The “Dollitics” of Peace

This week as you greeted each other in church with the words of “Peace Be With You,” I hope that they took on some additional meaning as this week in Advent, we lit the Peace candle. This week we turn our attention to why and how the Christmas Story is also a story of Peace. We are also on week 3 of our “Wisdom of Dolly” Advent preaching series, where we look at songs and stories from the life of the iconic Dolly Parton and tie them to the themes of the Advent season – Hope, Joy, Peace and Love.

I have to admit that it’s hard to fully embrace or understand how to celebrate peace this season when the top headlines from our various news outlets all tell the stories of war and violence, around the world and also here in our hometown of Memphis. Advent is about expectant waiting and longing for God to arrive, so I suppose that connects to our thoughts about Peace – expectant waiting and longing for an escape from the cycles of violence that are all too familiar to us in this world.

And what in the world does Dolly Parton have to do with this idea of Peace?

This where I turn particularly to Jad Abumrhad’s podcast, “Dolly Parton’s America” for an interesting tie between Dolly and this idea of Peace. Episode five of this podcast series is called “Dollitics,” and it is a fascinating look at Dolly Parton’s politics, or lack thereof. The episode starts with what most of us know to be true. Dolly Parton is one of the most beloved, least polarizing figures in the world. Folks have described her concerts as being something like a utopian, Kin-dom of God kind of experience because they bring together folks from so many different walks of life. Folks gather at her shows across all kinds of difference – generational difference, socioeconomic difference, ethnic and racial difference, geographic difference, political difference. All the lines we draw in society, lines that feel like they have been drawn a little thicker in recent years, seem to disappear at events that center around Dolly Parton. It’s a rarity to have any kind of gathering like this these days, when our culture puts so much pressure on picking sides, choosing a team and letting the world know whose team you are on.

And it’s not like people don’t ask Dolly to weigh in on everything, especially politics. She’s asked about it all the time. The Dolly experts interviewed on the podcast call her a master at deflection. In what has been described by others as “verbal Judo” Dolly always manages to glide above the fray, to side step and make a well-timed joke to avoid being pinned down. It’s earned her the label of being one of the “great unifiers” in this world.

In an interview, Dolly says, “I don’t do politics. I have fans on both side of the fence. Of course I have my opinions, but I learned long ago what happens when you speak out.” The irony of Dolly’s “I don’t do politics” position is that many of her songs are extremely political. She wrote and performed the anthem for an entire political movement – “9 to 5,” and starred in the film of the same name – a film and a song that were intended to shed light of the experiences of women in the workplace and the glaring inequities in pay, opportunity and treatment. She’s written songs through the perspectives of immigrants and refugees, and all those sad songs from the ‘60s certainly speak to the second wave feminism at the time – all while she’s on record saying she doesn’t think of herself as a feminist and has negative associations with that term.

The podcast then centers an event in 2017 – Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly, the three stars of the 1980 film 9 to 5, are reunited on stage at the Emmy Awards for the first time since the film because all three happen to be Emmy nominees. At the mic, Jane and Lily speak first, and quoting a line from the film say something about how back in 1980 in the move, they wouldn’t allow themselves to be controlled by a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.” – a line directed at their boss, played by Dabney Coleman. And then they added that in 2017, they still were not going to allow themselves to be controlled by a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.” Knowing the political perspectives of both Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, it was very clear that this was a line directed at newly elected President Donald Trump.

Dolly’s eyes were huge as they darted around. You can see the discomfort. She nervously states that’s it’s a line from the film directed at Dabney Coleman and then, she tells a boob joke. When asked about it later, Dolly says she did not like their comments and did not appreciate that moment because she doesn’t do politics.

The exchange that happened next is one that podcast creator Jad Abumrhad says he has thought about every day since. Without prompting she says, “What I wanted to say is, ‘Why don’t we pray for the president?’” She said it with such sincerity that it stopped Abumrhad in his tracks. While it is easy to think that Dolly’s “I don’t do politics” is about not wanting to upset anyone in her fan base lest it affect her likeability and, as a result, her success and livelihood as an entertainer, that’s not what this ultimately is. Dolly wants to be on everyone’s side. She’s passed on every single opportunity to take a shot at someone or criticize, even folks who have actively worked against her, manipulated her, and betrayed her. She persistently takes the high road, and seems to want to believe in the best of everyone. Her “I don’t do politics” stance is less about her bottom line than it is her heart, and her resistance to taking sides that situate her as an enemy to any person or group.

