Monday night, I gathered with many others in a prayer service on the eve of the election. We prayed for unity and hope and an end to division.

This morning I pray we continue to pray. But to also guard against “cheap grace”.

The one thing this campaign has made plain is that this was always going to be about pain.

We focused in the late months of the summer and early fall on the pain of the rural white man. We dissected the history of his disaffection and dislocation. The ways in which the rural white poor have been used as political pawns on the Right and on the Left.

We dealt with racism, homophobia, and xenophobia. Bemoaned the loss of manufacturing jobs and the suffering of two whole regions of the country (the Midwest and Appalachia). We have explored the very real pain many are feeling.

However, little ink has been spent and pixels typed to deal with the pain this group is willing to inflict. The sense of retaliation and justification. Pain which didn’t come out of nowhere.

We look out for all those to blame.

The ones advocating for full inclusion. Racial equality. Or bringing an end to mass incarceration, unjust sentencing, and capital punishment.

Or simply

• Ideologues
• Political Parties
• Institutions
• Leaders
• Politics itself

Always someone else. They did it. That one. Not me.

Someone not from here. This particular spot.

So they raise the flag. Not the one they claim to revere and defend. The other one. Yellow with the snake coiled. Then replace E pluribus unum with “Don’t Tread On Me”

There is no justification for inflicting pain.

None.

And even more to the point, none of these scapegoats inflicted the pain.

• Marriage equality didn’t harm anyone’s marriage.
• Cities trying to reduce gun violence are actually preventing harm, not inflicting it.
• Asking every person in the country to treat with decency every other person in the country isn’t harming anyone’s religious beliefs. Those are the core of our beliefs.

The pain many of us are feeling doesn’t come from outside our community or from some boogeyman other.

The pain comes from us. It comes from what we’re willing to do to one another. Intentionally and in retaliation for a perceived slight.

To denigrate the poor or bully strangers on Twitter. It’s found in Gamergate, the Alt-Right, and white supremacists. And in refusing to acknowledge the pain of African-American communities–responding to investigations into police brutality with police solidarity.

And it’s found in the person who feels like an alien in their own home turning around and making someone else feel like an alien in their own home.

Because it would seem they are at war and their neighbor is the enemy.

But there is no justification for inflicting pain.

No moral, spiritual, or religious justification.
No logical, anecdotal, or scientific justification.

All we’ve got is hate. And naked politics.

We aren’t aliens.

This is the point I want to make. We aren’t aliens. None of us.

We are individuals and we are part of community: we are all one. We are like the persons of the Trinity and the incarnate God. None alone and none can be hurt without hurting the whole.

So stand today with your neighbors, your co-equal partners, your family and friends. Stand up to the homogenous and disingenuous calls for unity without equality. Stand up to the scapegoating without confession, for we are called to build unity, not fake it. To become a United States of America, not the Hierarchical States of Revenge.

And we reckon with all the justifications we make instead of confessing; the retaliations we make to acts of inclusion, love, and hope. The anger and brutality we inflict out of our own pain.

We stand up today to reject the idea that hate and division is our way or has anything to do with the gospel. That we all have made compromises we have reason to regret and sin we must atone for. That none of us deserve the mercy of God. But God gives it.

We acknowledge that.

And we show mercy.

Then we keep showing mercy. Not cheap grace; the kind which papers over injustice. But the real stuff. The stuff which comes when we show one another how evil selfishness is.

And we make sure love has the final word.

 

Last night’s response to family and friends.