I preached this sermon on Sunday, July 21, 2004. Feel free to use all or part of it, with our without attribution.
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Live by the Spirit… the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Galatians 5 has become a go-to Scripture for me. It says freedom is not the destination for our lives. Freedom is not the end, it’s the means to a better end. What is the purpose the freedom that God gives? Not self-indulgence, Paul says. Nor is it self-actualization, which our culture says. Freedom is definitely not yours so that you can get wealthy or have power. No, instead, Jesus has yet another trick up his sleeve. Christ sets you free… so that you might choose to be “enslaved” by love. Only when you are free to choose between any possible path can it then be said that you have chosen the constraints, the burdens, the beautiful self-limitation that comes when you love others. I don’t know if you know--but choosing love is hard. That why we need the Holy Spirit to show us how. If you live by God’s Spirit, this passage says, you will know that you are using your freedom well because all around you there will be sweet fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
This text will be our backdrop as we talk about politics.
I wade into these waters hesitantly. After the 2016 election, I preached a sermon for those who had concerns about Donald Trump. Afterward, one of our members, an amazing woman in a longtime same-gender partnership came up and said to me “I have never been so offended by a sermon in my whole life. I voted for that man,” she said. I knew we had a few folks who had, but I never would have guessed her. I apologized. I told her I was truly sorry my words had hurt. I asked her to help me understand what I had said that offended her, so could learn. I affirmed with her what I affirm with you: I see only part of the picture. Every preaching moment is part of a conversation. When you take seriously what is said and push back when you need to push back--that’s just as essential as the sermon itself. It’s how we learn and grow together. I also remember in that conversation in 2016 that we told each other that we loved each other and that we would hold fast to that love. And we did until she joined the communion of the saints in light. Let this sermon today be part of our ongoing conversation to seek the way of Jesus in this world.
American politics is in a bad place. It’s not that we disagree now more than ever. Our disagreements aren’t more dramatic or rancorous than before. We fought a Civil War. We know conflict, we know political rhetoric that flares into violence. But knowing this kind of conflict isn’t new doesn’t make it feel better. It feels lousy. It feels like it’s getting worse.
One of the hard things to accept is that we’ve chosen this reality for ourselves. For 50 years, Americans have all been sorting ourselves into like-minded communities. I couldn’t wait to leave Ohio when I was 18, I thought it was so provincial--me and JD Vance, apparently. Liberals love porches, parks, density and “diversity.” Conservatives like open spaces, big trucks, low taxes, and traditional values. 50 years ago--1974, only one quarter of Americans lived in landslide counties, where one party won the presidential vote by over 20 points. Now 2/3 of voters live in landslide counties. Put another way, Joe Biden won 85% of counties with a Whole Foods but 32% of counties with a Cracker Barrel. We live with people like us. We don’t know people with whom we disagree. Few social institutions make us work together across party lines; the military may be the last one. Congressional districts get gerrymandered to protect politicians from competition--only 8% of Congressional races are competitive. In these bubbles of sameness, politicians run to the extremes. Individual votes matter less. We get cynical and disengaged--only the ideological partisans--the nut jobs--stay involved in politics. No offense to you nut jobs.
We have these differences. Media drives a wedge through them and makes money off them. NPR and Fox report the news on different planets. Social media algorithms boost your most inflammatory messages because when they elevate conflict, they can monetize every click. Religion could be a mediating factor in this world of difference. Jesus does say something about loving your neighbor. Mainline Protestants are still split 50/50, but every pastor I know is afraid to talk about politics because our budgets are fragile and we’re scared of losing donors. Evangelical churches? They tilt 85/15 for Republicans, they aren’t helping the divide, they drive it. Evangelical churches have normalized divisive violent theology and normalized powerful, unaccountable male leadership. Some evangelicals have abased themselves to gain proximity to power, drawing that tradition farther away from anything that resembles the way of a crucified savior, the Prince of Peace.
I wish I were in a place today where all we needed to say was “let’s work harder to get to know one another across lines of difference.” I believe deeply in that project. Never give up on face-to-face relationships across lines of difference; it may be the only way God converts enemies back into human beings with whom we know we share much in common. Wonderful organizations like Braver Angels model bipartisan civil discourse.
