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Navigating American Politics at Church: Doing Things Out of Compassion

Navigating American Politics at Church: Doing Things Out of Compassion

Last updated on: February 1, 2017 at 1:40 pm by Tom Truby

Navigating American Politics at Church: Doing Things Out of Compassion 2017-02-01T13:40:32-05:00 Tom Truby

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Pastors have a frequent question when they begin to discover mimetic theory. “That’s great. But how does it preach?”

Reverend Tom Truby shows that mimetic theory is a powerful tool that enables pastors to preach the Gospel in a way that is meaningful and refreshing to the modern world. Each Wednesday, Teaching Nonviolent Atonement will highlight his sermons as an example of preaching the Gospel through mimetic theory.

In this sermon, Tom shares an email exchange with a member of his congregation. Tom and the church member model how to have strong convictions, while staying in relationship with one another. During these highly polarizing times, can we make room for one another in the Body of Christ? This exchange offers hope for the days ahead.

Year A, 4th Sunday after Epiphany
January 29th, 2017
By Thomas L. Truby

Doing Things Out of Compassion

On Sunday, Sam Robertson, a man primarily of Sioux heritage gave the sermon at our church. He is a member of my wife’s Episcopal Church in Portland and has become quite proficient at teaching racism. In my view, he presented a very balanced, low key and respectful description of white privilege and how the majority culture is blind to it. I was quite moved particularly as I knew the farm my family has farmed in Nebraska for over one hundred years was once land that his ancestors hunted buffalo on and considered their own.

Our church located south of Oregon City in the hills of the Cascade Range is politically quite diverse. I can’t indulge in liberal theology that attacks the right and condones the left as the embodiment of Christian faith. Always I must search for the gospel-truth hidden in the text, (I am a lectionary preacher) that somehow gets beyond the left/right polarity.

On Monday one of our members, a retired airline pilot, sent me the email below. He is known for two things: helping people in need and his very conservative, articulate views on the country and how it should be run. He is a major force at Clarkes Church and loves to both tease me for what he thinks are my liberal views and be teased by me whenever I have the chance. Here is the email:

Tom:

In my opinion, one of the principal attitudes that promotes segregation and racism amongst us Americans is the almost-universal use of qualifiers before the word American. Irish-, Afro-, Mexican-, white-, black-, Pilipino-, Asian-, Native-, etc, etc, etc are all examples of verbiage that serves to divide us.

If we are Americans first, who gives a damn what nationality, color or religion we might also be?

You can call me what you wish, but I don’t buy into much of Sam’s viewpoint. There is no royalty in this culture; we’re all a bunch of hard-scrabble misfits according to the Europeans, who built a wonderful place to live, work and worship and I will not pretend I am sorry to be white because my forebears might have done some other group a wrong.

So long as I am on a rant, what were the Sioux known for? It wasn’t for picking flowers and lying in the sun. It was for killing, raping, scalping and destroying any group that challenged them.

History is written by the winners; the Sioux did not win. In my estimation, it is their job to be assimilated into our culture rather than staying aloof and crying “Foul!”

Rant off.

Mike

I shook my head when I got the email and thought I am not going to try to respond on my day off. Maybe I should just ignore it. Maybe he is baiting me. I put it out of my mind until the next day.

On the next day I wrote this:

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your rant. One point, as a follower of Jesus I don’t put America first. I am a follower of Jesus and therefore put Jesus ahead of America. Classical theology always saw “America first” as “idolatry,” just as it saw Germany first or Mexico first as idolatry. Idolatry is making something ultimate that is not. America and American Empire is a passing thing and making “America First” will make that passing even faster I think. While I love my country and speak out hoping to influence it toward righteousness (right relationship), mercy and even forgiveness, my prior and deeper commitment is to the one who lived a life of righteousness, died a death to show us what we continually do to each other by allowing us to do it to him, and got raised on the third day so that we know love wins in the end. And along the way he teaches us a lot about forgiveness both personally and as nations.

Second point, I know the Sioux were no angels. None of us humans are. This “Good News” is for all people because it knows that good and evil reside in us all, bar none. Sam’s awareness of this has led him to become a Jesus Follower like me though he is culturally a Sioux. I think Sam and I both believe Jesus comes before all religion and critiques all; even Americanism as a religion. As you know, I have been working on how Jesus addresses all religion in my sermons from Matthew. And I am not putting this into the text, it’s there already and we are just now seeing it more clearly. I think Jesus’ gospel addresses the very mechanism that drives religion.

I think Sam and I are both very aware of our human hubris and capacity for evil. We have each hurt other people on our journey as well as been deeply hurt. Part of Sam’s journey is not only forgiving himself for wasting years of his life hiding behind alcohol, he has to forgive white culture for reneging on most of our treaties and for developing a culture that systematically blocks his advancement and privileges its own at his expense. This is real and not just feeling sorry for one’s self as a minority. Every minority culture can tell you about it even while it remains invisible to the majority culture. Jesus knew about it as a member of a minority culture occupied by Rome.

I thought Sam’s sermon was very well done and that he spoke with authority, humility, and compassion for us and himself. I thought we needed to hear what he said and I was challenged to open myself to people quite different from me as I confessed to in my comments after he spoke. (The book I have on CDs that I will listen to while driving is Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson. I want to read it so that I can see life through African American eyes more easily).

Michael, you think quite differently from me and I do try to understand where you are coming from though it is quite a stretch for me. We both see dark times ahead but propose different actions to address it. I think you think you are quite simple and that the answers are simple but I think you have incorporated all kinds of assumptions that you have not examined in the light of the gospel, reason, or the western tradition. Your education has been primarily technical and experiential and that has served you well and what we needed when you were our airplane pilot. You are also very bright and I respect that. But you have not been required nor seen the need to delve deeply into the history of western thought nor Christian anthropology and theology that both lie beneath western culture and challenge all human thought; western and otherwise.

Well, I have taken the time to respond to your “rant”. I thought maybe you were just baiting me to see what I would say. If so, now you know. I like you and you are one of the figures in my mind that I address as I write sermons for Clarkes Church. You are important to me even though I don’t understand why?!

When the Samaritan, that evil enemy of Jews, walked along the road and saw the man in the ditch bleeding and all beat up, he was moved in his gut to help him. He didn’t do it because he had to or because he was good, or because his religion told him to. He just did it because he happened to be the one there and his stomach twisted and he almost couldn’t help it. It’s kind of a mystery why he did it really. I know you do a lot of things out of compassion.

Peace and love,
Your friend,
Tom

Copyright: sean824 / 123RF Stock Photo

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