As it turns out, grace abounds this summer in the United States. On the Lord’s Day, President Biden has given us a new, better election. A week ago yesterday, former President Trump, his family, and our children and grandchildren were spared the horror of a televised assassination.
God intended neither to save Trump nor sacrifice firefighter Corey Comperatore. But God rushed in, inspiring relief, thanksgiving, and the impulse to lower our voices. Our God in Christ no doubt was a help to President Biden, who is nothing if not a man of prayer. As we did last weekend, let us again give thanks, this time that we’ll have four months of dialog and debate instead of armchair dementia diagnosis.
So whatever your theology, grace abounds today. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Let’s also pray for the healing of our country and the end of our pandemic of distrust and hatred. Because pandemics do end, or at least lose their harshest edge. But this pandemic is different from COVID. This time it’s not about wearing our masks. It’s about taking them off.
At home and at work, on the sidewalks and freeway, we tend to have our masks securely in place, not letting people see us smile unless they earn it or we reckon them as safe. As for the strangers we meet, especially if they’re different from us, their masks are the ones we have a tendency to imagine for them when we choose not to notice the imprint in their God-fashioned features of the imago dei. When instead we see the brown person as an invader or the police officer as a threat.
And, increasingly, we see people with differing politics as enemies. Conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr. famously said that he would rather be governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston phone book than the same number of Harvard professors. I’ve also heard conservatives say they’d rather be governed by an unrepresentative Senate than the people of Los Angeles County, notwithstanding that we outnumber the populations of forty states. If Buckley’s anti-elite logic wouldn’t equally apply, one would have to wonder why.
Either way, and in contrast, I would prefer to be governed by my L.A. neighbors than the people of Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas, who comprise fewer than one percent of the population but control eight percent of the electoral college and Senate. It’s not much of an oversimplification to say that because of them, my daughters and granddaughters don’t live in a country in which every person can talk to God about their reproductive choices, if God happens to be a discernment partner, and then freely decide what’s best for their own health and peace of mind.
But that’s not western Republicans’ fault. Nor is the government’s current round of big spending the fault of Democratic Angelenos and New Yorkers. It’s republicanism’s fault. Federalism’s fault. If someone wants to amend the Constitution, they can. But I’m tired of being mad at my fellow Americans. Because by and large, everyone is doing the best they can, taking care of their families, dropping off a casserole across the street if there’s been a death in the family, and, at their best, being kind to strangers.
Several years ago, during my annual drive in the desert, the mighty Honda got stuck on a soft shoulder on a bleak stretch of two-lane blacktop between Twentynine Palms and Parker, AZ. AAA was 50 miles away and unreachable, it was 105 degrees, and after 20 minutes trying to wedge branches under my wheels, I didn’t feel well. Then a family with a Trump bumpersticker on their pickup came along and spent a half-hour digging me out. Just yesterday, one of our Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles deacons told me about an awkward political conversation with an Uber driver. The driver was for Trump. My colleague, who was not, left his sunglasses in the car, and the driver dropped them off later.
Because love abounds. Grace abounds. They’re all around us, every day. Look what just happened! July A.D. 2024 will be remembered as the month violence and pride lost their bid to prevent the United States from have the rip-roaring classic of a campaign we deserve. Let’s all take off our masks, and may the better person win — and this time, nobody cheat, because otherwise, yep, that’ll definitely tick me off.