Grace Cathedral

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“See I am making all things new… I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 21).

1. In three days there will be an election. We have heard about authoritarianism and the Deep State, that this might be the last election we will ever have. We have been told that the United States Department of Justice will seek retribution against political enemies, that doctors will be prosecuted for performing health procedures like abortions or gender transition therapies, that our own armies will be deployed against regular American citizens. We are afraid that our marriages will be declared invalid and that we will be singled out for persecution.

Candidates have said that America’s domestic enemies are more dangerous than our foreign ones. News broadcasters have told us that rather than protecting us from foreign dictators our political leaders admire them. We see signs that the meager efforts we are making to slow down climate change and species extinction may be undone. We have been told that the elections cannot be trusted, that immigrants are in some way unseen threats. We are reminded that the person we choose will alone have power to destroy life on earth by launching nuclear weapons.

There is so much more I could say about this but I don’t need to because we are all getting five text messages a day from politicians who act as if they know us, who talk as if they alone can save us.

In 1965, 70% of Americans said that religion is very important. In our time 45% of Americans agree with this statement.¹ Some may say that we are becoming less spiritual as a society. But one might argue instead that we are less likely to express our spirituality through religious institutions and more likely to invest other parts of our life with ultimate value.

The sociologist Max Weber (1865-1920) had a theory that the evolution of religious life has led us in the modern world to have seven “value spheres” that at times compete with each other. These include: religion, family, politics, economics, art, science and eroticism. Some thinkers today believe that as people participate less in religion they invest spiritual meaning in other spheres, particularly politics.

Philip Gorski writes, “the most important form of sacrality today is arguably “the political.” For the populist right, the sacred is most often “the nation,” or ”Christian nation” or “Hindu Civilization.” For the progressive left, the sacred is more often democracy or social justice… [N]ation and state, party and ideology, race and identity, have become sacred objects of devotion for many.”²

Many of our most secular friends have become missionaries writing letters and visiting distant places trying to inspire people to vote. This makes sense since the political sphere has tremendous power to control taxation, wage nuclear war, curtail climate change, preserve democracy and balance inconceivable levels of wealth inequality.

2. In the time of Jesus the Romans mercilessly demanded that subject peoples worship the emperor as a god. The situation seemed hopeless. But according to the Gospel of John, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” John goes on, “the true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him… but to all who received him he gave power to become children of God” (Jn. 1). This light which shone in Jesus still shines today.

The purpose of the Gospel of John is to draw us into a new world, into life in God. He writes about seven signs. The first happens when Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. And the last occurs when Jesus returns to enemy territory in order to bring his friend Lazarus back from the dead.

Jesus narrowly escapes being stoned to death in Judea for saying that, “The Father and I are one” (Jn. 10). Then he gets a message from two sisters that “the one you love is ill.” Jesus’ friends can hardly believe it when he tells them that he is going back to the place where he was almost killed.

The name Lazarus means “God is my help.” Jesus feels so deeply moved by the grief of Lazarus’ sisters Martha and Mary that he himself weeps. Jesus knows that bringing his friend back to life will lead to his own death. And this is exactly what happens. Later, the authorities reason that Jesus must die because by raising the dead he will inspire the masses who will then provoke the Romans to destroy the temple and their whole culture. High Priest Caiaphas says, “it is better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” (Jn. 11).

The pivotal moment occurs when Jesus says to Martha, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” The point of this is not that Martha’s

believing has anything to do with her brother coming back to life. It is that Martha’s faith will help her to see the action of God that is already happening in Jesus.

3. And this is how faith is. We trust in God first and then we come to see the world in a completely new way. St. Augustine (354-430) was an African saint born in the fourth century. He calls this faith seeking understanding. We say yes and give our hearts to God. And then God opens our lives to the divine mystery.

St. Augustine helps me to understand these elections and Jesus’ invitation into a deeper reality. In 410 Rome was sacked. Pagans argued that this defeat happened because the gods were punishing the Romans for converting to Christianity.³ In response Augustine wrote his book The City of God.

In it Augustine describes two cities the earthly city and the city of God. These are not distinguished by jurisdiction or location. One is not on earth and the other in the skies. Instead, they are two fundamentally different ways of organizing human community. They are distinguished by their love. The earthly city revolves around love of self, the lust for power and domination.

