The Goodness That Endures
It's not up for a vote
Why do you boast, you tyrant, that you can do evil; Whereas the goodness of God endures all the day long? (Psalm 52:1-2)
Plenty of folks have described politics as the new religion, with all of the worst aspects of religion front and center.
A recent political raid on a church service in Minnesota has people stirred up.
As we might expect, there are self-identified Christians demonstrating and opining from within both of the political bubbles.
My morning Psalm offerings and Bible reading reminded me that the essentials of the Gospel cannot be contained or eliminated by politics, although various political policies and actions can make it more or less difficult or even sacrificial to keep the faith.
Psalms 52. 53 and 54 portray the powers of this world in opposition to faith in God,
“Behold, this is the one who did not take God for his strength, but trusted in the multitude of his riches and relied on his wickedness”…I will always give thanks unto you for what you have done, and I will declare your Name among the faithful, for it is good. (52:8,10)
Have they no knowledge, all the workers of evil who eat up my people as they would eat bread, and call not upon God? (53:5)
For the arrogant have risen up against me, and tyrants, who do not have God before their eyes, seek after my life. Behold, God is my helper; the Lord is he who upholds my life. (54:3-4)
If we’re honest, we’ll confess that we see “the other side” as the bad guys in these verses and our own partisans as the righteous and victimized. And so much of today’s commentary — some offered by Christians — is an effort to legitimate the violence that the Psalms protest.
Whichever bubble engulfs the other has nothing to do with the ultimate claims of the Christian faith, shared in this morning’s New Testament lesson,
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one. (Jesus in John 10:27-30)
You can hang that on the wall of a statehouse or ban the Bibles that contain it. You can bellow it at a political rally or arrest people who read it softly on a sidewalk. Those actions do not touch the truth that is Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine, who gives eternal life to those who follow him in faith.
When our churches cease to proclaim him as he is to use him as a symbol for our bubble cause du jour, and seek our meaning in grim, sourpuss chaplaincies to the political bubbles, we cling to things that are passing away and miss the goodness of God that endures all the day long.
This bedtime prayer is apt,
Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
This should be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.
Powerful reframing of the faith-politics tension. The observation that both bubbles claim righteousness while the Gospel stands apart is crucial, tho rarely acknowledged in practice. I've seen congregations fracture over precisely this conflation of temporal power with eternal truth. The John 10 passage grounds things well, th permanence of divine security versus the transience of political victories matters more than most want to admit.