You know, I usually start a sermon sharing how I’ve always loved the Gospel lesson of the day, and then I’d tell you all the things I like about it, how it’s inspiring and motivating, curious and original. But the truth is I don’t know how I feel about this Gospel reading. It begins with Jesus foretelling the destruction of the Temple, and, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m partial to the perpetuation of religious institutions. Then Jesus goes on to list persecution and betrayal, hatred and martyrdom, earthquake and famine, insurrection and war, and anything else that would make you think the world is coming to an end. This isn’t a bedtime book to help your children go to sleep. It’s just not something we want to linger on.

Now, this passage from Daniel is a whole other story. The people must have been relieved to hear a word of promise from God, a message of comfort. I can imagine some scribe scribbling in awe as the words poured forth: “at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake … Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” This is great news!

This promise is grounded in the needs of a people who are crying out for relief. The Book of Daniel is aimed at a people who labor day after day, so that others would prosper, while they remain far from their promised land, far from their loved ones, far from the places where their forebearers are buried. This is not the life the people of God imagined they were supposed to lead. Do you remember that other promise God makes Abraham? The land where he was an alien was to be his home and the home of all those to follow after him. They would plant and enjoy the fruit of their labor. They would live in that place and call it their own.

But time and again, nations overtook Israel and disinherited[i] them of their land. The people of God were forced to grow food for these empires, building dwellings for those who had been born into positions of power or who made themselves useful to the powerful within the empire. And the people of God struggled to make ends meet. They wondered, “how long will things go on like this?” They wondered, “how long God will keep silent?”[ii] 

Those questions have been asked by people who have struggled to shelter and feed their children in every context and climate. People have labored for the benefit of others for as long as anyone can tell, serving tyrants and rulers who only take, take, and take what is not theirs to satisfy their own hungers.[iii] This pattern of oppression continued as kingdoms grew into empires in the ancient near east, as the feudal system took hold in Europe’s Middle Ages, as involuntary captivity and slavery spurred Europe’s westward expansion into the New World, as colonialism spread to every continent, and people in every place and time have suffered serving those who were the most powerful.

Even today, we live in a country with income inequality beyond comprehension.[iv] People work with their hands every day and struggle to provide for their families. They see the elite grow wealthier and more powerful, while their own wages and salaries fail to keep up with rising prices and added expenses. Due to a changing economy and insufficient training, their prospects for a better life are limited, as is their hope that things will change under leaders who have dedicated the lives to government service for decades. What they long for is a better time, a feeling not of estrangement but of familiarity, and a restoration of things to how they were meant to be. 

And there are other people, too, who are struggling. They face a dearth of education and employment opportunities, an uphill battle for respect and acceptance, and a national culture that devalues them because of their difference – their otherness – based on their race, the first language spoken in their home, or the gender of the person they love. They are struggling for their own place to call home and to be able to build their own families, too.

As a country, we are all hoping for a change, an amelioration of our current stagnant recovery from the pandemic. Generally speaking, we are hoping for a way to make people’s lives better. For the most part, I believe people cast their ballots based on their expectation that their candidate would do good by them. In a way, everyone is trying to realize the promise that God makes to Abraham – that our needs would be met, that the problems we’re so used to facing would somehow no longer be an issue, and that we could breathe a sigh of relief instead of a groan of worry.

It’s worth noting that God also promises to make the wolf and lamb feed together and the lion to eat straw like an ox. It’s as if to say the new heavens and the new earth are something we encounter at the end of history,[v] rather than in its course.

Rather, Jesus’ apocalyptic prophecy is, unflinchingly, realistic. Things won’t get better as if by magic. Things won’t turn around all of a sudden, even if it’s for the good of God’s people. The patterns of this world – fear mongering, aggression, oppression – will continue to shatter our expectation of decency. Calamity after catastrophe, disaster after devastation, those should not come to surprise us. They should not come to overwhelm us. They should not come to make us doubt God’s victory. Even though the nights are growing longer, one day, not tomorrow or the next, but one day, the hours of daylight will outnumber the hours of darkness.

And in the meantime, we don’t get to stop trying. The people of God do not stop working for God’s kingdom to come about on earth, no matter the events around them. The people of God do not decide to give up just because the odds are stacked against them. The people of God do not sit around in cloistered communities just waiting for a change to come about finally. The people of God do not give up.

In Governor Larry Hogan’s concession speech to Senator-elect Angela Alsobrooks, he shared a conviction worth repeating:

Now is the time for us to come together and to move forward as one state and one nation to respect the will of the voters and the outcome of the democratic process … If the pundits and the politicians were more like the good and decent people that I meet every day on the campaign trail our country would be so much better off … We Americans today are thoroughly convinced that we’re hopelessly divided, that Washington is completely dysfunctional, and that our entire political system is fundamentally broken – that the voices of the exhausted majority are ignored in deference to the demands of the loudest and angriest few, who seem hellbent on tearing America apart. No matter what happens in this election, we as a country must move beyond talking only with those we agree with, and we need to stop dismissing or even hating those we disagree with. We have got to find a way to come together to listen and to believe in each other once again, because there really is far more that unites us than divides us.

Only by the grace of God can we hope to learn to love one another, and we can work to love those whom society has trouble loving. We can give of ourselves for their wellbeing, to fast and pray and welcome and comfort and seek justice and cry out. We can, by God’s grace, endure every disappointment and, equally, refuse to rest on our laurels. And that’s the assurance, that by our endurance we will gain our souls, as Luke records. Our lives will be full of joy and courage if we listen to God’s will for us to care for the orphan, widow, and alien among us. To be able to love graciously those who most need it, we’ll also need to allow ourselves to be filled with God’s love and grace.

We need God’s reign over our hearts. We need it if we are going to be good advocates for those who struggle for respect and acceptance. We need it if we are going to make efforts to protect those who are most vulnerable to practices of exclusion, derision, and suspicion. We need it if we are going to love those around us with the kind of love with which Jesus loves us.

This week reminded me of an election years ago. Early one morning that week, after I reached into the crib to pick up my son, I then sat down with him and pulled out a copy of Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! It started out positively enough:

You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.

You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed.
You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so
but, sadly, it’s true
that Bang-ups
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.

You can get all hung up
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You’ll be left in a Lurch.

You’ll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you’ll be in a Slump.

And when you’re in a Slump,
you’re not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…

…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or the waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for the wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

NO!
That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape
all that waiting and staying
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.[vi]

How could it be that someone who doesn’t know me, doesn’t know my sons, doesn’t know what’s going on today in our world and in our country, how is it that someone can say all this and be so right? It’s a promise I want to believe. It’s a promise I will share with my child. The scriptures and the gospels likewise contain promises from God for a hope and a future. One says that things will get better, while the other predicts that things will get worse. Both invite us to put our trust in God and to live boldly – with joy and courage no matter what. So don’t sit out on the sidelines waiting, just waiting. Get out there and live. Go out there and love.

What will you find in the bright places? I can’t wait to hear about it.  

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[i] Thurman, Howard. Jesus and the Disinherited. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1996.

[ii] Isaiah 64:12.

[iii] Mitchell, Stephen. Gilgamesh : A New English Version. New York: Free Press, 2004.

[iv] Noah, Timothy. The Great Divergence. Slate. Washington, DC: 2010. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_great_divergence/2010/09/the_united_states_of_inequality.html

[v] Paul Ricoeur, “State and Violence,” History and Truth (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1965), p. 24

[vi] Seuss, Dr. Oh, The Places You’ll Go! New York: Random House, 1990.