Lately I have been thinking: If I was still a Pastor what would I say next Sunday? It is a hard time to be a Preacher. Outside the stained glass windows we’re in the middle of enormous chaos. A Pandemic that seems endless. More than 150,000 of our bothers and sisters dead. Strong opinions about opening or keeping schools shut down. Over 50,000 of our citizens without work. So many knowing they could find themselves homeless because of eviction after eviction. Black folks raising their voices. Strange things like politicizing masks. Refugees scared of everything. Many in the country still at home after all these months. A President that does not help us as our divisions grow wider every day.
What am I to say? Outside and inside the church there the anger and fear that touches us all. We are told that when the Evangelist Billy Sunday preached he placed his manuscript down on that Isaiah passage. “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to this captives, and release to the prisoners…” This is still every Preacher’s mandate. Jesus took those words in his first sermon and they became an overture for everything he was to do.
The people out there in the pews are decent people. They come Sunday after Sunday hungry for something to help with their own personal chaos and the tsunami that this country faces. If I talk about the President and his rages and hatred so many of them will leave the church shaking their heads. So many tell us that we are to stay out of politics. But how can we be silent when there is little good news for the oppressed, when so many broken hearts find little solace, when those captives and the imprisoned by systems hear few words of hope or faith or love?
What am I to say?. We all must rise up and say no more to the lies and the half-truths in Washington. All those seeking asylum. No more snatching children from their parents and keeping human beings in cages. No more rages from people that disagree. No more tweets about Jesus* with his arms outstretched and the words: We will protect this. No more holding up the Holy Bible for photo ops.
We place our words down beside the whole world which God still has in his hands. We do not turn off the TV—we stay informed. But our lives are to be fashioned by Him who touches us all.
I asked the great preacher George Buttrick, “How do you handle the controversial as Pastor?” He said, “I let the people know what I think and how I feel. I never belabor the point. I just say the words and then move on.”
The words. Not Republicans. Not Democrats or Independents. Not patriotism or nationalism. No protecting Jesus. No flags or monuments. But the larger words. A remembrance we can never forget: “We are no longer strangers and aliens but we are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.” So I end as I began with those haunting words of Isaiah. We. All, always all.
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