I think it’s natural for us as Christians to become invested in politics. We’re people to whom values and ethics are important, to whom relationships and communities are important; and those things come together in our national and local political lives as much as they do in our church life. This is a good thing! There’s nothing wrong with it. But I do think that it’s important to set it at the right level.

On the one hand, we don’t want to invest too much faith in our leaders. It is just not true that Joe Biden is a savior who will fix every problem, or that Donald Trump was some kind of demon bent on evil. Nor was it true that Donald Trump as a savior who would fix every problem and Barack Obama was a demon bent on evil. This just isn’t how human beings work. There is a bigger cosmic struggle happening between good and evil, but human beings are never black-and-white like that.

On the other hand, we don’t want to become too uninvested from politics, as if it didn’t matter, as if one side was the same as the other and both were in line with Christian values of love and peace. It’s important for us to act in our political lives, to care about our political lives, because the decisions we make do have real effects on our neighbors and the most vulnerable living among us.

I do believe that Christians can, in good faith, disagree about their political beliefs. If they’re acting out of a sincere love of their neighbor, out of a sincere concern for the poor and the vulnerable, they can disagree on the best policy means to achieve those goals.

Not everyone is acting with those goals in mind, of course, and it’s okay to recognize that as well. It’s okay to recognize when people are acting with their own interests in mind, and not those of the poor and the refugee.

At times like these, I find the prayer book helpful, not just because it gives us words to pray, but because it contains prayers that were as relevant 50 years ago as they are today. Many of the prayers we have in our prayer book were written in the ’60s and ’70s, times as turbulent as these, as the Civil Rights Movement continued, and I wanted to share this morning a prayer that our bishops shared for the inauguration. It’s the “Prayer for the Human Family”:

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP p. 815)

We do need compassion from God. We do need the arrogance and hatred that infect our hearts to be taken away. We do need the walls that divide us to be broken down.

And more than anything, we do need God to work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish God’s purposes on earth.

It won’t be a quick process. It won’t happen when we want it. It won’t necessarily happen the way that we want it. But I have faith that, as the prayer says, “in [God’s] good time,” these things will be done. So let us pray for God’s love to grow in all of us, and let us work to make God’s love a reality in our lives. Amen.