Is There A Connection Between Who We Vote For And With Whom We Would Like To Spend Eternity?
Good Morning Friends,
Ever wonder what animal or President you are most like? God communicates with animals and Presidents more than you might think. How else could the animals have known to get on the Ark. How else could the union of the United States of American still be intact. Indeed, we can we can learn from both animals and Presidents. Presbyterian Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump have left an indelible impact on the way we are governed; nevertheless, I would like to focus on animals and Jesus the Good Shepherd taking us on a Lenten journey and address the overarching issue before us obliquely. Here the topic of animal instincts and self-evident God given rights to humans converge in the stories in the Bible about the naming of animals and the name of God. The naming of things and their relationship to us is part of our language and effort to gain control over that which we have little control. The beauty is that animals do exhibit human characteristics beyond elephants and donkeys. Sometimes they are wise, but sometimes their reasoning is, well, nonexistent. We might call one person a card shark, another a bulldog. In fact, a lot of animal names can be used as a verb. Think of a person who is catty or piggy. If I told you a person was a porcupine with their hair standing on end you would get the picture about who they were. A snail, turtle, monkey, owl, spider, tiger or vulture all can be used as verbs. Typically, it is natural for birds of a feather flock together but sometimes opposites attract, and diversity occurs around keystone species. But sometimes we need to be careful about congregating with the wrong crowds. The challenge here is to think outside the box and not always like an unreasoning animal. Maybe that is why we have the rise of the none…those who claim no political or religious affiliation. Maybe we like sheep have gone astray seeking a freedom away from the Good Shepherd. Mature thinking is needed to sort this out. Now maybe you remember that Adam named all the animals. There was a purpose to that naming that is about growing up. Names in the Bible are important but more interesting than most people give the good book credit. The issue is authority and control and responsibility. Not just over the animals but over our animalistic characteristics. Moses for example asked God’s name and the answer is instructive to our own becoming for we too are to be who we will be both individually and collectively. The tension here is palpable and now with the world facing a pandemic. It becomes even clearer that there is a relationship between religion and politics and psychology and who we call our Daddy, the one who named us. Now put on your thinking cap for a moment before you start to dream of counting sheep. There is a question here about freedom from things and a freedom to living a life that is productive and not destructive. So, who we decide to follow and the deep reasons we choose that person to follow makes a difference to how we barter our freedom. And that brings us to a question about the underlying reasons why we decide to do the things in society that we do.
So, Is There A Connection Between Who We Vote For And With Whom We Would Like To Spend Eternity?
Scripture: Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
Acts 11:1-18 (NRSV)
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”
John 10:11-18 (NRSV)
As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
2 Timothy 4:6-8 (NRSV)
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”
I Corinthians 2:9 (NRSV)
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:1 (NRSV)
The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.
Isaiah 1:3 (NRSV)
Message: Perhaps you have heard someone say that a group was or was not our kind of people. Psychologists describe this tribal behavior and make the connection with this mindset related to the people we hire, and that includes the people we vote into office, and some make the further connection to what kind of father we seek to please or shepherd we choose to follow. This kind of thinking and the verbiage that goes with it engenders both a comfortable exclusivity and strange sense of belonging and a bit of disgust all at the same time. Sheep stink! And of course, there are goats too. And for the chosen race, Israel, or those who mistakenly think they can be a substitute for them, who is in and who is out is important in this life, and perhaps a little more important in election years. Ask any immigrant. But more important than the political election is what is happening now to form the nature of our life in preparation for in the next. Friends, there is a sea change going on that makes me concerned and hopeful. We live in the freest of times and also the most dangerous of times where we risk being confined to our quarters on a cruise ship for two weeks. Here isolation takes on a whole new meaning related to our need to belong. Sure, I trust God, but I also trust, as history is my witness, that people can muck it up and our own minds can trick us into making decisions that are against our best ultimate interest. I think of the parade goers in 1918 Philadelphia who packed the streets and uniformly got what was called the Spanish Flu and 10% died. For our own safety we may need to develop a sense of belonging that stems from the inside not our outside environment. This may be our future. At least for a time. Hopefully our unproductive survival instincts will not kill us. Indeed, we have natural rights given by God. But the times they are a changing. Religion is no longer central to American politics and perhaps never really was, but it is of great importance and with morality I think is the reason we have had a sustained prosperity. Friends, religious and ethnic forces still exist and drives history at the psychological level, but I am concerned that a new passion and a new science of politics exists that modifies our behavior in ways we have yet to fully realize. Ambition must balance ambition. Discover the good motive of the Good Shepherd. Know who your daddy is. Know that nature is a guide to human behavior that need not be chaotic. Know that God created us and gave us the right to be free in the experience of it and that religion secures natural rights. But sometimes politics secures these too. State crafting and our souls crafting can be entangled in unproductive ways. Hopefully we will not fall prey to tyrannical shepherds who would rob us all of the dignity and the trouble of thinking.
