I am tired of being at war. I don’t mean the war that is happening in Iraq or Afghanistan and I don’t mean the war on drugs, the war on poverty or the war on violence. I am tired of feeling as if Americans, as if we, are at war with ourselves.
This past week and the last few months of rigorous debate about healthcare have brought this war home to all of us. It has gotten messy. It has gotten ugly. It has gotten virulent and it has begun to cut deeper and grow darker. By most accounts this war has been underway for quite a while and depending upon the political and ideological mindset in which you find yourself, this war is about different things. For some, it is defined in terms of moral issues or family values. For others it is labeled in terms of rights and freedom. For others it is about our wholeness as a people, the future of our nation and what kind of people we want to be. We Americans have been waging a battle on ourselves.
The expression, Culture Wars was tossed around in the 1960’s but was reintroduced by the 1991 publication of Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter. Hunter describes a dramatic shift in American social and political life and argues that an increasing number of "hot-button" issues have been reduced to two definable polarities, which he characterizes in terms of opposite impulses and calls Progressivism and Orthodoxy. And this dichotomy has long been magnified by political writers, journalists, news commentators and others who emphasize the differences of these poles by using derogatory labels from "Secular-Progressives" and "Traditionalists" to Fascists, bigots and racists.
And as much as I appreciate a good debate, this has begun to feel like something different. This battle has gone too far and I fear that it is taking a toll on our souls. I fear that our identity as a people is being drowned out by angry and hate-filled talk from every political corner. But it is hard to know where to go or what to do now. No one wants so be the first to say, “I’m sorry,” or “Let’s move ahead and work together.” Have we gotten so locked in on the issues of our time that we cannot even talk? Have we staked ourselves so deeply in our own positions that we cannot find mutual understanding? It seems to me that this war we are in, has reduced every political position to nothing more than caricatures of ideas and all that is left when the dust settles is the sentiment that “the other side, them, they” are wrong.
And from what I know of us, from what I know of who we are as a people, as a country, I think we, as a people of faith, can lead the charge into a new way of being. We have good precedent and it comes from the One we aim to follow. Jesus lived in a time that was also fraught with profound disagreement. The pressing down of the Roman Empire made it difficult for those who fell to the margins to have any kind of life at all. Children, women, people with disabilities or illnesses were all sidelined. As subjects of the Empire, few experienced any kind of freedom or the chance to live the life Jesus dreamed about for all of God’s creation. So imagine their shock when we hear Jesus’ say, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Imagine the rumbling of the Empire when Jesus says that it is not in taking life that we gain life, it is not in gathering up riches that we gain life, it is not in hoarding for our own sake that we gain life. Jesus says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” and it makes me wonder how far we are willing to go with him. His words make me think of this Culture War raging all around us. I wonder what we are willing to give up, to sacrifice as individuals for a higher calling. I wonder what we are willing to give up for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of abundant life. Are willing to give up being right? Are we willing to give up some of our resources? Are we willing to risk the possibility that what we thought was God’s way, was really our way disguised as something holy? Are we willing to tear each other apart with words and let this battle have the last say or is it possible that Jesus calls us to something greater, to another way of being, to a different kind of life?
For the last 10 years, my heart has been tugged and torn and pulled by this Culture War. I grew up in a conservative Republican household in a tight knit community committed to many values that are vital to who we are as a nation. I was introduced to what might be called conservative vocabulary at a young age and was taught that hard work is one of the highest values for human living. Along with a diligent work ethic, I was reared with the ideals of personal responsibility above all else, a commitment to my Christian faith and a belief that the government should be limited in its scope in order to let the free market run its course.
In college I worked for Republican Senator Jon Kyl and during that time, my heart and mind began to experience something like a paradigm shift and it was mostly due to my church. The more I learned of Jesus, the more I knew that my thinking did not account for sin and the tendency of human beings to make decisions that are selfish and often motivated by greed. I started to wonder what happens to those whom the market deems unprofitable. I began to ponder personal responsibility in the context of the students I taught in middle school, knowing that they would likely toil and toil and end up right where they began. Although my parents blame Berkeley for this questioning, when I moved to California to attend seminary in 2001, my change was well underway. But it wasn’t as if this change meant switching sides and starting the long Berkeley tradition of demonizing conservatives. My Christian faith changed me because it began to open me.
I share this piece of my story not because I have found the perfect answer or because I have arrived at full understanding, or because my mixed political perspective is a prescription for your own life, but because God opened me. I began to hear new voices and to see new faces. I began to see the humanity and the longing for abundant life desired by each side. And I know first hand the pitfalls of the kind of non-conversation conversation in which we are currently engaged. I know that being a Democrat does not mean that a person does not have faith based morals and I know that being a Republican does not mean that a person doesn’t care about the poor. I know the limitations of claiming to uphold family values all the while making it impossible for nontraditional families to live fully. I know the constraints of claiming to speak for the least and the last and yet often providing little incentive for them to seek a way out of oppressive circumstances. I also know well the hypocrisy exercised by politicos of all stripes: Republicans wanting to limit the government’s role in our lives, except around certain issues that a few deem to be the exceptions, Democrats claiming to be for the people while receiving millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the companies they speak against. And I hear Jesus’ words again, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it,” and it makes me wonder how far we are willing to go with him. How much are we willing to give up to be the kind of people, the kind of church, the kind of country that we are called to be?
Over the next two months, we will be following Jesus right into the real, but often chaotic task of speaking the truth in love. Our worship together will provide an opening for us to talk faithfully about many of the issues of our time that aim to divide us as a nation. My prayer would be that the conversation happens at coffee hour, at meetings, in service and wherever you find an occasion to learn, to change, to grow. We will be listening to each other, not because of common courtesy but because God can speak through any of us. We will be following Jesus so closely that we cannot help but to see something, even a small thing in a new way. If we really believe that what Jesus says is true, that, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it,” then it is too difficult to do alone. If we take seriously our task of following Christ, of imitating him and becoming more like him, then it seems to me that we don’t just need each other, we cannot be the Body of Christ without each other- our own well being and that of all of God’s creation relies upon our ability to live together, to talk to one another, to listen to on another and to grow together.
I am tired of feeling as if Americans, as if we are at war with ourselves. I want us in this church to be something different- a place where real conversation happens, where difference is honored and where we assume the best of each other, even in the face of dire opposition. I can’t help but to think of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.” And the Prophet also sings out to us as the Holy One beckons us, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth…” And this new thing just might be something as small but as earth shattering as listening our way out of a war and into a life saving kind of faith. Amen.