HOW WOULD JESUS VOTE?

(Preached on Sunday, November 5, 2006)

Jesus answered, AThe first is, >Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all you soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.=@          -Mark 12:29-30

 

A few years back many people, especially teenagers, began wearing bracelets, necklaces, and T-shirts with the initials WWJD. 

They stood for the phrase AWhat would Jesus do.@

It became the latest Christian fad for a number of years.

In truth it was not something new.  The phrase was actually coined a hundred years earlier by a Congregational minister in Topeka, Kansas as the key element in a novel he wrote entitled AIn His Steps@.

The Congregational minister was Charles M. Sheldon and his book began as a serialized sermon he preached to boost attendance in the Sunday evening worship.  In simple style, AIn His Steps,@ tells the story of self-satisfied congregants of a midwestern church who are challenged by a tramp during a Sunday service to live up to their declaration of faith.  The tramp then dies in their midst.  So moved are the minister and his parishioners that they pledge to live their lives for one year asking themselves before they make any decision, AWhat would Jesus do?@  The book struck a chord with many, many people over the years and is ranked as the tenth-most-read book in the world.  While many have criticized the approach of that book as too simplistic and naive, I believe Sheldon touched the core of what Jesus, Paul, and the early Christian communities were all about.  For the early Christians the most important issue was how they lived their lives.  The apostle Paul called his churches too imitate him as he imitated Jesus.  So, while Jesus did not face all the issues in first century Palestine that we face today in 21^st century America, it is still appropriate to ask ourselves often AWhat would Jesus do?@ as a guiding question for us today.

 

Since Tuesday is Election Day I have put a bit of a twist on the question and want to ask, AHow would Jesus vote?@

Now, while Jesus never voted in his life, it is not such a far-fetched question, for Jesus was not as a-political as some would have us believe and he does offer some guidelines which can guide us as we think about how we will vote on election day.

 

In truth Jesus was very political.  Beginning with what he called his message, Agood news.@  That phrase was a public term that evoked the political announcements of the Roman emperors.  When they would win an important military victory, they would send out messengers to announce Agood news.@  Second, when he characterized his message in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, and in his message to John the Baptist, he used the term Ajubilee,@ which is an economic and political, term.  For the Jews, Ajubilee@ was the teaching from Moses that every 49^th or 50^th year there was to be an economic Sabbath C that is, all debts were to be forgiven, all slaves set free, and all property returned to the original owners. 

 

So, how would Jesus vote?

First, I don=t think he would vote any particular party.

Jesus could not be pigeonholed into a party in his day.

Much of his teaching sounded radical, like that of the Zealots, but he was non-violent and peaceable, not very zealot-like.

He also sounded at times like a Pharisee, with his emphasis on right-living and purity, but he was much more accepting and non-judgmental.  Where the Pharisees wanted to blame the troubles of the day on the prostitutes and drunks and Roman collaborators (tax-collectors) and other notorious people, Jesus instead ate and drank with such people and said you cannot scapegoat them and blame all the ills of society on any group of marginalized people, but must love them and value them as children of God.

 

No, Jesus wouldn=t vote for partisan politics, but instead Jesus would take two guiding principals into the voting booth with him: Love God with every ounce and fiber of your being and love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Those were the principals that guided his life and they would guide his voting.

 

For Jesus the two commandments really went together, they were like two peas in a pod, or two sides of one coin.  If you truly loved God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, then you would love what God loves, which is you and all the other people of the world.

Not just the members of your family, or your clan, or your tribe, or your nation, but each and every person C especially those most in need of love C the poor, hungry, sick, imprisoned, young, elderly, unemployed, even those who did you harm, your enemies.

In the great tradition of the Hebrew prophets, Jesus understood that since God is one and there is only one God, there is not one set of Aright and wrong@ for the rich and another for the poor.  There is not one level of justice for one race and another level for a different race.  But just as God loves everybody and cares for everybody, even so we are to love everybody and care for everybody.

 

The Psalmist proclaimed that justice is what the God of Jacob, the God of Israel, the God who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, is all about.  That is why those who serve this God are happy, because this God is all about good living for all people, which starts by lifting up those from the bottom levels of society.

This is done by executing justice for the oppressed, ensuring food for the hungry, setting prisoners free, opening the eyes of the blind, lifting up those weighed down by the heavy burdens of life, watching over the strangers, taking care of the widows and orphans and affirming those who are doing right with their lives in the world.

 

This is the constant message of the prophets, beginning with Moses and it is the constant message of Jesus.  Sojourners magazine did a survey of the New Testament and identified that one of every sixteen verses contains a teaching on the question of poverty and wealth. 

None of those issues highlighted by the Psalmist includes abortion, divorce, public displays of the Ten Commandments, or homosexual sex C the issues hammered on by political fundamentalists and the Christian Right.

Jesus emphasized in his parable of the sheep and the goats at the final judgment that it was how we treat the poor, the prisoner, the ill, the stranger, the hungry and naked that demonstrated how we treated him.  His guiding principals of love for the One God and for our neighbors as for ourselves call us to realize that how we treat women and children, people of other races, our enemies, and the sick and dying, is how we treat Christ.

As God loves us we are to love others C no exceptions.

Our dignity as human beings is from God, as are our vulnerability and our connectedness with one another.

 

We begin to understand that justice is not an abstract word about laws or rights.  In the present world situation, justice is another word for love.   That is why Jesus was so concerned for justice for all people C because he loved them and that was the most powerful and meaningful expression of that love.

 

So, how would Jesus vote?

He would vote for people who were not just talking about, but actually living out, in their votes in government and in their personal lives, a love for God by loving all people.

He would recognize this in their work for justice; in how concerned they were for the poor, the hungry, for women and children, for the elderly, for the sick and disabled, for those working minimum wage jobs, and those without any health insurance and therefore limited access to health care.