Yesterday, we heard Mother Teresa’s wise words that, rather than praying for clarity about our lives and the world, we should pray for trust in God. As we await the election results in these days when clarity seems so hard to find, that is a good word. The rest of my sermon yesterday is below, offered as an alternative to watching the news … and waiting. I welcome your feedback. And don’t forget that if you need a ride to vote, we can get one! – John
Vote. Pray. Trust.
Nov. 4, 2018
Caldwell Presbyterian Church
Rev. John Cleghorn
Text: Psalm 146
“Voting is an act of faith.”
So proclaimed the headline of an email I received last week, a clear effort to get everyone to the polls. It was from the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, the Stated Clerk of our denomination. That’s the highest ecclesiastical position in the Presbyterian Church USA.
Perhaps you came to church today to get away from the election. I can relate to that. But the truth is unmistakable. You would have to live in a cave to not know how pivotal Tuesday’s election is in our national life together.
Still, when I saw J. Herbert’s headline, “Voting is an act of faith,” I have to admit I took issue.
Sure, his message included all the right points:
- Voting is our civic duty.
- Failing to use our vote is to remain silent in what’s happening in America today.
- And, we can offer rides to the polls for any who may need one.
I agree with all of those points, completely and absolutely. I urge every last one of you to vote on Tuesday, if you haven’t already.
But, while I am not in the habit of disagreeing with our top dog, something about that email title, “Voting is an act of faith,” sticks in my craw.
Maybe it’s just the headline. Maybe it’s this year, this election, these times. But my “faith,” to use his word, is more than a little shaken, at least as far as politics goes, at least as for faith in the electorate. I admit I have no idea what will happen Tuesday. The election of 2016 shattered my crystal ball into pieces still left lying on the floor. My confidence in understanding just what’s happening in America is, to say the least, deeply shaken.
I can name how I feel about it all: my disgust at the dual cancers of hate and violence that have infected our national life; my deep and profound disappointment in the cowardice of our elected officials for not rising up together to take back the character of our country; my dismay in how what has been the white majority in our nation is fighting in such despicable ways to hold onto power.
My faith? Well, let’s just say that my ultimate faith is placed elsewhere.
As I’ve noted a time or two before, we often preach from what’s called the lectionary on Sundays. This rotating collection of scripture readings walks us through scripture over a three-year cycle. Each Sunday, the lectionary gives us preachers four choices to consider – two from the Old Testament and two from the new.
The lectionary seems to have an uncanny sense of timing, as it does today in lifting up Psalm 146. “Do not put your trust in princes and mortals,” declares the psalm for today. “Do not put your trust in princes and mortals.”’
Then again, maybe it’s not uncanny at all. Perhaps that is exactly what God knows we need to hear today, two days before we know more about who will lead us, at least in political office, at the local, state and federal levels.
I’ll admit we don’t often preach the psalms here on Sunday mornings. The psalter, as it is called, is more for praying than for preaching. Maybe that is our loss, as this morning shows us. So many of you have shared how you love these 150 prayers, how they express every human emotion, from fear, anguish and lament to joy, victory and praise.
The psalter was the prayer book of the Hebrews. We know Jesus loved the psalms. He knew them by heart, even quoting them in his final hours on the cross, according to the gospels. The psalms express the intimate relationship between the children of Israel and their God. Our tradition also holds that the psalms point to Jesus’ coming, his life, his salvific death for all of us.
The Book of Psalms closes with five psalms of praise. Yes, they explore and give voice to every part of life with God, including moments of abandonment, confusion and agony. But they end with praise. Praise gets the final word.
Today’s psalm itself begins and ends with praise. The English translation in our Bibles is “Praise the Lord!” with an exclamation mark at the end. But not even that translation quite captures what the author wishes to say. The old Latin word “alleluia” is an attempt to express a joy that reaches beyond language. Our alleluias are more for singing than mere speaking.
Then, after the praises, Psalm 146 gets right down to business.
“Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.”
