In this Church and Main Shorts, we look at a clip from a May interview with Joshua Gritter, a Presbyterian Pastor in North Carolina. We talk about what he and his wife will preach on at the church they serve on the Sunday after the election (hint: it won't be about the election).
Suggested Reading and Listening:
The Full Episode with Joshua Gritter
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[0:36] Hello and welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in seeing where faith, politics, and culture intersect. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Well, it has been a while since I've done a Church in Maine Shorts episode, and I decided to do one now. For those who are unfamiliar, the Shorts episodes are episodes where I kind of take a, usually a 10 to 15 minute clip from an episode for people to listen to. I've actually heard from some people that they kind of like those kind of shorter episodes. There's someone that's really on the go and they don't have the time. This is a good way of at least getting a little bit of a taste of an episode. So I am doing one now, and this is coming from an episode that was done back in May with Joshua Gritter. He is co-pastor, along with his wife, Lara, of First Presbyterian Church in Salisbury, North Carolina. This was a memorable interview. I really enjoyed it. But we talked about, especially in our very polarized and political culture that we live in, how our wires can get crossed, and think that electing a president is about kind of electing a high priest. We kind of cross religion with politics, and this is something that happens regardless of whether you're a Republican or a Democrat.
[2:00] I'm going to put a link to the full episode in the show notes. And this was probably the most one of the most memorable points of the episode is a clip where I asked really kind of it kind of based itself on what what is he going to preach on on November 10th of this year. November 10th is the first Sunday after Election Day in this year so Josh's answer really made an impression on me and I want to share it with all of you, before I go to the clip I do want to say check out other episodes of Church in Maine at the Church in Maine website churchinmaine.org please consider leaving a review or rating on your favorite podcast app. That really helps others find this podcast and consider sharing it with someone
[3:01] that might be interested in listening. So with all of that out of the way, here is this very memorable clip from Joshua Gritter.
[3:14] How do you help to form Christians in a way that centers them on Christ and not necessarily to shill for an ideology? I mean, I actually think this is where it's important for pastors to not give in to the temptation of talking about politics all the time. I know that there would be colleagues of mine in the PeaceUSA who would disagree with me and say, you're just taking the cheap road. I'm not saying that the church doesn't have a witness in the world. It must. It must have a witness in the world. But when it comes to talking about which side you're on, who you're going to vote for and how that constitutes your identity as a person or does not.
[4:03] The church has an answer for those questions. It's Jesus is Lord. And it sounds dumb, but I think confession is really important right now.
[4:15] Confessing our brokenness and that we are not magnificent on our own, that we can't do it on our own.
[4:25] Surrender. I think for me, I just did a retreat in the mountains in March with my youth. And it was a retreat about those big questions who am I where do I belong and what is my purpose and I really encouraged them to start to learn how to tell the story of their own weakness and woundedness because if the cross is who God is ultimately if the cross is where we see God's face revealed most which I believe to be the case then the the places where we had carry crosses in our our own lives are the places where God's acting life intersects with our own, which means we need to understand how to articulate our own need for God. This is why Jesus says, I've not come for the righteous. I've come for sinners. I'm a doctor for the sick, not the healthy. This is why people in alcoholics, anonymous, or have gone through addiction or loss can sometimes come out on the other side and seem to have been touched by God and live in a different world and we all do or than they used to because God meets us in our weakness in the troughs not in the mountaintops in so so I think it's getting in the business of.
[5:46] You know not false vulnerability in the pulpit but um i'm always struggling to figure out how to talk about weakness how to talk about wounds how to talk about the cross that i carry that we carry, so that because that's where god is going to meet people that's where the the church is going to meet people um you know that's that's my christology and that's my ecclesiology is um, meeting people in those low places, right? Like 1 Corinthians 2, the wisdom of God is the foolishness of the world.
[6:28] So church has to get a little bit more foolish in its practices. And you can't just go around talking about dying and being sick and wounded all the time, obviously. obviously, but people sitting in the pew in church on Sunday, they're not just people who are trying to perform their own righteousness. Deep down, they're longing to see something, to touch something, to hear something that's bigger than the pain they know, and if in that moment, let's say a grieving woman comes on November 6th after someone gets elected, and And they're just caught up in their grief. And I spend the whole sermon talking about they happen to vote for the candidate who I disagree with, let's say. And I spend the whole sermon ramming on that candidate. So that person leaves, not only with no comfort or hope about the grief they've experienced, but feeling shame for the fact that they voted for someone in a free election. In my mind, that's irresponsible pastoral leadership.
[7:35] I think that there are ways that we can confront the principalities and powers by the way we live and practice grace as the Christian community. So I just want to double down on all that stuff. And I think it actually makes it less noisy. This is why me and my wife, we planned. We're doing a sermon series on the Lord's Prayer. And the last Sunday is the Sunday after the election. And it's to, you know, the power and glory forever. ever. And what we're going to preach on that Sunday is Jesus told us how to pray this way, and God is the one to whom the power and the glory belong. God is sovereign. Jesus is Lord. And no matter who sits in that office, the church has a job to do, and that is, participating in the life of this God, this good God. And we wanted to do that so that no matter who gets elected, it's like, hey, guys, we already planned to talk about this.
