Sermon Text:

Good morning, people of God. My name is Adam Baker, and I’m one of the pastors here at Wesley Memorial. Whether you’re new to Wesley or you’ve been worshipping with us for a long time, I want to welcome you into this space & this place because I believe deeply that this is a church where the Holy Spirit of the living God is at work, and that Jesus wants to share his love with us today. I believe that the Lord desires to remind us of who He is even as He transforms us today. Amen?

It’s no coincidence that we’re beginning a two-part sermon series today that asks us, as Christians, “Who’s in charge?,” exploring what that question means for us as followers of Jesus. We chose to begin this series today because we knew that as Christians, along with everyone else in our country, would be coming this past Tuesday to the end of a year-and-a-half-long political journey. And I think that “journey” might be the polite word for it – it’s been much more of a grueling & painful thing, almost like a battle that’s divided families and friends and people groups in some pretty ugly, bitter, and horrible ways. Whatever you think of it, that process came to a close on Tuesday, and it did so in some ways that were very surprising for most people. What we learned is that the world, and specifically our country, is a very unpredictable place, and when something unpredictable happens, everything gets thrown for a loop, at least for a while, and how long that “while” is will be very different for each and every one of us. For over a year now, we’ve been asking “Who will be in charge?”, and that question has moved beyond a friendly competition into some brutal kind of wrestling match or an MMA fight. Whether you’ve been fascinated or horrified by what’s been said and done, you’ve likely been sucked into it with the rest of us. This election has marked us as a nation; I’ve heard it described as though someone has peeled back a scab on a wound, with none of us have been happy to see just how infected things actually are.

Before I became a pastor, I was a clinical counselor who worked with survivors of trauma – young men & women who had experienced grief & loss, neglect, and sexual abuse. Trauma is defined as “a deeply distressing or disturbing experience,” and what I learned very quickly about trauma is that each and every of us reacts differently to it. People can face being robbed, raped, or seeing someone die, and every person will react in different ways. But, there is something about trauma that’s common to all: when you’ve survived trauma, it can be very damaging & destructive for someone else to tell you to “just get over it”.

Think of it this way: if I had told one of my clients who was a sexual abuse survivor to just “buck up, buttercup,” how long do you think I’d have had my counseling license or my job? I’d have lost both, and with good reason, because in minimizing the fear & pain of other people, I would be killing something in their soul and making them doubt even more than they already do that this world might be a safe place for them. I would be discounting their pain. With this in mind, I know that even as many of you are feeling hopeful & excited because of this election, I also know that many of you are hurt, angry, and afraid. I’m not going to tell any of you on either side of the political aisle to just “get over” what’s happened among us over the past year & a half, because doing that would be the opposite of the compassion, mercy, grace, and love that God shows to us in Jesus.

We need to own that this election season has been a traumatic experience for a great many people. We need to acknowledge that. After all, how many of you have seen or heard people saying terrible or even hateful things about other people during this election season? It’s happened across the board, no matter where you fall politically. How many of you feel tired in your soul when anyone even mentions the word “election,” or the word “politics”? There’s reason for that!

I don’t care what political party you affiliate yourself with – people on all sides of this process have been incredibly vicious toward one another; people feel hurt & betrayed by one another, even by people who should be safe people. Even now that the election is over, these wounds are still here. They are real, and that’s on both sides of the political aisle. I won’t tell you to “get over” your hurt and anger and your confusion, because I know what it’s like right now to feel unsure about what being an American is going to mean in the next four years. I am hurt and I am angry about how people have treated one another, about how they’re STILL treating one another, especially how Christians are treating one another.

Because Christians are meant to be different than the rest of the world. Because we are meant to be people who actually listen to Jesus when he commands us to love each other as he has loved us. Because even though you might be someone who may feel hurt or angry or excited and hopeful about Donald Trump winning and Hillary Clinton losing the election, what holds true is that each and every one of us in this room, those people you’re sitting next to, no matter who they voted for - they are made in the image of the living God, just like you.

