A Word From Joel - August 28, 2024

“But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’” Mark 6:49-50 You may have noticed that we live in anxious times. If there’s one thing our political parties agree on, it’s fear. Everybody is selling fear to a degree that I have not seen in my lifetime. The reasons we are told to be afraid are different depending on who you are listening to: crime, climate change, immigration, authoritarianism, socialism…the list could go on. The reasons we are told to be afraid are legion. How do we as followers of Jesus live in a fearful world? How do we keep our head about us in a divisive election season?

From now through November, we will be following Jesus in the Gospel of Mark in a series I’m entitling “God’s Politics.” Now, I will not be telling you explicitly or implicitly who to vote for. That’s not my job. My job is to preach the gospel, and the gospel has profound implications on how we live our lives both individually and collectively, including politics. This shouldn’t surprise us since Jesus’ entire preaching ministry was about the kingdom of God. That phrase is fraught with political implications, because Jesus already lived in the kingdom of Rome, and Rome wasn’t interested in having rivals. Not only that, but the earliest version of the gospel was for Jesus’ followers were three small but explosive words: Jesus is Lord. This was a dangerous thing to say because everyone in the Roman Empire knew that Caesar was Lord. Rome crucified those who claimed to be Lord. This is why the gospel has always been political. To claim Jesus as Lord means that Caesar is not. The invitation for those of us who follow Jesus is to live now as though Jesus is Lord, as though God’s kingdom is what determines how we live, move, and have our being. That’s what we are going to be considering between now and November.

 In Mark 6, Jesus sees the disciples alone in a boat in a storm at night. Isn’t that what it means to live in this world? Diagnosis, accidents, and death appear without any warning. There’s hatred, cruelty, and violence. The reason our politics is soaked in fear is because the world can be a scary place. What if this election season, we take Jesus’ words to heart and hold onto them for dear life: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” The reason we are not afraid is not because Jesus will miraculously calm every storm we face. It’s great when he does, but true faith holds onto these words even when the storm gets worse because in the end, we know that Jesus is Lord, which means the storm is not and Caesar is not, and neither is Joe Biden, or Donald Trump, or Kamala Harris, or inflation or Project 2025, or anything else you might be afraid of. If Jesus is Lord, that means nothing else is. Trusting that’s true, living as though it is true is how you keep your head about you amidst the storms of life.