Identity Politics

The scripture reading today comes from 2 Corinthians 5 verses 16 through 21. Let us hear these words. From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, the new is here. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to use the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Well, good morning, church. It's good to be here with you today. Last week we started our sermon series, Faith and Politics. And if you weren't here, one, I encourage you to go find a place to give it a listen on YouTube or on the church website or on Facebook or other places, just to kind of get caught up. It kind of sets the foundation of what we hope to accomplish over these six weeks of this series. The main thing I want to tell you today is that I kind of made a promise in that, that my promise to you is that I'm going to stick with scripture on what scripture says. I'm going to stick on what it means, what I believe it means to be a follower of Jesus in these situations, and to stick with that and stay above the partisan political fray on all of this.

Now, doesn't mean that we're not going to have our toes stepped on. In fact, I feel certain that today we may leave here with our toes bloodied and bruised. But I also asked you to make a promise to me, and that's if you feel like I'm off the mark. If I fail on that, if I'm wrong on something, or if you're not sure what I meant, that you would come talk to me, that you would set up a time for us to have coffee together or to come to my office and let's talk. That's the way forward as a nation. When we disagree with somebody, when we're not sure that we talk with them, that we listen to them, that we hear them out, that we share our thoughts, and that we can be in dialogue and interaction.

So I hope that we can model that in those times when maybe we do disagree with each other in the midst of this. Today we're going to talk about identity politics. If you're not familiar with the term, it's largely what it says. It's politics based on a particular identity, such as race, nationality, religion, gender, socio-economics, age, education, or any other identity a person holds that they choose to allow to define how they approach politics. So it's whatever you would like to identify yourself as on how you're going to approach and view and interact with politics. For me, it's sports. If somebody's running for office and they're a big fan of my team's rivals, I'm not voting for that person. I'm teasing. Sort of. But that's what I want us to kind of talk about. Identity politics may be a new term to us, but it's not new. In fact, the scriptures are filled with people who are engaging in identity politics. And I'll tell you every time if you look at it, it causes problems. We see identity politics at work in the 12 tribes of Israel. We see identity politics at work in the way kings are chosen. We see identity politics in the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel. We see identity politics in the interactions between Jews and Gentiles. And in the New Testament, in the gospel, what we see also is there are sects of Judaism that don't get along with each other and can't agree about how to rule Israel and they can't agree about Jesus either. We hear them mentioned as the Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, zealots, Herodians. All of these are identity politics and each creates division. I want to look at one particular thing and it's in Paul's letters.

We talked about it a little bit last week, how Paul was dealing with all sorts of division in these newly formed churches that he was overseeing, that he was trying to give leadership to, that he was trying to help them get off the ground. And in 1 Corinthians, what we see is Paul addressing these divisions in the new church. He sees it in so many ways and he uses that imagery in 1 Corinthians that we talked a little bit about how we're one body, the body of Christ, and we have many parts. And how can one part of the body say to another part, I don't need you. But he also calls out identity politics in the very first chapter of his very first letter to the church at Corinth. He gives the pleasantries, he gives the salutations, he greets them in the name of Jesus and then he gets into the meat of it and the first content that he offers is this, I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree with one another in what you say and there be no divisions among you but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this, one of you says I follow Paul. Now remember this is Paul writing this. So some are saying I'm a follower of Paul while others will say I'm a follower of Apollo. So to another I'm a follower of Cephas and still another I follow Christ. And then Paul says this, is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? Were you baptized in my name? No, I know what name I baptized you in These are identity politics. Christianity is new. And people were being brought to Christ left and right by these certain evangelists that are out there. These people who have sacrificed and given of themselves to go out and to share the gospel message of Jesus, to share the good news of Jesus that they had heard some of them directly from Jesus and now they're sharing it to the rest of the world. And people come to know Christ and they feel a lot of loyalty to the person who led them to Christ, whether it be Paul or Peter or Apollos or the like. And they become having their identity wrapped up, not in Christ, but in the person that led them to Christ. And they would say things to each other. They would say, well, I'm a Paul Christian. Well, I'm a Peter Christian. I'm an Apollos Christian and on and on. Paul saw the danger of that. He saw the danger of having their identity tied up in anything other than Jesus, especially in him. He knew that was dangerous because he knew who he was. I think that's a warning just at one level for us in denominationalism today. We need to be careful when we have our identity tied up in being a Methodist or a Baptist or a Church of Christ instead of having our identity tied up in Jesus. But it's not hard, right, to see how this translates into our politics of the day. I mean, we do have plenty of people who say, well, I'm a Democrat or I'm a Republican, right? We've had that for a long time, parties who have different ideals, different platforms, different ways of looking at things and thinking of things. But now in today's politics, we have divisions within the divisions.

