Drink Florida Orange Juice

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Matthew 10:34, NRSV.

In my hearing at a large social gathering some fifty but less than sixty years ago, a young man whom I had grown up with as neighbor and playmate from earliest childhood criticized our rector for, as he said, “preaching politics instead of the word of God.” By marriage he had changed from Baptist to Episcopalian and was not used to our ways of thinking and believing. I might have taken issue or at least engaged him, but having long contemned him as a fool and known him as a person of zilch integrity anyway, I simply turned away. 

Many years later he died after a long and terrible illness and my parents asked me to go with them to his funeral. More long years later and far too late, I deeply regret declining to accompany my parents to his funeral. But I do not regret turning away from challenging his remark of then forty years earlier, because in experience of life I have found that there is no satisfaction in conversing with fools, less in arguing, even less in trying to reason.

“Preaching politics” as my childhood friend put it, is the call of every Christian, and these days is practiced in every church, every denomination of every political bent. We don’t agree with each other, our convictions range far and wide. Unfortunately, if we occupy the extreme end of a subject, we call anyone who disagrees with us the “anti-Christ.” That’s too bad, but at least we are trying to carry Christ as we understand Christ into the world. That’s our call. And disagreeing is our privilege in a democracy.

Unlike Christian churches where there is a measure of political unity among members, the Episcopal Church is a mixing bowl. In the current generation our denominational leadership seems to lean left politically, but the people in the local parish and pew are politically as conglomerated as a tossed salad. And none of us lend special political credence to the one in the collar, who, not wanting to stir counter-productive divisiveness and also realizing that he is likely outweighed intellectually among those in the pews, usually has sense enough to refrain from politics on Sunday morning. 

I have never carried my political flags into the pulpit. The Episcopal Church is a decent example that people with far differing political and social views can check their differences instead of their brains at the door, and worship, respect and enjoy each other together. And it is not a bad thing that members of a church who constantly pray for “the unity of the Church” can at least begin by finding unity in worship.

This is in mind this morning while media continue to stir the Zimmerman verdict on which public opinion, broadening into stand your ground and now calling for yet another boycott of perfectly innocent and unbiased Florida orange juice and even Walt Disney World (I mean, who could hate Mickey Mouse and Tigger), splits racially as well as red/blue, conservative/liberal. Likewise on Edward Snowden, a new man without a country. On both issues, my views are solid but recognizedly no better than the opinions of highly intelligent people around me with whom I disagree strongly. Plus, on all sides of both subjects I notice many fools, with whom there is no point in engaging conversation anyway. 

My preference might be that the media shift to stirring up demonstrations and boycotts of Rolling Stone and their advertisers and those who have the August 1, 2013 issue in their bookracks. RS has interesting coverage of many topics, but they seem to be feeling unloved and not getting their share of attention. Let them have it. 

If the text doesn’t bear out the scripture, one of many great things about being Episcopalian is being comfortable with inconsistency: doesn’t bother me in the least.

TW observing what’s going on around me in +Time