SHAKE THE DUST OFF [M, 1-25-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

SHAKE THE DUST OFF      [M, 1-25-21]

Old friend, Nina Morwell [She’s not that old, but we’ve known each other a long time. Also, she’s a bassoonist, so you know she’s smart.] reminded me of how Jesus said “…shake the dust off your sandals as you leave town if people won’t accept the good news. He didn’t say to move into town and stay there until you’ve won the hearts and minds of all the people.”  [Matthew 10:14]

So I say that to Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. [Can we call him JRB now?] He already knows it, but I want him to know that I know it.

He knows it, because he said, in his inaugural speech, “…enough of us came together to carry all of us forward.”

“Enough.” That’s all that is necessary. It doesn’t have to be “all.” We don’t disparage or disrespect those who will not join and move forward in democratic ways, but we shall not let them set the agenda.

The nay-sayers will always set the agenda if we let them, in a family or an institution or the nation. And their agenda to go back to the “again” that never was will win, if we spend our time and energy trying to persuade them to go forward with us. No, we need to invite them, and welcome them, to go forward with us, but not allow them to take us all backward.

As a pastor, I was educated in the school that says you try to preserve every member. There was something wrong with a church that could not hold onto everyone. It was called “unity.” The church is The Body of Christ, and it is a sin for that body to be divided.

That meant that the most disgruntled member, the one who most often threatened, one way or another, to leave, got to be the most important person, got to say what would happen to everyone who stayed. Then I heard Lyle Schaller, the church sociologist, say, “At any given moment, there are some people who are in the wrong church. It’s okay to let them leave.” We weren’t doing them any favors by making them stay, because they were in the wrong place.

So it is with the nay-sayers, the lie-believers, the conspiracy theorists in the nation. Some people are just contrarians. That is how they find fulfillment, in being “against.” They believe that those who are the best believers are the ones who believe what is least believable. If today all their demands were met, tomorrow they would have a new set of demands, because they just have to be against whatever is.

If they insist on leaving democracy, leaving civil society, leaving the truth, we have to let them go. But we don’t let them run anything, because the only thing they really run is into the ground.

John Robert McFarland