On November 3, voting in the 2020 elections will conclude and we will soon thereafter know who our next elected leaders are. This has been a very fraught time for our nation and for each one of us, and Election Day is not guaranteed to settle it.
From pandemic, to violence, to racial injustice, to economic, housing, and food insecurity, to manipulative disinformation for the purpose of division, we are beset on every side.
Every aspect of our lives has been disrupted and each of us has been thrust into a more vulnerable space that can emotionally and physically exhaust us. We are facing choices in this election that many of us, regardless of party or candidate we support, see as existential in nature. More than once we have likely heard, “Nobody is at their best right now.”
In the midst of all of this we have a calling as God’s people to be, in the words of the Prayer of St. Francis, “Instruments of [God’s] peace.” How do we do so at the ballot box? With our friends and coworkers? Among our neighbors and in our larger communities? Amidst the things we see that try our souls?
I think of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s absolute commitment to non-violence. It was not passive. It was not naive. It was planned, shrewdly targeted, and uncompromising. It came at a huge personal cost for all who practiced it, and it transformed hearts and minds. Above all, it was rooted in the absolute conviction that God was the author of justice and God’s victory could not be denied. It was also rooted in the conviction that even the worst persecutor was also a human being, a child of God, and had an inherent God-given dignity that the sin of racism had marred. The struggle was not against individuals, but against principalities and powers that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God, perpetrator and victim alike.
In our baptism, we promise to turn away from these powers (“Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?”) and embrace a way of life that is rooted in being the embodiment of Christ’s love (“Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior . . . do you promise to follow and obey him as Lord?”).
Our Baptismal Covenant gives very clear shape as to how to keep these promises. We are to worship God, study God’s word, and pray. We are to repent when (not if!) we sin. We are to seek and serve Christ in all whom we meet and love them as ourselves, whether we agree with them or not. We are to strive for justice and peace - God’s justice that restores rather than condemns and God’s peace that passes all understanding - and respect the dignity of every human being, because innate human dignity is given by God and God alone.
The conviction I have in this time is that we matter. The choices we make matters. The way we live out our faith matters.
The conviction I have in this time and all times is that God is sovereign over all and God’s purpose for this world and God’s beloved will not be thwarted.
Because of this, as Abraham Lincoln so wisely stated, we must not claim that God is on our side, but pray that we are on God’s side. It is a journey we each must make through our own discernment and reflection. We may each honestly and faithfully make different choices as a result of that journey, and we must each recognize that there are parts of our life stories and lived experiences that go into the choices we make. We can make tremendous headway towards that “peace which passes all understanding” if we engage in a willingness to listen and to love, even if we cannot agree. I tend to discover that if we can listen, if we can love, we find out that we agree on far more than the public rhetoric around us wants us to think.
We cannot compromise in our resistance of evil powers that corrupt and destroy. Neither can we compromise in our commitment to repent, seek, strive, respect, and above all love as we serve God in one another.
In all things, we must see our purpose, our vocation, our calling by God, to be active instruments of peace, servants of healing and hope. We can never let judgment be the only word, or any word at all in the name of the One who claims judgment for God alone. Instead, we can only be relentless in the pursuit of justice and peace in ways that offer hope and a path forward, that empower rather than destroy.
May God guide us to wise and holy choices in this election season and grant that we may do the work God gives us to do in truth and beauty and for the common good; for the sake of the who came among us as one who serves, our SaviorJesus Christ.