Paul Graves: For good of our community, get out of God’s way

“I hoped for more.”

That’s how a pastoral colleague and good friend began his response to last month’s column about faith and politics at the intersection.

Bob then asked for more specific starting places for “figuring out the abundant confusion” about how faith and politics might work together better.

My friend was right about that column. It was pretty generic. So let’s sit down at the intersection’s curb and talk some more. (The curb is safer if you don’t want to get run down by a reckless faith or runaway politics zooming by.)

I believe a healthy place to begin our conversation is with some simple truth-telling. I suggest we first admit the presence of politics in the most basic of social relationships, be they family or friendships.

Let’s also admit that politics is alive and well in our faith communities. If that shocks you, please get over it.

Where do we start looking at our faith? Being a Christian, I must logically begin with Jesus. If you follow another tradition, I suspect you’ll find that some of the attitudes and beliefs I identify here will connect with basic affirmations of your own faith.

One of the stunning characteristics of Jesus was how selfless he was. This was not just in relation to other people. Primarily, his predominant desire was to do what God wanted him to do in relation to other people. His own will must be emptied out to make room for God’s will to function more freely.

Last Sunday, our church choir sang of this truth. The refrain to “Empty of Me,” by Susan Bentall Boersma and David Lantz III, is a great reminder:

“Fill me up, Lord, I want to overflow. Fill me up with your spirit full and free. Turn me upside down, pour me out on the ground, then fill me up and keep me empty of me.”

So what will God’s spirit fill us up with so we can remain “empty of me”?

As I read the Gospel stories of Jesus and the stories that fed and shaped his own faith as a boy and young man – from the book Christians call the Old Testament – I see some common actions of God’s spirit at work.

Hebrew Scriptures spoke often and eloquently about their community (a political entity) being most faithful to God when they cared for their weakest and most vulnerable members. Prosperity was shared by all.

There were many times the Hebrews were not faithful in their caring or their sharing. In those times, some prophet stood up to remind them that some betrayal of personal faith had a direct impact on their political community.

Jesus’ life fleshed out God’s insistence that the vulnerable must be protected and that wealth must be shared more equitably. The love ethic lived by Jesus was based on his being “empty of me” and filled with God’s passion and compassion for all people, not just Jews.

So how does this empty-of-me faith work within our own experience of the political relationships in which we live and move?

Sometimes it works easily, but most often with some degree of personal reluctance and social difficulty.

This is when I try to remember that while I may not always welcome people as fully as I can, or serve them as willingly as I might, God’s “radical hospitality” is much deeper and more unconditional than I can ever be. So I must do and be only as much as I can do and be – and leave the rest to God.

That is how I try to manage my faith in a political circumstance.

We cannot escape the truth that our personal faith always has a social result. So how do you find yourself able to be more consistent in your loving of others and your advocating for others?