Palm Sunday, Health Care, and the Kingdom of God.

1 Peter 1.3-12 (continuing study of the Petrine epistles).

If you have been paying attention these past few weeks you will, of course, know that we are living through an incredibly divided time in our nation’s history. The Democrat majority passed sweeping health care legislation that appears to many to be the equivalent of a Marxist takeover of the American political system. I heard one woman call in to NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” this week and complain that she had an apple thrown at her as she was driving because she has a political bumper-sticker on her truck. She also complained of having her vehicle “keyed” because of her political opinions. She then identified herself as a conservative and proceeded to inform the host of the program and his guests that it may be time for Americans to claim the rights that the 2nd Amendment gives to form militias and take back the government.

Meanwhile commentators were pointing out that this new legislation signals a meaningful step forward in the leveling of economic disparity in our country. This of course terrifies those concerned with the specter of socialism that still haunts the American consciousness since the Cold War. And I think they are right to point out the dangers of socialism, at least a secular socialism, in its reliance on a certain totalitarian power for enforcement. Yet, the poor and the sick, especially children, will now have access to health care that only the more wealthy had before. One of my co-workers, whose wife runs a childcare program in their home, “complained” that they were going to lose one of the children that attends their program because of this new health care bill. This child suffers from a rare medical condition that has always been rejected for coverage by insurance companies. This required the child’s mother to work just to pay for medical treatment so that her child could live. The new health care bill, by prohibiting the exclusion of children due to pre-existing conditions, will happily free up this mother to quit her job and stay home with her child.

As the health care legislation was being signed, outside the White House thousands of immigrants and activists were protesting the lack of action the administration has taken with regards to immigration reform. Immigrants and the sick. Tea party activists. These scenes reminded me this week of the rabble that followed Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. There were the sick, the poor, the aliens, the strangers, the tax-collectors, the fishermen, the zealots, the militants, and, leading them all, was Jesus riding on a donkey--on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Palm branches waving, the crowds laying their cloaks on the ground before his feet, the people were celebrating the arrival of their Messiah into their capitol, Jerusalem, the city of Kings. A week later he would be crucified, hanging on a cross outside the city, condemned to have his body torn apart by wild birds as a warning to other radicals.

Jesus upset all of their expectations. He perhaps upsets ours as well.

Peter writes in verses 3-5: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Our hope, according to Peter, is not in the triumphal entry. Our hope is not in the establishment of a political party, a particular legislative act, a militia, or a constitution. Our hope is not in Barak Obama as his political propaganda proclaimed. Our hope is in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that event which invades our world and our time with something radically new. Ours is not a hope in conservatism, liberalism, socialism, capitalism, Marxism, Federalism, or state’s rights. Our hope is in resurrection.

This is not a confusion of categories. Some would argue that resurrection doesn’t belong among these political movements. But Peter called it a “living hope.” It’s not a dormant, sleeping hope waiting for some future day to be realized in our life. It is now, active in the present, shaping our lives, our actions, and, yes, our politics. But our political party is that of the “exiles of the dispersion.” We affirm that the Jesus who rode into Jerusalem was the king. That his entry was triumphant. That his followers are called to live lives of political importance. It’s just that the political lives they live will not be recognized as such. Or if they are recognized, they will be seen to be as subversive as Jesus himself who was killed because he upset the order so much. This should remind us of the early Anabaptists who simply rejected the political options that were set before them. Rather than take one side or another in the Roman Catholic/Protestant conflicts that were dividing Europe during the Reformation, the Anabaptists claimed that their faith trumped all political loyalties. This, of course, turned out to be a political loyalty. But it was a loyalty to the Kingdom of Heaven.

But Peter also said that the resurrection indicated an inheritance, “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.…” We typically interpret this based upon a belief that heaven is that place to which we are going when we die. Our hope is not of this world. It is waiting for us up there, in heaven, in the sky, away from this world. The political hope of Christians then seems to consist of the simple act of waiting to die. There is something about this way of seeing things that is absolutely right--and also significantly wrong.

Our hope does require that we wait. I suggested last week that we compare two images in the Bible: The Tower of Babel and the New Jerusalem. The Tower of Babel is something we build. It is a vivid image of human power and pride, constructed on the promise of greatness and progress. On the other hand, the New Jerusalem is an image of God’s action. It is God’s building, a heavenly hope, and it comes to us. This is our inheritance and it will come to us. It will not be something we build--no constitution we write, no legislation we pass, no government we establish. It will be God’s action and I will suggest to you that this is tremendously freeing. You are not called to change the world. You may walk into Jerusalem with Jesus, you may march to Washington, but most likely you will not succeed. Like Jesus you will experience persecution and “suffer various trials.” This is normally the fate of exiles. And so, like exiles, we wait for the time of our exile to be over, which means we are waiting for the New Jerusalem, the New Heavens, and the New Earth.

Yet the nature of our waiting is not inactive, apolitical, or powerless. Rather, the period of our waiting is characterized by the witness, in our lives and our communities, to the kingdom of God. Our politics is informed always by the politics of the king who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. It is a politics that brings together right and left, young and old, wealthy and poor, sick and healthy, into one community, a community that is first of all characterized by the worship of God’s people as they shout, “Hosanna! Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” What characterizes this sort of politics is a sort of radical patience. We may act, and we will act. We will act in such a way that accords with the teachings of Jesus on the Kingdom of God in the Gospels. But we will not attempt to control the system, or wield power other than through the witness of our lives and our patience. We are not building a kingdom, we are waiting for a kingdom even as we live in that kingdom. We are not building the Tower of Babel, we are waiting for the New Jerusalem.

Our waiting and the suffering that a politics of exile produces, is to be something in which we paradoxically rejoice: in the words of Peter, “so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation [the apocalypse] of Jesus Christ.” In this new community of worship our violence and indignation fades away. Our desire for control melts into worship of the one who is in control and whose reign will one day be manifest in the New Creation. Our focus is redirected to justice, mercy, and peace. But ours is a politics of outsiders, looking in, saying, “this might be a good idea for you to try” or, “look, those people are suffering, lend a hand, help them.” Or, “here we are, working and laboring for the sick and poor, come join us in this labor.”

This is where the Christian practice of hospitality lent itself to to establishment of homes for the sick and dying, called hospitals. It is the Christian practice of care for the sick that is at the heart of our debate surrounding health care. It is the Christian history of caring for the sick even at extreme risk to our own health, as was the risk of nurses a hundred years ago, that is the source of our understanding of health care: nursing as martyrdom, nursing as witness, nursing as testimony to the Lamb who was slain. Such a self sacrificing practice of hospitality is a witness to the king who rode on a donkey, a king who cared more for the sick than for his own reputation, political viability, or success. It is the king who rode on a donkey that loved the sick and the dying more than political ideology. It is the sick and the dying that paradoxically wield the power in the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us not forget this as we continue into the fray of political divisiveness that is overwhelming our country during this time. As we continue the debate over health care, be chastened by this reminder that it is the sick and dying, regardless of their ability to pay, who hold the place of honor and value in the Kingdom of God.

And let us, in patience and peaceableness, direct our politics first toward worship, toward the worship of the one who alone is king and who alone will come with power and might. Let our politics be first of all characterized by the last words of the Bible: “Amen. Come Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.”