Political But not Partisan
Reflections for the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany
RCL Epiphany 3C
26 January 2026
Church of the Epiphany
Surrey BC
On the Feast of Saint Thomas, the 21st of December 1981, a snowy Monday night, Bishop William Frey of Colorado presided at my ordination to the priesthood in the Cathedral of Saint John in the Wilderness in Denver, Colorado. Before asking me to make certain commitments and promises, Bishop Frey spoke these words to me:
As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to fashion your life in accordance with its precepts. You are to love and serve the people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. . . . It all that you do, you are to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come. (BCP 1979, 531)
With these and other words and actions, Bishop Frey entrusted to me a political ministry.
By a political ministry, I do not mean a partisan ministry. The word ‘political’ comes from the Greek word polis which means ‘city or state or community’. To be political means that one takes responsibility for working for the good of the entire community, “young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor”. To be political means committing oneself to the work of the common good of every human being. To be political does not mean not to have opinions about how best to achieve the common good, but it does mean that one must be prepared to listen to diverse voices and, perhaps more importantly, to be willing to acknowledge two things: (i) that no one voice or opinion possesses all the truth and wisdom necessary for the good of all and (ii) that I, along with my ‘circle’, might be wrong.
When you and I were baptized into the Christian community, we were baptized into a political movement whose commitment is to serve those who are not Christians as well as those who are and to serve those whose views are not necessarily ours as well as to work with those who share our views and values. We renew our commitment to this political movement each time we renew our baptismal covenant, as we did, for example, when Archbishop John was with us on the Feast of the Epiphany.
· To promise to persevere in resisting evil and, when we fall into sin, to repent and return to the Lord is a political choice.
· To promise to proclaim the good news of God in Christ, a message that challenges those who have power, is a political choice.
· To promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbour as ourselves, is a political choice.
· To promise to strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being, is a political choice. (BAS 1985, 159)
How we fulfill these promises does involve hearing diverse voices and differing approaches. We will disagree, sometimes mildly, sometimes forcefully, but we dare not pretend that we are not engaged in working with God “so that we and all God’s children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise (God’s) name” (BAS 1985 215).
When Nehemiah and Ezra gathered the people to hear the reading from the Law of Moses, they made some political choices that may not be apparent. Because they were committed to the renewal of the people of Israel after more than seventy years of exile and oppression, Nehemiah and Ezra chose to read the Law in a public place where there no obstacles to the participation of every single person present in the city of Jerusalem. Nehemiah and Ezra chose to ensure that there were people in the crowd who could translate the Law from Hebrew, a language many people did not speak, into Aramaic, a language they could speak. Nehemiah and Ezra knew that the common good required a restoration of a shared knowledge of the traditions and aspirations of the people.
When Paul wrote to the Christian community in Corinth, he chose to confront the partisanship that had begun to emerge and that was dividing the community. People were beginning to identify themselves as followers of Paul, others as followers of another evangelist by the name of Apollos, still others were claiming to be directly inspired by Christ. When Paul uses the image of the body, he is making a political choice. When one part of the body thinks itself superior to another, then the common good, the health of the whole body, is threatened. Paul reminds the Corinthians that they are mutually dependent upon one another. Despite their pride and arrogance, they all need one another or, as Paul so clearly puts it: “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if once member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.” (1 Corinthians 12.26)
When Jesus enters the synagogue at Nazareth and is handed the scroll to read, he does not choose the text from Isaiah. It is simply the text assigned for that day. But he does turn the moment into a political one by declaring that the promises that Isaiah is making about the future are, in fact, a present reality.
“The ‘someday’ of hope is now the ‘today’ of fulfillment (v. 21). For Luke’s church and for us, it is still ‘today,’ and preaching that turns ‘today’ into another vague and distant ‘someday’ has not listened carefully to the text.” (Craddock, Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year C 1993, 88)
If we are not releasing people today from whatever is holding them captive, then we are failing in our vocation as followers of Christ. How we bring about that release is always a lively debate and there are good people who disagree on what steps to take, but taking steps in the here and now cannot be put off until some abstract future moment.
This past week we have witnessed the contrast between politics as a commitment to the well-being of the whole community and to listening to diverse voices and partisanship as the use of power to coerce others without regard to questions of justice, loving-kindness and humility. The story is told that, when the warrant for the execution of King Charles 1 was being signed, one of the members of Parliament said to Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the anti-monarchist party, ‘I beseech you, Sir, by the bowels of Christ, to consider that you might be wrong.’
So, my friends, have no illusions. Being a Christian means being political. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “When people say that religion and politics don’t mix, I wonder which Bible it is they are reading.” But we must be on guard at all times that we do not confuse our political vocation with partisan advocacy at the expense of others.
Partisanship always looks for opponents to be defeated; politics always looks for people of differing perspectives to be united in a common work for the common good. Partisanship embraces coercion; politics embraces persuasion. Partisanship uses fear as its main weapon; politics uses hope as its main message. Partisanship lives in a closed sound chamber; politics encourages the voices of all, young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor.
On Wednesday, the Bishop of Washington acknowledged the authority of the current President but also asked him to consider that he might be wrong. That is not partisanship; that was the political ministry to which we have been all baptized and the political ministry to which the Bishop had been ordained. May God grant us the grace never to back away from this ministry.