The city of God is characterized by love of God and neighbor. Because God values human freedom we find ourselves in a shared territory that is occupied by citizens of both cities. Now is not a time for separating the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats. We will not experience perfect justice, peace, goodness or beauty in this life. Politicians will always let us down.

In 418 Augustine puts this in another way when he writes to Boniface, the Roman general in charge of North Africa. Boniface wants to impose Christian practices with the sword. Augustine disagrees and writes, “We ought not to want to live ahead of time with only the saints and the righteous.”⁴ In other words we should not imagine that we will achieve the ideal in this world. Politics is the way that we live in the time we have now. We should expect disagreement, compromise, debate and be patient with those who disagree with us.

The message is simple on All Saint’s Day in San Francisco let politics have its place. But it should never become our god. Regardless of who is elected, our God is on the throne. Jesus, through his life and death ushers us into another reality. That light shines through our darkness.

Last week after church I had lunch with our former bishop Bill Swing and Cricket Jones the wife of our longtime dean Alan Jones. Alan died in January and the three of us still look visibly upset when we talk about him together. Hesitantly I asked the two about their most powerful memories of Alan and Cricket’s wedding which took place in France at Chartres Cathedral.

Bishop Swing talked about drawers of vestments from the sixteenth century. Then Cricket described a moment from the service. She and Alan were perched on little chairs in front of the high altar. And as the bishop was going through the prayers she felt as if her little chair rose up into the air by four or five inches. And then she had a sense that all the saints who had ever been there were present with them. In her mind’s eye she could see them standing all around the apse on each other’s shoulders with such deep love.⁵

In three days there will be an election. But as we baptize children into the new life of Christ may the ones we love and all the saints be present with us. Let us have eyes to see that God is making all things new.

¹ “Forty-five percent of Americans say religion is “very important” in their life, with another 26% saying it is “fairly important” and 28% saying it’s “not very important.” When Gallup first asked this question in 1965, 70% said religion was very important. That fell to 52% in a 1978 survey, but the percentage ticked up to nearly 60% between 1990 and 2005. Over the past 20 years, a declining share of Americans have said religion is important, dropping below 50% for the first time in 2019.” From, “How Religious Are Americans,” Gallup News, 29 March 2024. https://news.gallup.com/poll/358364/religious-americans.aspx

² Robert Gorski, “Disenchantment of the World” or Fragmentation of the Sacred,” in Robert N. Bellah, Challenging Modernity (NY: Columbia University Press, 2024) 319.

³ In his book The City of God Augustine writes that rather than the gods protecting Rome, Rome protected her gods.

⁴ “At the heart of Augustine’s political wisdom is an awareness of what time it is. Late in his life, he counseled Boniface, a Roman general governing the precinct of Africa. In a letter from 418, Augustine addresses Boniface’s frustrations with uprisings and incursions by those who despise the Christian faith. Boniface thinks he knows what the kingdom of God is supposed to look like, and he’s tempted to impose it—to make the kingdom come. Augustine cautions the impatient ruler: “We ought not to want to live ahead of time with only the saints and the righteous.” Trying to “live ahead of time” means imagining we can achieve some ideal embodiment of justice—whether it’s utopia or the kingdom—by imposing our will. Politics, Augustine counsels, demands patience. Politics is the art of forging a life together in the now. The institutions of our republic and the practices of democracy are eroded precisely when we imagine that we can live ahead of time. Political liberalism is accumulated wisdom about how not to live ahead of time.” James K. A. Smith, “Wisdom from Augustine in an Election Year,” The Christian Century, November 2024. https://www.christiancentury.org/features/wisdom-augustine-election-year?check_logged_in=1

⁵ The novelist Susanna Clarke in an interview with the New York Times says, ““I feel very strongly that if you could see the world as it really is, if you could get further beyond your ego and the sorts of ways in which we trap ourselves, if you could just see the world beyond, every moment would be miraculous.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/books/susanna-clarke-strange-norrell-sequel-interview.html?campaign_id=69&emc=edit_bk_20241101&instance_id=138448&nl=books&regi_id=13508633&segment_id=181999&user_id=f284507f51aad420f13c2727d615ae11