In America, an election year has become like a bad traffic accident. You don’t want to see it, but you can’t not look at it.

Perhaps the church should be a politics-free zone during an election year. A safe place to escape. A retreat from the hyper-politicization and negative-polarization. This strategy would be understandable.

However, living in 21st-century America, awash with feeds and polls, it is nearly impossible for us to escape the onslaught. Politics come up around the dinner table, across the backyard fence, and above the freeways plastered on overpasses.  

And so, rather than muster a feeble attempt to escape the echo chambers and spin zones, we at WCPC have decided to locate the redemptive edges of the political conversation. We are doing so, not by dissecting political party, platform, pitch, or process, but instead, by grounding ourselves in Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.

The Sermon on the Mount (found in Matthew 5-7) is Jesus’s State of the Universe Address. Yet, before we explore What Jesus Teaches in the sermon, we should back up to Chapters 1-4 to better understand Who Jesus Is. We cannot sink into the teachings of Jesus without first examining His claims about His identity. Jesus doesn’t claim to be a mere partisan candidate of a democracy, but the Divine King of a monarchy. Within His Kingship, Jesus also claims to be Israel’s true Messiah in the line of King David and the second person of the Godhead (what Christians came to call the “Trinity”). 

That’s a lot to unpack and we will do so as we delve in week to week, but in short, suffice it to say here: Jesus isn’t asking for your vote, but for your allegiance. He isn’t asking for your support, but for your submission. His is not a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” but of Him, by Him, through Him, to Him, from Him, and for Him! (see Romans 11:36). And, “Of the greatness of his government and peace there will no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this” (see Isaiah 9:7).

To our ears, trained by the ruthless regimes of a broken world, this could sound like a cruel and harsh dictatorship unless you consider that, to make this all happen, Jesus stepped into one of the cruelest and harshest dictatorships, that of Caesar Augustus, and sacrificed his very life for its healing.

The State of the Universe Address is delivered by a leader whose love for his people is so high and wide and long and deep that it culminated in ultimate sacrifice.