Proper
28C 2016 – Post Election day
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.