Whether you are hurt and angry or crowing in victory, the question that defines us cannot FIRST be “Who’s in charge of these United States?,” but instead, we need to be asking “Who’s in charge of the Body into which I have been baptized? Who’s in charge of the Church with whom I eat the bread and drink the cup of Holy Communion? Who’s in charge of transforming other people, making them my Brothers and Sisters in Christ, people for whom I should be willing to lay down my life? Who’s in charge of the Kingdom that I am supposed be representing out in the world, a Kingdom whose citizenship is more important than my being a Republican, a Democrat, and even an American?” These are the questions that should be defining followers of Jesus in this country, and from what I have seen, they’re not. We’re confused about our kingdoms, confused about who rules us and what that means for us, and now we’ve entered into a time that’s making us question what we’d thought we’d understood about this country & how we’re meant to live in it as Christians.

To help us to think about these questions, I’m asking you to turn in your Bibles to the 12th chapter of the book of Isaiah, one of the prophets of God in the Old Testament. If you’re unfamiliar with the prophets, they are the (often unwilling) people that God sent to tell Israel what was going to happen to them because they had chosen to live in ways that brought God sorrow or made God angry. There were two points in the Old Testament where Israel had become so sinful, so false & empty in their worship, that God’s judgment came against them and they were conquered & dragged away into slavery. These periods are called Israel’s exiles, and Isaiah is prophesying to Israel during their first exile, when they’d been conquered by an empire called the Assyrians. Now, the Assyrians had taken a bunch of Israelites into captivity, but they hadn’t taken everybody. Some Israelites remained, basically refugees in their own destroyed land.

The people of Israel were torn apart from within; none of them were sure what to make of their nation anymore. Even if they were allowed to come back together, those Israelites who had been in Assyria looked, sounded, thought, and believed differently than those who had been left behind. Both groups were trying to be faithful to God; both hoped for reunification, but neither knew the difficulties that would entail. In our passage for today, the prophet, Isaiah, offers something beautifully unexpected in the midst of Israel’s sorrow & confusion: he offers them hope, and he offers them joy. He doesn’t ignore the fact that they’re in exile, that they’re split apart, and that they are angry and scared. Instead, he whispers to them in chapter 11 about the highway that will be built to help them all to return home, and then in this chapter, he says this to God’s broken & wounded people:

Isaiah 12:

“You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me. Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day:

Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

Somehow, this is still the word of God for us, the people of God. Thanks be to God.

In the United Methodist Church, many pastors choose to preach according the Lectionary, which assigns certain passages from Scripture to each Sunday over the course of the year. When I saw this passage for today, knowing what week this was, I was pretty much like, “Not today, Lord”. Yes, there are things in that passage that I can get behind instantly, without hesitation: trusting in God, and believing that not government, and not a President, but God alone is our salvation – I can embrace that! And the second part is deeply true: as Christians, we’re called to trust in God, especially in the midst of times like this. And, Lord knows, I’m so grateful to know that my salvation isn’t found in any of these failing & broken systems, but in God alone.

Still, I honestly struggled with the idea of preaching joy today; I even struggled a bit with preaching hope, and that says a lot – hope is my wheelhouse; it’s what I love to preach about more than almost anything else. I struggled because I’ve been listening to all of you, and to my family, and my friends, and all of those speaking across the country about your struggles. I struggled because I know that this has been such an exhausting time for all of us, and I don’t want to dismiss that. It’s been a painful time, and a traumatizing time. So many of us are walking wounded right now. I could say “Be joyful & hopeful, church,” and know that it is something I mean deeply, but I cannot say it if I am using it as a way to tell others to “just get over it”. “Trust, and don’t be afraid” is something I want to whisper to all of you, but many of you believe that you have good reason to feel afraid. I struggled to figure out how to preach this.