And So, how much we can collectively change in a positive way I cannot say but nevertheless part of me realizes that eternity starts now with all its imperfection, crazy thinking and bias, but in the sweet by and by it may be jampacked with a diversity that challenges our current instincts. And yes, we may be surprised at who gets in and how they get in. There is strength in diversity and a tension. But what makes us great now in this environment is not the political power or wealth or even the number of churches. It is something much simpler. It is whether we can be in a love relationship with God and others. The inhabitants of Israel during Jesus’ day walking the earth had a similar problem identifying the means of salvation. They had the wrong idea. It was not so much about the place as the people and so they rejected Jesus for a false sense of power and control. Today’s message tackles this issue in a surprising way. We are invited to walk in the grace of God following the Good Shepherd. The beauty is that when Jesus leads all kinds of people, they all can be saved no matter where they live and what they eat, or to what tribe they belong. And so here change is evoked, and the disenfranchised empowered and other communities engaged so the great commission can be realized throughout the world. So, it is not surprising that the number one question on Google is, “What is love?” And it is a good question for in some ways we have ceased to seek in ourselves the supreme purpose in living and instead made ourselves into instruments serving the economic, religious and political machine we have built with our own hands. We are idolatrous and do not even know it. Even our attitude towards God is idolatrous until we realize that Jesus Christ is not a mere object of worship to follow but the Way, the Truth, and the Life that integrates into us His life. A free society is capable of destroying itself. Christ gives us freedom, but it is not so much a freedom from but a freedom to. That is what we learn in following the good Shepherd. Here we learn what is real with what is illusory, what is authentic with what is inauthentic. Here we face up to the reality of the unconscious methods we have used to defer pain and avoid fearful realities for another time. Here we face up to the reality that we slap labels on realities outside our control in order to reduce them to something intellectually manageable and to neatly categorize them rather than enter into them, to struggle with them. Friends, we even take trivial things and make them into things of supreme concern. We chase phantoms as a way of coping instead of engaging in the very battle ground for our life where our activities work together to heal us enough to enable us to love maturely. Here we discover that being in our doing helps us discover that the greatest hope actually comes from consummate love. Discover commitment, passion, intimacy in balance on the journey with the Good Shepherd.
Pray we get rid of our idolatry. Pray we realize that Christ came to earth as an example to teach us how to become. Pray we individually and collectively are freed from our animal way of thinking. Pray in the interim that we are not only smart sheep but also good sheep. Pray that we are ready when God puts opportunities before us. Pray that we live life beyond ourselves. Pray we lead as we dare to care for others not like ourselves. Pray that we have a heart for the lost. Pray that we discover we are ministering to the Way, the Truth and the Light of Life when we respond to those in need with the dignity, intimacy and knowledge. Pray that in our serving that we in a way suffer with Christ himself. Pray we walk in grace and live in the love of Shepherd so that others might follow as well. Pray we do something about the love we have received. Pray we love. Pray we have an identity that is not based on what we have that might be taken away and instead have an eternal identity in something that lasts. Pray we look together at a future where we are melting into one into another with Christ. Pray our identity is not so much caught up in what we have and can loose but in who we become in relationship with Christ. Pray we have a balance of commitment, passion and intimacy in Christ that helps us to make wise decisions. Pray our impulse is to be religious. Pray we have meaning, and interest combined with the pleasure of being creative in a way that honors God. Pray we endure.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 