I'm a bit anxious about today's sermon. I know what I want to talk about and I have a few ideas about what I will say, but I am not sure if I can say it the right way, or how it will be heard or even received. Given what's happened in our country this past week I feel it is important to say something, but it feels like a risky topic, given that 42 percent of the American public eligible to vote did not vote, and of those that did vote, 26.4 voted for Donald Trump and slightly more, 26.5 voted for Hillary Clinton with the remaining percentage voting for others.
My anxiousness aside however, I feel it is important to talk with you today about this presidential election that we had. I know that for some we are at happy place somehow feeling vindicated. I also know that for some we are ambivalent. I also know for many others we are not happy, so what can I say that will help all of us? I may upset some of you but that's not my intention. I don't want to upset some of you. My hope is to upset all of us. My hope is that we be receptive to how the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, can challenge all of us to be open so that we do not choose --- as Luke puts it --- "a defense in advance," but to be open to the "words and wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict." I want to be Christ-like in this world, to choose a different way, to think differently, to do differently, and to be different because as our ELCA Bishop Eaton put it in her response to the election: "No human candidate can guarantee our life or our future."
Nonetheless to be honest, I am struggling deeply with the choice, but that is not my point, because now that I have had a couple days to think about this election, I have realized somethings about these last few months.
Before the election happened, if I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times, I even said it myself: "I'll be so glad when it's all over." But, now that it's over --- I find that it isn't over --- it isn't over at all. Our fears, anger, prejudices, regrets, disappointments, frustrations, agendas, and hateful words did not end. "It" will not end until we choose to end "it," until we choose to be different. And I wonder if we will choose to end "it" because I don't know if we want it to end.
So, as painful and difficult as this election and aftermath has been and continues to be, I think its aftershock provides us an opportunity. I don't mean the opportunity to redo an election. I mean the opportunity to seriously look at ourselves. This election was a self-portrait, and I don't like what I saw. As a self-portrait, it paints what we are as people of this nation and what we are doing to ourselves, each other, and the world.
I don't blame Mr. Trump or Secretary Clinton for causing this. I don't blame President Obama or President Bush before them. Nor do I blame those who carry my namesake as evangelicals. Rather, all of us in our own way has added to this self-portrait, as we are all citizens of this nation. We simply did as we all have done, stirred intentionally or unintentionally what was already there; the deep inequalities, economic injustice, racism and a whole host of other open Pandora box of fears, sins and problems.
And for those who say "things have gotten worse" have not read history. I still remember cleaning out an old church file cabinet at a former parish and reading the minutes from community meetings at the church of people working so that John Kennedy a Roman Catholic would not be elected, and what they thought of end of segregation.
In other words, once again we had winners and losers and we all missed an opportunity to think and be different.
I know the question: How do we do that when everything has become so personal? "He's not my president." "My side lost." "My side won." "My agenda was approved." Don't get me wrong. I am deeply concerned and I recognize that I am coming from a place of straight, white, male privilege. It is personal for those who felt this nation had forgotten them. It is personal for those who felt that this nation was on an unredeemable path. Likewise, it is personal for all those who fear deportation, those who fear that this now license to take away marriage for all same sex loving couples, those who fear that there is now a pass to grope and harass women, those who fear that once again they will not be judged by their character but by the color of their skin, those who fear attack because of their Muslim faith. Rather, by suggesting that this has become personal, I am not trying to someway trivialize those who are afraid now or the fears of the many who voted for President elect Trump.
Rather, if any day calls points to the way we have over-personalized this election is today's gospel from Luke (21:5-19). It was not one I would have chosen for this day because I would have much preferred to find a lesson to justify my view. But thank God for a liturgical calendar that forces me to muddle through scripture that I would rather not chose.
