imitators of god: a sermon on faith & politics

I gave this sermon on November 1, 2020 – the Sunday before the presidential election.  Our home church (Mount Olympus Presbyterian in Salt Lake City) was doing a series on Faith and Politics and I had the privilege of closing it out.  The text came from the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:29-5:2. We are now post-election, but I hope the thoughts and ideas continue to remain meaningful as we engage in politics in the future!

The transcript has been edited a bit to make a better blog, but if you’d like to watch the video of the sermon in its entirety, the whole service was recorded live and can be accessed HERE via Facebook 😊 Enjoy!

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Some people question whether or not the church should engage in conversations about politics.  It seems a bit risky given our culture’s well-ingrained separation of church and state.  But as one wise pastor pointed out: if we can talk about something “out there” (in the world), we should talk about it “in here” (in the church)— and that includes our “secular” politics. 

Previously in this sermon series, it had been pointed out that:

(a)    Jesus was a political figure, and 

(b)    There is a difference between being “political” (engaging in societal discourse) and being “partisan” (being biased toward one group/cause or another) 

AND that no one political party or country can identify itself as the Kingdom of God.  Jesus will not be co-opted into our factions!

So the question becomes:  What does it mean as members of the Body of Christ—as citizens of the Kingdom of God—to engage faithfully in politics and political conversations today without getting sucked into the mire of it all, and how do we do that?

In Ephesians 4:29-5:2, Paul is writing to a community of believers who are struggling with division, and he offers some solid guiding principles on doing life together that I think can very much inform our discussion of Faith and Politics.  He writes:   

²⁹ Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. ³⁰ And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. ³¹ Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³² and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. 5 ¹ Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, ² and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Paul actually starts this section of his letter a little further ahead by saying that, as followers of Christ, we have been taught to “put away [our] former way of life” and to “clothe [ourselves] with a new self… according to the likeness of God.”

And part of that process, he says, is by learning to control how we speak.  In verse 25, he writes,

“putting away all falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another,” 

and then in verse 29, 

“Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up.” 

The Greek word used here that we translate “evil” is the same word that in other places describes something rotten—something that is corrosive, that breaks down, that decays.  This is speech that is hurtful.  So not only, he says, are we supposed to speak what is true, we are also supposed to speak what is loving and kind.     

I think it’s safe to say that our political discourse currently is struggling with both of these things.  

In the first place, we seem to have a war going on over what is truthful and what is not.  We’ve been bombarded with the phrase “fake news,” we have presidential debates that now require constant fact-checking, and there are endless memes and articles online and on social media that are meant to inflame one side or another get disseminated without any critical research to see whether those claims are founded or not. 

I’m not going to spend time trying to tell you what is factual and what isn’t.  But I will say that this is a caution for us to be careful and critical about what we accept as truth, and what sources we use to help us make political decisions, and especially about we quote or “repost” or share with other people. 

But it’s also not just about speaking what is true.  It’s about speaking what is kind.  It’s about what builds someone up rather than breaking them down, and our words giving grace to those who hear us. 

John Calvin wrote about this in his Institutes of the Christian Religion.  He said:

“We delight in a certain poisoned sweetness experienced in ferreting out and in disclosing the evils of others.  And let us not think it an adequate excuse if in many instances we are not lying.  For [God] who does not allow a brother’s name to be sullied by falsehood also wishes it to be kept unblemished as far as truth permits.”

Just because something we might say about someone else is true, that does not make it kind.  This is difficult, right?  Because if we are trying to live out Kingdom values in the world and trying to promote the kind of kindness and love that Christ showed us in our own communities, when someone is lying or deeply betraying those values, we want to call it out.  We want to name evil when we see it.

So is Paul saying we just let that go?  Not necessarily.  Jesus called out the Pharisees for the religious hypocrisy they were practicing in his time. 

But he also never failed to see them as human beings.  He met with them, he taught them, and he died for them as much as for us.  He continued to show love even as he spoke truth to power, which means that every time we speak politically—whether it’s a post on social media or a comment to our spouse in our living room—we need to ask ourselves what kind of language we’re using. 

Is what I’m saying meant to break you down? 

Am I saying this because I’m scared, or angry, or feeling threatened?

OR do I still recognize you as a human being that Christ died for? 

Am I still able to see the beloved image of God in you?

Paul says we’re meant to put away the things that break down unity.  But in verse 31, he also says to cut out “bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander, and malice.”

