I think I may have had a religious experience at Rotary

The other day a member of my church very kindly took me with him to Rotary.  I’m looking for ways to get engaged in the community and this is a real possibility.  Honestly, I was expecting a nice meal, good conversation, and a mildly interesting speech of some sort.

Turns out that the food was excellent, the conversation was great but most surprising the speech spoke right to my heart.  (Not an easy thing for a pastor attending a Rotary club to admit!)  The speaker was Washington State Secretary of State Sam Reed.  Sam is retiring soon and has no plans on running for office again so he is in that rare place of being able to speak his mind without much in the way of filters.  Sam has also been in public service almost all his life and is a Republican.

 

I was expecting a speech about why we should vote and support Republican candidates.  No problem there is much good in the Republican Party.  I was rather stunned when instead he started to talk about the level of civility in public discourse.   He pulled out of his long history in politics and cited several examples of diametrically opposed parties finding a way to work it out and he even seemed to think compromise was not a swear word.   (In fact, he flat out said it was the foundation of democracy)

In the end he did something that almost made me fall off my chair.  He asked these Rotarians, all of them people of influence and resource, to challenge everyone who asked for their support to pledge to three things, civility, moderation, and bipartisanship.   There was a high-level political leader asking a group of high influence people to hold politicians to civility, moderation, and bi-partisanship?  I almost got woozy for a second. 

As we were pulling out of the parking lot my parishioner said something to the effect of ... imagine that, asking them to behave like adults!  I don’t normally give Amen’s outside of the church but I sure had the urge to do it right there in the car.   Frankly, I am often embarrassed by the behavior of so many politicians and pundits.  Really, I wouldn’t let my kids talk to people like that.

 

I’m probably going to get in trouble for this but I have pretty much banned politics in our church.  It’s not because of my party affiliation.  (Neither side wants me)  It’s not because I wouldn’t welcome the free exchange of ideas about how to make our country even greater than it already is, I would love that.  It is because when people start talking about politics they start acting like politicians and that is just embarrassing!   People have a tendency, even in the church to divide down party lines and view “the others” as somehow suspect and frankly we just can’t have that in the body of Christ.

 

One of the central themes of the early church was a call to unity.  They had all kinds of political and cultural dividing lines that represented a great opportunity for the evil one to separate them from each other.  Wisely, the early pastoral disciples called the churches to unity and love for each other.   In fact, the one new command Jesus gave us was Love each other!  Turns out that means you have to love folks who are in the other political party as well!

In the months ahead the noise around political discourse is going to only get louder.  I’m sure more people will tell me how important it is that we as a church lobby for people to vote this way or that.  In those moments I remind myself of the words of Jesus... My kingdom is not of this earth.   Should we divide His body over the kingdom of this world?