In this episode, Dennis shares a sermon he gave on the Sunday before the election, which might serve as thoughts on how we are to be Christians after the election. For Dennis, the most important thing is that we love one another regardless of how one voted. Give a listen.
Suggested Reading and Listening:
Whatever Happens, Love Thy Neighbor by Larissa Phillips
Love God. Love Neighbors. Sermon Text
Related Episodes:
John Wesley's Voting Advice with Drew McIntyre | Episode 208
Does Election Day Communion Still Matter? with Andrew Camp | Episode 207
What Will You Preach the Sunday After the Election? with Joshua Gritter | Episode 202
Election Year Christianity with Doug Skinner | Episode 201
Beyond the Purple Church with Jack Haberer | Episode 194
The Cross and the Ballot with Joshua Gritter | Episode 182
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[0:27] Hello and welcome to Church in Maine, a podcast for people interested in seeing
[0:32] where faith, politics, and culture intersect. I'm Dennis Sanders, your host. Well, this is a special episode. It's a solo episode. And I wanted to share some of my thoughts concerning the election, but I'm doing that actually in the form of a sermon. And it's a sermon actually I preached last Sunday, November 3rd, about the election as a part of a kind of a election eve communion service. And so it has some of my thoughts about the election from a theological perspective. And we'll be doing some episodes probably cashing out the religious vote from the election. What does this mean for all of us moving forward? But I wanted to share this sermon, and I share it not because I'm some kind of great preacher, but I just felt like I wanted to share some of these thoughts because I think it's important of how we treat one another going forward.
[1:43] In the aftermath of the election, I've been seeing posts and things on social media, about how we should kind of break relationships with people who voted differently. And I'll be honest with people who voted for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris. And maybe one of the most well-known people who have said that is John Pavlovitz, Lovitz, who is a progressive Christian, um, speaker. He, you know, he has a sub stack. He has, he's on, um, different things on Twitter, on Facebook. And, um, he's actually wrote something on sub stack where he says that it's okay to end relationships basically, uh, with family and friends because they decided to vote for, um, Donald Trump. I don't think that that's a good thing. Um, I'm just going to say that out right now. Um.
[2:55] This was an election. This was part of democracy. And the fact of the matter is, um, people chose, uh, Donald Trump and there are a lot of reasons for that. And no, it was not simply because people are racist or sexist. There are a lot of reasons why people chose Trump over Harris. And I think... That we, especially as a church, are really called to love one another.
[3:30] And I don't think we can do that if we are basically deciding we're not going to have relations with people who think differently from us. I think that we are called to love each other and called to maybe sit down and talk and find out why people believe what they believe. Why did they make the choice that they made, the choice that they made instead of basically being arrogant and thinking that, you know, everything and that you can just kind of ditch people. And I don't think that that's the right way of thinking about all of this. So I have probably more to say going forward. Um, but I think that that's important to lift up is that if you have family and friends who did vote for Donald Trump, don't break off their relationship. And I know that people have done that on the other side, and I think that's equally stupid. Just don't do that. Politics is not our God. God is God. And I think God calls us to love one another.
[4:43] Yes, justice, if you believe that voting was a justice issue, yeah, I get it. But we're also still called to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. And I'm not saying that Trump people are enemies or persecutors. I'm just saying that we're called to love people, and even those that we don't always see eye to eye. Anyway, so that's kind of what I have to say, but I do have more in the sermon. I will include some links, especially to an article that I used in the sermon that I think is important to read.
[5:23] If you have the chance. And yeah, that's it. There will be other episodes coming up that will not be election-related on the life of the church that I think will be important. So, those things are coming down the pike very soon.
