The Morning After

…as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

—Joshua 24:15d

It is the morning after. A man who stripped away any facade of progress on race, religion, equality, dignity, and sexual mores became President of the United States. If I were anything other than the White Protestant Male that I am, I would not feel safe, hopeful, or comfortable this morning. Anger, resentment, alienation, isolation, and fear won. 

The world is changing; and it is changing rapidly—too rapidly for us to keep up, truth be told. We have not adjusted to an economy based on technology that does not really make any tangible products, but rather follows ideas into the ethereal reality of computers. We still build buildings and cars. We still grow more food than any other country in the world, but the folks working there are not “us.” We have not adjusted to a society that is more open to diversity than any previous generation. People who are different in so many different ways no longer keep those differences hidden. They want to marry whom they love. They want to use a bathroom that is theirs. They want to live in the liberation that birth control brought. We are not ready for their self-expression. We want what is “normal.” We have not adjusted to the reality that our national face will soon be more brown than white. 42% of California is Latino. Now add in ever-expanding Asian populations, and the Euro-Americans are rapidly becoming outnumbered. We fear “them.” We want 1955 when everybody knew who was in charge. Jackie Robinson could play baseball, just don’t let him run for office. Oh, and women…they want access; they want respect; and they want to feel safe in the presence of predatory males. We have not adjusted to a sexless way of viewing human beings. Instead, we use sex to sell everything, i.e., a woman is simply an object to be gawked at, used, and shelved. How could a woman ever lead the whole country? But the world changes, regardless. Last night was a reaction, but in no way stops the changes coming.

You will note that I never stopped using “we” in the above paragraph. That is because everything that happens, happens with us, through us, to us, and because of us. All sorts of mayhem comes when we divide into an us and them. The election is ours—we who voted, and we who did not vote. It is OURS. 

So what do we do beginning today, the day after?

Joshua had it right—serve the Lord.

How does God view the world this morning? Same as yesterday, last week, last century, and even the last epoch—creation is God’s beloved, brought into being in love, kept in love, and led by love. That means that each of the seven billion of us on the planet is, will be, and always has been a beloved child of God—including Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton; Vladimir Putin and Kim Il Jong; Pope Francis and Angela Merkel; Desmond Tutu and Pema Chodron; the Dalai Lama and Elizabeth Warren; anyone named Jamal and anyone named Schwartz; and all the rest of us all around and in between. No human being came into being apart from God’s loving breath, breathing life into being. The more we are able to see one another as God does and then act on it, the more we can make a difference within the world that brings compassion to the fore. 

You see the immediate difficulty—that list has as many sinners as saints, the depraved alongside the enlightened. When Jesus directed his followers to love their enemies, he knew the reality of his demand, the immediate exceptions his disciples were making, but he did not back down or away from his demand. If we are to serve the Lord, we must hear his, Go and do likewise, for what it is—it is not a suggestion, it is the means to life. 

We can counter depravity by compassion. If anything was revealed yesterday, it is the power of someone feeling they are not heard. Ignoring someone carries a heavy consequence. It is what actually unites the followers of Donald Trump and the followers of Bernie Sanders. It is actually what unites Black Lives Matter with any number of wild-eyed militias hidden in corners of Oregon and northernmost California. Someone felt unheard, so they demand an audience, and they will use any means necessary to get our attention. That was the brilliance of the recent Tom Hanks and SNL “Black Jeopardy” sketch—African Americans and Trump supporters were all on the same page until the very last category where Lives That Matter became the focus—each lost the other in their own vision, but to that point agreed they had not been listened to. Compassion demands that we listen with ears and hearts attuned to this because of that—last night did not just happen—it happened because millions of human beings feel ignored. Compassion listens. It is astounding how much can be defused by simple listening. 

Compassion, though, also demands that we work to see the inherent value in every human being as we meet them. That means we meet someone browner than we are as beloved, worthy of respect, dignity, and grace as child of God. That means we treasure women for who they are, denouncing any belittling of their existence. That means we see God’s wondrous grace in speaking to human beings in a variety of ways that makes sense to the human beings hearing the voice of God—i.e., there are a lot of religions in response to the One Living God. That means we celebrate that God showed infinite imagination in creating human beings—i.e., there is a spectrum to being human—you will find someone all over the place in terms of male and female, straight or gay, smart or less so, strong and weak, artistic and logical, and so on. God placed seven billion unique people in this moment to become a great family of being human. Variety is not something to be feared, but celebnrated,  for that is our direct experience of God. Treasure that.

In these ways, we counter fear, anger, and division. We find that which leads to the kingdom.

…as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.