Do you realize that we still have seventy-two days until Election Day? Seventy-two more days of this uncivilized brutality.  I'm not a fan of boxing, but at least in boxing it’s possible for the referee to stop the fight if it gets too bloody.
 
Political poll-takers report that the number of undecided voters is unusually small this year. Most people have their minds made up and don't want to be confused with any further facts -- assuming that anyone can agree on what the facts actually are.
 
We've almost reached the place where being a swing voter means that you're ready to take a swing at somebody.
 
I am reminded of Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass:
 
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean ­ neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which (of us) is to be master ­ that’s all.”
 
Is that all? Which of us is to be master?
 
Moses led the people out of slavery in Egypt.  Joshua took over after Moses died.  Near the end of his life, he gathered all the tribes together at Shechem and gave what sounds strangely like a nominating speech at a political convention – right down to the fact that wherever we have the word LORD in caps in our text, it is a name that the Israelites thought was too holy to be pronounced … like nominating speeches that say “I bring you a man who….” (no women nominated this time). Anyway,  Joshua says,
 
Now therefore revere the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.[1]
 
If you read these verses out of the context of the chapters that surround them, it sounds like Joshua was actually giving people a choice about which god they would follow: “choose this day whom you will serve.”  In actuality, those who chose to serve other gods were generally driven out or starved out or wiped out by Israel’s occupying armies. “Choose this day whom you will serve,” but tough luck if you make the wrong choice.
 
Most of us are horrified by the brutality of these Bible stories; but, in actuality, things haven’t changed that much. Current political rhetoric pretty much treats opponents as infidels rather than fellow citizens. If your party doesn’t control congress, expect to be treated as an irrelevant outsider to be driven away or starved out.
 
Even if it doesn’t actually come down to physical violence, it is at least the moral equivalent.  Columnist Andrew Revkin, writing about ecology in the New York Times this week said we need proposals that go beyond "woe is me and shame on you."[2]
 
Did you know that the verse, “choose this day whom you will serve,” actually has it’s own Facebook page?  …Wait, put away your smart phones; don’t check it now. You can do it during coffee hour. The interesting thing is that on a Facebook page called “choose you today whom you will serve,” only 31 people have even had the energy to click that they “like” it.  I’ll leave it to you to figure out what that means.
 
When it comes to candidates and political positions, however, people are less clear about what they like than about what they hate. Everyone is ready to click on what they don’t like.
 
Can we do better than this? I frankly don’t know.  I sometimes despair. 
 
What I do know is that some of us had better be about the business of trying.
 
And I don’t think that the work that we need to do is much about the current election campaign. This one seems to have an unstoppable life of it’s own.  The work we need to do is more about how we choose to live and work and teach our children over the long run.
 
What I think we need to do in a disciplined way is to cultivate the discipline of respectful and, dare I say, even loving conversation with people with whom we disagree. 
 
This coming November, (too late to effect this election) Stephen Spielberg will release a film based on Doris Kearns’ book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. The book tells the story of how Lincoln, in the period between 1861 and 1865, included three people in his cabinet who had actually run against him in the election of 1860. It was one of the most polarized and difficult times in our nation’s history. Lincoln brought the polarization right into the oval office. The difficult work they did together was the foundation for rebuilding a broken nation after the Civil War.
 
More than one of you will surely remind me that Barak Obama famously read this book and regularly referred to it during his 2008 campaign. As for actually doing it, it hasn’t happened. The liberal wing of his own party said it made him too wishy-washy. His opposition mostly refused to participate in significant conversation.  As for the president himself, it’s sometimes hard to tell what he has been up to.
 
Whatever has been happening and whoever is to blame, and there is certainly enough blame to go around, meaningful conversations between rival positions seems to have deteriorated during the past four years rather than improved.
 
When you live in Berkeley and attend Epworth United Methodist Church, there is a temptation to think that we don’t really know anybody with a different position (other than some family members who live in states of a different color), but I’d like to suggest, first of all, that it is not true that there are not significant differences among us right here in this room, and secondly, that it would be good practice for us to invite conversations among ourselves about our different theological and political perspectives.
 
I’m sure we sometimes avoid these discussions because we fear that paying attention to differences would somehow jeopardize the sense of community that we love so much.  The fact is, though, sharing differences makes community stronger.  Maybe this would be a good time to create some contexts for those conversations in some on-going small groups.
 
Starting out with people we know and trust can build a foundation for more difficult encounters with people where trust needs to be rebuilt.
 
We need to come to terms with the fact that we no longer live in a world where those who think or pray differently can just be killed or driven away. 
 
Jewish philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel put it this way.  He said, 
 
The religions of the world are no more self-sufficient, no more independent, no more isolated than individuals or nations.  Energies, experiences and ideas that come to life outside the boundaries of a particular religion or all religions continue to challenge and to affect every religion.  Horizons are wider, dangers are greater. … No religion is an island.  We are all involved with one another.  Spiritual betrayal on the part of one of us affects the faith of all of us.[3]
 
So choose this day whom you will serve, but don’t let that service be an excuse for exclusion or rejection of those who have chosen differently.
 
We began our service today singing these words:
 
As a fire is meant for burning
with a bright and warming flame,
so the church is meant for mission,
giving glory to God’s name.
Not to preach our creeds and customs,
but to build a bridge of care,
we join hands across the nations,
finding neighbors everywhere.[4]
 
Building bridges, joining hands, and finding neighbors is the way we give glory to God’s name.
 
And as for us, and our house…?
 


[1] Joshua 24:14-15.
[2] August 22, 2012.
 
[3] “No Religion is an Island,” p. 6, quoted in Diana L. Eck, Encountering God:  A spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras (New York: Penguin Books 1993), p. 219.
[4] Ruth Duck, “As a Fire Is Meant for Burning” (The Faith We Sing), 2237.