"On The Eve Of The American Election..." - Sermon by Rev. Stephen Milton

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“On the Eve of the American Election….”

 Rev. Stephen Milton

Lawrence Park Community Church

November 3rd, 2024
Mark 12:28-34. 

 Today is November 3rd, just two days before the Americans go to the polls to decide who will be their next president. The stakes are very high. One candidate sees the current system as corrupt, and promises to tear it all down. He has no respect for existing democratic institutions. His former advisors and colleagues have called him a fascist[1]. If he loses the election, he has promised to deny the validity of the election results, just as he did in 2020. Whatever happens on Tuesday night, it looks unlikely that the country will accept the election result easily. Democracy is in trouble in the United States.

What does this have to do with us, on a Sunday morning in church in Canada? The fact is that Christians have played an important role in creating this state of affairs. In Trump’s first term, most American Christians voted for him.[2] They demanded that abortion laws be changed, and Trump delivered. They made this demand based on their reading of the Bible’s injunction, “thou shall not kill”, one of the ten commandments. For this election, they have become much more ambitious. Christians known as “Christian Nationalists” believe that America was always meant to be a Christian nation, guided by Christian principles. They want America to become an explicitly Christian country, erasing the boundary between church and state. 

Their stance poses a challenge to Christians everywhere. Should our country do the same? Should Canada also be a Christian state, where judges quote the Bible when explaining their decisions?[3] Should the Bible dictate our laws and the content of our legislation?

In the Hebrew Scriptures, God clearly calls on the Israelites to live by laws which God hands down. In the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, there are hundreds of commandments given by God about what the ancient Hebrews should and shouldn’t do. They include instructions about what kinds of food to eat – to never eat pork or shellfish.[4] There are also dozens of commandments about how to treat the people in your household, as well as strangers and neighbours.[5]There are some 613 commandments[6], and Jews were expected to obey them all. 

However, when Christ appeared, He provided a different perspective. In today’s scripture reading, he is in the temple, where he has been teaching for a few days. 

The temple had a large building only priests could enter, and then a series of courtyards where people would gather. This is where Jesus has been teaching, probably in one of the shady areas under the collonades. He’s attracted the attention of Jews who have come to the temple to make sacrifices to atone for breaking various commandments. 

They like what they heard from this rabbi who speaks with a Galilean accent.  But not everyone is happy. The priests and the teachers of the Torah resent Jesus’ popularity. So, they come by to try to trip him up, to embarrass him in front of the crowd. They ask him things like, if a woman has had seven husbands, who is she married to in heaven?[7] That kind of thing.

In today’s scripture reading, one of the teachers of the law shows up. He teaches people about the Torah, and those 613 commandments. He knows them backwards and forwards, and probably has them memorized. He asks Jesus, of all the commandments, which are the most important? Imagine being asked to select one detail out of 600.  It’s a hard test.  

But, Jesus doesn’t hesitate. He immediately quotes two commandments: love God with all your being, and love your neighbour as yourself. He quotes from two different books in the Hebrew Scriptures, showing that he knows the laws well, too. Each one is a direct quote, from memory. And each one suggests that love is the foundation of all God’s instructions to us. Jesus is implying, start with love, and everything else will follow.

The order in which Christ lists these commandments is important. It starts with loving God with our heart, mind and soul – basically all of our being. A full love of God is the work of a lifetime. It does not come all at once, and it can ebb and flow, like love. But when we fall in love with another person, we want what they want. We come to see their goals as our goals. And Jesus lives in that kind of love with God. What Jesus understands about God is that God loves everyone and everything in creation. We heard that last month in the Book of Job. When God finally replies to Job, God speaks of taking care of every kind of creature, from ravens and lions to monsters to humans. God loves and cares for them all. God is all powerful, but also all-loving. 

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, God invites us to be more God-like. Now, to some ears, that may sound like we are being invited to be an all-powerful ruler, as God is. If we love God and become like God, should we rule like God, even pretend to be God’s ruler on Earth? And what would that mean for our neighbours? And for our enemies? If we become more like God, does that mean becoming more like an all-powerful dictator? 

Trump seems to understand it that way. He has promised to be a dictator on his first day in power.[8]

Jesus seems to understand that interpretation, to think that being Godlike is to be all powerful. So, he says there are two prime commandments, not just one. The first is that We are called to love God with all our heart and soul. The second commandment concerns how we should treat our neighbours.  He is quoting from Hebrew Scripture. The full quote reads like this: 

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. ( Lev 19:18).  

A follower of God will not seek revenge or bear grudges. That is not God-like, nor does God support this kind of vindictiveness. We humans are not expected to be all powerful dictators, gods on earth, seeking revenge against our enemies. 

