Sermon: I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics

Political polarization has reached a breaking point in our personal relationships, creating divisions between family members, friends, and potential romantic partners. We have learned to treat politics like team sports, putting on partisan jerseys that immediately categorize others as allies or enemies, leaving no room for nuance or middle ground.

The apostle Peter addressed early Christians facing persecution for their faith, reminding them that their primary identity was as God's chosen people, not citizens of any earthly nation. This biblical perspective offers a framework for navigating political differences today. Rather than allowing political affiliation to define us, Christians are called to ground their identity first and foremost in Jesus Christ and citizenship in God's kingdom.

To love people we disagree with politically requires intentional steps: removing our partisan identity when approaching others, recognizing that people are far more complex than their political views, prioritizing loving posture over being right, extending grace instead of judgment, and remembering our ultimate allegiance to Christ. Jesus demonstrated this approach with his diverse group of disciples, who represented a complete spectrum of political views from tax collectors to zealots. By approaching others with curiosity rather than condemnation, asking questions to understand their hearts rather than attacking their minds, we can preserve and strengthen relationships while maintaining our convictions. The goal is not to change minds but to love people, remembering that we all need grace and none of us has perfect understanding of every political issue.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

So I mentioned we're in a sermon series, I love you, but where we're talking about how we are called to love with no exceptions. And before I before I get ready to preach today, let me just I brought something, one of my favorite things with me today. Okay, all right. Okay, now I'm ready. Do you all see it, everyone? Okay, just making sure. Just about see it. There we go. Okay. So our New Testament comes from the first letter of Peter, chapter two, verses nine and ten. I invite you to hear now the word of the Lord. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. This is the word of God for us, the people of God. Will you pray with me? Oh Lord, we ask that you would send your Holy Spirit to dwell within us, that as your scriptures are pondered and proclaimed, that we might hear you speaking to each of us today. In Christ's name. Amen. Okay, well, let me ask you a couple questions before we dive into 1 Peter. Is there someone you love with whom you disagree politically? Okay. Have you lost relationships over political differences? Are any relationships in your life strained because of political disagreements? Well, if you answered yes to any of these questions, then welcome to the club. It's not a very selective club. Actually, pretty much everybody I know belongs to it. Because the reality of the world in which we live right now is that the political divisions within our government are causing significant divisions within our most important relationships. Let me ask you another question. Is this distracting? Yeah? Okay, so all the Duke fans out there are like, yes! My pastor's wearing a Shire jersey. How cool is that? But some of you are probably a little uncomfortable with this getup. In fact, I guarantee it, somebody in this room right now is thinking up a zinger that they want to deliver as they leave this place. I know how poorly we played in our last NCAA tournament game, right? I know it. I'll own it. The truth is, I did not grow up in this area. And when I first moved here about, I don't know, almost 20 years ago, I was honestly surprised by how vicious the team rivalries are in the triangle. But that's the thing about team mentality. In sports, there's a winner and there's a loser. You cheer for your team no matter what, and you believe that the ref is calling everything in the other team's favor and is actively working against your own team, right? Even if all evidence points to the contrary, the refs are always against you. Or is that just me? Anybody? When we take our team loyalties really seriously, we even start to genuinely dislike people from another team. You lump them all together as one kind of person, a type of person who, of course, is much worse than you are, somebody a little less worthy of respect. In fact, I'm wondering if any of the Duke haters out there are having trouble even listening to me right now because I'm currently representing the team that they hate. Right? Am I right? Okay, well, I'll do everyone a favor. Just give me a second. Okay, here we go. Okay. Okay, so the thing about politics in the USA today is that we often approach it like a team sport. We learn early in life that we have to pick a side, we're red or we're blue. And we put on the team jersey, and these days it's turning us into irrational sports fans. The political jerseys we wear become core to our identity. In fact, without even realizing it, our political allegiances can easily become the most important thing about our identity. And so we learn to divide the people in our life into camps, into teams, allies or enemies, winners or losers, the good guys or the bad guys, and there's no in-betweens. No wonder our relationships are suffering. Because if your spouse votes differently than you, suddenly you're living with the enemy. If your best friend takes a different political stance than you on any political topic, suddenly you are wondering when they turned evil and you didn't know it. When we see our relationships with our political jerseys on, everything is a battle in which someone wins and someone loses, someone is good and someone is evil. Over the past several years, I've had lots of conversations with folks who are braving the online dating world, and I've learned that a potential date with different political persuasions are immediately off the table. They're not even given a chance. It's