A Sermon for Fall Leadership Gathering - "Flipping the Script"

This is what the Lord says—your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
    “For your sake I will send to Babylon and bring down as fugitives 
    all the Babylonians, in the ships in which they took pride. 
    I am the Lord, your Holy One, Israel’s Creator, your King.”

A Response to the 2024 Election

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. 

Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world, 

from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
--Psalm 90.1-2--

Beloved in Christ,

For most of my lived experience, our elections have always involved the fulfillment of some hopes, the dashing of others, and a belief that, win or lose, every citizen and every perspective has a place in the exchange of ideas and dreams that we call American democracy. 

In the aftermath of this election season, however, things are different. Millions of American citizens, for whom dissent, free speech, and due process are constitutional rights, have been labeled "the enemy within" and threatened with prosecution, incarceration, and violence. Immigrants who are here legally under international asylum laws have been victims of hate speech and death threats, as have non-profit agencies and churches who accompany them. These are not partisan complaints from a disappointed voter: these are assaults on the fundamental human rights that undergird every society which seeks to be just, and ignoring these assaults under the guise of patriotism or Christian faith is a denial of the reality in which we currently live. As Lutherans, we believe the theology of the cross requires us to "call a thing what it is." There will be consequences from this election for all of us, and lessons we will all need to learn if there is to be a future for the expansive, robust vision of American democracy many of us hope to embody.

All of us have differing capacities to take in the circumstances and results of this election and what they have revealed about our identity, our priorities, and our moral standing as a nation. I can't say how you should react in this moment, how you should define your existence and inhabit this space that is your life. Whatever marks your dwelling place in this moment, it is between you and God, your dwelling place. Grief, fear, anger, frustration, determination, hope - all of these and more are legitimate responses that deserve their time and space to be experienced and processed. What I can say is this: you are, right now, a child of God who has a dwelling place in God, a place which was never conditional on any victory and cannot be denied to you by any loss. 

That dwelling place in God, however, is not a place of isolation. God is our dwelling place, and that means neighbors, some of whom might not be the neighbors we would choose if it were up to us. None of what lies before us will be easy. Rebuilding relationships shattered by conflict is hard work that requires courage, honesty, and kindness. This is, however, the work to which God our dwelling place has called us: to bind up the broken-hearted, to feed the hungry, to care for those who have lost their dwelling place with God and among God's people. That mission remains the same no matter who occupies the seats of power, and the God who was our dwelling place before the mountains were brought forth will be our dwelling place long after the grass that grows from the seeds sown in this or any election has withered and faded away. 

For now, beloveds, my prayer is that we abide in this dwelling place that is the steadfast love of God. Rest and recover, dear friends. When we're ready, the work will be there for us. 

Yours in Christ,

Bishop Scott Alan Johnson