[5:41] If you want to listen to past episodes, please check me out at churchandmaine.org. Again, that's churchandmaine.org. You can also go to churchandmaine.substack.com to read articles that I've written. And I'm actually working on an article right now. Hopefully it'll be up in the next day or two to read articles that are kind of related to the podcast. Podcast and so and also um if you are listening to this podcast please consider um leaving a rating a review especially if you listen to this on apple podcasts um share it with someone that you know and um yeah that's about it so um i will leave you to this sermon that i wrote uh that i shared um it just so that you know um because since it is a sermon it's based off of of biblical text, I was preaching from Deuteronomy 6, 1-9, and Mark 12, 28-34. Those were the appointed texts for this past Sunday, November 3rd, in the Revised Common Lectionary. So, that's what I preached on.
[7:00] So, without further ado, here is the sermon that I preached last Sunday, which is entitled Love God, Love Neighbors.
[7:15] Music.
[7:34] My earliest memory of politics and elections goes back to 1976. That was the bicentennial election between the incumbent, Gerald Ford, and Governor Jim Carter. I remember actually that very clearly because we had a mock election in my second grade class. I voted for Carter, but even though in some ways I actually liked Ford, That might have been a sign of my political trajectory, because I always like to say that my New Deal Democrat parents gave birth to an Eisenhower Republican. My parents have always taught me the importance of voting. I mean, that was imprinted on me when I was young.
[8:23] If you remember back to 1976, we were already only a decade from the Passive Voting Rights Act. So I was taught that voting mattered because there were a lot of people who looked like me who were barred from voting not so long ago. And so I remember from that time, 1976, but then in subsequent years, that I would go with my parents to St. Michael's Byzantine Catholic Church in Flint, Michigan, as they made their choices in the elections. And I've always found politics and elections fascinating, and I've actually blogged about these things for years. Now, though, I have to admit, as of late, it has not always been as fun to follow politics. Now, I can remember back in college that you do what lots of people in college do is argue over politics. But that was always in some ways in good spirit, even if they were very spirited. There was a good spirit about it.
[9:38] These days, that's not the case. You can sense a lot of anger in how we talk about politics and that we no longer really seek to persuade or even just to share our views. It's as much more that we're trying to delegitimize the other. The other side isn't simply wrong. They're evil.
[10:08] And as now election day has come closer and closer i sense a lot more anxiety in people including myself and that is tinged also with a sense of dread, there are people who worry what will happen after election day, i've seen a tweet or a comment that does try to offer a bit of hope and say that our nation has gone through challenging times and we will get through this. And I will personally say I do want to believe that. And at some point I do believe that that will happen. But I also think, what if we're wrong? Politics has become a high-stakes game where we talk about how the other side are either communists or fascists, and that if the other side wins, it's the end of everything. Politics is not just a part of our lives these days. It has become our lives.
[11:17] Over the years, especially as we've become more and more polarized, there have been a lot of efforts of trying to bring people from different sides together. And in fact, the service that we're doing today is based on one such attempt. The service that we're doing today is actually based on something called Election Day communion. This was started actually back in 2012, and it by two Mennonite pastors and an Episcopal layman. And the hope was to bring people together from different sides and to meet at the communion table. Their website actually is still up, by the way. And it had this to say about that first event. It says, quote, on Tuesday evening, November 6, make a choice to remember. Let's meet at the Lord's table. Let's remember to get it. Now, I think that this is a wonderful event. I actually did this at First Christian back in 2016. If you go to the Facebook page for Election Day Convenience, the backers of that event did do things for 2016 and in 2020.
[12:38] It has not been updated for 2024. before. It's like even the founders think that it's rather odd to believe that maybe a little bread and grape juice could actually bring people together.
[12:58] I think about how we can come together and how we can act in this time. And that brings me back to another moment from the 2008 election. One that actually took place here in Minnesota.
[13:18] And it was an event for John McCain. And there was an elderly woman that came up and she talked in a very fearful manner about then-Senator Barack Obama, who that she believed was a Muslim. Senator McCain defended Obama by telling the woman that Obama was the patriot, just like him. That was a grand moment of, to me, of civility. But it was civility in more ways than one. It was civility in how Senator McCain stood up for Senator Obama, but it was also, strangely, a way of how Senator McCain treated the woman. He didn't treat her with contempt. Every time that he talked to her, he always used the word man.
