An Alternative to Campaign Promises--May 18, 2022

An Alternative to Campaign Promises--May 18, 2022

"When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified." [1 Corinthians 2:1-2]

On the days when my faith is at its most wobbly and I ask myself why I continue to do my best to keep following the way of Jesus, one thing that grounds me again is the simple realization that the New Testament writers just do NOT sound like politicians campaigning for office.  That's part of how I know there's something to the Gospel: it ain't a stump speech full of empty campaign promises.

I say this with a recollection from just yesterday, our state's primarily election day, as I was walking into my polling place, where a campaigner for a candidate for state office was outside trying to drum up last-minute support with assurances of how their candidate would do such great things, and "Wouldn't you like to support him?"  And as I overheard the campaigner's spiel about how their candidate's agenda would help "save" America, I thought to myself that if I weren't already opposed to this particular candidate's platform, this spokesperson's big talk would have pushed me away even further--if for no other reason than that it felt so cheap and hollow.  So much talk about how "strong" and "great" they would make things hit my ears like so much bluster and hot air, rather than substance.  And as I think about the short snippets I heard just walking in and out of the door, it dawned on me just how un-like the posture of Saint Paul the whole scene was.  Paul makes a point not to peddle empty promises or schmaltzy rhetoric about God or about this new religion he's come to tell you about.  All he talks about is Jesus--and there is no Jesus other than the Crucified one, as far as Paul is concerned.  

In other words, Paul knew that it sounds empty, shallow, and fake to try to persuade people on big promises or cheap appeals to being "strong" or "successful" or "great," if only you'll support his candidate Jesus for Lord. And instead, Paul focuses on the very thing that makes Jesus look, to the watching world, like he is a weak failure of a nobody.  He centers on the cross.  And he does not, not as some fine print he'd like to skip over or sweep unde the rug, but as the very heart of the Christian message.  God's way of reigning and rescuing the world is not through conquest or domination, not through strict enforcement of rules to make us into well-behaved little boys and girls, and not through the usual means of military might, economic power, or overwhelming coercive force.  God's way of reigning the world is the preposterous notion of dying for it at the hands of the rulers of the day, absorbing the empire's violence into himself, and breaking its power in death and resurrection.  It is decidedly NOT through the means of what we usually recognize as "success," "strength," or "greatness."  And so Paul doesn't try to sell the gospel in those terms, because he knows they are just so much hot air.

It is easy to lose sight of this in our day, when so many voices confuse Christianity with the usual modes of getting things done in our culture. We are so used to the stump speech making grand (and vague) promises of success, or loud angry bluster stoking violence against "those people" who will take away our strength or our power or our greatness, that we might miss how that whole way of thinking runs counter to the way of Jesus.  And here the contrast could hardly be any clearer: rather than the last-minute attempt to gin up support for a candidate with glittering generalities and appeals to strength and power, Paul zeroes in on Jesus the Crucified, the One whose way of saving the whole world (not just America, mind you) is the self-giving love and rejection of violence that looks like failure and weakness to the watching world.

After hearing so many religious hucksters in my day who peddle a version of Christianity that sounds just like one of those polling-place campaigners, sometimes I forget--the real gospel sounds nothing like those diatribes.  The real gospel sounds like Jesus, the Crucified One, and it is exactly because of that difference that I find myself drawn back again to it and to Jesus himself, over against a world full of pompous pundits and campaign noise.

What I need is exactly what Paul has given us: the word that God has saved the world by dying for it already. That doesn't sound like a campaign promise--that sounds like news of something already accomplished.

Lord Jesus, keep me centered on you today, especially over against all the noise and bluster around.