Preaching in the Age of Donald Trump

Preach the Word! Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves preachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.

II Timothy 4:2-4

Dad died twelve years ago today.

Part of his spiritual discipline was a regular reading of Oswald Chambers’ classic devotional, “My Utmost for His Highest.”

In his commentary on these verses, Chambers quotes from the King James Version: “This verse says, ‘Preach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season.’ In other words, we should ‘be ready’ whether we feel like it or not.” And then he observes, “If we do only what we feel inclined to do, some of us would never do anything. . . The proof that our relationship is right with God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not.”

Dad was a United Methodist pastor and he was always ready to preach the Word. He was persistent and faithful “in season and out.”

But it is perhaps just as well that he is not preaching in the age of Donald Trump.

This is not an easy time to be a Christian pastor. For that matter, it’s not an easy time to be a Christian. It’s hard to be faithful without appearing to be intensely and explicitly political.

Of course, the Gospel is a political document, but it transcends partisan politics. And although Jesus, like the Hebrew prophets before him, proclaimed an undeniably political message, we should not identify that message with one party or candidate.

It’s hard not to appear partisan in the age of Trump because he has done so many explicitly anti-Christian things. We will pause now in silent remembrance. We could start with teargassing children, or separating families, but it’s a very long list. And it seems to just keep getting longer.

There is nothing partisan about those issues, but it is hard to address them without some folks seeing it in partisan terms.

Dad always worried less than I do about appearing partisan. Actually, he didn’t worry about appearances at all. To say that he was outspoken would be an understatement. And to his credit, he never counted the cost of his witness in personal terms.

I never ask myself what Dad would say about this, because I already know.

For Dad, it was always about justice. He looked for the practical application of the gospel in contemporary life. And he was never afraid to tell you what he saw. In his mind, he had no choice.

Dad served in the Navy during World War II, and then again during the Korean War. In March of 1945, as soon as he turned 17, he received his High School diploma early and enlisted. But as a pastor, he was deeply committed to world peace.

On Veterans Day in 1966, when our church was hosting the American Legion, Dad felt he had no choice but to preach about how war generally, and the Vietnam War specifically, was a denial of everything Christ taught.

Not surprisingly, it did not go over that well.

His outspoken witness often got him into trouble, but that never kept him quiet.

If parishioners were upset with him, he would listen patiently, and explain gently. And then he would say that he was sorry, but he had no choice. He was just doing what he had to do. It was his job to preach, in season and out.

Sometimes they would agree to disagree. Sometimes his persistent witness would win them over. And other times they would leave to look for another church, with a preacher who had the good sense not to meddle in “politics.”

As a pastor in the age of Trump, I find myself trying to thread the needle; to be faithful without giving offense. But the truth is that I probably worry too much about the second part and too little about the first.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Darwin's Midrash on Creation

And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
Genesis 1:20-22

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th Century, once wisely observed that the Bible is a Midrash (commentary and reflection) on creation.

Heschel’s wisdom came back to me as I read in the paper this morning that today marks the anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” in 1859.

The book was upsetting to those who held a literal understanding of the Bible. There were immediate objections to Darwin’s theory from Christians who saw it as a contradiction of the Genesis account of creation, which they held to be literal and scientific.

Actually, Darwin really only contradicts the second creation story.

On that point, we should give a shout out to the people who put together the Priestly narrative in Genesis one, that has the basic evolutionary order correct a few thousand years before Darwin.

Like the first creation story, Darwin has human beings arriving last, rather than appearing first as they do in the second narrative.  Oddly, the folks who are upset by Darwin are untroubled by the contradictions between the first and second accounts, which come from the Priestly and Yahweh narratives, respectively.

Among the non-literalist Christian theologians and biblical scholars, the reaction was largely positive from the beginning. When they heard Darwin’s theory, their reaction was, “We knew that God created the world. Now we know how.” And the on-going nature of evolutionary change reminded them that God was still at work.

In the “Origin of Species,” Darwin offered his own opinion. “I see no good reason,” he wrote, “why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one.”

When the theologians of Darwin’s time saw his understanding of an evolving biological world, it reminded them that social relationships also needed to evolve. They came to believe that the progress seen in nature must be replicated in society.

For the Social Gospel preachers, theologians, and activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, progress was not just natural, it was divine. This did not mean it was inevitable; it meant that working toward a more just and humane world was what God was calling them to do.

Technically, Midrash is commentary on the Hebrew Bible. It has two parts: Midrash Halachah, which deals with interpreting the legal portions of the Torah, and Midrash Aggadah, which deals with the non-legal aspects and is filled with morals, legends, parables, and stories. When most people refer to Midrash, they are referring to the parables and the stories.

When Heschel speaks of the Bible as a Midrash on creation, he is not referring to the technical meaning, but to a broader understanding of commentary.

And if we wind our way down that road, then we could see Darwin’s theory of evolution as another layer of Midrash. It is both discovery and revelation.

And the evolutionary process, with all of its amazing and miraculous complexity, is the subject of more Midrash.