Faith Matters | Christians must decide how they will give their witness to the world
Before I met Jesus, I met Mr. Fred & Mr. Geary. I’m not sure what meeting they missed, but somehow they ended up teaching the middle/high school Sunday school class at our little church up north. I’m sure I had Sunday School teachers before them, but they are the ones I remember. So, I often think of them as the greeters at the reception desk of my faith. They were the first impressions that I have about Jesus, about His Kingdom, about His followers. And that impression was, and is, a good one. It’s likely a large part of the reason that I’ve invested my whole life in ministry.
As a pastor, I constantly find people in our larger Bradenton community who either don’t know Jesus or don’t want anything to do with Him, or His church. Most of the time, if you’re brave enough to ask them why that is, they will tell you that the followers of Jesus have not made a very good first impression. I get that. That’s why I’ve never put a church bumper sticker on the back of my car. I’d hate for your first impression of my church or my faith to be that we are impatient drivers who have little tolerance for left-hand turns from the right-hand lane.
Although I don’t sport a bumper sticker, I do wear a mask that has our church’s logo on it. And I do that because it’s my witness to what I believe. I believe, and it is more than OK for you to disagree, that wearing a mask is an act of loving my neighbor. This is not the space or place to get into the whole mask argument. Every person, every church, needs to wrestle with that one individually. But I believe that even if the science is wrong, even if I look stupid, that maybe, just maybe I did something that visibly showed that I care about my neighbor and my community – not because someone told me I had to do it, but because I wanted to. There IS a difference.
In the same way, followers of Christ, need to decide what their witness to the world is going to be during this election season and the months that follow it. Regardless of what you believe about the Bible, you simply will not find “Republican” or “Democrat” anywhere in it. I have always found it fascinating that I can preach a sermon and as people are headed out the door at the end, one person will say, “I sure hope those liberals got the message,” and a few people later someone will say, “It’s about time somebody told those Trumpsters about scripture.” It was the same exact sermon! How did that happen? Because God’s Word, like the rain, falls on us all and one specific political party cannot lay exclusive claim to the Scripture. Furthermore, I believe it damages our witness to do so.
A political party does not ultimately save lives. In the end game, a mask will not insure eternity. But using either of them as a weapon, as a way of disparaging those who don’t agree with you, can significantly damage the impression of what you believe to other people. It can damage your witness to Christ.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that perhaps Mr. Fred and Mr. Geary wouldn’t have agreed with me on sports teams or politics or vacation destinations. I have no idea where they are on the whole mask issue. But, what I do know is that my first impression of people who called themselves “Christians” was a good one. In all my years in their Sunday School class they never crammed their politics or anything else down my throat or rabidly judged my faith based on who I would’ve voted for. They were far less interested in kiNdom than they were in KinGdom, meaning that it was more important to them that people get to meet Jesus than it was to convince them to vote a certain way.
That’s not to say that we didn’t have hard discussions on topics like abortion or race or even elections. We did. But we did it from the context that gave everybody a place at the table and didn’t immediately count people out just because they didn’t “get it.” That’s how Jesus did it — with lepers, adulterers, Samaritans, even His own disciples. He stayed in relationship with them and they grew with Him.
Jesus never said, “Go and make Republicans.” Jesus never said, “Go and make Democrats.” Jesus DID say, “Go and make disciples.” And how are you going to make disciples if your behavior and your words make it so that nobody wants to be around you?
Faith Matters is written by members of the Bradenton clerical community. Hope Italiano Lee is the lead pastor at Kirkwood Presbyterian Church in Bradenton, 6101 Cortez Road W., which has in-person and live-streamed services at 10 a.m. each Sunday. Go to www.biggreenchurch.org for more information.