(61) Election

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Election, originally shared on November 2, 2020. It was the sixty-first video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

We had a scary and triumphant weekend to be followed by the same kind of week. How can we best be prepared?

   We’re at a point in the pandemic it feels like we’re getting used to what we used to call the “new” normal, yet where cases are spiking all over the country, driven by young people whose symptoms are lesser and whose rate of death is lower, but who bring it home to their family and they die.

    We just set an international record for numbers of new cases in a single day, and yet we see people on the news and on our streets who are ignoring the easy things people can do to lower the number of cases and deaths. Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt.

   We are now between All Saints Sunday and Election Day. Actually those days involve two kinds of election.

   Halloween came and went last Saturday night without much activity this year. One of our Dr. friends texted, “Does anyone else feel like Halloween was unnecessary this year? I’ve been wearing a mask and eating candy for 7 months now.

   Jimmy Fallon read one of his viewer’s texts on the Tonight Show the other night, “Trick or Treat, stay six feet, leave my candy at the street.” That pretty much sums up this year’s activity.

   Yesterday was All Saints Sunday and the end of Daylight Saving Time for this year. And, one other important milestone: my six year Beard-aversary! But, you know, it’s the pandemic so we didn’t have the massive community celebration that we usually do. 😊 Lot’s of men are growing pandemic beards. I started mine before beard-growing was cool!

   Daylight Saving Time was not begun to give farmers extra time to work in the fields, it was done to save energy just after World War 1.

   Either way, it’s like the probably apocryphal and unnamed Native American chief is said to have said, “Only the white man could believe that if you cut one end off a blanket and sew it onto the other end, that you make a longer blanket”.

   That’s Daylight Saving Time, by the way, not Daylight Savings Time, if you want to be really annoying.  Did you get an extra hour of sleep, or did you figure you could just stay up an hour later?

   All Saints Day was celebrated on Sunday remembering the saints who have gone before us, particularly those brothers and sisters in Christ who have been meaningful in our growth and development as Christians. We read the names of those close to us and to our congregations who died in Christ in the past year. And, we remembered that we, who are all sinners, have also been made saints by God’s unearned transformational love for us.

   But, this is 2020, and tomorrow we will start a period of days, or weeks, or even months, that will bring this day of holy remembrance and gratitude into stark contrast with the ways and events of this world.

  Tomorrow is Election Day. And, if you haven’t already, please vote. No election’s outcome is certain, and there is a lot at stake. So much so that by tomorrow evening, millions of people will begin to be extremely upset and will be certain that the result will mean the end of the USA as we know it. They will be right. We are always changing.

   Thomas Jefferson once said that, in order to prevent the rule of despots, reflecting on the beginnings of the American revolution, “God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.” It is we the people who set things in motion, and tomorrow we will have an opportunity to do so when we vote.

   Tim Keller, a theologian, author and a Presbyterian pastor who started a church in NYC and has seen it grow into a large and influential presence in the city, had a portion of one of his books quoted as an opinion piece in the New York Time a couple of days ago.

   In it, he makes the claim that Christians can and should be involved in politics and government. But, they “should not identify the Christian church or faith with a political party as the only Christian one.”

   Furthermore, one can only rise so far in modern political parties unless you believe everything they believe. Christian beliefs do not fit completely with any political party, so people have to decide whether they will maintain their Christian worldview or assimilated into that of a political party. I’ll put a link to the article in the comments section below.

Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/christians-politics-belief.html

   And, if we do assimilate, modern politics takes people to an us vs. them mentality where the future of the nation depends only upon my party winning, leading to a hatred of the other and a victory at any cost strategy.

   That can’t be right. But it does say a lot about the place to which we have come in American politics.

   “Us vs. them” causes us to hate; that can’t be right.  To cast everything they do in the worst possible light can’t be right.

   That brings us to the doctrine of Election.

   To be elected means to choose or to be chosen, as in “I elect to have a more useful life”, or “He elected to play for the Rams”. 

   Election is also a theological term that describes the nature of how we are saved, who God has “elected”, or chosen to go to heaven, and how, and why.

   Do human beings have an active role in their election, do we have “free will”, or does God decide and, therefore, has it already been decided by God’s grace. Can human beings, in their sin, win salvation? Do all good people go to heaven and, if so, how good is good enough?  (meaning no need for the cross or the sacraments or the Bible), or does God give salvation as a gift? Do we decide for Jesus, or has Jesus decided for us?

   It’s kind of a big deal. In fact, the “Election Controversy” of the late 19^th century led to the founding of the college from which I graduated, St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. It follows the idea of predestination.

   The arguments were very nuanced and subtle, but they involved very important and practical ideas, and I’m going to step into the quagmire right here.

      Lutherans reject the idea of double-predestination, the idea that God chose some to be saved and some to be damned. The Bible supports the idea that God has chosen some for salvation, but does not support the idea that God has chosen anyone to go to hell. They argue that God wants all to be saved, but not all will be saved.

   It king of stretches the limits of human reason.

   I think about a philosopher who tells the story of going out for a walk on the streets of London. He took a turn down an alley he had never explored and came to a dead end.

There were two doors on either side of the alley. One said “Predestination Club” and the other said “Free Will Club”.

   He said, “I looked at the two doors and went through the first. I was met by a gatekeeper who said, “Before I can allow you to enter the Predestination Club, you must answer one question: ‘Why are you here?’”

   I answered, “Because I saw two doors and I decided to enter this one of my own free will.”  So, he threw me out.

   I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and I entered the second door. I was met there by another gatekeeper who said, “Before I can allow you to enter the Free Will Club, you must answer one question: ‘Why are you here?’”

   I answered, “Because I had no choice”. So, I got thrown out of that one, too.

   God elected those who will be saved. That’s not fatalism. That doesn’t mean we think we’re saved already so that it doesn’t matter what we do, or that we don’t need to be concerned about all people.

   The Bible reminds us that we are called by God to care for the poor and to see that they receive justice, to seek racial justice and to promote the things that lead to the abundant life for all people.

   To live in faith is to respond naturally, not under the requirements of religious laws, but because we just want to. Faith is a gift, Baptism is a gift, Holy Communion is a gift, everything associated with the Christian life is a gift. We live in response to God’s gifts, not to get them.

   The only way to be among the elect is to be elected by God.

   I think of it, since God is not bound by time, as a kind of ongoing judgement where God looks into our hearts and sees Jesus, or God sees our sin. Having Jesus in our heart is not a warm fuzzy feeling, but the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created, that is, faith that we in our sin cannot achieve, but that God can give to all who receive, as close to us as life itself.

   Predestination does not mean that how we live our lives doesn’t matter, it means that why we live our lives does matter. It’s living with streams of living water forming and shaping us from within, the Holy Spirit at work making us a new Creation, God’s people, born again.

   Knowing that relationship is how we are best prepared for what is to come.

   So, after a weekend in which our culture’s celebration of evil was scary, and All Saints Sunday reminded us of the triumph of the cross, we now face a week in which the scariness of a political election in today’s polarized political environment happens.

   Let us remember that the only election that truly changes lives and will endure forever is God’s. Let us be grateful and live in response to it.

 *John 10:25-28