These words of Jesus in response to the disciples who were marveling at what their nation had built, forces them and us to confront the fact that we see the world as winners and losers; am I part of the winning crowd? Although under the thumb of Rome, the disciples marveled at their blessings as winners, by extension those saved, in comparison to the losers who aren't so called blessed. Instead Jesus re-directs the disciples and by extension ourselves away from a winner/loser mentality in describing the way and challenges on the way to the kingdom of God; the challenges of trying to follow this Jesus who in Mary's vision: "has sent to proclaim release for the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
And yet like so often the case we relapse and take this lesson like so many others and divide it into winners and losers. I just don't believe that's the truth that there are --- those who are good and those who are bad --- those who are saved and those who are damned --- those who are right and those who are wrong --- those who are orthodox and those who are heretics --- those who will experience division and those who will not --- and on and on. Because the truth is we are both at the same time living in moments of grace and moments of evil, moments of love and moments of hate, joyful in God's grace and struggling with demons, frightened and trusting in God's grace or as Martin Luther put it, simultaneously saints and sinners. And it's not only in the church. The sin that creates and needs winner and losers is at the heart of what we are doing in our country and world.
I think this lesson is kind of like that hot and cold game we may have played as children. Somebody would hide something and then direct others by saying, "You're warm. Yes, you're getting warmer. Oh, now you're cold. You're ice cold." By calling out the temperature it was a way of telling the players if they were close to or far from what was hidden. Today, Jesus is calling out to us that we will experience warmth and bitter cold as we go toward this kingdom, getting close and sometimes moving far away from it.
That is where our faith comes in because in faith as a gift from God's Spirit and Word, we are being pushed away from a winners/losers paradigm. In faith, we put into practice our spirituality which transcends human and artificial labels. In faith, we are stirred and will stir others to refuse to settle for the world as it is --- for we know we are looking for and moving to the kingdom of God. We know ourselves to be poor, hungry, empty, and grieving and we want something else for ourselves and each other. We recognize there is another way, the way of Jesus Christ; a different way of being, a different way of loving and we are willing to let go of what is, to create room for what can be.
When Jesus pronounces the costs of the way, and that it will be frightening, it's not because there are those, undeserving of the kingdom and we are set aside as winners to endure. Instead we are all about listening, trusting and using Jesus himself as a model. This gospel has nothing to do with predictions of the future, but are words to strengthen the community that Jesus knew would feel long-suffering and persecuted --- then --- now and in the future.
What that means is when we divide the world, our nation, each other, our politicians, this election, and the kingdom into winners and losers we're telling Jesus, "You're just wrong. There isn't enough Kingdom of God to go around. Some can get it but others cannot and all I want is to be on winning side."
I don't want to live like that, because that is not Christ like; it is not the way of Jesus. Rather what Jesus is reminding in his words to the disciples today is that we will be challenged, to listen, trust and use Jesus as model. As Paul put it later: "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
What to do then? Perhaps rather than papering over what we have stirred and suggesting a false unity we begin with a basic step. I once read of a man who once asked his spiritual director about a particularly challenging problem and what he should do. The story went that the spiritual director sat in silence for a few moments and then spoke only one sentence: "I would just try to begin by not adding to the pain of the world."
Perhaps, we we could do that, for the next few days and months, we could make a stark difference in our crucial conversations just by not adding to the pain of the world. It isn't easy, particularly when we feel the other side is so in the wrong no matter how we voted. It isn't easy when this election has pitted family members against family members. It isn't easy when some feel hopeful and others feel hopeless.
Thankfully a little later in Luke, Jesus himself will face some of the same things he is warning will happen to the disciples, anger, being forsaken and death. In that, Jesus will be an example as a way of instruction on how to deal with suffering and persecution. We are to stand our ground, as Jesus did, and in love speak as humbly and truthfully in faith as we can, but not to back away either. "Not a hair of your head will perish" recalls 12:7: "even the hairs of your head are all counted." We are to hang in there, trust in God, and have "endurance." By our endurance, we will acquire our lives.
So, let us all of us be uncomfortable with what this election has shown us to be; let us continue to work on following a different way. To think differently, and do differently, and be different but not to add more pain to this world. Rather so that when we feel the cold of being far, far from the kingdom, we will be nudged by God's Spirit and Word closer to the warmth of the light of Christ. For our duty now is the same as it has been during all presidential administrations before us; it is the vision articulated by the prophet Micah: "To do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with God." Let us be different. Amen.
Thank you for this, again.
Posted by: Sam MB | 16 November 2016 at 07:08 PM