Here’s what those things mean:

• Bitterness: “A character trait that nurses a grudge, nurtures resentment, and refuses reconciliation.”
• Wrath: “To be given to fits of rage when one does not get one’s own way.”
• Anger: “That vice which makes us quick to lose our temper at any little offense.”
• Wrangling: “The readiness to shout down an opponent rather than listen to the reasons given by another, and to shout louder when one’s own argument is weaker.”
• Slander: “To curse or insult one another."
• Malice (or “wickedness”):  a general term, used here almost like “so forth,” to summarize all of these and more.

It’s easy to see these things characterizing America’s political discourse.  And it’s painful to say, but the Church has often been complicit in this.  I have been complicit in this.

This is the mire that it’s difficult not to get sucked into. 

This is the divisiveness that grieves the Holy Spirit of God. 

This is what we are to “put away” in the name of Christ.  

It may (especially in election seasons) be a daily battle… but this is the clothing of the old self and not the new self.  

So what are we supposed to “put on” in their place?  Kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness: 

• Kindness:  Not just brief gestures of politeness, but the posture that God himself takes in giving without expecting things in return.  It initiates love toward others and practices love for our neighbors in the same way we love ourselves. 
• Tenderheartedness:  another word for “compassion”—to suffer with others; the posture of Jesus toward the sick, or the Good Samaritan toward the Jew on the road, that sees the needs of others as much as we see our own.  It affects whose well-being we think about as we cast our votes, whose voices we listen to over others, and who we choose to give grace to even though we disagree with them.
• Forgiveness:  the posture of Christ on the cross, of letting go of others’ sins or their “trespasses against us” for the sake of right relationship.  It frees up the space in our hearts where bitterness would otherwise reside and fester, and helps us see the other person as someone Christ died for and who is beloved by God despite our differences with them.

*Important note: needing to show compassion and forgiveness assumes that there is suffering and sin.  It assumes that the world and the people in it are broken, and that failure is a part of everyday life.  This is not a set of rose-colored glasses that expects us to be morally perfect for our own sake.

Practicing kindness and compassion and forgiveness is about being able to find unity in the midst of our brokenness.

Paul sums all of this up by saying we are to be “imitators of God” and live in love, as Christ loved us… imitators of God being built up together into the “full stature of Christ.” 

We are not God. 

In fact, my husband Matt loves the joke: “What’s the difference between you and God? God never thinks he’s you.” :P 

But we imitate God.

We forgive because we’ve been forgiven in Christ. 

We love because Christ first loved us. 

That includes the people we may see as our political enemies, and those we disagree with.

Now, imagine yourself as a small child sitting at the kitchen table. 

You are fully aware that you’re little.  Your feet don’t even hit the floor yet, which means you have a long way to go before you grow up.  But you sit there watching your parent, who’s making you breakfast.  This parent is unfailingly wise and kind, and takes care of you when you’re hurt, forgives you when you’re wrong, and teaches you how to play nice with other kids. 

You don’t know how to do all those things yet.  You lose your temper.  You get mad when your brother gets a bigger bowl of cereal, or when your sister says she wants to be the boss of the game you’ll play later.  Sometimes you think it's okay to be mean to them if they’ve been mean to you first. 

But you trust your parent, and you know that they want to teach you to be like them—to be wise and kind and loving, and able to do all the things a grown-up can do.  So after breakfast, you sneak off and play dress-up in their clothes.  You imitate them. 

You take off your dirty jacket and your mud-covered shoes, and you put on your mom’s heels, or your dad’s tie and you pretend.  You may put on way too much makeup in all the wrong places, or go stand in front of the bathroom mirror and smother your chin in shaving cream, even though at this age, there’s absolutely no point.  But you go through the motions.  You pretend and you practice and you learn… and sometimes you even see them peeking in and smiling at you. 

Photo Credit:  Shutterstock

We are like little children trying to imitate God.  We are small and impetuous, and we don’t do all the right things, but we dress up and we pretend.  And the more we pretend, the more we grow.  We will never actually reach adulthood in this life, but we love our Father, so we try.  We’ve seen what it looks like to wear kindness and compassion and forgiveness like Christ did, and we have been given full access to his closet to try things on.

C.S. Lewis points out in his book, Mere Christianity, that

“very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already,” 

which is why he also wrote:

“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did.  As soon as we do this we find one of the greatest secrets.  When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love them… whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God… we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less.”