What's Tony Thinking

For Those Who Preach Tomorrow and Next Sunday

So the next two Sundays, the one before and the one after the election, will be challenging for preachers. Some of you have asked me, what is a preacher to say? What might I say? Here are some thoughts about that, and also about the appointed lessons of the Common Lectionary for Nov. 3 and 10. Happily, you have some great stuff to work with.

November 3, The Sunday before the Election

Perhaps a low bar but I would remind/ encourage people to vote. I sometimes meet folks who say they aren’t voting. I regret that. I do regard voting as some have said, to be a “civic sacrament.” Here in Washington, it’s all vote by mail now. I miss going to the polls with neighbors.

I would also acknowledge that our country is deeply and painfully divided, haunted by the possibility and specter of violence. I would caution us all (myself included) not to add to it with thoughtless or gratuitous words — however emotionally satisfying that might be! Hold to your convictions, but treat those with whom you disagree with as much grace as possible.

Last month I cited a piece on Karl Barth and politics. Here’s a good line from that, Will Willimon channeling Barth.

“A truly biblical politics practices grace and requires humility born out of the biblical recognition that all political participants are not only finite but also sinful. Our projects, even the best of them, must not be pathetically imbued with eternal significance nor must our political systems be treated as if they, not God, were sovereign.”

There is a lot, currently, of such “imbuing” of our political projects with eternal or ultimate significance. How often have we been told, this year (again), “This is the most important election of your lifetime.” Or, “The future of the nation and humanity depend upon us/ you.” I get that people care deeply. They should. But it’s easy to lose perspective, as well as to pretend to a knowledge and insight we do not possess.

A word about the Scripture lessons for Nov. 3:

Ruth: 1: 1 – 18: In a truly desperate situation, Ruth discovered that our God had the capacity to bring forth new life when and where it had seemed utterly impossible.

Hebrews 9: 11 – 14. In a time of deep division, we tend to see it as a division between the righteous and unrighteous, the good guys and the bad guys. Hebrews reminds us that every one of us stands in need of forgiveness. In Jesus forgiveness and grace are available.

Mark 12: 28 – 34. The greatest commandment: Love God with all you got and love your neighbor as yourself. What does it mean to put God first? What implications has that for our nation, our politics, our personal ambitions? And what does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself here and now?

Nov. 10 the Sunday after the Election

I was in the pew, not the pulpit, the Sunday after the election in 2016. At the UCC church where I worshipped then, it seemed to be assumed that no one present had voted for (or could possibly vote for) Donald Trump. While the first assumption may have been correct, it tended to make it feel like “the Democratic Party at prayer.” What I needed was church and the gospel. That said, I am sure the mirror image, or worse, was taking place in some conservative or evangelical churches.

I would probably repeat some version of the pastoral words of paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 above. It is a time of painful division. Yes, stand up for the right as it has been given you to know the right, but do so with an awareness of your own limits and fallibility. As theologian H. R. Niebuhr counseled, “Take your stand and pray for forgiveness.”

This year the election may very well not be decided by this, the Sunday after, so instead of the relief of it “being over,” already high anxiety may be only higher. I’d sing a lot, as singing makes you breathe deep, taking you out of “flight/ flight” mode. I’d sing hymns of trust, faith and reassurance. I’d emphasize that God has the power to uphold and sustain us in difficult times and situations. These kinds of things can be done in prayers and liturgy. The sermon doesn’t have to carry it all.

A word about the Scripture lessons for Nov. 10

Ruth 3: 1 -5, 4: 13 – 17. The denouement of this wonderful story. There is new life where it had been thought impossible, where there had been only despair. Moreover, it is a non-Israelite, a foreigner, the Moabitess Ruth, who shall be the grandmother of King David. How ’bout them apples! Moreover, Ruth is one of the four women mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus Christ. God moves in mysterious ways. Better, God moves in crazy ways (crazy to us).

Hebrews 9: 24 – 28 There is no need for constant sacrifice or beating up on ourselves for our failures to do or be better or perfect. Christ has made the one needed atoning sacrifice once, for all time, for all people. “On Christ the solid rock, I stand.”

Mark 12: 38 – 44. We live in a culture of celebrity. Many, like the Pharisees here, work to make themselves visible, to gain the spotlight. Will celebrities save us? Jesus finds the real action, what’s truly important, in an invisible person — a poor widow making her offering to God. He makes an invisible person visible.

She shows us that God’s chosen instruments, like Ruth, may be the unlikely, the unexpected. Or to put it another way, what the world counts as grand and glorious may, to God, not be grand or glorious at all. And what the world counts lowly and unimportant, may to God be grand and glorious.

Dear preachers, you are in my thoughts and prayers. Take the world and the pastoral needs of your people seriously, but remember that only God is God and that it is God’s grace in the Lord Jesus Christ will heal and save us to that we may live, faithfully and courageously, in a broken and fallen world.