Oh, how these words resonate in these days, in the here and now when so many of us are bewildered by the leadership in our nation, when even hope at times seems distant. But the author was talking as much or more about the then and there of our after-life. As the old saying goes, you can’t take it with you – whoever you are, whatever you’ve accomplished or built in this mortal realm. You can’t take it with you when it is time to see God face to face.
From there, the psalmist moves with purpose to remind readers who God is – that God made the heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them. The God of creation, the psalmist says, is sovereign over the universe and all of eternity. This God works in the long term over and above any two-year election cycle or even a four-year presidential term.
What comes next in the psalm is the promise and its fulfillment at once. These words of assurance meet us in our inability to guess where we will be on Wednesday morning – whether control of the U.S. House of Representatives will change hands, whether the North Carolina General Assembly will be shaken from the iron-fisted grip of one party, whether Charlotte will approve the affordable housing bonds.
These words cry out to be read with a particular inflection:
The LORD sets the prisoners free;
The LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
The LORD loves the righteous.
The LORD watches over he strangers;
The LORD upholds the orphan and the widow,
But the way of the wicked THE LORD brings to ruin.
It just sounds better when you read it that way. Then again, how about this?
The LORD – not the democrats – sets the prisoners free;
The LORD – not the republicans – opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD – not the progressives – lifts up those who are bowed down;
The LORD – not the conservatives – loves the righteous.
When we hear it that way, we are reminded that God is at the top of the ticket in the election of eternity. When we pray these words of the psalmist – and come to believe them – we can have the peace that passes all understanding, a peace that earthly powers and principalities can never deliver.
If nothing else, to read and pray Psalm 146 is to be given an unmistakably clear contrast.
One commentator writes this about the psalm:
“Certainly human leaders are called to act on behalf of those who find themselves on the margins, but their track record is miserable. YHWH, in contrast, uses power and privilege not to exploit but to uplift.”
The God the psalmist knows, another scholar writes, enables us all to “lift the heads of those who have been shamed and humiliated, to seek and bring protection to those who are most vulnerable among us.
“Daring acts of compassion,” he writes, “come from a power that transcends us, yet operates through us. For the God at work in the world empowering us to live as we should, the psalmist gives thanks.”
Psalm 146 leaves little room, then, for us to drop out of the process, out of life together, even out of the electoral process, no matter how dismayed and disoriented we may be by what we see happening. The God that is already at work compels us to join in bringing about justice, justice that transcends any bill or public policy or political platform.
Voting is an act of faith?
Maybe I am, after all, a Calvinist, at least in part. A part of me knows that humanity is inherently broken and sin-sick. So any electoral system run by broken and flawed people will be broken and flawed.
Then there is the resident cynic in me left over from my training as a journalist. We were taught to bring a high degree of skepticism to any human endeavor. My favorite journalism professor was a man of high character and deep faith. But, as for being a good reporter, he had two pieces of advice.
First, never forget that people are no damn good.
Second, if you mother says she loves you, you still better check it out.
The psalmist said something similar. But, in the end, he pointed to God.
“Do not out your trust in princes, in mortals in whom there is no help.”
As we navigate our way through these trying times, even as we hold legitimate fear for our country, even as we pray for those who are the most vulnerable at the hands of so many heartless, faithless and mean-spirited powers, let me close with a story.
One day a famous ethicist went to Calcutta, India. He was seeking Mother Teresa … and some answers to some big questions that weighed on him.
He went for three months to work at Mother Teresa’s ministry, “the house of the dying.” He wanted answers to how best he could spend the rest of his life. When he met Mother Teresa, he asked her to pray for him.
“What do you want me to pray for?” she replied. He then uttered the request he had carried thousands of miles: “Clarity. Pray that I have clarity.”
“No,” Mother Teresa answered, “I will not do that.”
When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.”
Mother Teresa’s visitor replied in surprise. He said that she always seemed to have clarity, the very kind of clarity he was looking for.
Mother Teresa laughed. She said: “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”
Friends, as we step from this holy place, let us vote. Let us pray. Most of all, even as we actively work to advance love and justice in a hurting world, let us trust. Let us trust in the God who created heaven and earth and even time itself, who came in Christ to win, for us and others, life over death, good over evil and hope over despair.
Amen.