Friday, November 4, 2022
Memorial of Saint Charles Borromeo, Bishop
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Election time
Many conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction and their God is their stomach.
My friend the politician thinks about next Tuesday more than he should. Signs up all over town encourage us to vote for him. He will be putting up signs till Tuesday, and then taking them down on Wednesday. He knows he’s caught by the election like a fish in a net, spending his time on little else.
Not that there’s anything exactly wrong with that. He believes he is the best candidate, and he wants to be a help rather than hindrance to the people in his section of the state, of the nation, of the continent, of the hemisphere, of the earth, of the solar system, of the universe … of God’s Hand.
Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
My friend the pastor and chaplain speaks of politics from a politely skeptical distance, sp3aking out of a libertarian point of view rather than liberal or conservative, democrat or republican. He has registered, and he will vote, and he voices his opinions. He is even on his local school board. But … his citizenship seems to mostly be in heaven.
Can I have both? Have my cake and eat it too? Can I await the glory of the future and work hard to improve the present? The Kingdom of God is “already, now and not yet,” says the Vineyard theology (following George Eldon Ladd). There is the beautiful doxology of the traditional Church: Glory be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.
The Lord Jesus Christ will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified Body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself.
Well, one thing is certain. The Democrats will not bring all things into subjection, nor will the Republicans. And anyway, subjection … to what? I think of the hundred year old aphorism, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Subjection, says Paul, to Christ.
What is the ethic of Jesus Christ? How would he vote? Luke 6 covers this ethic pretty well, I think. Lately it has been called the “preferential option for the poor”. Living it out at least requires that I vote with this ethic in mind.
So I have, and so I will this year too.
(Philippians 3, Psalm 122, 1 John 2, Luke 16)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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