Seeing Invisible Political Options

[These reflections are drawn from Kings and Presidents: Politics and the Kingdom of God. Sermon outlines and small group discussion guides over the content of that book are available here.]

One of my favorite themes in the book of 2 Kings has to do with sight. Woven into its intriguing narratives about kings and political intrigue is a subtle question: Who really has the ability to see what’s going on in the world? Often, the politically powerful kings are the ones who position themselves on vantage points to be able to see what’s going on, whether that has to do with the enemy outside the city walls or the subjects living within. The redemptively subversive message of 2 Kings shows up over and over again, however, when people who we wouldn’t expect to have much of a vision can see things the kings can’t. Diseased outcasts have a better view than the king walking atop the walls. Politically powerless slave girls see what powerful warriors can’t. Vulnerable women precariously positioned on the brink of destitution can see options others overlook.

In 2 Kings 4, we meet a woman from Shunem whose husband is about to die. Because she has no sons and the one who has provided for her needs is about to die, this woman is in a dire situation. In the ancient world, women like her were dependent upon the provision of a husband or son, and without either, her future is bleak. Utter poverty is the immediate option looming before her. Elisha offers her another pathway: “Can we speak on your behalf to the king or the commander of the army?” (2 Kings 4:13). Perhaps one of them would take her in as a wife. Perhaps they will use their political power to provide for her. Given the options in front of her, perhaps this is the lesser of two evils.

Her remarkable response resists the given options and charts out what others could not see. “I have a home among my own people.” We shouldn’t miss the subtext: She isn’t going to sell out to align with the powerful, even when her future is uncertain. Aligning with the king would displace her from the people whose identity and life have been rooted in God’s faithfulness. In other words, she could see the way the world really worked. She saw what the king couldn’t: God’s own faithfulness in strange and subtle ways would be her hope and future.

Her vision has me thinking a lot about my place among God’s people, who are currently being offered political options: this or that? I want to be able to see the invisible political option. Since most Americans will read this through a two-party lens, you may be asking, “You mean a third-party candidate?” And to answer that question, that’s not really what I mean. Rather, I mean maintaining a vision of God’s faithfulness in the subtle and strange ways, so that when I’m given options that would beckon me away from the subtlety of God’s future, I can say, “I actually want to find my home among my own people.”

Pastorally, I do have a concern that the given political options on offer (and I don’t just mean the candidates or parties) blind us to the subtle faithfulness of God that is sustaining and redeeming the world. Theologically, I hope that we can develop a vision to see the way God sustains and redeems so that God’s people will have the capacity to say, “We’re going to make our home there.”

The strangest way God seems to see fit to redeem the world is, of course, in the way of Jesus Christ. His life, death, and resurrection have opened a reality where Christians are called to find a home. His way isn’t going to fit other patterns, but I’m not making a call here for some generic ‘middle way’ in pointing to Jesus between two given options. Rather, I’m hoping to develop the vision of a woman who could see a completely different way forward that would cause her to entrust herself entirely to God’s pattern of redemptive life. And then I hope that such a vision would guide me to pass on offers to make my home by aligning with given options. I’d rather have the theological vision and courage to join her response: “I have a home among my people.” Those people are the ones who are living in real ways the dynamics of resurrection, entrusting themselves to the new creation breaking in at every turn. It’s not usually in the headlines, but it is anywhere the Spirit is making things new through Jesus. It is a vision that I hope will lead me to align with the politics of new creation.

A vision of new creation politics may not come with a clear-cut voter guide, but it does call for us to live life in ways that allow the dynamics of resurrection to move us, arranging us into new creation relationships and realities. Those realities probably won’t come back in poll results on election night, whatever the result. But my hope today is that a woman who could really see might lend her vision to us today, and that rather than aligning with given political options, we can see an option that is often overlooked and say with her, “Thanks for the offer, but I’m not going to go with you. I’ve got a home with my people.”