jesus would have been a card carrying liberal

If he was a young man born in the USA

He would not be fiscally conservative

And he wouldn’t vote for John McCain

All those so called Christians that you see on TV

Maybe they scare Jesus like they scare me

Kick you…out of my Temple, too

Too many elephants in the room

A lot has changed in the 12 years since that song came out, but a lot has stayed exactly the same. No matter which party you might affiliate yourself with today (if any), many of us have, and will always have, a very strong desire to politicize Jesus. And even though we really know on a gut level that Jesus is too big to ever align himself with any one political party, still, we desperately search our scriptures and our lived experiences of his love for clues as to how he would vote in this upcoming election if he lived today. And we have very good, very human reasons for that. We want to know we’re not in this alone, stumbling in the dark toward a ballot box on November 3^rd. We need to believe that Jesus hasn’t left us to our own short sighted human vision, that he is here, walking beside us, guiding our feet, shining a light on where to go and how to act.

I may not be able to assuage every anxiety you may have in this season of your life, but I can tell you a few important things. We are not alone. Jesus has always been walking beside us. And even when we struggle to perceive his presence, we can fall back on the assurances of the Word.

This morning I’m sharing the wisdom found in 2 different Scripture passages. The first is from Paul’s letter to his church in Philippi. As with all of Paul’s congregations, we don’t know a ton about the church in Philippi, but we do know how much Paul loved his flock there, and how hard they struggled to live like Christ. Don’t we all. We hear about two women who haven’t been getting along, Euodia and Syntyche. What their beef was, we may never know. Maybe Euodia was a Republican and Syntyche was a Democrat. Either way, Paul asks his friends to help these two ladies find some common ground. In the words of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement: “Though we may not think alike, can we not love alike?” Paul tells his flock to act virtuously, and to worry about nothing and pray about everything.

As we barrel on closer and closer to this election, tempting though it always is, we need to fight hard not to see one another as the enemy. We need to cast our cares to Jesus, and allow him to help us make the most responsible choices.

That brings us to our second Scripture passage, this one from Exodus. We pick up right from where we left off last week; Moses is on Mount Sinai receiving the Law from YHWH, and the Hebrew people have been at the foot of the mountain without him for forty days and forty nights, which is what the Bible always says when what it means is “a really really long time”. Aaron is leading the Hebrews in his brother’s absence, and this will be the greatest test of his strength as a leader, and his own faith. Unfortunately he fails both tests. We haven’t known the Hebrews to be very patient people throughout this time in the wilderness, and now they are at the very end of what little patience they ever had. In their distress they revert back to something familiar and comfortable to them: polytheism. Idol worship. They tell Aaron to make them a new god to save them because surely Moses is never coming back. So Aaron, deciding he’d rather be popular than righteous, collects everyone’s jewelry and makes a little orange cow to sit on an altar and be the new bovinity divinity. On Mount Sinai, God panics, and wonders is the beloved people of the Holy are forever lost.

Every Presidential election, and perhaps this one more than any other, we fight the same temptations. We can’t quell our fears and anxieties, the world is burning around us, we get hypnotized by the campaign slogans and mudslinging, and we look to a candidate to be our savior. Don’t get me wrong, whomever we the people elect has a ton of responsibilities on their plate, and a great amount of far-reaching influence. But whoever that will be, they will never save us. Only one man saves us. Jesus. While this mortal coil may depend on the leadership of people, we depend, now and forever, on the heart of Christ. The only way forward is with him.

This election season is the most stressful one that I have ever lived through. So much hangs in the balance. A border wall is being constructed between us and Mexico. In a nearby ICE detention facility, women are undergoing hysterectomies without informed consent while their children dwell in cages. The President, his wife, and several people on his staff have all tested positive for COVID-19, and have been ordered to quarantine. Wildfires rage on in California, and COVID-19 rages on, now having taken more than 200,000 lives in the United States alone. There is a vacant seat on the Supreme Court following the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a decades-long champion for women’s rights. Two current, conservative Supreme Court justices now question the 2015 ruling that made marriage equality the law of the land in all 50 states. Our rights, our futures, our families, our homes, and our lives all hang in the balance.

On October 6, 1774, Wesley wrote in his journal about a group of similarly stressed people whom he counseled right before an election. He wrote:

I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them:

1.     To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy

2.     To speak no evil of the person they voted against

3.     To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side

It’s amazing that these words were written so long ago, when they feel so very relevant today. Please vote. Vote like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness depends on it. But then know that no matter what happens we will be one country, one people, one Church, with one Savior, Jesus. And he will lead us toward true righteousness, and toward the Kingdom of God.

May it be so.

Amen.

And now I invite you to receive the benediction:

Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard our going out and coming in, from this time on and forever more. And as all God’s people we say together: Amen.