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| The United States Capitol Building after January 6, 2021 |
Stunned. That's how I felt on Election Night. I had fully anticipated us being in the same boat we were in back in November 2020 with the race simply too tight to call until four days later. I don't know how it is possible for the pollsters...who had projected a very tight race... to have gotten things so incredibly wrong.
I also don't know how 70+ million Americans could think it is a good idea to put a man in the White House who has shown such clear disdain for the rule of law, the Constitution, who has 34 felony convinctions, is a convicted sexual predator, who has endangered the lives of law enforcement by sending an armed group of thugs to the Capitol in an attempted coup on January 6, 2021, who is cozy with our country's enemies such as Russia and North Korea, who wants to enact a national abortion ban against the will of the majority of the citizens...even Republicans, who has appointed justices to the Supreme Court who are rolling back or threatening to roll back long hard-fought civil rights for minorities especially LGBTQ+ people, who has threatened to deport immigrants including people who are here legally, who has committed horrible characterizations of some immigrants (Haitians), refers to Islamic countries as "shit hole countries," has disparaged military service members who were POWs (the late Sen. John McCain)....the list of insults and atrocities are frankly endless. How anyone who aspires to call themselves a "Christian" could vote for such a man is a cognitive disconnect beyond my comprehension.
And yet....here we are.
Many of us who are priests in the Episcopal Church had the unfortunate task of having to preach after such an election. For me, I felt the blood draining from my body because I am painfully aware of three things:
1. I am queer and hence am quite concerned about the future of the country I call home;
2. I am leading a church in a rosy-red part of South Georgia that is a tiny congregation who are not of one mind politically; and
3. I have to be a priest to all of them...because I vowed to "love and serve the people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor."
Tough stuff on a good day, friends.
I chose not to directly address the election itself. Again, given the above, I needed to find a way to speak to both groups, especially those who might be feeling on top of the world and proud that their side prevailed. Because such pride and self-satisfaction in this moment needs to look more closely at what it actually has done...closer to the ground...to that person sitting a few chairs over from them in the church.
See what you think.
Text: Mark 12:28-34
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True confession time:
I have had a hard time coming up with a sermon
for this week.
At our post-election day evening prayer
service… I confessed that I wasn’t sure what I was going to say…as I kept
looking at the scriptures for something to say.
And… as always…God shows up.
The Holy Spirit gives me that sharp elbow to
the rib cage.
And as I sat in the pew at our opening
Eucharist at diocesan convention…that big Jesus…looking out as the risen Christ
the King…and hanging behind the altar of St. Anne’s wasn’t going to leave me
comfortless…
Nor was he going to leave me mute.
It truly helped to be gathered together as a
diocese committed to living hope…that was the theme of our convention.
That’s the bedrock of our faith…to continue to
live in hope no matter what.
To see that hope is the light that we look to
when we’re trying to stumble through a sometimes pea-soup foggy world.
It also helped me to turn toward the wisdom of
those who are my friends and guides.
I am blessed by some great relationships that I
had built in my short time in seminary…and clergy colleagues here in the
diocese.
We all need to keep looking to those helpers in
our lives.
And…of course…there’s always music.
And those musicians who preach through singing
and drumming some of the best public theology.
One of my favorites is Bernice Johnson
Reagon…the founder of the acapella singing group “Sweet Honey in the Rock.”
Reagon was born and raised in Albany,
Georgia…and moved to Washington, D.C. where she began this group of women
singers.
Their music was the soundtrack that made it
possible for me to enter the Florida State Capitol building…and do my work of
being that public radio reporter and witness to the things the powerful people
do to the powerless.
And it was an equal opportunity mean fest on
most days.
Meanness is non-partisan.
Sweet Honey’s music helped me pray…to find
inner peace….in my head and heart…during those years when the church was not my
home.
Their songs would also become the music loop in
my head as I embarked on my journey back into the church.
They were my friends…my muses…that would lift
up my spirits as I went from peak and valley…while God… the great potter…
worked the clay of my soul.
As I was driving to Tifton this week…traveling
along the roads dotted with farms that are harvesting cotton…and still
struggling with what to do with the sermon for this Sunday…I decided to play
one of my Sweet Honey in the Rock CDs.
And God…the great DJ…served up a song with
lyrics that met the Gospel and the moment.
Bernice Johnson Reagon began singing:
“I been thinking ‘bout how to talk about greed.
I been wond’rin’ if I could sing about greed.
