As I write these words, Kristkindl Markt is nearly here. By the time you read this, my church's building will be filled with hundreds, maybe thousands of visitors coming to visit our German Christmas festival. Every year our church building is transformed into a German Christmas village with craft vendors and gingerbread houses for the kids. Our social hall is turned into a beer hall with German food, beer (shout out to KC Bier Company) and oompah bands. Our church has been at this for 25 years, and KKM has become a Christmastime tradition for hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Sure, it's our church's largest fundraiser, and its a way for our folks to get to know one another working side by side to keep the beer, brats and gingerbread houses flowing, but I want to offer another reason why KKM matters this year more than ever.
I was a child when Watergate happened and Richard Nixon resigned. By the time I even understood what had happened, it all seemed like ancient history to me. My generation never knew life without deep cynicism in our political system, and a fractured and hyper-partisan America is all we've ever known. The deep wounds and ramifications of that time continue to fester. Many commentators and historians trace a line from our current impeachment drama back through Watergate and all the way back to the founding of our nation. Whatever the outcome now, the pain of this time will reach far into the future in ways we cannot predict, just like folks in 1974 could never have envisioned where we are today.
Supposedly one should never talk about politics or religion in polite company, but in my lifetime I can't really think of a worse time to talk about either. Up until the 2016 election, financial disagreements were the biggest cause of marriage breakups in America. Since the election, the leading cause of relationships ending was disagreement over politics. One polling report I found showed "one in 10 couples, married and not, have ended their relationships in a battle over political differences. For younger millennials, it's 22 percent. And nearly one in three Americans said that political clashes over Trump have "had a negative impact on their relationship," said the report . . ."Passionately opposing points of views are not only driving wedges between strangers and even friends, but we are now seeing evidence that this dissent is having a detrimental impact on Americans' marriages and relationships." That report was produced in 2017. Imagine how much worse those statistics are now.
Certainly our present days offer plenty of opportunities for people of faith to take stands against racism, xenophobia, attacks on immigrants and threats to honesty itself. Yet, I've come to believe that people of faith also can play a role in bringing disparate people together to find common ground. I'm talking about the most basic kind of common ground--just being together int he same space while being civil to one another.
I'm not a believer in "peace and harmony" necessarily being a good thing in and of itself. In American history, "peace" has almost always meant security for some at the cost of oppression for others. As MLK said, "True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice." That being said, there have to be opportunities for people to come together, share something in common and experience the common humanity in one another. At some point, people must come out from behind their cell phones and the nastiness they spew at total strangers in order to simply remember things like empathy, connection and that simple fact that someone may look and believe things very different from you but that doesn't erase your shared humanity. From a Christian perspective, one could say it's a chance for us to recognize the image of God in others different from ourselves and to see how Jesus' difficult teachings about loving our "enemies" can actually be made real.
Recently, I sat down for coffee with one of the sports writers for the KC Star. He shared with me about how social media has changed his business,. At a different time, he would maybe receive some hate mail in the literal mail or rude phone messages on his voicemail. Now, even the most non-controversial column or story about sports results in dozens of the most grotesque, obscene and even violent tweets and comments directed at him. (Female sports writers have it even worse!) As we commiserated on the state of our nation's soul, he remarked that I was the one as a minister doing something about it, while he was only a sports writer. I laughed and shared how powerless I often feel as a minister to make any perceptible difference. It takes faith to believe what I can rarely see, namely that God's spirit is at work improving the world despite evidence to the contrary.
I also told him that I felt he was selling himself short as a sports writer. Although some would dismiss sports as trivial, at its best sports can bring people together to have fun and share an experience together. Just think about the Royals World Series parade in 2015! I told him that despite the attacks he experiences from trolls, that his public service was helping people find enjoyment in something instead of fueling the omnipresent outrage machine. There is a reason talking sports becomes a bridge between people who have trouble communicating about anything else. Many are the times when I couldn't talk with someone about religion or politics but we could share a smile reliving a great pass by Patrick Mahomes.
Similarly, the folks coming to KKM may come from all sides of our current partisan divide and the bad religion mixed into it all. Yet, when they are here they get to be together, enjoy some great food and music, remember what it was like to be a child delighted by a gingerbread house and maybe even be reminded of what it means to be human. We don't get many new members from KKM, but we get thousands of people who know our church as the place they experience a vibrant, positive, life-giving experience. That seems pretty worthwhile to me.
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