I have been leaning into this lesson from Dolly over the past couple of months, particularly as it relates to the unfolding war in Gaza. Within a couple of weeks of the horrific terrorist events on October 7th, it became clear that there was an expectation that everyone must pick a side in this battle. The very complicated, long-standing and confusing histories and accounts of current events were boiled down to two options that everyone seemed to want us to choose from – Are you with Israel? Or, are you with the Palestinian people?

If you question any Israeli war tactics, or call for restraint, or ask about the conditions under which Palestinians had been living in the time leading up to October 7th, folks would be so quick to label you as antisemitic, and suggest that you deny Israel the opportunity to defend itself against this horrific act of terror. Questioning the violence was so quickly linked to denying the reality that antisemitism is growing throughout the world, a hatred so evil and pervasive it led to the genocide of a third of an entire race of people less than 100 years ago.

On the other hand if you do not question Israel, you were said to support occupation, oppression and what numerous humanitarian organizations around the world have described as Palestinians living in an open air prison in Gaza. In the early weeks of this conflict escalation, we were bombarded by horrific and traumatic images and stories. Depending on which media sources were reporting the narrative surrounding these horrific images was completely different. The pressure here in the United States to pick a side or have a definitive commentary has been immense, and its left many of us at a loss for words, often out of fear of the names we will be called or the assumptions that will be made about us if we say anything at all. It’s felt nearly impossible to openly grieve Israeli death, Palestinian death and all of the other death in the region together. 

Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is the academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College in Palestine and also pastor of Christmas Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. The image on the front of your bulletin is the nativity scene at their church this year – a child, on a pile of rubble, wrapped in a Palestinian scarf as a swaddling cloth. In late November, he wrote, “Christmas is canceled in Bethelehem this year.” There will be no celebrations of Christmas at his church as they are instead in solidarity with the massive pain and suffering in the region.

When I first read this, I wanted to protest. “Is this not a moment we need the in-breaking of God more than ever? How can you not celebrate Christmas?” But the more I listened to him – his message at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill in DC on November 28th – I began to understand. We can’t celebrate the arrival of God when God is already here with us, but is trapped under the rubble. Throughout these events, I’ve heard folks ask, “Where is God in these atrocities? Has God left the Holy Land?”

What I know to be true about Jesus, whose birthday we are mere days away from celebration, is that Jesus is not one who would be boxed in or forced to take sides. Jesus was with the people and for the people, and the people he was with and for first and always were those who were suffering – the poor, the sick, the outcasts, the downtrodden, the imprisoned, the dying. Where is God? God is with the suffering – not picking a side, dictating military strategy, or telling us that some lives are worth more than others. God is with those who are grieving, injured, displaced, and dying – no matter their race, national origin, or religion.

In the way that Dolly Parton means when she says it, God also doesn’t do politics, or at least not the way we do them. God isn’t picking a side in our human-made categories. God is on the side of love, mercy, justice and God is always, always on the side of Peace. If that sounds radical or makes you angry, I want you to listen to your Christmas songs a little more closely, because most of them use the word, “Peace”

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Risen with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the new-born king" 

Christmas isn’t canceled in Memphis, Tennessee this year. But it isn’t because we have chosen to ignore the suffering or chosen a comfortable side in the conflicts raging overseas. As we celebrate the arrival of the gentle newborn Jesus over the coming days, I want us to wonder together, what it means that we are able to celebrate the in-breaking of God into our world, the arrival of the Prince of Peace, when our Christian siblings in other parts of the world won’t this year, because their experience of God is too consumed with heartbreak, devastation and death. What does that mean for us? How does our celebration of Christmas relate to the non-celebration in areas of the world that are suffering. How does our lighting the Peace candle change as we recognize how so many don’t know peace? What is our responsibility in that?

Dolly doesn’t do politics, but she sings about the plight of the people, resists the urge to create “us” and “them” scenarios and refuses to speak a cruel word about anyone, even when it may be somewhat deserved. What is the lesson for us in taking that approach? How can we see God’s Peace in some of the wisdom of Dolly?

Peace Be With You. Amen.