411 M.A.G.A.

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for M.A.G.A.”, originally shared on April 30, 2026. It was the 411^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    What is our answer to the divisions that we are experiencing, possibly even leading to our recent political violence? It’s not that complicated. Today, we’re going to find out.
   The recent attempted assassination of President Trump and his senior officials has led to angry finger pointing and blame around our country.
   Ink has been spilled, pixels have been splashed, decibels have been raised, and bandwidth has been consumed, all to blame someone else. Some, predictably in today’s climate, have claimed that the whole thing was staged.
   It’s been said that the other ideology, the other party, the other side represents the threat of communism, socialism, fascism, nazi-ism, or whatever else is claimed to be an existential threat to our democracy, depending on which side of the divide you stand on.
   We are not polarized any more. We are pulverized each to his or her own tribe, echo chamber, and sense of indignant self-righteousness.
   Critical thinking and personal integrity have been replaced by myside bias and indoctrination.
   Social media could be blamed, as could the shift of higher education to vocational schools for making money, or the Boomers’ destruction of the institutions that formed them, or our therapeutic culture, or our hyper materialism and individualism, or our victim culture, or the rise of forces that seek to destroy the values of the Western world as well the United States and all its institutions. There are many more.
   But I think that the core reason for the “angry finger pointing and blame” is simple. It works.
   It works with us, the American people. It has been effective in getting people elected, making money, and gaining power.
   Do economic and social classes exist as a way to describe our country? There’s a tribe for that. Are we entirely defined by trauma from the pandemic? There’s a tribe for that. Do we seek equity over equality? There’s a tribe for that. And they all seek compensation and will support those who say that they will get it for them.
   George Bernard Shaw once said, "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul". 
   That’s all that many see as the proper role of government.
   The American Dream, for many, is an out of court settlement.
   All that matters is that your side wins.
   Today it seems to many to be naïve, even unjust, to expect newcomers to contribute, assimilate, and seek the common good. Civility is seen as weakness or as a badge of privilege. Does it not seem more productive today to hate your enemies today than to love them?
   Those things are no accident, and they go hand-in-hand with the general decline of Christianity in our country.
   What happened?
   I think that the gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, John 14:1-14 helps us understand where we are today, and what we can do about it as the Christian Church.
   This reading is a part of Jesus’ final words to his disciples as they gathered around a table for the last supper, the institution of Holy Communion, Jesus washing his disciple’s feet as a model of the selfless service he called on them to embody, and his new commandment: to love one another as he had loved them. Jesus would be betrayed, abandoned, and give his life on the cross the next day.
   He says this in John 14:1-4,
14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. ² In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴ And you know the way to the place where I am going.”
   Jesus tells the disciples gathered in the upper room not to worry, but to believe in God.
   So that’s the big insight? That’s the answer to all of life’s problems and the solution to our national fragmentation?
   Yup.
   We were made for a living relationship with the one true living God. We broke it and we brought evil into the world. We still do.
   We don’t live a natural life. The world is not the way it’s supposed to be.
   What’s the answer? Jesus.
   So, how does that work? Inquiring minds want to know as our Gospel text continues, in John 14:5-7,
⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
   When I served at a church in San Dimas, the members of our congregation ran the political gamut from a person who wore a “Trump” T-shirt to worship during his first campaign for the presidency to a person who occupied a place on the left wing of the Democratic party.
   People would occasionally ask me why I didn’t preach more on political or social issues. But what they were really asking was for me to preach in a way that supported their views.
   They didn’t want me to preach in a way that spoke against their views.
   I didn’t.
   I think that most people who cared knew what I thought about things in a general way, but my position was to say that we were going to focus on what unites us, not on what divides us, what we were there for, and what we all have in common: Jesus.
   We would let that relationship with Jesus guide us in God’s way.
   What is God’s way? Well, Jesus said that he was the way, and the truth and the life, and that he was the only way to God.
   But the disciples still don’t get it, as we see as our Gospel reading continues in John 14:8-10,
⁸ Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
   Do you look more like your mother or your father? Did Jesus look more like his father, so if you have seen Jesus you have an idea of  what God the Father looks like?
   No. That’s not the idea at all. 😊
   We resonate with God through the work of the Holy Spirit, we sense his presence within us and the re-formation of our truest selves. That internal reshaping is what guides what we do in response.
   Christ is risen, he is God, and he is present in all things.
   He is present in a unique way for our salvation in the forms of bread and wine in Holy Communion. When we eat that bread and drink that wine, Christ himself is present in, with, and under the forms of bread and wine, though the forms themselves don’t physically change. We commune with God!
   And, Jesus says, in Matthew 18:20,
²⁰ For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
   What are the operative words in that sentence? “In my name”.
   We might say that a person’s truest self is located in their “heart”, or in their “soul”, or in their “spirit”. People in the Bible would say that is was in their “name”.
   That’s why God has no name when he speaks to Moses out of the bush that is burning but not consumed. It is inconceivable for a human being to know God’s name, God’s true self. That’s why, when people in the Bible go through some life-altering experience, their name changes. Abram and Sari changes to Abraham and Sarah, Jacob changes to Israel. Saul changes to Paul. They are fundamentally different, so their name has to change accordingly.
   To say something, or to do something, in Jesus’ name, is to do it in the nature of Jesus’ true self. It means to act in accord with God’s will.
