SOMETIMES, WE, THE people, can get off track; we lose our collective way, and not know what we’re about.
We can forget what exactly it is we’re doing as a country and sometimes, well, sometimes, frankly, we need to get back on track and move toward a political and spiritual middle that erases multiple divisions.
However, we can’t forget that there is this thing at the heart of U.S. governance called “the separation of church and state,” and there should be.
Church and state are what Luther called the two kingdoms and it’s what Jesus was getting at when he asked whose face was on the coin used to trade amongst people in the culture of his day.
That face, of course, was Caesar’s and the question Jesus had been asked is “who governs? God or Caesar?” And his answer, which infuriated his listeners, was (seemingly) simple: “give to God the things that are God’s and to Caeser the things that are Caesar’s.”
Luther, in describing what he called the two kingdoms, argued they were entirely separate realms, each with total control over their own affairs: “God has therefore ordained two regiment(s): the spiritual which by the Holy Spirit produces Christians and pious folk under Christ, and the secular which restrains un-Christian and evil folk, so that they are obliged to keep outward peace, albeit by no merit of their own.”
Yeah, no.
Every time I reread Luther, I ask if there isn’t another solution and a better way to characterize secular folks.
Often marriage of religious folks, elsewhere than the U.S., is divided into two parts: a civil marriage, which marries the couple, but also a separate religious service that asks God to bless that marriage.
The marriage performed by a judge is the legal creation of the legal relationship between the two, period.
The religious service alone doesn’t do a thing in the civil reality.
If the couple (or their parents) want God’s blessings on the marriage, then they have both a religious rite and a civil marriage.
Here in the U.S., the two have become intermingled.
Clergy have been licensed to perform marriages that are legally binding; Justices of the Peace have as well. The division between church and state is perhaps a little blurred in U.S. matrimonial law, but often other sacramental practices are illegal in the civil realm and fine in religious rites.
A church, for instance, can serve young people not of age wine or everyone peyote, a psychedelic drug — practices that would otherwise be illegal by civic law.
So where is the middle ground between religious freedom and an orderly state? It’s probably found in what my mother would have called “minding your own beeswax,” something us kids didn’t seem to be able to manage.
However, tattling was not tolerated by Mom.
You got in real trouble for tattling, more than the actual offense itself. (Differing accounts between us siblings indicate that there was no agreement as to who was the most meddlesome, though as I age, I suspect it might have been me.)
That balance, then, which can become easier as we age, is the point to the readings for this coming Sunday: the figure of Wisdom makes an appearance, and she is the one who reaches out to us and offers her help. She cries out to all, “You that are simple, turn in here,” to her temple with its seven holy columns.
She’s busy dealing with humans, here pictured uniformly as fools.
The reading from the Hebrew Scriptures goes on: “To those without sense she says, ‘Come …’ ”
We are, all of us, without exception, called to “walk in the way of insight.”
The song associated with this text by the lectionary’s authors, Psalm 34:9-14, tells us stupid and foolish people how to survive: “Who among you loves life / and desires long life to enjoy prosperity? / Keep your tongue from evil-speaking / and your lips from lying words.”
This is a great lesson for today’s political situation. Whatever your party, whatever your beliefs, whoever you’ll vote for, remember Wisdom’s advice: “Lay aside immaturity, and live,” rather than hating each other.
That’s our job in these times.
We might want to rail at Biden for quitting or call Kamala Harris “as stupid as a goldfish,” or laugh at Trump and his followers for being “weird,” Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz’s descriptor for the Trump crowd.
Being weird was and is very familiar to me from my working class background.
The greatest sin of all, one I committed when I came out publicly as queer, was to not fit in, to embarrass my family by being open about the fact that I liked other guys. I’ve never been forgiven by others in my family for that openness, and never will be.
My mother once asked “Why can’t you people just go back under the rocks you came from?”
It was a horrible image of worms and bugs and slime, but from her point of view, it was justified: I had betrayed my family by being honest about being queer. It wasn’t so much that I liked men. It’s that I couldn’t be quiet about it, couldn’t sneak around to keep the family’s name in decent order.
My look of horror made her realize what she’d said, but the damage was lasting and continues well after her death.
We shall, I know, be healed someday, but not in this life.
So, whether we are Caesar’s or Christ’s, or whatever religious tradition gives us life and fills us with grace, we must be kind.
Behind the ugliness of the last eight years is the reality demonstrated by the fact that two men who both identify as working class are candidates for the office of Vice President of the U.S.
We don’t treat those who have less than us decently, something we collectively need to fix.
We see and call people other than us “failures.”
When I work with the unhoused and those living with substance abuse as I do, I’m warned off them by other comfortable people, that I could find myself in trouble or even danger.
But what I have discovered is that Jesus was right.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
They will show us old fools the way to Wisdom’s house, because they already live there.
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. The Rev. Dr. Keith Dorwick is a deacon resident in the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia.
