Well it happened. I didn’t think it would. But I woke up on Wednesday morning and then again on Thursday and Friday to discover that what I thought was all but impossible had happened. We had found a way to say more about an election after it was over than we did while it was still going on.
I won’t say how it went for me. Not here. Not from this pulpit or any pulpit. Not ever. Pulpits aren’t for calling out election results, only for calling out fear and calling on hope. This isn’t to say that I don’t care about who’s been elected, or that I never thought it mattered in the first place—Trump, Clinton, Johnson, it’s all the same to me.
It wasn’t all the same on Tuesday when I voted and it wasn’t all the same on Wednesday when I woke up to discover who had won and who had lost.
We have been told that it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game that matters. I don’t think this is helpful wisdom, though. The fact is, not everyone gets a trophy, not everyone gets the promotion, not everyone gets to ride off into the sunset. And as for the ones who do get these things, they tend also to get the power to decide for others, and especially for the losers. And so it has mattered to me all along who would win the election, because if the spoils go to the victor, the victor has the ability to make sure the loser doesn’t go without.
And I don’t think we can overstate how important this quality is, because if our most recent election cycle has shown us anything it’s that sometimes winning and losing is a zero sum game. It’s not just that the person we wanted to win actually does, or that the person we thought would win doesn’t, it’s that the only thing that makes us feel worse than losing is someone else having won, or put another way, the thing that really makes us feel good about winning is that someone else lost.
When the winner has no concern for the loser and the loser has no concern for the winner, then it’s hard to tell who won and who lost and in the end it’s a zero sum game.
This past Tuesday afternoon I was at the bus stop waiting for my daughter to come home from school. As with most days, I wasn’t alone. There are 3 families in our neighborhood whose children all take the bus together and we’ve all become quite chummy with one another. So there I was—me, two neighbors, and one of my neighbor’s had his youngest son with him. He was running around, jumping off the curb, and passing time as little boys do, when his mom pulled onto the street just ahead of the bus. She was getting home from work and he was naturally excited to see her and he darted out in the direction of her car. She motioned for him to stop, to allow her time to pull over, but he just couldn’t help himself. Meanwhile the bus was coming to a stop. So I reached out to grab his hand and pull him back, thinking I was doing the good and necessary thing, and of course he started to yell. “Let me go, let me go. You’re not my daddy!” But of course I couldn’t. His dad quickly ran over and picked him up, which is when he turned and threw me a gentle punch. His dad apologized and told him to apologize, too, but the tears just kept coming. I told him it was okay and that I didn’t mean to hurt him at all. “I just want you to be safe.”
Anyway, the next day we were out at the bus stop again, waiting, when he came up to me with a peace offering, a lollipop. Twisting and turning (also as little boys do) he looked at me and then looked away. “I’m sorry for running into the traffic and for not letting you help me.” I bent down, took the lollipop and said, “And I’m sorry if I scared you at all.”
It was a beautiful moment. On a day that had been full of victories and concessions, and not a few parades and protests, it was a beautiful moment, and it might have been enough for all of us except no sooner had the bus pulled up and his older brother came bounding down the steps and up to me. At the dinner table the night before he must have caught wind of what had gone down that day and he wanted in on the action.
“My brother has to say sorry to you.”
Ah the older brother. You remember the story of the prodigal son. Takes his share of the family inheritance early, while his father is still alive, and goes off to distant lands where he spends it all in wasted living. While all the day long his older brother is back home working double shifts in the field to make up for both of them. On the day his younger brother does come back home—dirty, worn, wasted, and broke—the older brother is still out working when he hears the sound of party poppers. His father has decided to throw a party to celebrate the return of his younger brother.
“What? What the hell is this? This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go,” the older brother points out to their father. “I’ve been with you the whole time, pulling my weight and then some, and never have you given me even a pig to roast. But when my brother, my useless, lazy brother comes home you pull out all the stops. Come on, at least let me hear him say he’s sorry.”
His father tries to tell him that’s not how it works. We don’t always get to hear the other person say they’re sorry, that they messed up. We don’t always get to decide whether they deserve a party. Sometimes someone else decides that for us.
The problem for the older brother of course is not that someone else is getting a party, but that they’re getting his party, the party he feels he so richly deserves. If you’re the father, however, it never crosses your mind to think that the party isn’t for both of your sons.