Tryin’ to find a way to talk about greed.”
And I saw it: this is a story about greed.
What I believe Mark wants us to really see is
that Jesus sits down “opposite the treasury” as he watched the crowd.
Commentators note that the treasury had these
thirteen trumpet-shaped receptacles…and that as the people placed their coins
in…they were to announce what they were giving.
So Jesus is sitting opposite this huge building
and this parade of people…including the widow…who comes along and gives the two
tiny coins that she has.
Jesus calls his disciples over. He starts to
talk about greed.
He’s not simply doing a critique of the scribes
and their robes and their pronouncements.
Jesus is opposite…opposing…the
whole system of the treasury.
A system that has put this widow in a place of
having to give up her last coins.
She is pinning her hope on this system…but this
is a power structure that hasn’t done its part:
To care for the widows and orphans.
To clothe the naked.
To release the captives and free the oppressed.
Instead…as Jesus said in this Gospel: this
system has devoured the widows’ houses.
He’s talking about greed.
Greed does terrible things to us.
It’s greed that makes people become callous and
cruel.
And we are all susceptible to greed.
Even Sweet Honey’s song acknowledges that greed
finds ways to sneak into us and corrupt us from within.
It operates very much like what another
theologian—Karl Barth—describes as “nothingness.”
Nothingness is Barth’s description of evil.
Nothingness has no form.
No shape.
No dimensions.
No taste.
No smell.
It’s just nothing.
And it’s a nothing that keeps looking for ways
to become a “something.”
Like greed... “nothingness” …searches for ways
to get into us.
And once it finds that opening…it infects the
heart like a virus…and begins its work of turning us away from compassion and
caring for one another into selfish and small people.
It closes us off and convinces us that we don’t
need anybody else.
And then that leads to self-reliance alone…and
suspicion of everyone else.
It’s the thing that keeps us constantly
“othering” people.
And that leads to dismissing and dehumanizing
people.
And it’s what makes us think that we must
dominate people…and the planet…in order to feel that we’re important…or valued.
Nothingness wants to be something in us.
That need to dominate and possess?
That’s greed…selfish greed.
Our former presiding bishop Michael Curry said
it best when he said that the opposite of Love is not hate; it’s selfishness.
And…as the good Bishop says…”If it’s not about
Love…it’s not about God.”
God is not greedy.
God isn’t into domination.
God doesn’t favor one nation over and above the
others.
Because God so loved the world…the
whole world…that God sent down the Word made Flesh…Jesus…to live and dwell
among us.
And Jesus came to minster to those who the
greedy power structures and the Empire treated as expendables.
Jesus came to be the light in the world.
But he had to deal with the reality that even
though the light had come into the world…people turned away from it.
Rejected it.
Even killed it.
Or so they thought.
Because we know that God didn’t let that light
die forever.
It rose again….and it would then become flaming
tongues of fire of those in the Upper Room.
Those who were huddled and scared in the face
of their hostile and confusing world had their lights supercharged by the Holy
Spirit.
That is the hope that was passed on to them…and
they went out and despite brutal opposition…they didn’t keep it to
themselves…and greedily keep the light from others.
No! They kept that light of Christ shining and
sharing their lights in their darkened world.
Think about that symbolism of light from our
baptisms.
Not only do we light the Christ candle…we also
offer a candle to the newly baptized…inviting them to receive the light of
Christ.
That is the outward and visible symbol of God’s
grace for that child or adult to now share that gift of the light of Christ to
the world.
Right now…in our world… in our church…we need a
whole lot of lights shining.
We need to steal ourselves and protect
ourselves from those strong and
incessant temptations:
The temptation to be too proud.
The temptation to be too depressed.
The temptation to isolate…want to hoard what we
believe is ours…and not theirs…and participate in the rejection of “the other.”
The temptation to give in to hopelessness…and
allow despair to make us lonely and swallow us whole.
We must be careful and kind…and not fall into
the lure of greed and nothingness that’s wanting to take root and become
manifest in us…and feed on our fears.
In all of this…we need to remember that we are
still one body of Christ with its many and varied members…and different talents.
Now is the time to not only see the Christ in
our selves and others…but to be that servant who says, “The spirit of the Lord is
upon me…because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor… the
captives…the blind…and to free the oppressed.”
That work must begin now…in this building…with
each other. It is time for us to commit to that light-bearing movement of love.
Here. NOW!
In the name of our One Holy and Undivided
Trinity.
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