[8:38] And I've seen it in small ways with our youth.
[8:42] We do a mission trip in the summertime, and there's a lot of people out there who don't like short-term mission trips. I got eviscerated for for writing an article for Mockingbird Ministries website, for saying that I love short-term mission trips, because I think there is a sort of liberal progressive idea out there that, well, shouldn't you use that money in your local community? And is it white saviorism? Which there's some important things to consider how you're going about the mission work. Have to do that carefully. But on that trip, I take the kids' phones and they spend a week week, encountering in the weakness of one another and the weakness of others, the person of Jesus Christ, and some really important things happen in their lives in that week. And I've seen it happen, and I think it's something like they are encountering the presence of the Holy Spirit, of the living God, because they're giving away their lives to something else that's bigger and it's just a snapshot and a foretaste of the kingdom which is all we get here we see through as a glass darkly right but but.
[9:57] Nevertheless I can point and say to them hey what you're feeling what you're experiencing right now that's the presence of the Living God working in you through you don't forget that and hopefully that experience marks them and resonates with them and keeps them Christian, makes them wanting more, makes them wanting their kids wanting more.
[10:22] What advice would you give to pastors when they are preaching on that Sunday following the election?
[10:32] It's going to be a doozy, whoever wins. And I also bring this because you talked earlier about your experience of how people were going to react back in 2016.
[10:53] What is your advice for pastors on what they should say on that Sunday following the election to their congregations? Well, I hesitate to give anybody advice. I'm 35 and feel like I don't know what I'm doing a lot of the time in this work. But I mean, I'd say a few things before saying, telling them what to say. The first thing I'd say is be in touch with your pastoral mentors, the people who've been through this before and ask them how to handle it, how they've handled it, because that's been really important to me is having mentors, spiritual mentors who help me discern those big moments in ministry. Number two would be be in touch with what is going on in your own spirit, because it's It's easy for the pulpit to become our own form of anger, grief counseling about who got elected and why we're mad about it. If we're not in touch with that part of ourselves, it's just going to make its way and we're going to throw it onto the people. And that's not fair.
[12:05] You know, it's not a fair fight. Sometimes we get 20 minutes to talk to people and they can email us, but they don't get to go up to the mic and offer their rebuttal. So if you really need to talk about who got elected and why it's a problem or explore that with people, find a different forum for it that isn't in the context of worship. Invite people who voted differently to go out to meals together and discuss the future of politics in this country. Country um force people to come face to face but don't don't alienate yourself to half of your people um and you know i don't know what to say to people who are maybe let's say in an entirely red or an entirely blue congregation and and maybe it will be faithful in that context to speak into the moment because that's the identity of their congregation and that's certainly not mine um, But remember that prophets love their people. And there's this, when I was in seminary, everybody wanted to be a prophet. I want to preach prophetically. I want to be a prophet. And I'm sure I said that too. But now, you know, I don't know. Jeremiah ended up naked and weeping on the street. You know, Isaiah had his lips touched to fire.
[13:29] Moses didn't get to make it to the promised land. and Jesus got crucified outside of the city, and Stephen got stoned by the Apostle Paul, who was formerly Saul. So I don't know if I want that life or not to be a prophet, but I do know that prophets were speaking to people they knew and loved and cared for, and that a word of judgment was the other side of a word of love.
[13:56] And so you just got to remember that you're called to be these people's minister you're called to bury them and marry them and baptize them, and there are things more important than who they voted for like what what's going on in their soul, like what lower loves are leading them in harmful directions um like what broken relationships are causing them strife like what unforgiveness is haunting them you know there's just there's the horizon for what people need to hear, what hope they need to hear is so important. And I'm reminded of something a preacher named Fleming Rutledge said in one of her preaching books. She said, every sermon has to have a promise and a hope. So if you can pull off, denouncing whoever gets elected with promise and hope, then have at it. But, you know, give the people a bigger promise and hope that, hey, maybe your person got elected, but God is bigger than that. And hey, maybe the person that you absolutely despise got elected and you think everything's over, but that person doesn't hold the keys to your soul.
[15:09] Offer that word and maybe do some some spiritual planning with the congregation for the months beforehand.
[15:16] And we've said it to our congregation. We've said it to our elders. Hey, the next six months are going to be really divisive, and people are going to eat each other. And how can we spiritually prepare as a congregation of people who are different and vote differently to still be the one place in the world where red and blue take communion together? How do we need to prepare our hearts? How can we be praying? Maybe maybe enemy love is the message um inviting people to pray for the president that they hate or uh pray for the people who voted for the president they hate, that seems like something bonhoeffer would say um that's all i got.
[16:03] Music.
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