Win or lose, all that is mine is yours, he tells his oldest son. Come to the party and see. At the very least, won’t you come see your brother?
When the winner has no concern for the loser and the loser has no concern for the winner, then it’s hard to tell who won and who lost and in the end it’s a zero sum game.
Listen, I’m not going to pretend that this actually is a zero sum game. News of Donald Trump’s election as our next president has pushed much of our nation and world from fear to fear. That someone whose actions and words have threatened the dignity of women and minorities, the safety of refugees and immigrants, and the rights of our gay, lesbian, and transgender neighbors, could be chosen to represent and lead our country is just terrible. Others have said they’re afraid to let it be known that they did vote for Donald Trump. I get it. This is not a zero sum game for us because we’ve already got skin in the game. Whether we all agree on just how credible the threats are, some of us are trying to find ways to reconcile with neighbors and family members who think we’re thoughtless and uncaring to have voted the way we did, while others are trying to reconcile with what we’ve taught our kids about kindness and compassion.
This past week my friend Melissa, who lives in North Carolina, posted on Facebook that on Thursday her daughter came home from school looking rather sullen. “How was your day?” she asked her. When Melissa got no answer, she pressed her a little bit.
“Well there were these boxes in the cafeteria today for children in Mexico. Do you think it means they’re going to let the kids take their school books with them when they have to go home, when they can no longer live here?”
Now along with Melissa we can wonder all day long at the answer to her daughter’s question, but I want us to understand something. Melissa doesn’t have an answer to her daughter’s question, and neither do we. We know what we’ve heard and seen, and not just from one person but from many people, sometimes even from each other, during this election year. When campaigns are waged, promises are made. When promises are made, votes are cast and people win or lose. What happens next, however, we do not know. We tell ourselves that we know, that our candidate won and it’s going to be great or our candidate lost and it’s going to be terrible, but if we’re honest about it, for a brief shining moment, we don’t know how it’s all going to go. And in that moment we, like the father of the prodigal, have the power to ask a different question and change the game entirely.
“Won’t you come see your brother?”
The biblical story doesn’t actually have the father asking his older son to come, but we know the question must have hung in the air because the older brother is still out working in the fields when his younger brother gets home. Still brooding. Still running up a tally. “I’ve been with you the whole time and never have you given me anything! But when that son of yours, that no good son of yours comes back, broke to the bone…”
“My child, you are with me always, and all that is mine is yours,” his father assures him. “But we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”
So the older brother must decide. Stay where I am, bitter, bruised, and broken in my own right, or go home and be with my brother?
This is, I think, the question Jesus is trying to get through to us this morning in our gospel reading. He is talking about ultimate happenings and he paints a rather bleak picture. In the end there will be wars and revolts. Nations will rise up against nations. There will be earthquakes and famines and plagues. Ultimately everything that we’ve ever used to identify ourselves in the world will be burned up or washed away, right down to our holy things—our synagogues, temples, churches, and presidential lawn signs. Friends will turn against friends, mothers against daughters, brothers against brothers. This will happen, Jesus tells us, but before it does you are going to be asked to answer a few questions, to speak, and you ought to be careful with what you say because one of the questions may very well be, Won’t you come see your brother? And what you say will have the power to change the outcome of the game entirely.
Let me ask you something. How close would you get to your brother or sister if they had swindled away your good name? If they stood for everything you stood against? If they didn’t spend money in any of the same ways you do? If they made a mockery of your heritage?
How close would you get to them if they voted for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?
Would you still defend their dignity? Would you still call them your brother, your sister? Would you listen to their side of the story and help them write a good ending to their story? Would you get close enough to count the hairs on their head?
Jesus says that in the end this is how close he will be to us. Close enough to count the very hairs on our head, to make sure that not a one of them will be lost to us.
I realize this may be asking a lot of you right now. To reach out in faith to someone who is not your own. But I would remind us that very soon we will be in the season of Advent and then Christmas when once again the God of all compassion will say to us, “I am coming to you who are my own, and though you will turn me away, I am coming to you anyway, so that all that is mine may also be yours.”
Now won’t you come see your brother? He is so afraid and I’m not sure he knows how not to be. But you’ve been with me the whole time. You know what it is to be welcomed, to take from the hand of mercy, to dwell in grace, to love everything. You can help him to not be so afraid. Please, won’t you come see your brother?
Sunday’s Sermon, November 13, 2016
PleaseGrace 