So, when Donald Trump promises to persecute and imprison his political enemies, when he explicitly seeks revenge, he is not speaking as a Christian. His supporters should know this. 

When we love God, and seek to be God-like, it should not result in a desire for absolute control. Instead, we are called to be God-like by loving our neighbour as ourselves, to share God’s love and respect for all, including our enemies. The rain and sunshine fall on the good and the bad alike – that is God’s way. (Matthew 5:4-5)  Unfortunately, Christian nationalists fixate on emulating God by imposing God’s will on others, forgetting about the importance of love. 

The temptation of Christian Nationalism is not new. That desire for God-like power to control others is an old one. We’ve seen it here in Canada. Canadian society was created by Christians. They thought Canada should be a Christian nation, too.  We can hear this in our national anthem. “O Canada”, was written in the 1880s[9]. The earliest version was written in French, and was explicitly Christian. The English version we sing at hockey and baseball games was written in 1908. We still sing its first verse, but we rarely get to the last verse. I’ve asked the choir to sing the last verse for us. Here’s how it goes:

Ruler Supreme, Who hearest humble prayer,
Hold our dominion within Thy loving care.
Help us to find, O God, in Thee,
A lasting, rich reward,
As waiting for the Better Day
We ever stand on guard.
(Refrain)[10]

Those words come from a time when we Canadians were Christian nationalists. We wanted our state to be ruled by explicit Christian principles. So, our national anthem contained explicit references to the Bible. In this verse, it speaks of God, of prayer, and that we should do good waiting until that Better day arrives when Jesus comes back to judge us. Canadians wanted all citizens to be Christians. We encouraged immigration from Christian European countries.[11]  We imposed Christian values on Indigenous children in residential schools. It was illegal for Indigenous adults to hold religious ceremonies unless they were Christian.[12] Our country, Canada , started out as a Christian nation, run by Christian nationalists.

But things changed. The reason we don’t still sing this verse in our national anthem is that we slowly realized that our state shouldn’t be defined by Christianity, or any religion. We have become a country composed of many nations, many religions, and ways of understanding faith. We have wisely realized that to treat our neighbours fairly, we can’t demand that they love a Christian God. We have matured as a society. We have realized that loving our neighbour includes letting them worship as they like. Which may include not loving God at all.

On Tuesday night, this sanctuary stage was occupied by 11 candidates who were seeking election for the City Councillor seat for Ward 15. I served as moderator. 

In my opening remarks, I stated that as Christians, Jesus calls on us to care for the poor, the sick, the oppressed. We believe in our day and age, that includes the homeless and the underhoused. As Christians we feel compelled to help those who are suffering. To love our neighbours as ourselves. So, we asked the candidates questions about how they would help provide more housing for people who are living on the streets, or are underhoused. 

The candidates were Muslims, Jews, Christians, probably some atheists and agnostics. They were all welcome here. As a church, we were asking them to love our neighbours, and to put those values into law and policies. 

But we don’t need them to be Christian to do it. Loving and respecting everyone who lives in this city is enough. 

So, on the eve of the American election, let us be clear. Christianity does not insist that we must take over the state. God does not ask us to emulate God’s power, but God’s love. We are asked to be Godlike only in our capacity to love friend and foe, neighbour and stranger. We are called to love God with all our heart and soul, and to express that love through our relations with our neighbours. This is why we Christians use the cross as our symbol. A love that reaches up to God, and across to our neighbours. It is a love that we sometimes find hard to fathom, but it is our calling to follow God on this mission of love. Let us pray that Americans and Canadians remember to vote with love for their neighbours  this week in the elections here in Toronto and in the United States. And that we will continue to love and help our neighbours, whoever wins. Amen. 

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/politics/trump-fascist-john-kelly/index.html

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/

[3]https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/bible-quoting-alabama-chief-justice-sparks-church-state-debate-in-embryo-ruling#:~:text=Human%20life%2C%20Parker%20wrote%2C%20“,frozen%20embryos%20were%20accidentally%20destroyed.

[4] Leviticus 11:7-10

[5] Leviticus 19

[6] https://www.jewfaq.org/613_commandments

[7] Mark 12:18-23.

[8] Chris Michaels, “Trump says he will be a dictator only on ‘day one’ if elected president,” The Guardian, Dec 6 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/06/donald-trump-sean-hannity-dictator-day-one-response-iowa-town-hall

[9] https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/anthem-canada/history-o-canada.html

[10] https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/o-canada

[11] https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/immigration

[12] https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/21-things-you-may-not-have-known-about-the-indian-act