“Our engagement with the empire can quickly become a case of the frog in the pot of boiling water. A little support of war, a little indifference about the environment, a little disregard of poverty, a little failure to notice racism or sexism, a little collapse of indignation and hope, a little innocence about class privilege; a little of this and a little of that, and all too soon comes a lethal society.”
Walter Bruggemann, Out of Babylon, p.152
Author Diana Butler Bass recently posted on Facebook about a pastor who can no longer preach about Jesus’ call to love our neighbors because it is too political. I’ve been warned away from speaking about the same because it might get taken as socialist. There is no denying the divisive state of politics these days. People fear getting political and offending others. Most pastors I know shy away from preaching about any issue that could even remotely be construed as political. Issues like loving our neighbor, serving the poor, and releasing the bonds of oppression. Those are all apparently too controversial.
This fear of offending congregants or getting political has essentially silenced the words of Jesus in many churches. But in trying to navigate these waters and not upset any opinions, the church doesn’t seem to realize that it is being political. By not delivering the message of Jesus or being a prophetic alternative to empire, the church is allowing the voices of the anti-Christian forces to win. It’s like Bruggemann mentions in the quote above, when we let little advances of empire overtake the kingdom of God, we end up with a lethal society.
Standing up for the God we claim to follow might be deemed political because it is. When we resist the siren call of empire – when we stand against a message that tries to convince us that the only thing we should care about is ourselves – we are making a political statement. We are aligning ourselves with the Kingdom of God instead of the kingdoms of this world. To do so will always be political. It will always offend the defenders of empire. But that is the choice the cross presents us with – to follow God or this world. And if we are afraid to call the church to follow God, then we simply have handed the church over to empire and allowed it to win.