   That’s why we can get a weird, and sometimes wildly misinterpreted, statement like we do in the conclusion to today’s gospel reading, in John 14:11-14,
¹¹ Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. ¹² Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³ I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
   To say that we are agreeing with one another to do something in Jesus’ name, or to do something “in the name of Jesus”, by itself, is not invoking some magic words, like in Harry Potter where you say something in Latin and it just happens. 😊
   To ask Jesus to do something in Jesus’ name means to ask Jesus to act in accord with his true self. It means to ask Jesus to do his will, as we pray in the Lord’s prayer, “thy will be done”, not to get Jesus to do our will.
   We act in accord with God’s will as a natural result of our hearts, our true selves, turned to God. God changes us. God makes us a new creation. It is so dramatic that Jesus calls it being born again, and it must happen for us to enter the kingdom of God. But we don’t do it. It comes when we receive the gift of the living relationship with the one true living God that Jesus, who was fully God and fully human being, made possible on the cross.
   What does that life look like?
   I read a review once of a book called The Toxic War on Masculinity by Nancy Pearcey.
   In it, the reviewer summarized the book’s main theme by saying that the historical Christian contribution to gender identity was to shift the idea from “the Real Man” to “the Good Man.” From one who cared only for himself to one who sought to serve others. The reviewer praised the book as a "splendid" and nuanced analysis that navigates modern gender debates by contrasting the "Good Man" (the Christian ideal of responsibility and sacrifice) with the "Real Man" (the secular, aggressive stereotype).
   The Real Man was “tough, strong, aggressive, highly competitive, unwilling to show weakness, unemotional, imposing, isolated, and self-made. They grab all the guns, gold, and girls they can get, and don’t care much who gets hurt in the process.”
   The Good Man, the man of God, is characterized by “honor, duty, integrity, and a willingness to sacrifice. They’re responsible and generous, and they provide and protect, especially the weak.”
   Today, as the influence of Christianity is declining in our culture, we seem to be going backwards, and it’s not difficult to see the consequences.
   Today we are concerned about another land war in Europe, in the Middle East, and in the Far East, even talking in terms of World War III. We know that that wouldn’t end well.
   Albert Einstein reportedly said, “I know not what weapons will be used to fight World War III, but I’m confident that World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
   Yet, we act as if we can isolate ourselves from the consequences of our declining influence.
   Let me be very clear. I am not saying that any of the wars that we are facing right now many not need to be fought.
   But I am saying that they will not make us great, and they certainly will not make us good.
   That’s why it is necessary, especially at this moment in our history, to be thinking about what does make us great.
   We are concerned about what is going on in the world and we want to do the right thing. but are we worried? No.
   In fact, this week’s Gospel reading begins, with words, or similar words, to those that are seen all over the Bible, in John 14:1, where Jesus says,
“¹ Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
   At the root of the Christian life, we Christians experience the peace that passes human understanding. Whatever our emotional state, there is a state of being at our core that is unshakable because it comes from God. And because of that, we can give thanks in every circumstance because that peace, even joy, in all times and conditions of life, is a gift from God in a living relationship with God.
   Nevertheless, some of our own citizens have become so focused on our flaws that they hate our country, while at the same time people from other countries are literally dying to get into our country. And we continue to be a generous people as a whole.
   What is the source of our greatness? It is our goodness.
   Alexis de Tocqueville was a French diplomat and sociologist who toured the United States in the early 1800’s to learn about America, and he was deeply impressed with our singular democracy.
   After looking for the source of American greatness among the attributes and institutions of our new country, he wrote, in his book Democracy in America, “Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
   Let’s let that sink in for a minute… “and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
   How do we end the fragmentation, the loss of national unity and identity, the selfishness, the might makes right ideology that has crept even into the church?
   M.A.G.A. Make America Good Again!
   Make our pulpits flame with righteousness again!
   What is righteousness in the Bible but the restoration of the right relationship with the one true living God restored on the cross and given to all who will receive it by Jesus Christ?
   What is the Christian life but living the transformed life that comes from within as a natural, unforced, outcome in response to that selfless sacrifice of Jesus?
   How do we live with integrity, obedient to his command to love one another and to make disciples, seeking only to do God’s will? Jesus.
   Has God withdrawn his blessing from us? Is that why we are so divided, because a house divided against itself cannot stand?
   Where do we find our unity? Jesus. How can we replace rhetoric with revelation? Jesus. How can our hearts find peace? Jesus.
   We cannot know what good is without God, and we certainly cannot be good without God.
   “Doing good” and “being good” require a definition of good that can only come from outside our own judgement. It can only come from God.
   I took a philosophy course one year in college from which, I think, I remember very little. What I do remember is what the professor said in the few minutes at the end of some classes, when he had finished his prepared “professor” notes early and went into what I would call his “cracker barrel philosopher” mode. 😊
   One day, while in this mode, he made the observation that, in his opinion, most of the world’s evil, and probably all of its most heinous evil, had been done by people who sincerely, in their heart of hearts, believed that they were doing good.
   One of the things that I think that means, is that we need to be very humble before God. We need to live in response to the new life that God gives us and renews in us each day, to self-examine what we do in order to consider both our motives and our actions, and to trust only in God as the only source for a life that truly is life.
   God has given us that life, and called, equipped, and sent us to share it with one another.
   Pray that our pulpits flame with righteousness again today to make America, and the world, good again, a good that can only come from God.
   Live through Jesus, not your idea of Jesus, but Jesus who is revealed to you, and is living through you. Live, subject to Him who is the way, the truth and the life.
   That is our answer to the divisions that we cannot overcome, but that God can.
   Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!