Sermons

A Voice Crying Out

John Wilkinson                               Third Presbyterian Church
December 4, 2005                          Mark 1:1-8/Isaiah 40:1-11

Amid all the choices you can make in this holiday season, allow us to help set priorities just a bit. All throughout today, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., you may attend our annual Alternative Christmas Market in the Celebration Center. Many worthy groups are offering goods – some directly related to Third Church and others connected to us in some way. Please do visit – jump start your Christmas gift acquisition and support some important efforts.

A week from today, in the evening, we will gather for our Advent Festival. We will begin with a wonderful meal – see the instructions for what to bring in the bulletin --and follow with activities for all ages and conclude with a time of singing. It will be a good opportunity to focus your Advent energy and to do so in the context of this community. All ages – and invite friends and neighbors as well.

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(Mark 1:1-8)
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On June 9, 2005, the All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California received a certified letter from the Internal Revenue Service, indicating that they were being investigated. Churches, as you know, are tax-exempt organizations. One provision of maintaining such status is a commitment to remain non-partisan in political matters. That is much different than remaining non-political, as we will see.

The issue for the I.R.S., and I want to be as clear and accurate as I can in case there are any I.R.S. representatives present this morning, was a sermon preached at All Saints Church in the weeks prior to last year’s presidential election. Though it was critical of both political parties, and was clearly qualified with an opening statement saying “I do not presume to tell you how to vote,” the sermon itself was critical of the war in Iraq.

In the I.R.S.’s opinion, such a sermon warranted an investigation – a chilling prospect – to determine whether or not that sermon, preached by the retired rector of the congregation, indicated “ involvement in activities which may constitute political campaign intervention prohibited under IRS section 501(c)(3).” The sermon was titled “If Jesus Debated Senator Kerry and President Bush.” The congregation has retained counsel as the investigation unfolds and a protracted legal and political battle seems inevitable.

Response to this news has been deep and wide. I’ve read the sermon. I agree with parts – disagree with others. That’s not the point, of course. The point is that the preacher, George Regas, brought matters of faith to matters of politics that were appropriate theologically and politically.

In that election, you will remember, hundreds of churches issued voters’ guides. While being careful not to offer endorsements, the connect-the-dots implicaiton between a position and a candidate seemed to be clear.

The immediate point was whether the sermon constituted, in the legal language, “intervention in a political campaign.” Though neither a tax specialist nor an attorney, the answer seems to be “no.” We shall see.

The bigger point is even more critical. What is the fundamental role and ability of a religious community to speak its concerns, to act out its faith, to bring a prophetic voice to matters of public life? This cannot be a liberal or conservative conversation, nor a Democratic or a Republican one. I agree that I or any other preacher should not publicly endorse candidates, nor tell you how to vote on particular political issues. We’ve crafted a delicate balance over several centuries; separation of church and state is the shorthand phrase. But that stance should never prohibit me, or any person of faith, from expressing a faith perspective on a political matter.

A recent Times editorial (November 22, 2005) wrote that “The I.R.S. cannot justify picking on a church that has a long record of opposition to wars waged by leaders from both parties.”

A so-called peace church, a Mennonite or Quaker church, for example, that holds as one of its core beliefs a commitment to pacifism, would be against any and all war, and should say so, publicly, as Americans and as Christians. That is not partisan. That is not even political, in its purest sense. It is fundamentally and profoundly theological and biblical.

It can get very complex and even messy. War is an example. Choice is another. Here’s another, more local, one. In recent months, as young people have been dying in the streets of Rochester, victims of gun violence, voices have called for action and intervention. Some have called for a curfew. Others have insisted that a curfew will not help solve the problem. Each position was articulated from pulpits in the city. Is that partisan? I am not sure, but I don’t think so. What I am sure of is the theological truth, the God-delivered truth, that gun-violence against youth destroys the image of God in the shooter and the victim, that God would intend something better and other for us.

It is complex and messy. Earlier this week, the 1000th person was executed since the death penalty’s practice was restored in the 1970’s. Since that time, our denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has consistently declared its opposition to the death penalty. In a letter to governors of states who still utilize the death penalty, our Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick said "Capital punishment is wrong because it is impossible to know that a person who has murdered can never be redeemed or restored. As a matter of faith and faithfulness, this possibility must be left open for every human being." He quoted past General Assemblies who stated that “capital punishment cannot be condoned by an interpretation of the Bible based upon the revelation of God's love in Jesus Christ" and that "the use of the death penalty tends to brutalize the society that condones it."

We Presbyterians disagree on many things – we’ve historically agreed on this. I do; you may not. But like war or poverty or matters of reproductive choice, it’s a position based on theological study and biblical reflection, and not a directive of who to vote for or what to vote for.

If a bigger point is the role and ability to take a stand, the even bigger point is the call to take a stand. We could spend hours and days and lifetimes debating issues, seeking to determine whether and how faith makes a difference. Years ago Reinhold Niebuhr reminded us that such debates were fine and good and faithful, but that we got ourselves into trouble when we got too specific. Allow the faith community to provide the vision, he said, and the politicians to provide the strategy. That seems reasonable.

Even as we focus on vision, our task is complex and daunting. But perhaps not so much. We feed hungry people around here several days a week, and we now offer shelter to those without homes. We do that as a faith commitment. It would seem to be a logical extension of that faith commitment to begin asking root questions – why are people hungry; why do they have no place to live – and to work to change reality, not as a political endeavor but as a faith commitment.

Or we tutor children as a faith commitment, and we notice deficiencies in reading and math, and we begin asking root questions about the strength of our schools and we get involved in that level, again, not as a political endeavor but as a faith commitment.

Or we come to know a gay or lesbian person, no big deal, build a friendship within the context of this faith community, a faith commitment, and then come to learn that there are civil rights issues at risk, and we get involved in local legislative efforts and state legislative efforts, again, not as a political endeavor but as a faith commitment.

It is with us all the time, this call, this mandate. It is not a call to be political. It is a call to bring what we sense and know through our faith into all the corners of human living.

Faith has political implications. Faith may even bring us into conflicting political perspectives, even in this place, which is certainly fine.

None of this is new.

· It is as old as the witness of Rosa Parks, who found great strength and sustenance from her African Methodist Episcopal church.

· It is as old as Walter Rauschenbusch, Rochester’s own, portrayed in our stained glass windows, who believed there to be a deep connection between poverty in the city, adequate jobs for working people, care for children, and the gospel’s commitments to justice and righteousness.

· It is as old as the witness of John Witherspoon, Presbyterian minister, who added his name to the Declaration of Independence, a little more modestly than John Hancock’s, and thus connected the freedom he had experience in Jesus Christ with the freedom he believed to be delivered to all of God’s children.

· It is as old, and as young, as the voice given to John the Baptist, to the voice given to Mary, to the voice given to the prophet Isaiah, to the voice given to you and me and all of us together.

We will let the politicians hammer out the particulars, keeping them honest all the way. But we have been given a gift and a mandate and a voice.

Against the tide of politics as usual, that would serve interests other than our common ones, against the tide of a world that consumes rapidly and thoughtlessly, against the tide of a world that defines people by how they look and how much they have, we have been given a gift and a mandate and a voice. An Advent voice. Its watchwords are hope and peace and justice and joy.

A voice to cry out when things are not right, and a voice to cry out when we move, inch by inch, moment by moment, ever closer to the vision. (Isaiah 40:1-11) This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen.