Taken from a 2023 sermon, here are some suggestions for transforming political anger, anxiety, agitation and fatigue into loving action for peace and justice.

• Veni Sancte Spiritus. Come Holy Spirit. Cultivate Stillness and Invite the Holy Spirit to help you conform your dreams for our country to God’s dreams. Notice when the political rantings and ravings are making you anxious or angry in a way which paralyzes you instead of energizing you. Make space for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

• If your entire agenda has become waiting for any snippet of news that casts your political “opponent” in a bad light, then you need to consider changing your channels (both internal and external) to something peaceful and constructive. You may want to switch off your devices completely at least for a while. This may be a good time for a “media cleanse”. Cultivate media habits that bring you the kind of peace that invites the Holy Spirit in! So that your discernment and action are positive, loving and energizing.

• Use the presence of the Holy Spirit to help you with your political discernment. Read the book of Amos. Read also 1 Samuel 8:11-17. (See below). Heed their prophetic warnings, still applicable today, about how systems of power and oppression are always a threat to God’s Dream of Justice and Peace for all people. Amos and Samuel will help you be alert for self-serving authority falsely claiming God’s endorsement. They’ll help you notice false patriotism and claims of being specially chosen (see Amos 9:7). They’ll help you notice when God’s dream of justice and peace is being abused and distorted.

• Don’t underestimate what you can do in your context to further the dream of love and fairness instead of hate. You can be “lovingly active” without being an “activist”. We aren’t all called to be activists but we are all called to be lovingly active!

• Be excited by the fact that we can all do something. A donation to strengthen the efforts of an organization that actively promotes God’s dream. A phone call to your representative in government. Joining a protest march. 

• Find and use the resources that already exist to help you with your discernment of God’s justice-dream, and to help you lovingly to act in furtherance of that dream. The following offer resources and opportunities for service and advocacy, and guidance for protecting God’s justice dream from abuse and misrepresentation:
  • Episcopal Community Services of New Jersey(ECS-NJ). Go to info@ecs-nj.org
  • www.episcopalchurch.org. Click on “Ministries”
  • Lutherans Engaging in Advocacy Ministry: Go to www.leamnj.org

Watch out of self-serving authority, especially if it claims God’s endorsement

These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 
(1 Samuel: 11-17)

Beware of false patriotism that claims God’s blessing on one country but not another

Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? . . . . 
Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, 
And the Philistines from Caphtor, 
And the Arameans from Kir? 
(Amos 9:7)

Justice is God’s Dream. Persistent Unfairness and Inequality should be our nightmare.

Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
And bring to ruin the poor of the land,
Saying, “When will the new moon be over
So that we may sell grain;
And the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah (a unit of measurement) small,
And the shekel great,
And practice deceit with false balances,
Buying the poor for silver
And the needy for a pair of sandals,
And selling the sweepings of the wheat.
(Amos 8: 4-6)

from Peter Bridge’s sermon at Trinity Cathedral 6/11/23