But, finally, I read that last sentence again: “Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel,” and I saw something I’d missed before, but something that was so obvious when those scales finally fell off of my eyes. The joy and hope that the prophet tells God’s people to feel is not a false happiness; it’s not a fake smile, pretending that the people of Israel are not a million miles from home and torn apart from family & friends. It’s not a joy and hope that Isaiah is commanding the people of Israel to reach down deep to find within themselves, which would have been difficult, if not impossible, because they’re in captivity in a strange land, after all. Instead, it’s a hope that heaves up gasping from the dust of their destruction; it’s a joy that cracks open its bruised eyes because it hears the feet of someone stepping closer and closer, bending down to touch it with care and kindness. “Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

God is in the midst of God’s people. God has drawn close, even in that place of sorrow and rage and uncertainty, where everything has been thrown for a loop and God’s people are torn in two. And that made me remember what I’d heard from Willie Jennings, a professor of mine who I know has faced racism & oppression, who I know has been jailed for standing up for what he believes in, and who has the BEST laugh I’ve ever heard – he said that “Joy is an act of resistance against all of the forces of despair. Despair wants to drive us toward death, making death the final word. And this isn’t death that’s simply the end of life, but death as violence, as war, as debt, as racism, as division, as rape & sexual assault, as hatred and all of the ways in which life can be strangled & presented to us as not worth living. But, Joy is a way of singing a song in a strange land - it makes use of pain and suffering, not taking them lightly but seriously. Joy just refuses to make pain & suffering into gods.”

And that made me remember, even with my tired brain and heavy heart, that God has also drawn near to us in our suffering, my friends. And Jesus has told us how to forge the weapon of joy in the midst of suffering: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:27; 31). Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, be with those in prison, for by caring for the least of these, we care for Jesus himself (Matthew 25). Follow Jesus into the crowds, the harassed & oppressed & persecuted, those who are helpless & in pain, and have compassion upon them as he does (Matthew 9:36). Be humble & kind people, grateful for the gift of God’s love, known for your pursuit of justice and your love for mercy (Micah 6:8).

We, like the people of Israel in exile, need people who are able to make us laugh in even the darkest of places. We need people who have sung songs of hope in strange lands. People who have learned how to trust in the midst of chaos, sleeping in the boat as everyone else loses their mind. We need Jesus to remind us that because we have been loved with an everlasting love, we have a responsibility to take action: to love others, as he has loved us, to fight to hold onto life even there is very little that makes sense in life.

Our joy and hope as Christians doesn’t deny the tension among us or the differences of opinion, but it does refuse to allow us to build walls to keep others out. This is because Jesus is here, now; the Holy Spirit is here, now. If we are people truly transformed by Christ, we must be people who are opened outward, people who suddenly realize that what sets us apart from the world is that even with our political differences, we refuse to demonize one another. We refuse to tear one another with words or deeds, because of Jesus. We refuse to deny one another’s fears & concerns, worries & pain, because of Jesus. We listen to learn about why one celebrates, even as we refuse to silence another’s sorrow, because of Jesus. Our strength and hope can only be found in Christ together, because only in Jesus can the “joy and comfort” we imagine be created together with “the very people whom you imagine are part of your despair” (W. Jennings).

The sobering reality is this: in Jesus, we will always be made one body with people who are very different than us. A part of being a Christian means fighting to help others understand that their difference from us is actually the place where God meets us both, working from there to transform the entire world. And so, if we are a people who insist that hatred, fear, division, suspicion, rage, and paranoia are to be guides for how we’re meant to treat others, then perhaps the answer to our question, “Who’s in charge?,” isn’t actually Jesus at all.

May we be known as different & transformed people, my friends, a people for whom joy and hope are an act of resistance, a people willing to lay our lives down (as our Savior has) even for those who may not be deserving in the world’s eyes. May we be people who welcome others as we have been welcomed, poor and outcast as we & they may be. May Jesus be glorified in the lives of his people, people who remember (even unto our deaths) that Christ’s Kingdom and power are not of this world. Because of this, may we be people who are known for generously sharing the living water we draw from the wells of our salvation, whether we agree with the thirsty person or not.

Especially now, may we be people who love differently, more generously and hopefully than this world does. May we do so because we believe that our God is actually here, real and among us, encouraging us to be kind and merciful, as He has been kind and merciful to us. May we be people called to "resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever form they present themselves". We do this not by our own strength and power, but by the strength of the Lord.

If we are Christians, this must be who we are.