[14:13] Along with the civility that he showed to his rival, he showed grace to a woman that was saying something that really in some ways was rather racist. I look at election day communion even though we're doing that right now and i look at that time from 2008 and i think about that in our current political context and wonder could any of this happened today i'd like to believe it could but i've become much more doubtful these days i don't think so.
[14:52] Over the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about this gospel text and how it relates to our present situation. Jesus is finally in Jerusalem. Over the last few weeks, we've been kind of talking about Jesus on the way to Jerusalem, and now he's finally here, and he is having a back-and-forth argument with religious leaders. They ask him all of these sorts of gotcha questions. They're asking, should you pay taxes to Caesar? Is there going to be marriage at the resurrection? They're all trying to find a way to get Jesus arrested and put to death. In this particular passage, another scribe comes to ask a question, but this scribe is very different from the others he's not interested in a gotcha question he actually has an actual question that he wants to ask jesus he wants to know of all of the commandments, which is the most important.
[16:00] Now, in kind of among rabbis and in Jewish theology of that time, even though all of the law was supposed to be equal, rabbis would sometimes argue which one was the heaviest, which one was the one you would place the most emphasis on. And so Jesus responds by reciting the Shema, which Rob read and I repeated in Mark. Hear only Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one And then he adds that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, But Jesus is not that He then adds to follow him Love your neighbor as yourself.
[16:50] Jesus is making a point here Our love of God is actualized in how we treat our neighbor. When Jesus says that there is no commandment greater than these two, it's interesting in some interpretations how they say is that on these two laws, everything else hangs. If you don't have these two, love of God, love of neighbor, everything else in the law means nothing. The scribe is pleased. And he tells Jesus that loving God is actually much more important than dirt offerings and sacrifices. He's basically saying you can give the biggest burnt offering imaginable, something that would just wow everyone. but if you do not show love to God and neighbor, it doesn't mean anything.
[17:55] Jesus is impressed by that answer. And he tells the man, you're not far from God's kingdom.
[18:06] So, how should the church respond during this time of the election? Some will say that we must respond, depending on how we vote, how we believe, that we must respond to the rise of things like Christian nationalism, or that we should stand for the unborn. But I think that this passage tells us what really matters. It isn't how we respond to threats as much of it is how do we act in our world, and in that case the church should stand in love the church should put love first, of course i am not saying that we don't speak out on issues that we hold dear near and dear, But as the psalm goes, it does not say that they will know that we are Christians by our policy positions, but that they will know that we are Christians by our love, and that love is extended to the neighbor. And the neighbor is someone that goes beyond our own limited understanding of neighbor.
[19:24] The parable of the good samaritan which is in luke 10, is not just a story that says that we should help people, it is also a story that tells us that our neighbor isn't just simply someone we know or is familiar with but it could be someone that could be our enemy we are called to be a neighbor and to love someone, even if they are an enemy, because they are a child of God. In a time like this, we should remember our baptism, know that everyone, from the people that we don't like to the ones that we do, are children of God. So how do we live out our baptisms?
[20:13] There is a story I just read recently in the online news magazine, the Free Press, written by Larissa Phillips. She is a farmer that lives in upstate New York. She and her family used to live in Park Slope, Brooklyn. And if you know a little bit about Park Slope, you know that it is a very progressive area. And she was very much and is a Democrat and a very progressive one to boot. And about a decade ago, they moved from New York City to Greene County in upstate New York, south of Albany. The park slope was very Democratic. Greene County was very Republican. And she found herself in very much as the minority. And it took a while for her to feel comfortable in this area.
