A sermon based on Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
In the name of Jesus; amen.
Did you remember to vote yesterday?
My husband and I had to take turns going to the polls because both our kids were sick at home, but we both made it. Besides the people who were working there I was the only one in the room when I went to vote. I asked how the turnout was at about 3:00 when I was there and they said it had been going pretty well for a primary, but they expected it to pick up later in the day once people were leaving work.
My daughter is excited because there is a “girl” running so I was asked quite a few questions about the political process yesterday. Explaining political parties, primaries, and the Electoral College to an 8 year old is a great deal of fun. Had she been feeling better I would have taken her along with me, which is something my parents always did with my brother and me when we were children.
She asked me if people “had” to vote. This was an easier question to answer. No, I told her, but voting was important because people had given their lives for me to be able to vote as an American and as a woman. It was a privilege and I took that seriously.
It seems to me that voting for our leaders is our civic duty, a responsibility we have as Americans to our community. It may not always seem as though our one vote counts, but when you add it with everyone else’s it does make a difference.
If yesterday was Super Tuesday then we might just say that today is Super Wednesday. Because if voting for our leaders is our civic duty to our community then repentance is our faith duty to our community.
The prophet Joel, speaking the word of God, calls the community to corporal repentance. The fasting, weeping, and rending is not of the individual, but of the whole assembly gathered together. What we do might look like individual repentance, private fasting, and personal marking, but what we do today is communal.
The signs of repentance that are about to be placed on our foreheads are meant to remind us of our baptisms when we are marked with the cross of Christ forever. Baptism is far from an individual rite of passage. Baptism is a community event where one becomes a member of the family of God.
I understand this is a hard concept. We Americans pride ourselves on our individuality, we live in a world that is focused on the “me” and the “I”, but the “me” and the “I” are only part of the whole. Baptism connects us to one another and to Christ purposely so that we become one body.
What we do today in our prayers and our marking is important to the whole body. Yes, repentance is good for the individual. When I turn to God and confess the wrongs that I have done and ask for forgiveness it is good for me, but it necessary to the whole community. My one vote does count, but it means nothing if I am the only one voting.
There is nothing wrong with having a personal faith or a personal relationship with God, but our faith is based in community.
Repentance is our faith duty to the community. Turning to God is a responsibility we cannot take lightly because of the one who died so that we might have forgiveness.
Repentance is our faith duty to the community. Turning to God is a responsibility we cannot take lightly because God’s forgiveness changes us; it reconnects us to God and to one another and to the world around us.
One voice can make a difference, but many voices crying out to God at once in unison builds up the whole body and the individuals in that one body and it speaks to a world that makes faith a byword and a mockery.
The ashen crosses we will wear as we leave this place become a sign that God is not absent, but present in the world to those who question, “Where is their God?”
There is a vast difference between our political process and our faith lives. We do not elect God, but God makes us the elect. Our political leaders will make promises that they either don’t actually intend to keep or become unable to keep, but God is faithful in every promise that has been made to us. Political leaders are elected for terms, but God is our God for eternity.
And who we vote for isn’t nearly as important as who we turn to in repentance.
Our political leaders will raise and lower our taxes, they will make laws that make sense and they will make laws that don’t, and they make good decisions and they will make bad decisions, but God…
… God will open wide merciful arms to hold us and love us with abounding love. God will listen to our cries and instead of bringing punishment will offer healing to the world.
So let us repent, not just as individuals, but as a whole body, the assembled gathering of the baptized. Amen.
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