After the Election

I voted today. Now what? What are you going to do when the election is over?

No matter who lands in office, we have work to do.

I hope you will join me in a renewed and energetic commitment to repairing the torn fabric of our public life. Deep hurts that we have inflicted on one another need healing. Both we ourselves and our elected public servants need a re-call to civility and a persistent commitment to the common good over personal and partisan agendas. The post-election world needs ambassadors of reconciliation in every arena of influence that we have, in our families, our congregations, our communities, our church, our counties, our states, and our country.

Most pundits and social commentators agree that we will be sorting through the debris left behind by this election cycle for a very long time. As cross-marked, Spirit-sealed followers of Jesus, we are claimed, called, set free, and sent to stand in the breaches. We are sent to tear down walls that divide and build paths to peace. The cross on our foreheads and the Spirit in our hearts call us to turn the gaze of our common life – which has been saturated with attack ads and volatile rhetoric –toward those who have been overlooked, pushed aside, dismissed, disrespected, detested, and dejected.

If you and I don’t lead the way forward, who will?

Long ago, the apostle Paul reminded riven communities that in Christ, God has torn down divisive walls of hostility and has entrusted the message of reconciliation to us [Ephesians 2:14; 2 Corinthians 5:19]. We know the power of forgiveness and we are sent to offer it to others. We know the peace of being restored in relationship and we are blessed to be peacemakers. We know the transforming power of receiving mercy and the freedom and new life that ride the coattails of justice and we are empowered to give ourselves so others might know it, too. We know the commitment of Christ to care for the poor, the outcast, the captive, and the wandering ones and we are called to follow in that way of Jesus.

We follow this Way trusting the even more ancient call and promise from God through the prophet Jeremiah: Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For surely I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope [Jeremiah29:7-14].

Of course, this is not an easy path to walk. The divides are deep and the needs are myriad. But it’s the path the crucified and risen Jesus has always walked. He will continue to walk that way long after the election results are in. For the sake of the life of the world so beloved by God, he calls us to follow.

So, what do you say? Let’s cast our votes and get to work.

Can We Talk?

Sometimes I wonder whether we have lost the ability to talk. I don’t mean the ability to form and speak words. I mean the ability to talk – really talk – with others.

Think about all the “conversations” about race, politics, or religion that you have heard or participated in recently, on TV, at public meetings, in church, on Facebook. It appears to me that, on the whole, we are pretty good at making demands, spewing projectile perspectives, yelling, interrupting, accusing, labeling, and making sweeping assertions about whole groups of people or about how the world ought to work. But we are not very good at conversing, especially when the stakes are high. At least, I don’t hear much genuine conversation going on around the very difficult issues we face together as the body of Christ and in the world, issues like racial tension, violence, politics, religious perspectives, sexual identity, even the future of the church.

In her wise and important book, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre reminds us that “To ‘converse’ originally meant to live among or together, or to act together, to foster community, to commune with…When we converse, we act together toward a common end, and we act upon one another…Indeed, conversation is...a way of building and sustaining community.”[1]

If we are going to find a way forward through these challenging times somebody needs to create spaces in our life together for genuine, careful, caring, honest, mutually-honoring conversation, the sort of conversation that changes the participants and builds and sustains community toward a common good, rather than tearing it apart in a wrestling match over who will get their way, over whose perspective or interest or power will dominate the day.

Of all people, we who have been marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with his Spirit ought to be able to engage and create space for this sort of conversation. After all, trust in the grace of God made known in Jesus who is our forgiveness, love, and hope frees us to go deep into the sorts of paradox, ambiguity and pain that so often give rise to fear and angry imposition of hardline demands. We who rest in amazing grace and walk in the way of the cross are able to face hard, harsh truths about the brokenness and sinfulness of life – together – and to lead the way in our human search for life-giving paths forward.

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. [2 Corinthians 5:18-20; NRSV]

This sort of conversation is neither natural nor easy. In many ways, it’s quite countercultural. It involves deep listening to the other, listening at the risk of being changed, not listening in order to find a hole in an argument or a target for rebuttal. Community building conversation that moves to action calls each participant to honest sharing of their experience or perspective in an non-judgmental environment that honors each and is committed to working together for the common good. It’s walking, or rather, talking in the way of the cross, trusting that there really is “one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” [Ephesians 4:6; NRSV]

How might we create space for this sort of conversation in our families, our neighborhoods, and our congregations this fall?

How might your book group or Bible study or youth meetings or congregation council or committee meetings be different if genuine conversation about difficult issues were to become a high priority?

What if we all looked around our congregations, communities, and workplaces for people who are different from us or who hold perspectives different from ours and invited them into genuine and sustained conversation about the very things about which we differ? 

Such conversation certainly won’t remedy all the challenges, divisions, and injustices that we face. But I do suspect that, with McEntyre, we’d discover “conversation that discloses us to one another and brings us into relationship that reaffirms our common dependencies and our importance to each other. Like prayer, good conversation fashions words into vessels that carry living water.”[2]

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[1] Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000), 89.

[2] McEntyre, 110.