We have here in our church a long-standing tradition of the separation of church and state. We do not get involved in partisan politics. We do not support candidates, we do not give platforms to those running for political office. This sets us off from some other churches, where it is not at all uncommon for candidates to speak from the pulpit, or where political literature is handed out.
This is not our way. And I am confident you do not want to change it. We have another way of understanding what it is to be the church in the world. We have felt that it is more important to maintain the unity of our fellowship around spiritual matters than it is to fracture it around political races.
However, that means it is easy for us to become irrelevant. That means that we can be in danger of forfeiting our voice when great issues are at stake. Just because we do not get involved in endorsing candidates, that does not mean that we cannot think together about political issues. We do need to take seriously our spiritual responsibility as citizens.
And so, on this Independence Day weekend, with national political party conventions coming up, and with a presidential election only four months away, I want to ask you to think with me about how we might be Christian citizens. What do we need to look for as we make our decisions about who shall lead this nation for the next four years?
One set of clues comes from a very, very long time ago, from the period of the Judges in ancient Israel. I am talking about some eleven centuries before Christ, some three thousand years ago. It’s a rather obscure period in Israel’s history, but it has a lot to teach us.
The period of the Judges comes after Moses has freed the people from slavery in Egypt, after they have wandered for a generation in the wilderness, and then after they have conquered the land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua. After Joshua’s death, there was a series of leaders we call "Judges". The Judges were men and some women who simply emerged from among the people, who demonstrated moral courage and political ability, as well as military strength. There was no particular way in which judges were selected; it just seems as though the people sensed when somebody was called of God to lead them, and they followed.
One of the greatest of the Judges was Gideon. You will remember Gideon as the man who had rallied a large army behind him to go into battle against one of Israel’s enemies, but God told him to whittle down the army to just a handful of brilliant, dedicated fighters. That story is intended, among other things, to tell us that Gideon was not an ambitious man. He did not want to accumulate the trappings of power. His idea of political leadership was to keep it very limited. In fact, at one point in the story of Gideon some of the people wanted to make him king, but he refused it. Gideon is the very picture of godly leadership.
But after Gideon’s death, an ugly, vicious stream breaks out in the life of the nation. This happens, you know. One of the things we always have to watch out for is the backlash phenomenon. No matter how good and how productive some leader has been, there are always those who are so uncomfortable that when they get half a chance, they will turn in exactly the opposite direction. Civil rights, white backlash. Peace movement, militaristic backlash. Welfare state, yuppie backlash. It happens all the time.
So when Gideon the godly leader died, there was a Baal backlash. The text in Judges, ch. 8, tells us that at the death of Gideon, the nation turned back to its old temptation to worship the Canaanite fertility gods called the Baals. And in that pagan context there arose the figure of Abimelech. Abimelech, the son of Gideon by one of Gideon’s concubines, came on the scene and appealed to the worst in the hearts and minds of Israel.
Let’s hear a part of his bloody story:
Judges 9: 1-6
I
Notice what has happened. Abimelech began his political climb by appealing to his close relatives, the kinsmen and clan of his mother’s family. He began with a racial appeal. He was not interested in courting a broad support, just his own kind of people.
And then Abimelech was given seventy pieces of silver from the Temple of Baal-berith. You might call that the first PAC, the first Political Action Committee! And look at where the money comes from: from a special interest group, interested only in promoting the pleasure palaces of paganism.
And then you heard that Abimelech used the money to hire worthless and reckless fellows, who followed him. I guess this might be history’s first instance of Walking-Around Money! He hired an intimidation squad, a goon squad, to bully others into supporting him.
It all sounds painfully contemporary, doesn’t it? Racial appeal, special interest money, mean-spirited campaign workers. Very contemporary.
And this part is just too delicious for me to pass up: did you notice that the text said that Abimelech went to his father’s house at Ophrah … Ophrah! Did they have talk shows thirty centuries ago?!
But seriously, hear the note of treachery! He went to his father’s house and killed all of his own brothers, the sons of Gideon, with only one exception; only Jotham escaped. Oh, the bloodthirsty ambition of Abimelech!
And when it was all over, all the professional politicians swallowed their morals and made Abimelech their king. Sounds like a political party convention to me!
Let me draw just a couple of salient conclusions from this rough and ready story from three thousand years ago.
A
First, beware of the politician who is so driven by ambition that he will do anything, say anything, and court anybody, just to get in power. Beware of those whose life seems to be nothing more than being driven by blind ambition and by the need for power.
The story of Abimelech is an abysmal story of a man who was born in privilege, who had before his very eyes, in the person of his father, a picture of statesmanship. But Abimelech learned nothing but ambition. And so the picture we are given is of one whose every energy is spent on getting into office and on staying in office, no matter what it costs. Abimelech will accept the support of the merchants of sensuality; he will appeal in a very sophisticated way to racial prejudice; and he is for sale. Above all, he is for sale.
Beware of the politician who is so driven by ambition that he will do anything, say anything, and court anybody, just to get in power. Ask why any candidate runs for office. Is there anything in his heart more than having and holding power? If not, he is an Abimelech.
B
Second, beware of the politician who exhibits a careless disregard for life. Beware of the politician who does not value life and who will destroy those who threaten him.
