“If I Lose My Faith” Dec. 17, 2017 Dr. Roger Ray, pastor
“If I Ever Lose My
Faith” by Sting
You could say I lost my faith in science and
progress
You could say I lost my belief in the holy church
You could say I lost my sense of direction
You could say all of this and worse, but
You could say I lost my sense of direction
You could say all of this and worse, but
If I ever lose my faith in you There'd be nothing
left for me to do
Some would say I was a lost man in a lost world
You could say I lost my faith in the people on T.V.
You could say I'd lost my belief in our politicians
They all seemed like game show hosts to me
You could say I lost my faith in the people on T.V.
You could say I'd lost my belief in our politicians
They all seemed like game show hosts to me
If I ever lose my faith in you There'd be nothing
left for me to do
I could be lost inside their lies without a trace
But every time I close my eyes, I see your face
But every time I close my eyes, I see your face
I never saw no miracle of science That didn't go
from a blessing to a curse
I never saw no military solution That didn't always end up as something worse
But let me say this first
I never saw no military solution That didn't always end up as something worse
But let me say this first
If I ever lose my faith in you There'd be nothing
left for me to do
There are certain
epiphanies in life… those wonderful moments when the lights go on and you
suddenly realize some important life truth. Those moments when a seemingly
impossible concept in math, physics, or biology, just suddenly makes sense… or
for me, when some obscure passage of Soren Kierkegaard’s writing finally
reveals itself, a moment like breaking out of dense cloud into clear bright
sunlight.
But there are also
epiphanies that are more like an “ah ha” moment, or an “oh no.” It may be that
I pay way too much attention to election politics but I suspect that I am not
alone in this room for having been terribly interested in the special election
for a senate seat in Alabama. There were a lot of cheap, dime-store novel
dimensions to this election. When Jeff Sessions gave up his seat to become
attorney general, then Gov. Robert Bentley, appointed the state’s attorney
general, Luther Strange, to temporarily fill the slot.
Bentley was, being
investigated by Luther for a sordid sex scandal in which he was accused to
using state money to facilitate an affair with an aid. Suddenly, and without
explanation, Luther ends the investigation and is then appointed to a senate
seat. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I don’t want to be the village
jester either. This was political quid pro quo in a Dante style lower circles
of hell sort of way.
But Luther is then the
candidate for this office but because he got the seat under a cloud and
because, somehow, he just wasn’t conservative enough, he did not win the
primary election in Alabama. Alabama Republicans chose, instead, one of the
most comical candidates ever to take a national stage. He was called “Judge”
Roy Moore but he had been removed from the bench on two occasions for defiantly
refusing to obey Supreme Court rulings . . . both times in his fierce desire to
adorn our democracy with his own brand of fundamentalist evangelical theocracy.
The first time was for
placing a huge stone monument of the ten commandments on the court house
property and refusing to remove it, and the second time for insisting that
court clerks not honor the right of same sex couples to marry. During the
campaign, Moore flouted his religious prejudices while waving a tiny handgun
that would have embarrassed most gun owners, but it fit with his penchant for
trying to impersonate an actual cowboy with his ill-fitting hat and laughable
horsemanship.
But the real kicker came
in November when women started coming forward to tell their stories of having
been sexually assaulted or solicited by Moore when they were teenagers. One of
whom was only 14 years old when Moore was in his 30’s.
I don’t remember what the
total count got up to but it was 8 very credible women by mid-November . . . A
number my older brother, an Alabama Methodist pastor, called “hearsay.”
There was reason to fear
that in spite of very clearly being a racist, a homophobe, an Islamophobe, a
xenophobe, and an incompetent lawyer, compounded by the apparently inescapable
fact that he had a history of persistent and repeated pedophilia, that he might
still be elected by popular vote in Alabama.
Our own Theresa Armstrong
cautioned on social media, “Don’t blame this on black voters. This is a white
people problem.” And, of course, it is a white people problem. In the end, even
though he lost, more than 70% of white voters in Alabama voted for a pedophile
who was, before you even put pedophilia in the balance, an absolutely horrible,
unqualified, embarrassment of a candidate.
I can agree with Theresa
saying that this is a white problem but I’m not sure that I agree entirely with
the way it was stated because even though it is an embarrassingly white
problem, the only thing that saved America from this guy replacing Ted Cruse as
the most hated Senator in Washington, DC was black voters… and specificially,
black female voters who voted 98% for Jones.
