When Love Shows Up: Weekly Reflections about God's Presence

11 years ago my family and I walked into a theater and watched what would become one of the most significant movies of the last several decades. Of course I'm talking about Frozen. It became the highest grossing film of that year, the highest grossing animated film up to that point, and singlehandedly re-established the cultural relevance of Disney's animated movies.

But more important than all that, Frozen brought the song "Let it Go" into the world. Everything else about Frozen's impact pales in comparison to this. "Let it Go" won an Oscar, a Grammy, and sold nearly 11million copies in one year. Even if you have never seen Frozen you have heard this song. And if you have had a child, grandchild, godchild, or are friends with anyone who has had any of these in the last decade, you know this song. It is impossible to overstate its ubiquity in our culture.

Let me step back for a moment and acknowledge the obvious. Yes, I am still a priest and this is still my religious podcast. And yes, I am an adult. And yes, in the midst of some of the most interesting and trying times in recent memory, I am here talking/writing about a Disney movie and one of its songs. Stick with me. Jesus will be here soon.

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Kindness is the conscious decision to humanize the person right in front of you, to at least seek to empathize with them, to insist that they matter even when you don't want them to.

The temptation to hate is so strong. I am speaking about myself here as much as I am speaking about anyone. I do not believe kindness comes naturally when we feel threatened, when we are hurting. We are in a time of upheaval and great cultural division, fear, and animosity.

Some are grieving the results of this election, and some are celebrating - and if you look at the numbers, it's a fairly equal portion of both. We cannot say that our country is united behind Donald Trump. That would be a lie. We could not have said the country was united behind Joe Biden after his election. That's not how this works in real life. We know that politicians like to speak in sweeping terms about the electorate. I think those broad declarations about us are disingenuous - wishful thinking. "America has spoken!" they will often say. Have we? Our winner-take-all mentality insists on a narrative of unity that does not reflect our experience. And our binary thinking requires good guys and bad guys for us to be able to function. This is fertile ground for hatred to grow.

We are fractured, and the breach runs deep. I am not at all sure it is reparable. We all belong to each other, but we don't act like it, and often we don't even believe it.

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Well, this

is the last blog I will publish before the election. I am aware that nothing I

could say at this point would sway your vote one way or the other. I think most

of you who know me and have read my writing have your own guesses about how I

will vote. And I don't pretend that anything I've put out there has had much of

an influence on your vote. So I will not be using this platform to tell you for

whom you should vote, or even to tell you to vote at all.

But I am

thinking a lot about November 5th. I believe it is the most

consequential election of my lifetime so far. I care deeply about what happens.

And also, beyond casting my vote, I have no control over the outcome.

What I also

believe is that there will be a November 6th. And a November 7th.

And hopefully many days after that. And I believe that, regardless of the

outcome of the election, we will still all belong to each other. And we have

some work to do in order to act like that's true.

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Soon people began to arrive for the 9 o'clock service, which is our largest. They piled into our parish hall, all smiles and grace and understanding and playfulness. I was overwhelmed. This day started in disaster and was met with grace by every single person involved. There were so many opportunities for panic, sadness, or frustration - and I'm sure those feelings were felt here and there, but the overriding sense was that we have got this, that we've got each other, that we know what's important.

And I know. I know we have insurance. I know what ended up happening was a tiny little thing: A pipe had burst. There was some water damage that was not catastrophic, that would be repaired, that would be covered. And it does not compare to the damage and disaster that has befallen our siblings in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee after the recent hurricanes. It amounted to a minor inconvenience. We are safe and sound and will be back to normal so quickly. We are a fortunate group. Even in our misfortune. We are privileged by our resources and insurance.

At the same time, our response to the trouble we faced was revelatory to me. I say revelatory, though it's worth noting it didn't reveal anything to me I didn't already know about God. But we can forget so easily how love and grace work to transform our lives. I already knew how grateful I was to have the people of this church in my life, to be a part of theirs. I already knew that they are a good-hearted, flexible, loving, understanding, and resourceful bunch. None of this was new. But it was revealed to me all over again.

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That word enfranchised might seem out of place in a spiritual conversation. It's a word we find in the political realm. We sometimes forget that political matters have spiritual elements and spiritual matters affect our politics. Enfranchisement in our current context is mostly about voting, but the primary thrust of the word is that a person's presence and dignity is acknowledged as part of the larger community. They are not shut out. They are not kept quiet. This is what Jesus is doing in his healing. When he calls the woman daughter, he is publicly incorporating her into the shared life of her people. She is enfranchised, and that is spiritual and political at the same time.

I cannot unequivocally tell you that Jesus likes democracy. It never comes up in his teaching. What I can tell you is that Jesus is serious about leveling the playing field, about every person's life mattering. He is serious about giving voice and dignity to the people he meets. The values Jesus embodies are, I believe, consistent with what we value about democracy. Everyone has a voice. Everyone has a place in the conversation. Nobody left out.

I do not live in a democracy. I live in Ohio.

Ohio, a place I have come to love very much, is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. You're welcome to do a Google image search of our districts if you are a fan of visual comedy. But for context I will tell you this: Ohio is 42% Republican and 40% Democrat, with 18% stating no affiliation. If people all voted on party lines and that 18% miraculously all voted Republican, you might feasibly expect our representation to be 60% Republican, 40% Democrat. In reality, 75% of our representatives are Republican. 75%. Our districts - which have been ruled unconstitutional but somehow still stand - are intentionally designed to engineer a one party supermajority.

