The lectionary is interesting in how it guides our thoughts. I had other ideas for this week, but this scripture of Jesus asking this man about healing really sent my thoughts elsewhere.
I choose to believe that is one of the way that Holy Spirit works - by speaking in the scripture as I read it.
Do We Want to be Healed?
We have to figure out how to talk to people who disagree with us. Churches are the right place for these conversations.
It's terrifying. Especially for the people who have been hurt directly, or are blatantly being threatened, and for their family and friends, it feels impossible to have these conversations. It feels like self-preservation to avoid the people who are trying to hurt us. I want to use the courts, and public protest, and to depend on the constitution to save our nation.
But the long-term health of our nation requires a change of heart, and a change of heart requires relationships, and a relationships are built in conversation. The question is this: "do we want to be made well?" If we do, then we must do the hard working of picking up our mat and walking toward the work of healing.
A recent post-mortem of the election shows that high numbers of people in our mainline churches voted for the present administration. Another small group couldn't bring themselves to vote for either major candidate. Church is one of the few places that people of different political views sit together, eat together, share stories of our lives together. If we are serious about wanting healing, we are the people that can have these conversations, if we dare.
We have the benefit of a common faith story, a common history together, and a common God to keep us connected to each other. We've got to find those commonalities.
To do this, we cannot start with the presumption that we can, or even should, be trying to change people's minds. The first step must be only about hearing what our sibling-in-Christ is thinking, feeling, and doing in these times. I trust that the majority of people in this nation want reasonable changes to our nation, and don't know what to do to get those changes.
To be clear, I don't know what they want. I'm afraid, like you, that they actually hate people who are immigrants, who are trans or queer, or who are poor. It is possible that they do. But it is also possible that the individuals in your congregation had some other fear or frustration or concern that made them accept the hate in return for some other theoretical benefit. We can't know until we talk, and talk with some depth.
The leaders on the left have spent a great deal of time critiquing, condemning, and constructing a picture of an uneducated hater who votes against their own interests. Honestly I have done the same. And that means we don't know what their decision-making was actually like. We don't know how their faith informed their choices. These specific individuals, right here in our own church, have some need that we don't know about. Similarly, we on the left have argued most strongly for maintaining the status quo, even though we know that our health care system is not working, our anti-poverty programs are not enough, our immigration system is broken. We've argued against the Republican proposed fixes, without successfully communicating how we will fix what is clearly a broken nation.
Your conversations should not be about electoral politics, nor should the rehash the last election. Instead we have to get to stories of how the system is broken, and how people have been hurt, and what we wish would be the specific solutions to very contextual problems. This is not "how do we fix health care;" this is what should have happened when you got that outrageous bill. We are trying to get at what this person in front of needs to have a satisfactory life. What is interfering with their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?
Next newsletter will get into what to these conversations might look like.
None of this is in place of protesting and protecting our neighbors. But dialogue with those we disagree with is part of creating a new nation for the long-term. Jesus asks if we want to be made well. Are we willing to engage these hardest discussions?
Is your church engaging in church wide, or community conversations. Are they scary? Are they fruitful? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening.
Ryan Burge used the data from the Cooperative Election Study to show that only 40% of mainline Protestants voted for the Democratic Presidential Candidate in the 2024 election. If you scroll down further in his newsletter you can find the breakdown for many protestant denominations.
The social graces suggest we should not talk about religion, money, or politics. But is that what creates a healthy congregation? Does your congregation want to hear more politics? Do other congregations want to hear about politics? The data is from a PRRI study. Interesting it includes topics like racism which I would not identify as "politics" but rather "faith in one God".
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