Be the Crack that Lets the Light Shine In – a sermon lamenting the election

Our readings included Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 and Luke 21:5-19, our Contemporary Psalm was “Anthem” by Lenard Cohen

Listen to the sermon here

“There is a time for everything,

a season for every purpose under heaven:

a season to be born and a season to die;

a season to plant and a season to harvest;

a season to hurt and a season to heal;

a season to tear down and a season to build up;

a season to cry and a season to laugh;

a season to mourn and a season to dance;

a season to scatter stones and a season to gather them;

a season for holding close and a season for holding back;

a season to seek and a season to lose;

a season to keep and a season to throw away;

a season to tear and a season to mend;

a season to be silent and a season to speak;

a season to love and a season to hate;

a season for hostilities and a season for peace.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

“The birds they sang

at the break of day

Start again

I heard them say

Don’t dwell on what

has passed away

or what is yet to be.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.” (Anthem by Lenard Cohen)

What a season we are in; a time to grieve, a time to weep, a time to harken back through the ages to seasons when our ancestors spoke of rending their garments.

Tearing their clothing, the fabric that protects them from the elements.

Tearing the fabric that adorns their body, the fashion that identifies them, shows the world who and what they are ripped and torn as they throw themselves down to the ground and wail in their grief.

In these past few days, the sound of rending garments has haunted my very being as if the fabric of civility is torn in two and our hopes and dreams as timid as we allow them to be, are ripped asunder.

Wailing and gnashing of teeth can only begin to express our grief.

What we need is the ululation, that long, wavering, high-pitched scream, the kind of howling that has long since got out of fashion in our civil society.

“We asked for signs

the signs were sent:

the birth betrayed

the marriage spent

Yeah the widowhood

of every government —

signs for all to see.”

Our hopes and dreams of a new season had barely begun to surface.

When our own demons tore the curtain asunder to reveal the reality that white supremacy and male supremacy, are not going gently into the great night.

“Ah the wars they will

be fought again

The holy dove

She will be caught again

bought and sold

and bought again

the dove is never free.”

Women grabbed as once again misogyny is worn as a badge of honour.

Walls erected.

People of colour taunted with lynching ropes.

Our fragile planet groaning under the pressure of our filth, threatened by the ignorance of powerful deniers who now wield the power of the richest purse.

“Ah the wars they will

be fought again

The holy dove

She will be caught again

bought and sold

and bought again

the dove is never free.”

Conversion therapy is on the books again.

Tired tropes of white supremacy.

Muslim bans, deportation squads, treaties broken, pipelines built, clean coal replacing suspicious solar, as our energies are directed and distracted by promises of taking back and making great again.

“The holy dove is never free.

The wars they will be fought again,”

water-boarding and torture back in vogue again.

Even generals cower before visions of their new commander-in-chief, promises to “bomb the shit out of them” as the generals wonder who are “them.”

Let’s build a wall. Let’s build it high.

Let’s dig a moat. Let’s fill that moat with crocodiles.

Let’s keep them out.

What a season this is.

Only the promise of winter can cheer our hearts, the drifting snow, the promised birth.

Let Jesus come.

Let Christmas mirth distract us here.

Jesus saves.

But Christians cheer.

They’ve found their saviour.

“Two Corinthians” is their guy.

Pussies be damned we hear them preach.

What a season this is.

I’ve struggled wondering what to say to you this morning; what hope can I offer?

When the message of the one we profess to follow has been used in ways that have convinced 81% of white evangelicals to vote for change such as this?

The majority of Roman Catholics joined in.

33% of the women who voted cast their lot with a misogynist.

75% percent of those who voted profess to be Christian.

Jesus weeps.

The curtain is torn.

Wars and rumors of wars.

“The holy dove

She will be caught again

bought and sold

and bought again

the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.”

“Here we stand.”

We Canadians.

Convinced that we are above it all.

Polite and kind are we.

Have a nice day.

Your welcome.

Excuse me.

“Here we stand.”

We who have yet to elect a female prime minister or a prime minister of colour.

Our last prime minister called for a burka ban and a barbaric practices hotline and we had already elected him 3 times.

But we’re not them.

No orange tan, just pretty locks of hair and a name that takes us back to simpler days when the just society, and multiculturalism inspired a mania whose child now feeds our arrogant notions of sunny ways.

We’re not them.

Our fingers point to the racist south while First Nations die in a slow creeping genocide.

It’s been a year since McLeans’ announced that our Indigenous peoples are incarcerated at ten times the rate as other Canadians.

But we are not them, despite the fact that our Indigenous peoples are murdered at more than six times the national average.

NO we are not them, even though our Indigenous peoples must survive on 40% less than the average wage in Canada.

We are not them.

139 active drinking water advisories in 94 First Nations communities across the country, more than 1000 missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and to which we say,

“Have a nice day

your welcome.”

We are not them.

Even if it is true that by almost every measurable indicator Canada’s indigenous population suffers a worse fate and more hardship than the African American population in the United States.

We are not them.

We are not racist.

“The birds they sang

at the break of day

Start again

I heard them say

Don’t dwell on what

has passed away

or what is yet to be.”

There is a season turn turn turn, to every purpose under heaven.

Jesus saves.

And here we stand, right smack in the middle of a season in which the Gospel and the church are associated with bigotry, racism, misogyny, sexual assault, climate change denial, and persecution of people based on ancient myths interpreted as facts.

Here we stand, an inclusive, progressive, science loving, historically critical, knowledge loving family that continues to struggle with the teachings of Jesus, refusing to take the Bible literally while trying to take it seriously.

Here we stand, convinced that we can do no other.

Opening our arms wide, extending a promise of radical welcome.

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.”

Ring the bells that still can ring:

the bells of justice

the bells of hope

the bells of peace

the bells of joy

“Forget your perfect offering.”

The cracks are there for all to see.

The light shines in.

And still we sing.

And still we stand.

Trusting that every tear will be wiped away.

That all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

LOVE will turn our mourning into dancing.

Here we stand for we can do no other.

Ring the bells that can still ring.

The LOVE that is God is the only hope I have to offer you in this strange season that we are in.