Now, I’ll admit that
curiosity would get the best of me if I could get a chance to talk to some of
those 2% of black women who voted for Moore because there is some “splainin”
that needs to happen there. But, Theresa, if you will allow me to say as much,
while it is a white voter problem, there is a black voter solution.
Republicans have done
everything they could get away with for the past 100 years to suppress the
black vote and economic and social pressures have fostered a kind of voter
apathy among many minority voting districts, all of which is compounded by
unethical Gerrymandering everywhere, but still, if you care about our Democracy
you have to vote.
So, we woke up on
Wednesday morning feeling like we had dodged a bullet but before we went to bed
on Tuesday evening, the thought that I couldn’t shake was this, regardless of
the final outcome of the vote, the issue remains that the overwhelming majority
of white voters in Alabama voted for the most obviously unqualified, immoral, and
embarrassing candidate every to run for office since the presidential election
of 2016.
And here is the issue
that I have been coming back to over and over for the past several months:
These are, by and large, church folks. These are people who have been going to
Sunday School and Bible studies, they have worshipped, prayed, sang hymns, and
participated in sacraments. Most of them were baptized after they had made a
personal declaration to reject sin and to choose to live in the manner of Jesus
of Nazareth.
They, like we, are
steeped in the scriptures that teach radical compassion, that demand that we
care for the sick and the poor, that we welcome the stranger, visit the
imprisoned, cloth the naked, feed the hungry and stand ready to give a drink of
water to the thirsty. How do we square that circle?
It is not exactly
scripture but maybe it ought to be: Maya
Angelou advised that when someone shows you who they are, you should believe
them. I am going to address this issue in more specific detail at the end of
next month, but suffice it to say that southern Evangelicals have shown us who
they are.
I don’t say that to be
divisive. I mean it. I don’t want to judge, reject, and cut off ties with the
kind of people who willingly vote to sexual predators, pedophiles, and racists
but I do want to say this: We’re not buying the phony religious front you have
been hiding behind and we will not pretend to take your religion seriously. We
want to be in conversation with you. We want to be able to reach across the
divide of conservatives and liberals but we need this from you . . . we need
for you to be better people. We need for you to be more honest. We need for you
to value character. We need to see that you love democracy. We need to see you
struggling to overcome a history of racism, of prejudice, of sexism, and
exclusivism.
Now I know that
evangelicals are rarely in this building unless they are lost and I know that
our internet audience is self-selected and by and large we’re a bunch of
liberals, agnostics, Unitarians, and humanists so I might need to ask all of
you to repost this sermon on your social media because this is a message that I
believe Evangelicals need to hear.
Faith without works is
dead. To pretend to be religious in your self-congratulatory church gatherings
while still voting for racists, pedophiles, xenophobes, homophobes, and greedy
capitalists is hypocrisy on your part and a direct insult to the Jesus you claim
to follow.
This past year has been
enough for us to all start singing Sting’s song. We lost our faith in
politicians and in the church. We have lost our faith in the people on TV. We
know that there is no such thing as a military solution and we have seen far
too often when miracles of science and progress have been, in your hands,
turned into something worse.
We believe in forgiveness
and reconciliation. We long for some unity of spirit. But you can’t play tennis
if there is no one on the other side of the net. We want to engage our more
conservative sisters and brothers in meaningful dialogue but that requires
honesty, integrity, character, and a sincere value for ethics and there is no
way to say this but to just put it out there: those are things we have not seen
on the other side of the net for a long long time.
We don’t need to have
only liberal church and we don’t need to only have Democratic socialists in
this country. We need at least a two party system… preferably, so far as I am
concerned, we could stand to have four or five, but we need at least two and
right now it looks like the Republicans are trying hard to burn their own house
down. I implore you, save yourselves from yourselves.
The election of a
Democratic senator in Alabama has been trumpeted as being something of a
miracle but it was a special election and Jones will be up for re-election in
just 3 years, at which time, surely someone with fewer liabilities and more desirable
qualities will be running against him… so this may be a very temporary glitch
in dark red state of Alabama.
But for most of my life
we have been talking about a new south arising from the ghosts and ashes of the
Civil War. A south that rises above the racism and anti-intellectualism so
easily associated with the regions of the old Confederacy. Donald Trump and Roy
Moore have gone a long way towards killing off any faith we may have had in
that new south and yet, all that the racists, sexists, homophobes, and
classists need to win is for us to give up and that, my friends, is the one thing
we cannot do.