But this moment is different. Donald Trump has changed American politics. He has done this by exploiting our differences. By “exploiting” I mean that instead of doing what regular politicians do and saying, “here’s what my party stands for and here’s what they stand for and here’s why you should vote for me and for my party’s policies,” Trump turns our differences into a story about imagined violence and victimization. In his telling of our national story, it’s not just that Americans disagree on political principles, it’s that they are “the enemy” and they are harming “us” and this is war.
Trump is a demagogue. Demagogues have appeared in democracies since ancient Athens--they’re a feature of popular rule. Throughout history, demagogues use the same tactics: first, they exaggerate danger to stoke fear; then, they scapegoat minority groups for causing the danger, playing up existing racial, religious, or class prejudices. Demagogues are master manipulators, skilled liars. They manufacture a crisis, then propose forceful solutions; they accuse moderates and opponents of weakness--and ridicule or threaten them. Demagogues overturn norms of political conduct and loosen limits on power. A demagogue, in the words of one historian, is “a person whose lust for power without recourse to principle leads them to become a master of the masses.”
America has had demagogues before. Anyone remember who won Georgia in 1968? White racist George Wallace. Neither Wallace nor Trump create our divisions; they expose and exploit the ones that are already there. The resentment of our white working class; the misogyny stoked by women’s rights; the fear of evolving gender norms. Trump is showing us us. It’s garden variety demagoguery. But this is new. In the past, demagogues have stayed a minority. Trump’s power grows. He has conquered and colonized one of our two major parties. No impeachment or prosecution to hold him accountable for his frauds and crimes has stopped him. Trump’s following is larger, more permanent, and more national than any previous American demagogue. His pathologies are normalized; we’re numb to his toxicity.
Some supporters are pragmatic. They say, “well, he’s not a good man, but I want lower taxes and conservative justices, so I’ll go along.” Other supporters are “true believers.” They imagine him in a mythic, even a divine, light. “Our nation needs a hero right now,” someone said this week at the convention. “God saved his life so he can save our nation,” another said. This is what is known as idolatry; God despises it.
Donald Trump is a charismatic, brilliant, and deeply troubled man. He is among the most morally malformed public figures we have ever seen. That’s not a judgment. It’s a conclusion drawn from the evidence of his life. As a real estate developer in the 70s, Trump's employees were told to mark rental applications with a "C" for "colored" to ensure those folks couldn’t rent his apartments. Trump chronically stiffed and cheated small business owners with whom he contracts, not paying them money he owed, putting some out of business. He cheats on his taxes, on financial reports, and loan applications; he’s a grifter who would avoid paying for our schools, parks, police, fire departments to enrich himself. In 1989, five young Black boys were accused of sexually assaulting a young white female jogger in New York City, Donald Trump took out a full page ad in the NY Times to advocate for them to suffer the death penalty; they were all innocent; they were exonerated in 2002 when another man confessed. Donald Trump, however, is accused and convicted of raping and sexually assaulting multiple women. He reviles immigrants, who, with their children are ¼ of all Americans--he blames them for our problems when immigrants are and have always been essential to America’ s strength. He called for the "registration" of Muslims. He mocks people with mental and physical disabilities.
Again and again, he threatens violence to people who oppose him. He jeered when Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked with a hammer; he laughed off a plan to abduct Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. He delighted in watching the January 6 riot at the Capitol during which people called for the hanging of the house speaker and the vice president.
Donald Trump does not believe in the thing that is most sacred to America--he does not believe in democracy. There are two principles--two agreements--upon which democracy stands. Election by the people--we elect our leaders; and the rule of law--we are all equal before the law. Trump tried to invalidate citizens’ vote in the 2020 election--he continues to lie and say it was stolen. In his indignance and denial in his many court cases, you can see that he believes he is above the law. The job of the President of the United States, under Article II of the Constitution, is to execute and enforce the laws created by Congress. That’s the job. Donald Trump cannot and will not do that job. That’s what people who served with Donald Trump in his first administration say, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of the Navy, National Security Advisor, two Secretaries of Defense, White House Chief of Staff, two Secretaries of State, the Attorney General, and his own Vice President. They have all said publicly that he’s unfit to serve. If elected, Donald Trump won’t be a president. He will try and be a dictator. Democracy is deeply informed by Christian values--by the imago dei--the image of God in every person; by the love of our enemies when we insist on protecting their God-given rights. Democracy is how God’s dream of freedom and justice is best realized in the public sphere. Donald Trump damages democracy for his own ego needs.