We have sub-identities with under the major divisions. Are you a Reagan Republican or a MAGA Republican? Are you a Blue Dog Democrat or a progressive Democrat? This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but you get the point. Each party has groups within their groups, identity within the identities that separate us at so many levels. It's not just, are you a D or an R? Within that, there's so many divisions among them. Just within Judaism, there was the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and on and on. So there is so much division. So not only do we see fighting between parties, but we see fighting within the parties. As we look at today's political landscape, what we also see are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey breaking away from Trump and people like John Federman breaking away from the majority of the Democratic Party. We're used to seeing this division between the Democrats and the Republicans, but now it's working its way down to every level of the political system.

We are divided in so many ways and it stems from where people find their identity. And what happens is where they find their identity becomes more important to them than anything else. And so if they're willingly will point out the failures and shortcomings of the other, whoever the other is. But when those same shortcomings become evident within their own tribe, within their own political identity, within their own party or subgroup, then they remain silent. We've seen it, right? Possibly we've done it, right? I'll tell you another form of identity politics that's very prevalent in our nation. We hear about it a lot and the phrase alone elicits strong emotion in people. That phrase is Christian nationalism. The definition, if you're not understanding, I know you've heard it, but what Christian nationalism is, is it's an ideology that seeks to merge Christianity in with the nation's government almost blending the two in together so that being faithful to one is being faithful to another. Before I lean in here, I feel like I just need to give a little kind of announcement here.

I'm a proud American. I'm proud of the nation that I live in. I love my country. I love being an American. I love all of the opportunities and rights and privileges that it gives me. But my patriotism and my love of country is totally separate from my faith in God. And my love of country does not translate to a love of God or vice versa. And I think that's the problem. At times we think that by being a good American, that it translates into being a good follower of Jesus and that is way too small of thinking.

In fact, Paul was dealing with Christian nationalism in his day. This isn't a new thing. There's nothing new, church. We just cycle back and forth through it all. He was dealing with Christian nationalism, especially within the Philippian church, and he saw them looking for the government to be their Savior. And he tells the Philippians in his letter to them that they focus on earthly things. Hear this. But our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly await a Savior from there. Did you hear that? The Philippians were looking for a Savior from their earthly kingdoms.

They were looking for a politician, for a government official to rise up and save them. And Paul says it's not going to happen. You're looking in the wrong place. We are citizens of heaven and that's where our Savior will come from. It's similar to what our text started off with today. Paul's given the same messages over and over and over again. He's saying in the text that I shared at the beginning, you want Paul to be your Savior? You want Peter to be your Savior? You want Apollos or Cephas? They want them to be your Savior? You're looking in the wrong place and it's causing division among you. It's causing quarreling among you. It's causing some of you to think that maybe you're better than others because, well, you had Paul baptize you.

You just had some random Methodist preacher in Lebanon baptize you. He's saying this division is killing us and we have to figure out how to move past it. Is Christ divided, he says? There's only one Christ How can we divide the body of Christ? Was Paul crucified for you? No, there's only one who was crucified for you. Jesus' desire is that the whole world will be saved and that's our ultimate goal. Our hope, our only hope, church, is in Jesus.

