On Joseph and Not Voting

Here's another portion of a recent sermon, this one was dealing with the story of Joseph...

It is not too extreme to suggest that each of our presidential candidates offers some sort of vision of salvation--perhaps not in an ultimate sense, but at least in a political sense. Then again, the line between these two is quite blurry. The rhetoric we hear often crosses the line between the temporal and the transcendent. That the political sense often becomes ultimate should remind us that we have lost a sense of the transcendent in our common discourse. We no longer recognize a need for ultimate salvation. Politics is all that there is.
In the face of this lie, the story of Joseph reminds us that God is Lord over all—families and even empires. It is God at work through the faithfulness of His people that He will accomplish His purposes. If we doubt this, remember Joseph. Joseph went from the eleventh of twelve brothers of a generally nomadic family to slavery, to being accused of rape, imprisoned, then, through his gift of the interpretation of dreams, he becomes Governor of Egypt.
Egypt is at this time a grand empire. Yet we discover through Joseph’s life that Egypt and by extension, all great empires, are subject to the Lordship of the God of Israel. While Joseph is in prison in Egypt, the Pharaoh has a dream. Joseph is able to interpret this dream and tells the Pharaoh that a famine is coming and that in order to survive the famine the Pharaoh needs to store grain over the next seven years. The Pharaoh takes Joseph’s advice and puts Joseph in charge, taking the very ring of his authority and pacing it on his hand. In all of this the empire is saved, but only because God has gifted Joseph with the ability to interpret dreams.
We learn also of the precarious nature of the position of empire. Famine could destroy Egypt, a reminder that even empires are at the mercy of nature, and we know that God is Lord over nature. Incidentally, this is why we should interpret Jesus’ miracles over nature—healing the sick, calming the storm, increasing the catch of fish—as political signs. God’s kingdom is not like the fragile kingdoms of this world that have no such control and authority.
So we learn that even in our own day, while the choices seem limited to two candidates, we are wrong to think that God’s purposes are bound up in one or the other—in John McCain or Barak Obama. No! His purposes are bound up with Ron Paul….Just kidding! God’s purposes are accomplished as he sees fit to accomplish them. That is why it is our task to discern what it is God is at work doing in the world.
It may be the case that we decide not to vote this November. It seems radical, but I can think of reasons why I wouldn’t vote for either candidate. Such a position may be interpreted as apolitical, that is, uninterested in political questions and solutions, but it could also be seen as radically political. As a friend of mine wrote in an essay recently regarding the church’s calling to engage in mission to concrete political concerns, “the church may have to carry out this task by refusing to endorse one party or another, but its neutrality is not benign. The church’s neutrality is an open rebuke against the self-deifying claims and dehumanizing practices on both sides.” [See G. Scott Becker, "Serving by Abstaining: Karl Barth on Political Engagement and Disengagement" in Electing Not to Vote: Christian Reflections on Reasons for not Voting (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008).]