A sermon preached on October 17, 2004, at The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, Washington, DC

Texts: Jeremiah 31:27-34 and Luke 18:1-8

On my recent trip to see my mother in Missouri, I was struck by the sheer number of campaign signs in the yards of my hometown neighborhoods. I’ve never seen my hometown so politicized, and seemingly all for the Republican ticket of Bush and Chaney. My mother’s yard was the lone holdout in her block, and since I know where my mother stands on the election, it is safe to say that, on the political map, we can put the 2700 block of Felix Street of St. Joseph, MO in red. Now this didn’t altogether surprise me. St. Joe has always been a fairly Republican-leaning city, but what I remember of the town of my birth and nurture was a more subdued political climate. We just didn’t talk about politics or display our partisan colors, but no longer. I took a long, somewhat nostalgic walk down one of the main residential streets of St. Joe, and traveled two full miles before bumping into a lone Kerry/Edwards sign in a perfectly well kept yard where there was no sign of vandalism. “Civility in politics,” I thought to myself. It made me proud that my hometown honors dissent. But then two blocks further, I saw the second Kerry/Edwards sign and this one had not faired as well as the first. A modern day “Zoro” seems to have come in the middle of the night and slashed through the Kerry part of the sign, then kicked and stomped on the sign and bent the poles holding it up. The owner of the sign, obviously indignant at the vandalism, straightened the poles and then fortified them with wire attached to stakes in the ground, leaving the slash in Kerry’s name as it was, for everyone to see. Well, whoever vandalized that sign really took after the next Kerry/Edwards sign, just two blocks further down the street. The vandals must have pulled the sign out of the ground and ripped it to shreds. But the owner of the latter sign was also indignant. He or she carefully took scotch tape and pieced the sign back together as best as they could—the repair job was so extensive that even the “e” in Kerry had to be taped back into place. The end result was like the completion of an intricate jigsaw puzzle that was then placed back in the yard for every passerby to witness. I wanted to knock on the door of the house to inquire about the story of the sign, but I thought it might be too intrusive. So I contented myself with pondering the sign.

On my walk home, it struck me how many partisan stories must be behind every sign or lack thereof in every yard, window, or lapel in America. We are told that this is the most engaged and deeply polarized election in years, so whether one bears a sign or not, one has an opinion about this election and that opinion, however deeply or lightly held, reflects the varied conditions of our lives. This is, of course, a common insight of many an election analyst. Each of us is has been herded into one demographic grouping or another. Less commonly acknowledged, but no less true, is that our signs or lack thereof reflects our great myth about who we are as Americans, and I am using the word “myth” here in the most positive sense of that word: that story or set of stories that provides meaning and animates our lives. Some animating myths are relatively easy to get at and are often acknowledged, like the animating story of America’s destiny to promote democracy around the world or the animating story of a multinational, multicultural, and tolerant America.

For Christians, however, our animating story is different. When you join the Presbyterian Church, you answer questions that define a very distinct and ultimate animating story; questions like: Do you affirm that in Jesus Christ you see God, the way of God’s love, the way of God’s justice? And do you seek to be a disciple of Christ? The answer to these questions defines the most important thing about you, and what you intend to be and do. And when you come to worship, you are charged to live out that animating story in the world. For example, at the conclusion of every service, I often charge you to lift up the broken-hearted and to stand with the oppressed. This charge is about living out your discipleship in the world. On the basis of answering these questions and living out this charge, how can we be anything but partisans for Jesus? At least, I hope you feel that way about your discipleship.

And if you’re a partisan of Jesus, then I hope you feel compelled by the spirit of Jesus to engage the key issues of the day, like war, poverty, education, housing, and human sexuality. If your animating story did not compel you to have an opinion about the key issues of the day—however complex or shaded with grey—then I think you ought to examine your story as to whether it has become irrelevant or even bankrupt. It seems to me that this is exactly the question Jeremiah is getting at in our morning scripture lesson. The people’s story had become bankrupt. They just didn’t see poverty and they didn’t see injustice. So Jeremiah predicts a day when the law—the Torah, the way of God—is written on the heart. It becomes, in other words, the animating story that compels them and compels us to see things we didn’t see. And sometimes that story creates tension. Walter Brueggemann says that the biblical story creates a counter-imagination that challenges the known world. The biblical story, in other words, will make us partisans.

And if this is true, it occurred to me while walking home from that vandalized sign, that for Christians, our chief concern in such a highly politicized and polarized world is not partisanship—whether we admit it or not, we are all partisans. Rather, our chief concern should be whether or not we’ve become a dysfunctional people who fail to engage one another in face-to-face encounters about our differences. We tear up one another’s signs under the cover of night or what is the same thing, talk about someone behind his/her back with no attempt or intention of having a face-to-face encounter. On controversial issues we often tend to speak only with those with whom we agree. So I find it interesting that, speaking of prayer, Jesus tells the story of a persistent woman who did not avoid conflict but walked right into the midst of it in a face-to-face encounter. But then, who likes conflict? I, for one, avoid it like the plague. The problem, however, is that if we don’t open ourselves to difference and potential conflict, we will never learn the animating stories that produce difference, and, thus, we are unlikely to open our own stories to the possibility of change and maybe even new relationships.

Psychologist Robert Coles says his teacher taught him to listen to the stories of others and not rush too quickly to diagnosis. I think this is good advice and what it suggests to me is that God’s grace is often found in the midst of face-to-face encounters in communities where people tell and listen to stories. These encounters are a means for grace for us—they are a means by which God speaks to us. My wife Frances is part of a Theological Task Force in the PC(USA) that is made up of twenty Presbyterians representing just about every shade of difference in the larger church on the issue of human sexuality. The task force was designed to lead the church in discernment amidst conflict and to model for the larger church how to talk about some of the key issues that are dividing us. From all I can tell about this group, representing widely diverse views on homosexuality, and the authority and interpretation of Scripture, among other things, they have become a model of the body of Christ for the larger church. Which is not to say that they all agree with each other, but rather they are not likely to let go of each other because of disagreement.

I suspect you have heard that the Presbyterian Church, at our General Assembly last summer, passed a resolution on Iraq, calling that war “unwise, illegal, and immoral.” Some are upset that the Presbyterian Church took a stand on such a partisan political issue. But then, how can the church of Jesus Christ and of the prophets not address an issue like war? We would render ourselves irrelevant if we didn’t. Others regret the strident language used in the resolution. But then, what other language is one to use about war? War is either wise or unwise because it is politically stabilizing or destabilizing; it is either legal or illegal according to the standards of international law; it is either moral or immoral according to the just-war standards of the church. It appears to me that few have actually read the resolution. It is a remarkable, conciliatory document! It acknowledges the differing attitudes that Presbyterians have about the war in Iraq and names them. And as important as anything in the resolution, it affirms a foundational principle in the PC(USA), that “God alone is Lord of the conscience” [CITE]. Thus, “every member of the Presbyterian Church [says the resolution] is both entitled and called upon to consider this matter prayerfully and lovingly. Every Presbyterian, however, is also called upon to treat those with whom we disagree with respect” [CITE]. There is a longstanding tradition in the Presbyterian Church that majority rules, but just as important is the respect for minority opinion. The latter is absolutely important because we affirm that the voice of dissent may also be the voice of God. Jeremiah, after all, was a dissenting voice, and Jesus never found himself in the majority. What this suggests to me is that we must never walk away from one another’s animating stories.