He must rise and we must rise with him

Malachi 4:1-2a; Psalm 98

Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

Our new president must rise to the occasion and we must rise with him. And if he doesn't - well, even if he does, we will bear the mantle of Elijah, speak like Malachi, and testify. We will testify because of our faith. We will testify to our hope. We will testify in our love.

On the night of July 4, 1776, in London, England, King George III made an entry in his diary,

"Nothing important happened today."

Telecommunications would not arise until 1836 with the first trans-Atlantic cables not laid until 1866. The king had no way of knowing what had transpired that day in Philadelphia. On that day fifty-six men pledged their lives, their trust, and their sacred honor to a declaration that read, in part,

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The importance of this event, of course, was profound.

I was partisan in the presidential election. As I have since I reached the age of majority and began to vote, I favored one candidate over the other. I suspect that is true for most of us. But now the election is over and now is the time to proceed from the nasty business of being elected to the solemn duty of serving the American people.

There was little hint that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first hundred days in office would have gone as they did. After a somewhat generic, yet highly negative campaign for president during which Roosevelt only stressed one national need - a balanced federal budget, Roosevelt got down to the business of governing. Almost overnight, with the prompt action of a willing yet divided congress, Franklin Delano Roosevelt rose to his position of leadership, charting a new course for America that would lead us into a new future. Only George Washington and Abraham Lincoln faced as great a challenge. The former met it by making the founders’ dreams come true and the latter by ending slavery.

Our next president will face a challenge less great than these and probably no greater than the presidents of the last few decades but his challenge will, nonetheless, be great.

And he must rise to the occasion and we must rise with him.

If he fails to rise then we don the mantle of Elijah and proclaim the words of Malachi,

“…the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.” (Malachi 4:1)

It is our responsibility – our Christian duty – to present a demand that he and the congress put aside their base-pleasing talking points and act on behalf of the common good that all people may prosper in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is time for them to make the hard decisions that will…

• right the economy for everyone, but especially for the poor and the isolated;

• protect all citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic;

• guarantee the human and civil rights of all people;

• conduct domestic and foreign policy in a way that will ensure prosperity and peace for this nation, its allies, and its enemies.

Now, borrowing the spirit (if not the letter) of the early Puritan preachers, let me change my heading just a bit and expand my compass with a religious charge. Though FDR, securing the wisdom of an array of counselors and advisors, came close, the president of these United States is not going to save us. The president cannot possibly save us. The president can inspire us. The president can help us, work for us, and lead us. The president might even, like Roosevelt, Lincoln, and Washington before him and like Barrack Hussein Obama, Woodrow Wilson, and John Adams, among others, rise to the occasion and act with purpose. But our new president will not save us. In the largest sense of the word, he cannot save us and neither could have Clinton, Johnson, Stein, or McMullen. The old Puritan preachers were right. We cast votes for president that pale in comparison to the votes we cast with and in our lives. You see, it is God, greater than all and yet present in each, that will save us.

Here that again: It is God who will save us. It is God who will save us by looking through our eyes, touching our hearts, and applying our hands to the saving work of neighborly love.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul reminds us of the key ingredients for the Christian life. He named them the three that abide and we have called them the cardinal virtues: faith, hope, and love, “and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Faith is the trust we put in God, the God who has acted on our behalf from the creation to the present day. We will pray this in our Eucharistic Prayer today (Eucharistic Prayer C, BCP 369-372),

• “At your command all things came to be…”

• “From the primal elements you brought forth the human race…”

• “Again and again, you called us to return. Through the prophets and sages you revealed your righteous law. And in the fullness of time your sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill you Law, and open for us the way of freedom and peace.”

God has made a covenant with us, holding us in the divine trust – each one of us, created in God’s image and likeness. That is where we put our faith, in the God who loves us so deeply that we were called into being by the divine voice and given the divine image.

