A Letter to Donald Trump

Dear Mr. Trump,

It has been nearly a week since you defied pundits and prognosticators and became the President-elect of the United States.

I should probably mention that I am one of the more than 61 million people who voted for your Democratic rival. This is probably not particularly surprising. After all, I am a millienial priest in a progressive mainline denomination who lives in the suburb of an east coast city. My support for Clinton, however, was about more than mere demographics. Like many people, I was attracted by her experience, intelligence, and toughness. I appreciated that she campaigned as a realist and had a sense of how profoundly difficult governing can be. Also, after 228 years, I thought it was high time we elected a woman to the highest office in the land.

If I’m honest, though, I was also voting against you. Frankly, you made me very nervous during your campaign. It wasn’t just your erratic behavior, your limited acquaintance with our Constitutional system, your casual relationship with the truth, or your lack of scruples that gave me pause. It was what you awakened in my fellow Americans. You played to our basest instincts and encouraged us to vote out of fear, resentment, and despair.

Nevertheless, I would like to give you a chance. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I am rooting for you. This has very little to do with you or the policies you have proposed, many of which I believe to be fundamentally inconsistent with this country’s ideals. It also has little to do with the people you are appointing to your administration. It has everything to do with the people who voted for you. I have lived in blue states, red states, and swing states. I have known, loved, and served with people who voted for you, people who voted for Clinton, people who voted for third party candidates, and people who stayed as far away from their polling places as possible on Election Day. I know that not one of these people is fundamentally evil. All of them love their mothers, want the best for the children, and, for the most part, are just trying to make sense of the daily struggles of this life. I hope that the people who supported you, people I know and love, did not do so in vain. I also hope that the people who did not support you, people I know and love, will not be marginalized by you or your administration. I stand with them, just as I stand with my brothers and sisters who pulled the lever for you.

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In my post-election grief, I listened to the Broadway musical Hamilton a lot (I know, I’m a liberal cliche, but please bear with me). Feeling both bitter and a little snide, I assumed the song that would resonate with me most was the one that King George sings to the newly independent United States after the Battle of Yorktown:

What comes next? You’ve been freed. Do you know how hard it is to lead?

You’re on your own. