Post Election Sermon

Proper 28C 2016 – Post Election day

Isaiah65:17-25; Canticle 9; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

                                                           Rev. Adam T. Trambley                                  

November 13, 2016, St. John’s Sharon

Our gospel this morning has some comforting and challenging things to say about the times we live in.  Jesus is looking at the temple in Jerusalem, which was a stunningly beautiful and large building at a time when the average person might see very few such buildings in their lifetime.  Seeing this bulwark of stability that was supposed to stand for every good religious, pious and godly thing, Jesus says that someday it will all come tumbling down.  His disciples understand him to be talking about the end of the world, so they ask him when it is.  A reasonable question, and one we would probably ask, as well.  His answer to them, and to us, is that the end isn’t yet, and in the meantime, you have some hard work of being a Christian to do.

Many of you received stewardship letters in the mail this week, or you should be shortly, and I had planned to talk more directly about time, talent and treasure this week.  But a whole lot has happened this week that I think this gospel is calling us to examine.  Seventy people were laid off from Sharon Regional a few blocks up the street and over twelve-hundred were laid off from the Cruze plant in Lordstown where some of our parishioners work.  Various cancers, dementia and other illnesses continue to afflict those in our parish.  Then Tuesday night we finally elected our next president after a long and bitter campaign, and the election’s aftermath has brought its own issues, not the least of which is that way too much of the country stayed up way too late on Tuesday night watching election results and has been grumpy all week.  In all of this, as Jesus says, the end of the world is coming, but it isn’t coming yet, no matter what anybody says, and in the meantime we have some hard work to do.

If you’ve been on social media or watched the news, many people have sounded like the world has just ended in the aftermath of this election.  And, we can pretty much guarantee that others would be sounding similar alarms if Clinton had been elected.  These feelings are real, but they are also part of the fallout from our particular American electoral process.  In the United States, we like clear winners and losers.  This way of operating probably goes back to our immigrant and frontier ethos where people picked up everything and started their lives over and they either made it or they didn’t.  We can see this desire for clarity in other aspects of our common life.  We can’t leave college football alone, but we have to design some sort of playoff system so we know who is number 1.  It bothers us that two different polls could have two different teams as number 1.  The country loves March Madness with its knockout brackets.  We don’t even care if the best team wins – in fact we almost prefer it if some underdog defeats the best team in the country – but we need to see a winner.  We even have Lent Madness where we put dead saints up against each other to win or lose, albeit tongue-in-cheek, but the social media fights about which saint is better can get pretty fierce.

This winning and losing is enshrined in the way our presidential elections work.  Candidates win states, and the electoral college vote allows for big red and blue television maps without a lot of purple.  If our candidates win, they go on, and if they lose, they go home.  In other countries, a Prime Minister candidate whose party narrowly loses becomes the leader of the opposition and has significant power until the next election.  Here, Hillary Clinton is now going home.  If Donald Trump had lost, he would be back to making real estate deals and would not be representing Manhattan, say, in the House of Representatives.  Both systems have strengths and weaknesses, and are better or worse in different situations and in facing different kinds of crises.  One of the weaknesses of our system is that during an election where the vote is pretty much split down the middle, and this year even the electoral college and the popular vote results differed, one group of people are much more likely to feel that they lost everything and another group to feel like they are leading a movement sweeping the entire nation.

Certainly the party that wins the presidency will exercise that power, and we will likely see a lot more Republican policies implemented in the next four years than in the last eight.  At the same time, our rhetoric on all sides is much stronger than I believe is warranted.  If one in a hundred voters – that’s right, just one in a hundred -- had voted differently, the narratives would be entirely different.  We would be hearing how the country had struck a definitive blow for equal rights for women and all people, that the Republican party was now in shambles and leaderless going forward, and would incapable of breaking the Democratic party’s electoral college firewall anytime soon.  Instead we are hearing how the country has voted for racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia, that the Democratic party is now in shambles and leaderless going forward, and that our foreign relationships will make us a pariah or worse on the world stage.  The difference in narratives is amazing based on a difference of 1 in a 100 voters changing their mind, or if maybe two in a hundred of the 90 million registered voters that make up 44% of the registered voters in America who didn’t show up at the polls had come out and voted.

Part of both narratives would be true and part of both narratives would be false about America regardless of which candidate won.  So much of our campaign revolves around personal character assaults that by the end, people who oppose a candidate tend to believe the worst about them and those who support them often believe the best, or find it necessary to cast a vote in spite of the negatives because of other overriding factors.  Our rhetoric turns into a belief that we voted the best we could and our opponents voted out of the most cynical and horrible reasons.  Yes, there are certainly those who voted for our President-elect out of pure racism, sexism or other horrific reasons.  And some people voted for Clinton because they felt much more likely to keep their money and their power in a continuation of what has become the status quo.  But as a church and as a nation, we also have to listen closely to why others voted the way they did. 

Many people, especially in this area, voted for Trump because he actually came and listened to what is happening here.  He toured the industrial Midwest and promised to work hard to keep auto and other jobs here, and he said it with a passion we haven’t heard in a while.  Whether he can deliver or not, who knows?  This region had voted democratic for decades because democratic candidates had listened and said they cared, but we still just lost another 1,000 jobs locally.  Many people voted for Clinton because they live in a world where they are continually harassed, bullied or worse because of their race or gender or immigration status or sexual identity.  In Alabama, for instance, interracial marriage is still illegal according to the state Constitution.  It isn’t enforced, but that’s a scary law.  A colleague in Arizona planted a predominantly white church and her parish has begun a partnership with a predominately Hispanic church on the other side of town.  They found that they can only do joint events at the Hispanic church, because if the Hispanic church members, most of whom are citizens and Episcopalians, come across town they are often stopped by police and can be immediately deported if they aren’t carrying their citizenship papers.  Actually having joint youth events in a white neighborhood is totally impossible, because a van full of Hispanic kids in some parts of Arizona pretty much invites legal troubles that can result in horrific and totally unjustifiable consequences.  Gay and lesbian couples have pushed so hard for marriage so that they can get basic rights like spousal health care or the ability to receive medical information and make medical decisions when their loved ones go into the hospital in a HIPPA-crazy world.  On top of all these reasons is the basic fear of a country where hate crimes are increasing.  Since Trump’s election, hate crimes of all sorts have spiked, including Hispanic children being told by bullies in school they were going to be sent back to Mexico, an Episcopal priest having a threatening letter left on his windshields in the church parking lot for having married gay couples, to numerous incidents of racist and anti-immigrant graffiti and other kinds of intimidation.  Unfortunately, the euphoric racism of this week could just as easily have been resentful racism after a Clinton victory.  One of the most depressing statistics of the last eight years has been an uptick in racist indicators after the election of Barak Obama as our first black president.  We live in a country with huge problems of almost every variety, and the fact that different candidates have spoken effectively to different groups who have prioritized their own suffering in different ways should not surprise us.           

Listening to Jesus, however, none of these issues are necessarily indications of a coming apocalypse, zombie or otherwise. Jesus message to the disciples is still his message to us.  The end is coming, it isn’t coming yet, but you have some very hard work to do.  As we really listen to the cries of our nation from both sides of this election, we have some very important and very hard work to do.

First, in this economically buffeted region, we need to be part of the rebuilding of the social and economic fabric that allows us to participate in the new national and global economies.  We continue to be on the front lines of caring for people who need food and clothing and other basic needs.  We can pray for people and for our community, including going out and praying on-site by prayerwalking around schools and government buildings and commercial and industrial areas.  We can pray for the places where we work, and offer to have our clergy come in and offer blessings and prayers for the manufacturing initiatives that do exist.  People really are happy to receive those prayers and blessings.  We can lift up the necessary educational opportunities to prepare our workforce here for the jobs of tomorrow.  We have places like Laurel Technical Institute and Penn State Shenango and BC3 and the coming HopeCat Center that are preparing people for jobs that we can bring to this region.  We can work with them.  We can work with schools and day care centers and children’s programs like West Hill to make sure as many young people as possible can read and write and do math and think critically, and some of those developmental skills come through art and athletics and, yes, even religious participation, and those opportunities increasing rely on volunteer efforts and outside fundraising, even in our public schools.  Schools need our help.  We can attend school board and city council and other non-profit boards because our region needs mature, praying, dedicated people helping to make decisions for the region.  We can also do whatever we can to help stem the huge tide of addiction and abuse that both destroys families and makes it exceedingly difficult for area employers to find effective workers for even entry level jobs.  Obviously, not everyone can do everything, but we all need to be committed to do something significant.  If we love the people in this parish and in this Valley, we are compelled to act for the revitalization and resurrection of this community.  And if I didn’t mention prayer, PRAY…hard.

Second, we need to take seriously the very real threats facing minorities in this country, both to their safety and to their future opportunities.  Our community is exceedingly racist.  I have heard words and opinions expressed in professional settings in the Shenango Valley unity that I would never have imagined hearing anywhere else I have lived.  We have very few immigrants in all of this part of Pennsylvania in part because unions and others institutions have done a very effective job of barring them from employment in the region’s industries.  On a number of occasions, I’ve personally had gay slurs shouted at me from passing cars as I walk my dog downtown at night.  It can feel scary. I can only imagine the fear felt by some of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters on a daily basis. 

Hate is wrong, always.  Love is basic Christianity – love even your enemies and those who hate you or persecute you.  Part of our call is not only not to engage in hateful behavior ourselves, but also to stand with those who are on the receiving end of hate from other people.  Such work is uncomfortable and sometimes scary and sometimes it’s difficult even to figure out how to be helpful.  Yet Jesus said gospel work can make you hated and even harmed, but not to worry because if you are willing to do the work God puts before you, God will give you the instructions of what to say and what to do.  And not a hair on your head will perish, even if they persecute you unto death.  The gentile kings the disciples were called before were much more powerful than the ignorant individuals and groups that spew hate and incite domestic terror in our area.  The governors of old that pulled in the disciples for questioning were much more imposing than the local bodies that need our testimony and participation as we try to renew our region.  Yet God is the same and the Holy Spirit is the same and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.  Yes, the end is coming.  No, it isn’t yet.  In the meantime, we have some very hard Christian work to do.

It’s been a tough week.  Let’s say our prayers and go back to work, together.