You can see, if you like, a very interesting and yet very frightening psychology in the story of Abimelech. The text tells us that Abimelech was the son of one of Gideon’s concubines, not one of Gideon’s wives, and that this concubine and this child were kept over in Shechem rather than at Ophrah, where Gideon lived. And so when Abimelech starts his movement, he appeals to his mother’s family to help him put down his father’s family. He had felt rejected by his father!
I don’t want to stretch the text beyond what it will take, but I cannot help but feel that here is a man whose mind had been warped by feelings of inadequacy forced upon him as a child. Now he will let all that venom out. He will turn on those who threaten him, and he will destroy them. He cares nothing for the lives of those whom he sees as a threat.
Today life issues dominate our politics. The right to life is a very conflicted one. We have debated endlessly and doubtless will continue to do so about abortion. The Supreme Court’s recent divided decisions have guaranteed that we continue to discuss and debate this issue. And that is as it ought to be. It is not as clear-cut as vigorous advocates on either side of the matter would like us to think.
But beware the politician who will not demonstrate a broad and consistent concern for life. Beware the politician who may speak long and loud about unborn babies, but then who wants to turn on electric chairs everywhere! Beware the politician who gives lip service to compassion but whose Fourth of July rhetoric is laced with militarism. He may well be an Abimelech, threatened and destructive. Beware the politician who does not demonstrate a consistent, thorough concern for the value of life.
II
But there is another figure in this Bible story. Besides Abimelech, there is another: Jotham, his brother. There is a voice of dissent -- Jotham, the sole survivor of the slaughter at Ophrah. Jotham, Abimelech’s only surviving brother, raises his voice and tells a parable to get the people’s attention. Let’s listen to Jotham’s story:
Judges 9:7-21
Let me summarize for you very succinctly what Jotham has told the people in his little fable. Jotham has said, "Because so-called good people have been irresponsible, we have in office someone who offers us nothing but thorns, nothing but pain. And if this is what you really want, then you have to accept the consequences." Jotham has told the people of Israel that when government goes wrong, it is the people who accept that who are ultimately responsible.
In other words, you get what you deserve. If productive people, people like the olive tree, the fig tree, the vine – if solid, productive people do not step forward and take responsibility for our national life, then the only ones left to do it are the brambles. The only ones left to do it are the ambitious, the greedy, the cynical, the twisted.
If the olive trees, the fig trees, the vines do not step forward and assert themselves, then we are inevitably going to get bramble for president!
It has often been said that the only thing needed for evil to triumph is that good people do nothing. If we have stayed out of the political process because we think that all politics is dirty business; if we have decided that we are too holy, too good; or, more than likely, if we have decided that no one will hear our voices and no one will pay attention to what we believe; if we stay out of politics, then we are asking for bramble kings and thorny presidents! And Jotham’s fable will tell us that we are asking for trouble and for judgment.
A people get the leadership that they deserve. I would urge you, encourage you, to get involved in the political process. Get involved with the Area Neighborhood Commission. Get involved with the Civic Association. Get involved with the candidates you can trust, and with the issues, and advocate some cause. Get involved with your vote. If you have not registered and you do not vote, you are turning it all over to the brambles, and you should not be surprised if you end up with a thorn in the flesh!
III
All right, then, bottom line. For whom should we vote for president? Who is the bramble we should avoid in 1992?
Now you can just scoot back from the edge of your seats, because you are not going to get that kind of conclusion from me!
I did say last week that you cannot conclude that a bramble is necessarily a Bush!
Nor can you be sure that an ambitious, self-made businessman with a penchant for vagueness is a bramble, even though he may have a prickly personality.
Nor would I be so naive as to conclude that the Baptist fellow is the right one, just on that account. After all, there have been three Baptist presidents. One of them kept mistresses and got trapped in scandals; the second had a reputation for being the puppet of a Midwestern political machine; and the third one, while a very good man in many ways, we pitched out of office for being ineffective.
No, I am not going to tell you for whom to vote. I don’t know myself what I will do as yet.
But I do know for what I will be looking. I will be looking for someone who has some understanding of what it is to be a servant. Not an ambitious bramble, but a servant. Not a ruthless, life-destroying thorn, but a servant.
For the Lord Jesus said, "Whoever would be first among you must be the servant of all."
And the great apostle taught, "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant …"
The form of a servant is what we need. The form of a servant, in the White House, the statehouse, the Congress house, my house and your house.
The form of a servant … not blind ambition, grasping at power. But someone who has the mind of Christ, who does not regard high station as something to be exploited, but who will empty himself, taking the form of a servant.
The form of a servant … not careless disregard for the lives of others, but disregard for his own life, for his own political future. One who has the mind of Christ, humbling himself and obedient even to the point of death.
The form of a servant … one who can bring out in us a desire to serve. One who can inspire this nation to be a breadbasket for a starving world, one who can lead us to be peacemakers and reconcilers on a fractious planet, one who can teach us to share and to build up life everywhere. The form of a servant.
One who could come to this table and feel at home here. One for whom the symbols of a given body and a poured out life would not be foreign. One who with us could share in worship of the Christ whose mind it was to be the servant of all and become obedient unto the point of death, even death on a cross.
If we could have a servant president, then God could exalt someone like that and give him or her a name that we can respect and honor. Just as at the name of Jesus, no one feels ashamed to bend the knee and confess with the tongue that Jesus Christ the servant is Lord, we need a servant leader of whom we can be proud.
Bramble for president!? I hope not. I hope we shall not deserve the bramble. Grant us, O Lord, the servant.
