sermons after attempted assassination

Yesterday, Donald Trump survived an assassination. Today is Sunday, and many American sermoners opened up to their Christians about Faith and its relation to politics.

It is the worthiest topic. I love to hear it spoken about, even if the expression is confused. I expect that today many churchgoing Christians heard thoughts that, even if they couldn’t put a finger on why, didn’t seem to fully fit together.

My deacon’s homily was a great single picture, I think, of the wider Church’s clouded mind on the matter. He started by saying that even people who consider Donald Trump an enemy should love him: a pure Christian truth and a rejection of worldly thinking.

Then, he told us that politics should not be the main focus of Christians. He told us that instead of putting our hopes and efforts into politics, Christians ought to be focused on the Kingdom of God, which only Jesus can bring.

This moment, a repetition of ten thousand like moments in ten thousand churches past, was the first point of the sermon when I hoped that some minds in the room were saying, “Hmm.”

I hoped some were wondering, “‘Not politics, but rather the Kingdom.’ But isn’t a kingdom an inherently political concept? Does the idea of a non-political kingdom make any more sense than a square circle or a married bachelor?”

The second moment for reflection came when, seconds after saying that politics should not be a Christian priority, the homilist said that Christians were not to ignore politics, Christians were not meant to abandon the political process to the World, but were meant to engage in the political process to try and advance the Kingdom of Heaven as much as we can.

Whoa, okay. Yes! Yes, brother. But I could not have been the only listener who felt the whiplash. We should care about politics, then? The Kingdom of Heaven is actually a political reality? What is going on? Why this craziness?

The craziness is not isolated to this particular friendly deacon; it is everywhere in the Church. The smoke that blinds and bothers everyone, and which leads to unfruitful contradiction, is the revilement felt for Normal Politics and the World’s political style. Christians recognize the day’s political situation as evil: one reflex says to work to change it, another reflex says to stay away from the scumpond.

In 2024, the first reflex is right and the second is wrong. But every Christian is correct to think that the current way politics is done is not pleasing to God. By ‘politics’, people tend to mean ‘politics as we have known it’, and every Christian is right to stand against politics so understood.

What, then? How are we to engage?

We heard the answer in our Gospel.

Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick—no food, no sack, no money in their belts. They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic.

This is the way. This is how Christians are to engage in politics. We have received authority over unclean spirits and this is how we will exercise that authority. The force for the Lord to upend worldly politics will be men and women who love Him and who have nothing. Anything else is more of the same.

There is no need for obscurity or confusion regarding Christian politics. Heaven is clear; God’s light shines through now. It heats and burns the World. The Lord Jesus, fully alive in believers who manifest every aspect of His Face, will realize the utopian Kingdom of God.

This is His will,

set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.