Driving down one of our country roads the other day I saw this sign: Vote for Jesus. Well, folks Jesus is not on the ballot. We cannot drag Jesus into any voting booth. So when we vote for a Republican president we do not vote for Jesus. When we check the Democratic nominee on our ballot we are not voting for Jesus. Where did we get this strange idea that God is on our side? Which means that if you are on the opposing side you must hate God. Consequently we must hate you.
For followers of Christ the basic message was always: Follow me. Caesar proclaimed that all under Roman rule must bow down to him and say: Caesar is Lord. But that tiny cluster of Christians refused. Their creed was: Jesus is Lord. They remembered that Jesus had said: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are God’s. And through the years the church has had to struggle to make sure God and Caesar were not one and the same. Often our record has been spotty.
As we preachers stand in the pulpit we look out at a divided people today. We are scared of many things. Drugs…the economy…foreclosures in housing…joblessness…worries about health insurance…schools safety…terrorists…wondering what is true or false on social media. Everything has changed. We’ve lost more than 180,000 in this pandemic. We don’t know if we are to send our children off to school this fall or not. And we wonder about our elderly that are so vulnerable. We struggle about how to have a wedding or a funeral or even in-person worship services. We mutter, “When will we ever get back to normal.”
But even with all these dark days we Christians are called to be people of faith. We cannot kill each other off or demean one another. We cannot hate those that disagree with us. We cannot buy into the politics that claim if we vote for so and so they—and we—hate God. We are not to smear another’s reputation. Who we are as followers of Jesus Christ must take what we say we believe outside of the stained glass windows. We speak to racism—reminding ourselves that black lives matter and that all lives matter. We must denounce children in cages remembering Jesus said: “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones…it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depths of the sea.”
The old slogan: What would Jesus do? Must be placed down beside the poor, those without health insurance, those who face foreclosures on their homes and those 16.3 million who have lost their jobs. We are to care for one another.
Remember Jesus’ first sermon in his hometown. He read from the Isaiah scroll: ” I have come to bring good news to the poor…to heal the broken-hearted…proclaim release to the captives…help the blind recover their sight…and to bring freedom to the oppressed.” They received Jesus’ words gladly until he began to unpack those powerful words.
History tells us that there have been terrible chapters when the church has veered away from faith, hope and love. Often we have been silent. Many times we have joined some bandwagon that runs counter to Jesus’ principles. Church history says that through the years we have turned inward and ignored the convulsions around us. But once in a while we have been stretched by those powerful words of the prophet, Amos. We have opened the Book and read: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”
Bill Coffin once said that: “We are to put loyalty to God above obedience to the national will. For obedience to the law is no invariable obligation for those who must serve God rather than man. We said this to the Germans at Nuremberg; we must repeat it to ourselves now.”
We cannot vote Jesus—but we can place the Lord’s words down beside all of us and hold those running for office accountable for what they say and do. Don’t vote Jesus he is not on the ballot—just vote.
--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com
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