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When we wrote that line, about 7 years ago, I thought I knew what we meant by "every". In my mind, I was thinking primarily about Republicans and Democrats, and a good mix of independents that included moderates, libertarian types, and some socialists for good measure. This was the scope of my thinking, and I thought that was pretty broad. That was everyone.

It feels naïve now. Sunny, even. It's not that I didn't realize other ideologies and perspectives existed - it's that I assumed the rest to be so extreme as not to need to be acknowledged or discussed. But in the intervening years, Christian Nationalism has emerged as an apparently acceptable perspective. Many legislators openly and comfortably proclaim themselves as Christian Nationalists. Shockingly, frighteningly, it is not a disqualifying proclamation.

It should be.

Christian Nationalism is antithetical both to America and to Christianity.

Christian Nationalism insists on creating legislation based on one particular interpretation of religious belief. That is patently unamerican. Our country has in its founding documents a refusal to establish a state religion. You will sometimes hear adherents to Christian Nationalism try to sidestep this by talking about "Christian values" as the backbone of America's creation. This is also patently false. For all its faults, our country's desire to exist as a place free from religious coercion is imaginative, noble, and courageous.

America is not a Christian nation. We were not founded by Christians, but by a mixture of Christians, Deists, Atheists, Agnostics, and Unitarians. Our founding documents are not Christian. While some of the values they promote may be compatible with Christian thought, they are not themselves inherently Christian. Pretending otherwise is just that: Make-believe.

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"So are

there other Republicans at the church?" he asked me. And I laughed.

I laughed

because it was a great question, asked directly, and without a hint of irony or

cynicism. My breakfast companion was sitting across from me at a local diner

when he asked this question. He is getting to know Church of the Redeemer, but he's

been an Episcopalian for his whole life - maybe longer. And as a Republican, he

knows the drill. There are, for the record, plenty of Republicans at Redeemer,

and in the Episcopal Church. 39% of Episcopalians, to be precise, identify as

Republican. Not a small number. But compared to, say evangelical Christians,

56% of which identify as Republican, Episcopal culture simply feels a little

more politically liberal. Plus, Cincinnati is a Democratic leaning city in a

Republican leaning state. So that skews our congregation's numbers a bit as

well.

I laughed

because, it was a lovely, vulnerable question. We live in such a heated and

politically divided time. And I won't even bemoan that. I think it makes sense

that things are heated and divided. I don't like it. But I think I get it. To

many people - myself included - it feels as if the soul of our country is currently

on the line, and how we navigate these next few years will be profoundly

decisive. At the same time, we are getting more and more accustomed to living

in self-selected bubbles based on common interest or affinity. So if he's

getting to know Redeemer, he wants to know if it's a bubble. And that is a

vulnerable question, because he's sitting there over his eggs benedict asking,

"Is there a place for me?" It takes courage to wonder that aloud, and it filled

my heart with love.

I laughed, because,

and I told him this immediately, not two minutes earlier, another Republican parishioner

had just texted me to congratulate me on my 8th anniversary of

ministry at Redeemer. "See?" I joked, "Republicans!"

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Last week I insisted that, as a Christian who is American, I must understand myself as Christian first - that my Christian identity supersedes my Americanness. There are, of course, problems with this assertion.

The first problem might just be that it makes me sound like a radical. We are currently in a time when a sizable portion of American leaders are working to remake American culture in a way that devalues and endangers women, minorities, LGBTQ+ persons, and immigrants - and they're doing it in Jesus' name. Many of these leaders argue that this is a Christian nation, that it was founded on Christian ideals, and by Christian men. None of those things are actually true, but they have been repeated so regularly that they seem to have seeped into our collective consciousness as being self-evident.

Nevertheless, in Jesus' name, many Americans are seeking to force their understanding of Christian living on others. I believe this actively goes against who Jesus is and what he teaches. Every time Jesus gets angry in the stories we have of him, it's because he's witnessing leaders misuse their religious authority to harm others. Jesus is not a theocrat.

Some people believe that commandment about taking the Lord's name in vain means you shouldn't say "Oh my God" or exclaim "Jesus Christ." But the real blasphemy is harming others in Jesus' name, using God as the buttress upon which you reinforce your own political power and social standing.

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I remember putting that flag up and thinking, "I'm home."

America was something about which I was religious. I wouldn't have said that at the time. I would not have acknowledged that. But I could not only not fathom being anything other than American - I could not imagine that any other country could be as good as mine. To love my country was not just about affection or allegiance. To love America was to consciously believe that it was the greatest country on earth, that there had never been a country and never would be a country as powerful as smart, as resourceful, as successful, as free - as Good as the USA. To love my country meant to know what was wrong with other countries. To love my country was to feel sorry for people who weren't American, who didn't know what it was like to be so free, to be so successful, to save the world so many times.

The line between patriotism and nationalism is sometimes razor thin, isn't it?

What does it look like to value our children?

How do we care for them? What is our responsibility to our children?

I have been thinking about this a lot. And I want to say this very clearly: I don't just mean my responsibility for the children I call mine. I also do not mean our responsibility to children because of what they will mean in the future when they are grown up. I mean our shared responsibility for the children among us right now. What is their value? What is their place in our community? And what is our responsibility to them? All of them, by the way. All of them.

I am a parent. I have three children, and I confess that much of my wondering about this has been based on my experience of raising them. More specifically, I am raising them in public schools in Cincinnati. And of course, that pushes me to think regularly about our city's commitment to children. In the aftermath of yet another school shooting, I wonder if we value their safety, their very lives.

And I confess, I wonder if my children were not in public schools, would I care so much? And if I didn't have children at all, would I care the way I care now?

Jesus didn't have children. Jesus didn't have a wife.

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