From the TMC team: With the U.S. presidential election behind us, but surely no less societal division, frustration, and significant challenges that lie ahead, TMC aims to provide both encouragement and insight with a view toward hope. We are grateful to have such a diversity of voices across our network who represent vastly different contexts, communities with varying priorities and concerns, and diverse theological lenses employed to try to make sense of how the Spirit is moving. For the next several weeks, several colleagues and friends from across the TMC network will offer reflections on scripture in light of this particular moment. We hope you find it insightful and encouraging. As always, we’d love to hear from you.
Luke 18
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
After last week’s presidential election, political commentator Ezra Klein presented two options to his liberal leaning audience: contempt or curiosity. As a Christian minister on the progressive side of the political spectrum, I believe Klein rightly challenges me and others with similar leanings with the correct contrast. I believe we would do well to reconsider the categories we typically employ to interpret the election, our broader culture, and whoever we might see as those “other people,” to use the Pharisee’s words above. More specifically, we must rethink the tendency to isolate racism, sexism, and xenophobia as discreet motivations without careful consideration of how socioeconomic conditions can heighten or lessen people’s prejudices. And we must then acknowledge that we are all in various ways susceptible to this kind of political seduction. In fact, if we resist the temptation of contempt and instead choose curiosity, we will find that human beings respond to particular situations in relatively predictable patterns. We all naturally tend to respond to “vibes” and signaling that resonates with our socioeconomic situation and acute anxieties. When we see this, it can help us to see more clearly those key elements of our common humanity and confess our common brokenness. Then and only then will we move closer to the tax collector pleading for God’s mercy, and rightly reject the Pharisee’s self-righteousness. This nudge toward curiosity is not to suggest a false equivalence, as if everyone is in the same boat, or that people don’t face oppression, pain, and a multitude of challenges as our cultural, economic, and political situation changes. It is, rather, to encourage us toward a wider lens and a deeper, more comprehensive view of our neighbor and this world that God so loves.
Joe Scrivner, Pastor Brown Memorial Presbyterian, Dean of Stillman Chapel, Tuscaloosa AL
If you’d like to listen to Joe’s November 10th sermon on today’s blog passage, see the link below beginning at the 35-minute mark.
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