unthinkable to date someone from another party. Let me just name that that has not always been the case, right? Likewise, over the past several years, I've had lots of conversations with folks who are struggling with their friendships, with their family relationships, with their marriages, because of political differences. And I'm talking about folks from both sides of the aisle coming to me feeling misunderstood, demonized, or like their loved one is now a stranger because they agree with this politician or that politician on any given matter. This is jersey wearing behavior. And it leads us into our sermon title today. It leads us into the sentiment, I love you, but I hate your politics. Now, last week, Pastor Kevin talked about how we are people of two inseparable commandments. Jesus instructed us above all to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, and the love of Jesus has no buts. This is a non-negotiable commandment. So the question becomes how? In the climate in which we live, how do we love our politically different loved ones? Well, Peter's first letter gives us a foundational place to begin. This letter was written to a people who were experiencing persecution. They were persecuted not for any particular Christian belief, but because of the ways their Christian beliefs impacted their lives. They no longer attended the pagan festivals that worshiped pagan gods, which meant they were no longer very socially acceptable. But more than that, these early Christians no longer engaged in worship of the Roman Emperor and by extension, the Roman Empire. Their primary allegiance was no longer to the empire, it was given to Jesus. And to the pagans of the day, this was unacceptable. This is what prompted harassment and violence against the earliest Christians. So here in Peter's first letter, he's writing to these persecuted Christians with a word of hope. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people. Peter wants to ground their identity first and foremost in Jesus. If they are wearing any jerseys, he wants them to wear the jersey of Jesus. Their primary allegiance was no longer given to the empire, it was given to Jesus because in Christ they have become an entirely new nation, a people unified by the Holy Spirit. People who belong to the kingdom of God. Now, Peter is not telling them that they are to disengage politically or socially. Rather, he's telling them that they don't ultimately belong to any nation or politic because they belong forever and always to Jesus and his kingdom. So if we want to navigate relationships that are strained by political tensions, we always have to begin here. We have to begin with ourselves and our own sense of identity. Whose jersey is closest to your heart? To whom do you give your deepest allegiance? As Christians, we are called to be followers of Jesus above everything else. Does this mean that you cannot belong to a political party? No. But it means that you filter every stance, every action, every law through your allegiance to Jesus and his kingdom. So, step one in navigating a politically challenged relationship is this: when you are with that person, take your political jersey off. Take it off. Do you remember how hard it was for the Ducators in the room to listen to me when I was wearing the Duke jersey? The same thing happens in our relationships when we approach one another with the team jersey on of our political stance. We can't see each other clearly. We see each other as enemies to be conquered or as stereotypes to be converted, not as beloved friends or family. If you approach political conversations with your loved ones as a member primarily of your political team, parroting the talking points and fingers and logics of that party, your words will fall on deaf ears and it will drive a wedge further between you and that person you love. Which leads us to step two in navigating politically charged relationships. We must remember that every person is more than their political views. Somewhere along the way, we have bought into this idea that what a person believes politically is the most important thing about them. That it entirely defines them and sums up everything about them into a nice tidy package that we can either celebrate or stew over. But Jesus never approached people with such little nuance. In fact, Jesus saw people for so much more than their political persuasion. Take, for instance, his twelve disciples. His twelve disciples were a microcosm of the politics of the day. So we have Peter and James and John. They were fishermen. They were small business owners just trying to make it in a Roman-occupied world. Did they love paying the high taxes and living under the thumb of the Romans? No. But they were making it work. And then there's Simon, who's called a zealot, which was a political radical. Zealots were a political movement of Jewish rebels who worked to violently drive the Romans out of their land. Okay, so picture it. We got some middle class guys just trying to make it in life, and we've got someone who wants to burn the whole thing down. Okay? And then to make it even more fun, we've got Matthew, the tax collector, the guy who worked directly for the Roman government, who was bought in to what they sold, and who benefited immensely from it. Can you imagine the kind of political fights that these disciples had on their journeys over three years as they walked the roads with Jesus? But the most surprising thing of all is that Jesus called each of them personally to be his disciples. He loved them equally. Jesus saw them from more than their political persuasions. Jesus saw them as complicated people who are beloved by God and worthy of being his disciple. What would change in your life if you began to look upon your politically different family, friends, or neighbors with the eyes of Jesus? If you looked upon their political jersey, if you looked beyond their political jersey, and if you saw them as the complicated bearers of God's image that all of us are. So if step one is approaching politically strained relationships by taking your own jersey off, step two