[21:10] But she noticed something. Time and the life of farming allowed for her opinion to change and to see her neighbors as more than just how they've owned it. She says, It's hard to care where someone stands on politics when they race to your house to save a dying lamb. This is the gift of living in a rural area. I keep finding reasons to see my political adversaries as human. And she tells other stories of how her neighbors, who vote very differently from her, have shown kindness to her, have shown kindness to the neighbor. One example was when her son drove off driving down the road and ended up in a snowbank. And three very burly men come down the road, make a little bit of a joke of their little, this man's little sedan not being able to get out of the steel bag. And they're able to get a truck and pull him out.
[22:25] She was larissa saw all of these examples of neighborliness and she then had a chance to show it to someone else there was a young boy lucas that would come every so often to hang out with her daughter and one day he just stopped coming and he actually announced to them in person that he wasn't going to come anymore because he found out that they were liberals and of course that fathered Larissa, but instead of getting angry about it, she decided she wanted to bridge the gap. She noticed that Lucas loved dogs and loved hanging out with their old shepherd dog, Theo. And so every so often when they needed someone to walk the dog, she would call Lucas. Which he would gladly do. The time came that Cleo, who was very old, was at the time to be at the end of her life. She was going to be euthanized.
[23:39] She called Lupus to come and tell him what was happening and to come to say goodbye. And he came and sat with Cleo, with Cleo's head on his lap. Telling her that she was a good girl, giving him the chance to say goodbye to this dog.
[24:05] She says, it's not clear whether he still spurned those who vote differently from his people. But I like to think it's gotten a little harder for him to do so. I know it has for me.
[24:21] As Christians, and especially as people who are in our denomination, disciples, we're centered at the communion table. We're simply at a table that we have been told and must be reminded it's not ours it belongs to god, and so if this is god's table then it is god that welcomes people to the table, not us and who does god welcome everybody body. So as we enter into this time of the election, whether or not you voted yet or will vote on Tuesday, how do we live as a church? Not as a progressive church, not as a Magna church, but as a church of Jesus Christ. How are we a people of justice, but also a people of love?
[25:24] Do we realize that Jesus' life and death, the resurrection, was for all of us, no matter who we are.
[25:37] I began this story with a story about my parents. And since this is also All Saints Sunday, if you remember St. Suam Aron before, I want to end the story of how I learned to care for your neighbor from my parents. In 1989, I was in my sophomore year of college. It was the summer. And I joined my parents on vacation. We were driving to visit relatives in Louisiana. And we almost always drove from Michigan to Louisiana. In this case, as we were on our way, we were almost to Louisiana. We stopped at a rest area in Mississippi. We were getting ready to go back into the car, continue on our way to central Louisiana. And there was this middle-aged man that came up to us. He looked at the shuttle, kind of looked really just ragged. And he was basically saying that he and his family were moving. They were moving from Alabama and going to drive out to Oklahoma.
[26:53] And I looked over at the car where he kind of had bought from, and you could tell it was filled to the gills. It was probably everything that they had. It was a home station wagon. And i could also see the kids that were in the car as well they didn't have anything to eat.
[27:13] Luckily, my mother always packed food for a trip.
[27:22] She packed a lot of food for the trip, more food than we needed so we were able to give food to this family including breath we gave him food to help this man feed his family and send them on their way i remember that encounter for my parents generosity, and there were some strange ironies in that encounter because here we are in the deep south in Mississippi, near an African-American family, helping a poor white family that have no food. I don't think that that would have happened maybe 20 years before, but it did happen then. And my parents lived out loving God and loving the neighbor. They loved God, especially in how they loved the neighbor. no matter who that neighbor was.
[28:34] So how do we act during this time? By loving our neighbors by loving others by remembering that at the table god loves us, all of us no matter who we are because of because of this we can do the same, so as we follow the returns on tuesday night can make it wednesday or Friday, let's remember that no matter what, no matter what happens, no matter what the result is, as a church, we will continue to love one another. Even the one who is our enemy. Because God loves us. And because God loves us.
[29:33] Thanks be to God. Amen.
[29:37] Music.
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