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It’s Stardate Monday, 11/4/24, at 2:21pm.  The afternoon before our next Presidential election.  

As I’m preparing a couple of remarks for our “nonpartisan prayer meeting for election anxiety”––who says I don’t do catchy titles?––I figured I’d jot down into blog form what I’ll be speaking about tonight just for a minute before we pray.  I’ll trust that as this post goes live shortly after the election, what I’ve written here will still be relevant.  See you on the other side!

Why is Liberti Collingswood sponsoring an explicitly nonpartisan prayer meeting, you might ask?  Well, it doesn’t mean that I expect everyone in the chapel at Holy Trinity tonight will themselves be nonpartisan.  To the contrary, we’ll have a room full of partisans (of various political stripes) gathering for a nevertheless nonsectarian prayer meeting because I believe it’s appropriate for churches to do so.

I’m quite aware that such a perspective runs the risk of “both sides-ism,” but that’s not what I’m intending: at Liberti Collingswood, we speak periodically about how Jesus calls us to a third way walk and worldview, a comportment that’s beholden neither to the secular right nor secular left.  This isn’t mandate that Christians must only and always be political centrists, and ditto that being a Christian compels us merely to settle for a lowest common denominator middle position that practically speaking fails to take appropriate stands if and when appropriate.  

On the other hand, a third way walk and worldview recognizes that although following Jesus will sometimes pull us to one side of the political aisle or the other according to both biblical convictions and individual consciences, at a larger level, holding to a biblical world and life view is always a whole thing unto itself.  We’re not just grabbing items in the political cafeteria line without caring whether we’re assembling a coherent meal.

This type of thinking, I believe, is deeply biblical.  This evening at our prayer meeting, I’ll remark for a couple of minutes upon Paul’s letter to the Philippian church, 3:20-21:

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

These verses might sound innocuous enough on the surface, but commentators will notice a concentration of politically charged words within this brief passage.  When Paul reminds the church that they are “citizens of heaven,” he’s using the standard Greek word for citizenship there.  The town of Philippi itself was a place where residents typically held citizenship in the Roman Empire and were quite proud of it, but here’s Paul butting in and claiming in essence, “You might take pride in the fact that you’re citizens of Rome, but that’s not your primary citizenship.  Your true political allegiance isn’t to Rome but to heaven!”  Paul is relativizing his hearers’ relationship to their state, and to underscore the point, he’s employing appellations for Jesus that were commonly ascribed to the Emperor–– “Lord” and “Savior.”  Christians, Paul intimates, your Lord and Savior isn’t Caesar; it’s Jesus!

The implications of Paul’s teaching here are vast, but I’ll only note here that the fact that Christians are citizens of heaven first and of the United States (or wherever else) second entails two things at once, both related to freedom.  (“Liberti” is Latin for free people, didn’t ya know?)  For starters, our loyalty to Jesus keeps us from becoming triumphalistic when our political candidate of choice wins and also from being torn apart when our candidate loses.  

As this framework applies to November of 2024, it feels undeniable that the stakes of this election are higher than usual, which of course means that we carry strong fears, anxieties, and desired outcomes into the voting booth.  I’m the same way,  but my keeping in mind and heart that the only true Lord is Jesus provides a needed backstop against my completely freaking out if, in my opinion, the wrong person becomes President.

Concurrently with freedom from fatalism, my Christian faith likewise gives me freedom to roll up my sleeves and engage in the political process with vigor and hope.  Because Jesus is Lord, and a new and whole heavens and earth are eventually coming!  I imagine that no matter what happens on election day, there will be much work to do afterwards.  It’s work that Jesus gives us hope to embrace.

Last thing.  I’ll also highlight this evening that especially for churches like ours where people in our congregation possess pretty wildly divergent political views, right now is a perfect invitation to practice unity in the bonds of Christ.  As Jesus is Lord, we’re united together not because of our political preferences but rather because of him.  

And think of it this way.  If we were a church that were more politically homogeneous, unity in the bonds of Christ would be something that functionally wouldn’t carry much weight or do much work for us.  And that would be a shame!

As it happens, tomorrow (and most probably, the subsequent weeks and months) will give us abundant opportunity to lean into and upon the Jesus that unites us while at the same time we experience the discomfort and dissonance of calling “brother” or “sister” someone with whom we’d disagree vehemently.  Friends, when this happens, you can say and pray something like this, “I’m really upset that these folks believe what are in my view such wrong, toxic, and harmful things about our country.  Jesus, if you don’t give me grace to extend forbearance, forgiveness, and love to these people, I’ll tend to consider them my enemies and will want to either fight or flee from them.  I need you, Jesus, to unify me with these brothers and sisters.”

As we recite every Sunday morning at Liberti Collingswood, may the Lord be with us in the weeks to come.  And we with him.

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