I haven’t said the hardest part yet. The part that gets closest to the truth. Donald Trump’s conscience doesn’t work. He’s broken. He doesn’t feel shame or remorse for hurting people; nor does he understand the grace that comes with apology and forgiveness. He is relationally and emotionally deformed. It is not clear he’s capable of empathy for people in pain. His sense of reality curves inward. He’s a sad man whose bluster and bravado mask an inner emptiness; he projects his own predatory nature onto others; he craves people’s affection to fill the void of his own loveless existence. He deserves our pity.
I might be wrong. Donald Trump might be great for America. I might read this sermon in 10 years and say, “oh, I blew that one, America is great again.” But I’ve also read Hannah Arendt and her work on the banality of evil, and how Germans normalized that which was otherwise intolerable. I’ve read about the Rwandan genocide and where dehumanization leads. We can’t be silent about what we see. I also want to say that I love Donald Trump--mostly because Jesus commands me to. He’s funny. He’s charming, in a way. He acts tough. I just think Donald Trump belongs in a church pew every Sunday, or on a therapist’s couch, or maybe, if the courts say so, wearing an ankle bracelet--not in a seat of power.
So, what’s a follower of Jesus to do? Keep reaching out across lines of difference. Don’t be afraid to listen to others--hear their pain and their hopes. Reject violence in word and deed. Don’t be afraid to speak your truth in love. Refuse to normalize this kind of politics. Speak up with and for others who are being targeted. Immigrants are afraid. Trans kids are afraid. White Christians can’t be afraid. This is a time to be courageous. Get involved in the November election. Help people register to vote. Get involved in voter turnout. Be a poll worker. Help make the sacred promise of democracy a reality.
Limit your news intake--even the most trusted news sources will play to the conflicts and leave you feeling depleted. When you have to get news, read it instead of watching it.
Take walks; behold God’s good creation. Laugh deeply. Love on your families. Take care of your neighbors. Volunteer in the church’s ministries--kids still need backpacks filled with school supplies. Volunteer for our partner church Shalom’s after school program that supports new young immigrants. Volunteer with Coalition for a Diverse DeKalb to build affordable housing in every neighborhood. Support Presbyterians for a Better Georgia’s work at the state capitol to get Georgia closer to providing health care for everyone. Get to know one of our FreeFridge guests and get to know their story and walk with them toward a better future. Sing in our choir--make a joyful noise to the Lord. Reach out to someone who is lonely with a caring call and an offer of lunch. Teach Sunday school and tell our children about the love of God and how big that love really is and listen to them--to whom they know God to be.
In short, here’s what you should do: take your freedom, and bind yourself with love to the wellbeing of your neighbors.
On the day after the 2016 election a seminary friend of mine who works for trans rights and against mass incarceration said:
Nothing today is changed.
Each day, we wake up and work to bring justice and accountability for the death and incarceration and deportation of black and brown folks, for the death and shaming and disempowerment of trans folks, for the violence against women that continues unchecked.
It hasn't mattered to those we serve who is in the white house, so it can't matter to us. carry on the good and holy work.
The call of Christ for your life is the same today as it will be on Tuesday, November 5th and on Wednesday, November 6th. Politics do matter--people’s lives are at stake as is our democracy. But as important as politics are, the Kingdom of God that Jesus shows us--the Beloved Community of God--the will of God on earth as it is in heaven--the luminous vision of lions and lambs laying down together, of the last being first, of the end of poverty through the sharing of God’s abundance, of the stranger being welcomed, of every tear being wiped away--God’s world has not yet and may never roll in on the wheels of a party platform. It comes when you take this gift of freedom, and knowing you could choose to use it any way you want, you choose to bind yourself to others with a love that is the only thing that ever saves. How will you know you’re on the way? You know you’re in Christ because you taste Christ’s sweetest fruit:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
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