is refusing to let another's jersey define your view of them. A person's political views are not the sum of who they are, they are always more. God's beloved child, created on purpose, loved equally by God, called to be part of Jesus' family. And when we can see past another's jersey, we can move to step three. When it comes to relationships with our politically different loved ones, we must prioritize our posture over our beliefs. Now, oftentimes in political conversations with loved ones, we believe our job is to get them to think like we do. That our job is to get them to see things the way we do, because of course it's the right way. And if they don't change their mind, then something must be terribly wrong with them. With this mindset in place, our posture is combative and condescending. Nobody wants to talk to somebody who is combative and condescending, no matter how much you love them, right? When we approach our conversations like this, nothing is heard by anybody. It just drives the wedge in further. We have to let go of our desire and our need to force our political beliefs on another. Your political beliefs are important. Your convictions matter. I am not saying otherwise. They matter, but forcing them on another person whom you love will get all of us nowhere. When we do that, we're not being prophets for Jesus, we're being jerks for Jesus. Don't be a jerk for Jesus. When it comes to loving our neighbors, our beliefs matter, but our posture matters more. It is more important to be loving than to be right. I'm gonna say that again. It is more important to be loving than to be right. Are we actually willing to listen humbly, gently, and respectfully to another's point of view? This is called a posture of curiosity, and it will build relational bridges faster than anything else. There are two curious questions that make a world of a difference. Help me understand what you believe, and how did you come to believe this? Help me understand what you believe, and how did you come to believe this? These questions are not saying that you agree with whatever they will tell you. It doesn't say you support their views or think they are right. Rather, it says loud and clear clear, I care about you. I want to understand you, even though I won't ever agree with you. And if you want someone to listen to your point of view, to understand you, then you better be ready to listen to theirs with respect and curiosity and a posture of compassion. Which leads me to the fourth step of navigating politically charged relationships. Lean into grace. Do you know the scripture story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery? The law said that she could be stoned to death for her behavior, and so she was dragged before Jesus for his verdict. Stones in hand, the religious leaders of the day were angry because they were very concerned about what is right and what is wrong. And they wanted to prove, they wanted Jesus to prove to them that he was a holy man by siding with the law. So they dragged her before Jesus and waited for his verdict. And do you remember what he did? He said, Let anyone without sin cast the first stone. And one by one, the accusers dropped their stones and went away. Too often, in our politically charged relationships, we show up with stones in hand. We are ready to throw stones at their arguments. We're ready to throw stones against their character or against their faith. We know what's right and what's wrong, and gosh darn it, those who are wrong need to know just how wrong they are. But this is not the way of Jesus. Stone throwing is not the way of Christ. Rather, Jesus saw the woman standing before him as a flawed, complicated, and beloved child of God in need of grace, not an attack. To have healthy relationships, we have to drop our stones. We have to remember that not a single one of us has every right answer to every political problem before us. We have to remember that we are all complicated, that all of our political stances have weaknesses, and we are all trying to be as faithful as we can according to our understanding of reality, which means we are all misguided to some extent, and we are all ultimately in need of grace. The minute that we forget this is the minute we turn one another into monsters or into stereotypes or into people who we no longer want in our lives. And suddenly we become another cog in the wheel of modern politics because the political mechanisms of our country are actively trying to divide us. It gives them more power if our jerseys are the most important thing about us. Don't let them divide us. Don't let them arm you with stones when Jesus is trying to hand you grace. Remember what Peter told the earliest Christians. You don't belong to this world. You don't belong primarily to any human nation or politic. You are a holy nation, God's own people. In April 1994, a civil war broke out in Rwanda between two tribes. Hutu extremists began brutally killing members of another tribe called the Tutsis, as well as moderate members of their own Hutu tribe. In 100 days, nearly one million people were slaughtered. When a cardinal visited the Christian leaders, trying to bring an end to the bloodshed. On behalf of the Pope, he asked them, Are you saying that the blood of tribalism is deeper than the waters of baptism? And one church leader said, Yes, it is. The way of political tribalism is not the way of Christ. If we continue to embrace its vitriol, who knows what horrors await us as Christian people, the waters of baptism are our core identity. And as followers of Jesus, our mission in life is to love God and love our neighbor, no exceptions. And so, step one, take off your political jersey when you are with your loved one. Step two, remember that every person is more than their political views. Step three, prioritize your posture over your beliefs. Step four, lean into grace. And finally, step five, remember whose you are, a citizen of God's kingdom, a forgiven and beloved follower of Jesus, armed not with prideful stones, but with the humble grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May it be so. Amen.