I read every morning with Encounter with God, a practice I started when my husband Whitney was president of Scripture Union USA. This week the readings were in Revelation.
On Thursday, minutes after hearing President Trump had tested positive for Covid-19, I read the header for the notes on Revelation 17: How the Mighty Are Fallen. The chapter is about the fall of Babylon, an oppressive commercial empire "rooted in pride and independence."
Glittering, flaunting, and powerful, Babylon brooks no rivals and corrupts everything it touches. It offer so much, but nothing it gives satisfies - it gives materialism without morality, pleasure without purity, and wealth without wisdom: an empty life. The world of the city trader, the multinational, the entrepreneur selling to the consumer society, may at times be profoundly anti-Christian.
The daily APPLY section said: "Recognize where things are smoke and mirrors. Pray for discernment, that you may not be duped."
I know Scripture Union notes are written years before they appear here in the US. The notes on Revelation were written by Colin Sinclair, a minister from Scotland who was Chair of Scripture Union's International Council in 2014 when Whitney and I attended an international meeting in Greece, where we met Colin and his wife Ruth.
He was certainly not thinking of our current political scene when he wrote those blistering words, but how close to home they hit. I pray daily for discernment as I watch so many taken in by smoke and mirrors, duped by empty promises and the corrupting promise of power.Friday's reading in Revelation 18 hit even closer with the header Power-Crazed Worldliness and the opening prayer:
Lord, keep our affections centered on You.
Consider: Thank God that we are citizens before we are consumers. We are called to look out for others, not just ourselves. Remember whose citizen you are.The note continues:
A lifestyle built on possessions, position and pleasure will not last. Its fall is tragic, dramatic and ironic. . . Seemingly invulnerable, the seeds of its destruction have been sown. Its desolation warns all imitators: get too close, and you risk infection.
Christians must acquire a critical objectivity about their culture, and then dare to be different. The city's sins carry a very heavy price tag . . . If money and power mean everything to you - then prepare to lose the game.
Today's reading in Psalm 72 holds up the values God expects in any ruler. Colin Sinclair's note makes an unexpected point:
Kings in Israel were like constitutional rather than absolute monarchs. They were subject to God's law. Their rights and duties were written down and deposited in the temple (1 Samuel 10:25). The king must have heard the part of this psalm's prayer: that he defend the afflicted and crush the oppressor and that he deliver the needy and protect the weak. Radical expectations indeed.
Tracking those duties of Biblical kings, I come again and again to this: administer justice.
I've posted in the past about God's insistence on justice. In 2014, Justice for All, I spoke of carrying the word as a prayer:
Justice is one of those words encompassing a rich mix of multiple meanings, illuminated by interchangeable translations between the Hebrew words mishpat and tzedaqah and the English words justice, righteousness, equity, mercy, victory, salvation, “doing all that’s good and right.”
In that post I quoted Tim Keller's
The mishpat, or justness, of a society, according to the Bible, is evaluated by how it treats these groups. Any neglect shown to the needs of the members of this quartet is not called merely a lack of mercy or charity but a violation of justice, of mishpat. God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we. That is what it means to “do justice.”
In 2017 I wrote another post on justice, Outcry, about the prophet Nehemiah's outcry against unjust leadership, and the need to cry out against even greater exploitation on the part of our own national leader:
The exploitation of Nehemiah's day seems mild compared to the inequities of our own.
Our Congress just approved the richest cabinet ever, including a billionaire who has used her wealth to buy influence and shape public policy in a way that has worsened segregation and undermined education for the poorest and most needy.
Our president has defrauded workers and has cheated thousands of students of both tuition and time.
In our service this morning on the front lawn of my church, our rector, Richard Morgan, reminded us that the Pharisees of Jesus' day believed they were right in opposing him. They were so locked in to their own loyalties and ideas they couldn't recognize Jesus, even when he stood right there in front of them. In his sermon, Richard asked: "what would it take to help you hear God?" He described the political ruts we find ourselves in and asked again "what would it take to change your mind? What would it take to really hear God?"
For us, today, what would it take to hear God?
My mail-in ballot arrived this week. I'll be voting prayerfully this afternoon and putting it back in the mail tomorrow.
As I do for every election, I'll be spending time on Vote411.org, a League of Women Voters website that offers links to candidates' positions and answers they provide to questions on key policy positions.
I make it a point never to vote for candidates who refuse to answer Vote411 questions. If they don't care enough about what voters think to answer a few questions and provide some links, then clearly they don't deserve my vote.
In some cases that makes my decision easy. In others, I'll be looking for evidence of integrity, faithfulness, compassion. I'll be looking for concern for the poor and the displaced, and a willingness to stand up for those who face oppression.
Scripture makes clear: God will judge a nation's leaders by how they treat the poor, the weak, the stranger.
Our loyalty isn't to party. Or a person. Or even a particular position.
It's time to pray for discernment.
Time to remember whose citizens we are.
The Reverend Robert Schenck explains how God changed his heart. Other links in this post were found at Christians against Trump and Political Extremism
