Maybe I'd feel less disgusted by it all if the commercials had much substance, but more often than not, they massage "facts" or tell straight out lies in order for one side to say that the other side's candidate hates babies, America, Jesus, and puppies. And the partisan name-calling has invaded Twitter and Facebook with a vengeance. The distortions and name-calling there are only more outlandish and preposterous than on TV.
I thought about our partisan divisions today as I heard Jesus say, "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three." Sound familiar?
So is Jesus just one more dividing line in an already polarized world? I think I have something of a "yes and no" answer to such a question. Certainly Jesus is not the meek and mild sop who never offends anyone or creates any conflict. No one fitting such a description ever got executed for his trouble. Clearly Jesus scared some people, and so it stands to reason that his followers might scare the same people. I might add that this provides a useful measure of whether your or my divisiveness is of a pair with Jesus'. Are the same sort of people upset with you? (If you aren't sure, you would do well to get to know you Bible a bit better and discover just who it was Jesus offended and who he embraced.)
But while Jesus scared people and even called them a few choice names on occasion, he did not seem intent on creating divisions. He did not go around looking for folks to label as bad or as outsiders. If anything, he worked to pull outsiders in. However, his very presence was a source of division. To encounter Jesus and his message created a kind of crisis moment. Could people accept, embrace, or go with Jesus and his message, or did they have to turn away.
Let me quickly add that I'm not talking about the stereotypical, evangelical choice to accept Jesus as your personal Savior or else. The positive judgment on the Gentiles in Matthew 25:31-46 clearly speaks of those who choose the way of Jesus unwittingly. Rather, the crisis Jesus' presence confronts us with is whether we will consider following Jesus and his ways over the ways honored by the world.
There's a famous quote from Mahatma Gandhi that speaks to this. He studied several faiths and was drawn toward Jesus' teachings. Yet he was repelled by what he experienced from those who called themselves Christian and said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
To spend much time around someone who really does try to follow Jesus, who is not so unlike Christ, can be a little unnerving. Such people can be difficult to relate to because they don't function out of the world's norms, and their presence can be an uncomfortable critique of our lives. They are easy to admire from afar, but to get very close can provoke a crisis. It can demand that we acknowledge their Christ-like way or turn away from it. And they need not call us names or condemn us. Their presence itself is sufficient.
Such moments of crisis and division are rare. Like religious leaders in Jesus' day, religious leaders in the Church manage and domesticate Jesus so that our divisions are along much more trivial lines, lines that typically mirror the dividing lines active in our culture. More fundamental questions about true life, true community, true relationship with God and other, get lost amongst our petty differences.
Despite claims to the contrary, our divisiveness is rarely about the future of our society or country. It is almost never about the hope of a new day that Jesus insists had drawn near. Perhaps that is why people have become so tired of our present day partisanship. After all, partisanship is a long-standing part of American political history. But our present divisiveness often seems to be for the sake of itself, rancor for rancor's sake, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Oh, for some divisiveness that was actually over Jesus and the Way he proclaims rather than the small and petty divisions that so often occupy us.
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