I think discipleship probably hasn’t really changed all that much in the last 2000 years. We have different challenges, for sure, but following Jesus is still a matter of putting our trust in God in the midst of circumstances that test our confidence and hope. As Christians, we will keep going, with endurance as a hallmark of what it means to be a believer. We will trust and we will bear witness to that trust as we continue to do Psalm 98 does, proclaiming the marvelous things that the Lord has done. We will have faith in God and God’s covenant, awaiting the “sun of righteousness….with healing in its wings.” (Malachi 4:2a).

Hope is living in confidence in newness and fullness of life, waiting the of Christ in glory and the completion of God’s purpose for the world. If faith is oriented toward the past – not living in the past but oriented to the past work of God – then hope is oriented toward the future. Hope is the fullest expression of the “already but not yet” of Christian living. In hope we await the fulfillment of God’s purpose.

There are only two Sundays left in the “Year of Luke” (aka Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary) so we should by now be clear about the one thing that will produce our Christian hope; namely, fixing our gaze on Jesus. But it’s not just about fixing our gaze on Jesus but about fixing it there and, through Jesus, fixing our gaze on what Jesus sees. Do we see what and whom Jesus sees? If our eyes are locked on the temporary, we will likely miss the permanency of the things that last. If we only see the beauty in the stones of the temple, the obvious grandeur and splendor, we might just overlook the beauty that first appeared unattractive and repulsive. If we focus only on the destructive, the injurious, and the ruinous, we might miss the affirming and constructive.

“What we see is what we see,” so imply the old German existentialists. The impression of the obvious is clear, but it’s still true. What we see determines who and what we see. It determines what we see in others and in our world. And I hold that this is the true claim of our hope in God – our God who is still present and powerful, merciful and mighty, loving and lavish even when it looks like we are powerless or in darkness or when all seems to be working against the very kingdom of God.

“As for these things that you see…." (Luke 21:6a). What do we see in our churches? …in our nation? …in our world? …in one another? What we see is what we see and it’s in that that we place our hope.

Love, or more precisely, agape or caritas is the active expression of true affection, care, and concern for your neighbor. If faith is oriented toward the past and hope toward the future, then love is oriented toward the present. “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19). This is the true saving work of God: God loves us and we love in return. You know, conversely, where there is hate or fear, God is absent. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4:18). God’s love casts out fear and hate and division. God’s love unites. E pluribus unum and all of that.

So, our hope is based on what we choose to see. What we see will also give rise to our witness – to our witness in the testimony of neighborly love. What we see is how we will respond to people, it determines what we will say and do. If we see women as objects, we will treat women as objects. If we see Latinos, African Americans, or Muslims as people whose lives matter less, we won’t speak up for them. If we see American Indians as culturally inferior, we will find it okay to trample on their dead and denigrate their way of life. If we see gays and lesbians and transgendered persons as sinners and if we see God primarily as the judge and jury, we will condemn.

But our testimony must be different! Our gaze fixed on Jesus, our witness must give voice to what Jesus sees, what God sees, what the Holy Spirit blesses. God needs us! That’s right, God needs us to be the eyes of the Gospel when the world is blind, to have the voice of the prophets when the world is deaf, to have the stamina of Moses leading his stiff-necked people out of bondage, to have the heart of the Good Samaritan, the generosity of Zacchaeus, and the welcome of the father awaiting his son’s return from a foreign land. God needs us to have the courage of Mary to bring Jesus to the world.

In the end though, it can be difficult to bear witness to what others don’t or can’t or refuse to see. I think that is part of the truth in Jesus’ visions in the gospel today, which sound hyperbolic at best and terrifying at worst. Nevertheless, we are called to a vision that can pierce through anything because we are called to have a vision that is intent on seeing what Jesus and who God sees no matter what.

Our new president must rise to the occasion and we must rise with him.

If he fails to rise and even if he succeeds, we will bear the mantle of Elijah and testify. We will give witness to our faith, our hope, and our love. And where will we find the words? Jesus reminds us, “I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”