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Dear saints,
As someone who lives across the ocean from the country of my origin, it can sometimes be hard to know how I feel about the place, living as I do at such a distance from it. In 2012, I saw a cosmopolitan country in that spectacular London Olympics opening ceremony, at last able to celebrate the myriad of origin stories that constitute modern Britain. Four years later, in 2016, that vision of multiculturalism gave way to the Brexit vote and the island drew a line around itself once more, cutting itself off from its mainland European partners. And then in 2022, the British were reminded in the death of Elizabeth II that we have shared a story with one another much longer than we have been arguing about what the next chapter of that story should be. As people waited for hours to file past Queen Elizabeth's body lying in repose, I imagine that many of them shared heartfelt stories of their own mothers and grandmothers and in doing so remembered that a nation is made up not of these grand narratives of togetherness and division, but of people—flawed, yet wondrous creations of the living God. In that death of someone none of us really knew, we were reminded of the salutary virtue of trying to pay attention to other people's lives.
If this week's events teach me anything, it is that it can be equally hard to know what to feel about the place I now call home this side of the Atlantic. You may feel similarly. Perhaps some of you are happy at the outcome, and I imagine a good number of you are not. That is to be expected, and even celebrated in a way, because at least in the democracy we all enjoy the outcome is not a foregone conclusion as it is in many parts of the world. The fact remains, we will all get another swing at the ball in four years time. What I have found more challenging to process is the fact that the economy of our political rhetoric is teetering on the edge of a kind of moral bankruptcy. In recent years, it has become acceptable to some for politicians to speak of other human beings in ways that are not only pejorative but dangerous. When people who come to this country to flee violence and persecution then face violence and persecution as a consequence of political campaigning, something about the promissory note of this country starts to default. As Christians who commit in our baptismal covenant to honor the dignity of every human being, especially at All Saints' in the lives of people seeking refuge here, we have to say that we are far over a line all of us should agree is a basic mark of decency and care for others. Something has become rotten in our political discourse. There has to be a better way.
There are many people who will and should weigh in on how we might embark on a better way. I would simply offer something the New Testament has to say in Paul's letter to the Romans: "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15).
It is a simple, perhaps even simplistic instruction, yet it leans into something I believe there is a profound deficit of in our politics: empathy. What would happen, do you imagine, if we walked out of this presidential election feeling utterly curious about why some people are rejoicing this week and why others are weeping? What would it be like, do you think, if we committed to ask friends and strangers, family members and loved ones, why they voted the way they did in this election? What if we could listen our way to a place of mutual understanding?
French philosopher, Michel Foucault, argues that discourse cannot be dismantled at the level of whole structure or ideology but at the point-by-point level of encounter. Such person by person resistance is the strategic insight offered by postcolonial practitioners, one of whom, I believe, was the apostle Paul as we meet him in his letter written to the church in the heart of empire. Paul also longed for a better way. Weeping with those who weep was not about being kind, it was about being effective in ushering in the kingdom of God.
The church is a point-by-point, person by person kind of community, and as such we have a vocation to practice our politics only only with the giving and receiving of decency and respect, but by cultivating a desire to meet those who are not like us, who don't vote the way we do, people whose lives are lived differently to our own.
So there’s my pastoral / political prescription: rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live other-wise. If we can learn to see who we really are, just imagine the nation we could become.
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