Sermons Author: The Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori

Bridging the Political Chasm

November 06, 2016

All Saints' Day

 

What do you dream about? Do you have monsters in your dreams, like Daniel? For him, those scary beasts represented the worst of what the world can produce. They're inhuman creatures, without virtue, likely to govern with affliction and treat human beings like commodities – new Pharaohs, if you will. For some of us, those midnight bogies are the external enemies we fear and hate or the internal ones that we often find harder to define. If it were my nightmare, it would probably be filled with loud talking heads – 40 different TV anchors shouting out their most urgent bad news. Yet Daniel's dream doesn't stop with the fearsome; it confronts the specter of evil with confidence in God's ever-emerging new creation. Those beasts have no staying power, for ultimately, love wins.

Well, three more days and we just might begin to rise from the dark night of this election. It doesn't matter who you're backing, we're all going to need to look for new life in the grave-clothes. We've all died a little – our hope for this nation has dimmed, we've lost trust in our fellow citizens, we've raised our guard against other opinions and those people because we don't think we can take any more. When was the last time you had a serious and thoughtful conversation with somebody who's voting for a different candidate than you are? The tragedy is that the level of fear is preventing thoughtful dialogue. We pin on labels that say 'enemy' and think that settles the matter.

We do know a better way, for we share a dream that doesn't stop with the monsters. It's about God's vast diversity of creatures living in harmony – not in lockstep, but like the instruments of a symphony: tubas and piccolos, oboes and harps, triangles, cymbals and organs, didgeridoos and conga drums – making a holy new song that needs every single part to make the festive music of healing. There are signs around us, right here in this city – Cubs and White Sox – and even Cleveland – all rooting for historical underdogs!

Blessed are the poor, who haven't won the Series for a century! After the Cubs won I had a friend tell me she was coming back to Evanston to pour champagne on her mother's grave. Blessed are the hungry, for they will be filled. We understand that kind of justice, deep in our guts. Can we put that kind of yearning and hope to work on even deeper droughts?

The sports world is something of a model for our wider troubles, with plenty of monsters rearing their ugly heads – franchises, operations, fiefdoms ruled by greed and every sort of dishonesty – doping, cheating, bribery, and using people up like commodities rather than meeting people with profound dignity and respect as the image of God. Those attitudes and behaviors are the fruit of fear that someone else is going to win, and therefore I am not. The rest of life is plenty complicated, and it generates similar behavior, but it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. Even in baseball, the Yankees don't win every year – eventually the Cubs get a turn, and the Indians will, too. Those teams have pretty similar assets in terms of players, structures, and facilities. Most of us would claim that heart and hope have an awful lot to do with the final outcome – and how management treats the team. We expect that the system will do its best to police the dishonesty, or there really isn't much point to having a ballgame. Without some basic level of fairness, there will never be any joy in Mudville.

That has something to do with this election season. People from across the political spectrum are increasingly disheartened by the rhetoric and maneuvering, which are not limited to one or a few candidates. We have lost even the semblance of civil discourse; we are failing to treat all parties and persons with decency and dignity. That is the root of all the anger and despair – and those midnight monsters. Fear and want generate nightmares. We play with monsters and nightmares at Hallowe'en, mostly to encourage ourselves, to remember there is another way and the monsters won't eventually win it all. For eventually, the holy ones will find what they're dreaming of and yearning for, and the nightmare will fade with the dawn. But we can't just sit back and wait – there is abundant work to do until the kingdom of God comes on earth.

Jesus points to the gap between those who are poor, hungry, grieving, and excluded, and those who seem to be living easy, and insists on a future reversal in their deplorable states. That word deplorable actually means cried out, emptied of tears or incapable of them. Eventually those who mourn and cry with hunger will find healing, even if it is in the grave or the last judgment. Those who have no pity or tears to offer will, too. Yet Jesus doesn't stop with judgment – he says love your enemies, reach across the chasm, return love for vitriol and hatefulness. Have compassion for what is broken in the other. If you are woeful, let the world hear your lament – keep crying out for justice, and expect and insist that your voice will be heard. Don't use violence, and don't quit. If you are blessed now, tune your ears to hear and respond to the lament of those who aren't – and abstain from the kind of violence that ignores the pain of God's creatures. Jesus' teaching is always about changing the nightmare of what is into the dream that God set in motion at creation.

The blessed and the woeful can both find healing in the community of the living, in the shared capacity for compassion. When the blessed can be moved by the woeful, and the woeful know there is a possibility for blessing, there is new possibility for the saints. The work of compassion is the only way to change the nightmare around us.

We have multiple opportunities right in front of our noses. Pray for those who stand for office, pray for those who vote and those who want to, but can't get access – for increasing numbers of undignified reasons. Pray for the disenfranchised, who will have to live with the decisions made in this election.

Now comes the hard work. Pray about the divisions in this city and nation and world, and pick your favorite monster or enemy. Pray for them. Do it until your heart begins to change. Get involved in real dialogue and action. Congregations like this one know something about civil conversation across difference – which is a gift the nation yearns for. How might St. James and others not only encourage that skill here, but model and teach it in the wider community? That would be good news indeed! When we're on our better behavior, Episcopalians claim that none of us has the fullness of God's truth, but that we can learn more of it when we wrestle together in community.

This nation has a lot of hard work ahead of us if we're going to lose the woes and share the blessings. It starts with reaching across what divides us. It takes vulnerability – both in disclosing our own fears and in listening carefully to others tell of theirs. Start with naming the fears of your own dark hours. They overwhelm us because we really can't manage them alone. We need help, and we only find it by naming our need. Those midnight spirits will only be healed together – as the Body of Christ and as communities and nations share their fears and their hopes. It's beginning to happen with climate change, in spite of ourselves. It began with lament, telling the very real fear of what is coming if we do nothing.

This political season is filled with lament that can only be healed by bridging the chasm between supposed enemies: Standing Rock's Water Protectors – and workers in the fossil fuel industry. The Black Lives Matter movement – and increasingly anxious police forces. Workers whose jobs are threatened by globalization – and migrants and refugees who see this as a land of hope and opportunity – and business leaders who live in fear of the bottom line. The dawn will never come while we sit in our tombs of fear. We have to reach out in the darkness for the hand and heart of another fearful one sitting next to us. We just might do it in the voting booth.

Human beings all long for pretty much the same things – the love of family, meaningful work, and the peace that comes with knowing and being known in community. What gets in the way are the night-time monsters, demanding utter loyalty to systems of greed and control. We will never have peace or justice without a measure of vulnerability, and it starts with seeing the image of God in our unlovely neighbors.

Make your own lament, and go in search of the lament behind that unloveliness. It reflects our universal hunger for belonging, meaning, and love, and it is the key to finding any measure of peace and healing. Joined lament eventually produces the song of new life – and resurrection comes in the morning.

Lament, build bridges, invest yourself in a healed future – and keep dreaming of fountains of justice and rivers of peace.

And don't forget to vote!