Sermon: What comes after this election? (Nov. 13, 2016)

Pentecost 26C

November 13, 2016

Isaiah 65:17-25

Isaiah 12:2-6

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

Luke 21:5-19

            This was a big week in the history of America. Either way the election ended up going, it was going to be big, and we all knew it. Tuesday night the country and the world watched anxiously as the poll numbers came in. Wednesday morning half the country woke up happy and hopeful; the other half awoke devastated, anxious and afraid. All of us have since then been trying to process what this result will mean for our future.

            And then we come to worship this morning, and hear this collection of texts. As you may know, I don’t choose the texts each week; they are chosen well in advance and are a part of what’s called the Revised Common Lectionary, which intentionally puts texts together by theme and season. (Though I admit, I swapped out the standard Old Testament and Psalm for the alternative option, which offered a bit more hope – I figured you wouldn’t mind!) As I read these texts again on Wednesday morning, my heart sank. How is one to preach to a congregation that is politically mixed, with texts that could very well be inflammatory given the current emotional temperature of our country?

            Depending on how you voted this week, I suspect these texts might speak to each of us a bit differently today. If you proudly cast your vote for Donald Trump, you may hear the first lesson from Isaiah, with its optimism about the newness that God will bring about, and it is God’s word to you: with God’s help, our country will finally be headed in the right direction! We shall be saved yet! If you proudly cast your vote for Hillary Clinton, you might hear the ominous words of our Gospel lesson, with its predictions of the end of the world and the dreadful things that will happen, and think of all the ways you fear that America as we know it might come to an end in the next four years, looking to the various hate crimes that have popped up since Tuesday as your proof. If you cast a vote holding your nose, unsupportive of either candidate, maybe you are also drawn to Isaiah, and the hope it brings that God will create something new and wonderful out of a terrible situation.

            The spread of the emotions this week is wide, and I think first of all, it is really, really

important to acknowledge that. This is not a time to gloat, nor to blame; it is a time to let people feel what they need to feel – without convincing them everything will be all right, or that they should get over it. As the Church, it is also the time to ask a question I have asked you before, but today I ask it again with a new urgency: how do we be in community with one another when our emotional spectrum is so wide and varied? How do we live in Christian love alongside one another? How do we seek healing over division, and love over hate?

            What I have found helpful this week, and what I believe is an essential first step toward faithfully living together, is finding ways to listen to one another – not to reply or convince, but just to hear and understand. This has been a season full of attacks and counter-attacks, of judgments and blame of the other side, of insisting that this view is right and that is wrong. So much of it is fueled by emotion, and when emotions are so high, no amount of reason or logic will help or change anyone’s mind or bring anyone closer to another – especially when, as I think has been the case in America, the primary emotion is fear. When we fear, we react – just look at today’s text from Luke. Jesus tells them that the temple, their place of worship, which was rebuilt with their own hands following the horrible, dark time of the exile, will be torn down. Their immediate response is fear: “What? When? Why? How will we know?” This temple was more than a building: it represented how God had answered their prayers in the past and brought them out of exile and back to their home. Surely it would not be taken from them again! Jesus does little to assuage their fears: he only warns them further, and they are left with uncertainty and anxiety about the future.

 Acknowledging that emotion, that fear, is important in knowing why someone behaves the way they do. Trying to rationalize it away only deepens the fear and sense that the fear is misunderstood and not taken seriously. At their core, what people want is to be understood, and their feelings valued.

So how does this affect our desire to be in Christian community together? First of all, we acknowledge: everybody feels, and everybody’s feelings are valid, and everybody wants to be heard.

Those hearing God’s good word in Isaiah were coming to the end of 70 years in exile. They were growing increasingly hopeless, distressed, separated from their faith and their God. Isaiah’s prophecy speaks to those feelings, and offers them a word of hope. It is not unlike many Trump supporters, who have for too long felt their voices and concerns were not heard by Washington, and now here comes a Washington outsider who gives voice to their feelings, and in that articulation they find hope.

Then we turn to our passage from Luke. This was actually written several decades after Jesus lived, about 15 years after the temple had already fallen, so by including this discourse, Luke was likely trying to make sense of the fallen temple to an audience who had already witnessed it. That audience was living in a tense time, where the political scene was scary to them. They felt threatened, and so their inclination was to look at the calamities around them and view it as a sign: that God wasn’t on their side, or that God was somehow punishing them, or that God was simply absent. This is not unlike those who are fearful and anxious about a Trump presidency. Many fear that we have elected a man whose behavior has normalized and legitimized some dangerous and hurtful ways of acting in the world, and undermined many Americans’ dignity and personhood. “How can God have allowed this?” they ask. “Is God even on our side anymore?” But Jesus was telling those 1^st century listeners and us: God is very much present, and very much on your side.

Whichever text speaks to your heart this week, the one that I think we all must take as our guiding light is the Psalm, which comes from Isaiah: “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might, and has become my salvation.” In the end, you see, we do not put our trust in human leaders. Though Luther wrote, and I agree, that government is one tool God uses to take care of God’s people, at the end of the day our salvation comes from the Lord, our strength and our might, and above all, we must trust in God.

So what does that look like, right now, in this time and place? How do we trust God if we voted for Trump? How do we trust God if we voted for Clinton? What does trusting God look like if neither candidate was your cup of tea? Jesus answers that question for us: “This will give you an opportunity to testify,” he says. In the face of calamity, or uncertainty, or a divided country in which half its citizens are grieving and anxious about the future and half are hopeful: this is your opportunity to testify – not for your candidate or viewpoint, but for the love and grace of God.

Sec. Clinton said the same thing in her concession speech. “Never stop believing,” she said, “that fighting for what’s right is worth it.” She backed it up with a reference to a Galatians text very

similar to today’s from 2^nd Thessalonians, “Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.”

That is what it means to trust in the Lord. It is not sitting back and saying, “God’s got this, I’ll just wait and see.” No, it is listening to God, listening to what is God’s will, listening to the needs of our brothers and sisters of every stripe and walk, and fighting the good fight, fighting for what is right. It means donating items for Christmas stockings that go to help children in need, including children of migrant workers. It means reaching out to your Muslim neighbors and saying, “How are you feeling?” and truly listening to their story. It means continuing to tell children that bullying is not okay, that every child (and adult) is a beloved child of God. It means valuing people and their gifts and their experience, whether that experience is as a black inner city woman with eight kids by three fathers, or a gay man, or a woman trying to climb the corporate ladder, or a white, working class man from Alabama who has never left his hometown, or an evangelical woman who has spent her life fighting against abortion, or a Latino man who is trying to make a better life for his family, or a Syrian refugee. Trusting God means loving and caring for all of these in whatever way we are able, because we know that Jesus died also for them.

Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right. Feel what you need to feel, seek the support you need, and finally, trust in God, our salvation, and use this time as an opportunity to testify: to testify the love of our forgiving God, who brings all people to Himself, who went to the cross to show us that love, and rose again to bring us into new life.

Surely it is God who saves me. I will trust in Him and not be afraid. For the Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense, and He shall be my savior. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.