Politics While We Wait
In Sunday’s sermon, I pulled together passages from across the Old Testament (highlighting especially Jeremiah 33) that point to Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah. I also demonstrated from Zechariah 3 and 6 how Jesus likewise fulfills the promised priestly function of this Branch of David – a surprising function given his birth from the tribe of Judah, which yet fits everything we see in the New Testament. The primary takeaway from this revelation is that Jesus is the one who brings the material and spiritual restoration that God promises to his people. Some of this is pending, awaiting his return, but when Christ returns we anticipate that he will introduce a new age of human flourishing under his government of justice and peace. I closed out by emphasizing that we can’t look to anyone else on the world stage to deliver us this glorious state of affairs – only Jesus can. We must embrace inevitable frustration and dissatisfaction as we await Christ’s return.
This is a difficult path to walk. In relation to politics, it’s easy for us to either be totally apathetic or rabidly zealous – to not care at all or to care as though our fate depends on it. The sort of dissatisfaction we are called to embrace is not really a middle way between those two, but a different way altogether. It requires us to care deeply about politics, while at the same time not placing any hope in it. A middle way would just split the difference – care a little and hope a little in politics. That’s not the way of Christ.
In the course of his ministry, Jesus makes it clear that his kingdom is not of this world and yet we see him express profound care for the downtrodden and utter scathing rebuke towards the rulers of the people. Rather than fixing his aim on the pagan Romans, he focuses on the Jewish religious authorities who effectively ordered Jewish society and who were God’s people. At its fullest reach politics orders the realities of our daily life and Jesus confronted those situations directly when he ate with sinners and crossed tense racial relations as he did with the Samaritan women at the well.
We receive another indication of Jesus’s political concern in his sermon on the mount. He tells us: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” [Mat 5:9 ESV] The biblical concept of peace extends beyond a merely emotional experience of calm or a cessation of war; biblical peace is characterized by a harmonious state of affairs in which human beings are flourishing. Hence, being a peacemaker means more than being bridge-builder in your personal relationships. As important as that is, being a peacemaker means that you go even further by doing those things that will help your local community and our broader society flourish.
Notably, being peacemakers is tied into our identity as God’s children. It is not situationally dependent – in all places and at all times, we are called to be peacemakers. This continues to be the case in the present. We don’t hope in politics, because all political hopes are only and ever fulfilled in Christ. Even so, it’s apparent that we should seek to permeate all politics with Christian peace. Not because our governments can be perfected, but because in truth they all belong to Christ as King.
We seek to preserve good governments and to reform governments that should be made good. At the same time, we recognize that these are still only shined up pennies – they can’t purchase, they can’t deliver, the perfection we ultimately desire. Albert .C. Johnson, a classic Advent Christian writer from the early 20th century, offers up one of my all-time favorite quotes that I think aptly captures this tension in which we live. I leave you with him:
What is true waiting for Christ? Does it rightly suggest the cessation or restraint of activity in Christian service? That we should make no plans for future labor in the field? Is it an idle looking, watching, waiting? Far from this. When the church has most fervently looked for the Lord's return she has been most diligent in the work of the vineyard. The Scripture nowhere sanctions an idle watching or waiting for his coming. The waiting rather means that we have a great hope whose fruition will not come to pass in this age, a splendid ideal that can be realized only after and by means of Christ's second advent. Therefore we set our hearts and hopes on that advent as the goal of promise, of joy and light. It means that we do not place our hope on what man can do for mankind, or on what the church, civilization or social service can do for the world, but only upon what Christ can and will do for the race by and following his second coming. Success to every worthy effort for world-betterment, but above and beyond all this we wait for the day of Christ, the day of redemption, of resurrection and restoration.
-Albert C. Johnson, "The Church Ready and Waiting for the Second Advent" in Adventism Triumphant, p. 67
Rev. Tom Loghry
Tom Loghry is the senior pastor of Rockland Community Church in North, Scituate, RI. He is a graduate of the Berkshire Institute for Christian Studies, Toccoa Falls College (B.S. Pastoral Ministry), and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (M.A. Theology). He is continuing his graduate studies in the area of “Ethics & Society” at GCTS.
Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001, 2007, 2011, 2016 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.