That's Paul's message. That's what Paul tries to communicate to us. When we try to find our identity in anything other than Jesus, we will fail. We will be let down. We will miss the mark and we'll fall short and we will create walls and we will create division and we will create strife that will cause harm and hurt our witness. Now, it doesn't mean that we don't have opinions. It doesn't mean we don't engage in the political process, support people that we think identify what we believe and vote for them and campaign for them. That's not at all what it means. It's just that we don't have our identity wrapped up in them.

But if we can find our identity in Christ, then it's not only going to be beneficial to us, it's going to be beneficial to the world around us. It will transform us and it should transform the world if we can model something different. Instead of seeing someone who thinks differently than us, instead of as Democrats seeing someone as a Republican or as Republicans thinking of seeing someone as a Democrat and on down the line, if we can see that person as someone who has their identity in Christ, like I have my identity in Christ, then it can be transformative because we can disagree and still be in relationship together.

We can still be in fellowship together. We can still be the church together. Whether we're Methodist or Baptist or non-denomination or Catholic or Church of Christ, you name it, if we have Jesus as our identity above all else, and truthfully, I think that we're struggling with that as a nation I think that we're struggling with putting other identities above our identity in Christ, and Paul would be writing us a letter because that's not healthy. In our text for today, did you hear Pastor Rebecca and what she read? That we need to stop viewing people through the lens of the world. We need to stop viewing people through the lens of the world. That's what the scripture said. This is at the end of 2 Corinthians. It's kind of bookending the division he talks about in the beginning because he says if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation. The old is gone. If we are in Christ, then we should be about the ministry that Jesus gave us and that ministry is reconciliation because just as Jesus reconciled the world to him through his life, through his death, and through his resurrection, his followers should also be about the work of reconciling the world to him as well. Let me ask you this, church.

Does your life illustrate the work of reconciliation? That's what Paul says, that Jesus's life was about the work of reconciling the world to God. Does our life as followers of Christ reflect that? Does how we act, talk, post, live, make people want to know Jesus? To be drawn to Jesus by how we live our life? I'll just be honest, when I ask that of myself, I find myself lacking. Identity politics divides us.

Jesus calls us to the work of uniting, of reconciling. I always feel like there's three things, these are three things that I try to live by that I audit myself on regularly and I want to challenge you to do it today because I think it gets to the heart of where we identify and how we identify ourselves. We can say easily, identify as Christ, but if we do an audit of ourselves, would it reflect that? I think there's three areas that really give us insight into really what our priorities are, what our identity is.

The first one is where we spend our thoughts. Maybe the hardest one to really quantify the three I want to tell you, but where do you spend your thoughts? Where are when your mind's drifting? Where does it go to? Because that'll give us good insight into really where our priorities are, where our identities lie and you know today oftentimes our thoughts they just tend to spill out on social media and conversations. If someone were to audit your social media, what would they say just from your social media where your identity is? The second is where do you spend your time? Our time is limited.

It's probably one of the most limited resources we have. We never seem to have enough of it. How do you spend your time? Look at your calendar. Look at how you spend your days, how you spend week to week. What are your habits? What does your calendar say about your priorities? The third is how do you spend your money? There's your checkbook, bank statement, credit card and Venmo account reflect your priorities and how you want your life to be. If not, what do they show your priorities to be? You see how we spend our thoughts, how we spend our time and how we spend our money.

They define a lot about what our identity is, who we claim to be, what our priorities are and gives us a place to work on to become who we want to be, to find our identity in Christ. There's nothing wrong with supporting a party, supporting a person, being proud of the nation that we live in, but as Christians, our identity can only be found in Christ and Christ calls us clearly to the work of reconciling the world to Him, not dividing it.

Thanks be to God. Amen.