The eCrozier

In our Gospel lesson this Sunday, Jesus calls out and exposes the words used from a demagogue’s playbook. Even in Jesus’ time, demagogues used “wars and rumors of wars” to create fear in people. It’s an effective, time-tested way to bend people’s behavior to the demagogue’s liking. Jesus warns his disciples to not “be alarmed” by such attempted manipulation and to not give into a fearful reaction. God’s Providential Grace will prevail, Jesus insists, as it always has.

Demagogues rarely appeal to God’s Providence and the sure and certain hope of God’s grace in Jesus. No, rather than naming God’s Providence and asking God’s grace upon us all, those who would lead us astray call us to act out of our fears, fears they actually have helped create and perpetuate. They’ve learned to play the “fear card” quite well. It’s a simple technique: you gather people together and remind them of a time when they felt better about their lives, then you tell them how awful things are now and who it is they should blame for all their problems. This generation’s demagogue list includes immigrants, minorities, and/or gay people, but in every generation it’s whoever they can conveniently brand as “the other.” Then they whip people into a frenzy claiming that if people would just do as they’re told, then they will protect them.

We should know that living by our fears rather than by our faith is living in direct denial of God’s providential love and care. Living by our fears leads us into all manner of behavior, most of which, upon reflection, don’t exemplify the highest virtues of the Christian faith. Even when it may be right for us to be afraid, fear never serves us well as a primary response to what we face. Fear encourages reptilian reactions from us rather than the higher soul-functions of hospitality, compassion, and generosity. Fear compels us to become, de facto, functional atheists. Functional atheism means we give assent to God’s Providential Grace with our lips, that is, we say believe God’s love and mercy will always carry the day, but in practice we actually live as if we are not part of a divinely coherent narrative that’s moving the world toward God’s plan of redemption.

Bruce Springsteen in his song, “Devils & Dust,” sings about what happens to someone living out of the fears induced by demagogues. He sings:
I got God on my side and I’m just trying to survive
But what if what you do to survive kills the things you love?
Fear’s a powerful thing. It can turn your heart black you can trust
It’ll take your God-filled soul and fill it with devils and dust

God isn’t present in the fearful delusions that have been packaged and sold to us, delusions that lead us to deny the Providence of God. Rather, God is present in the blessed death of our delusions, both the ones we have about ourselves and the ones about the world in which we live. God is no stranger to the fearful, the broken-hearted, the abandoned, the worried, or the hypocritical. The God we worship, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, isn’t a God we voted for. Rather, this God is a God who voted for us on the cross of Jesus.

+Scott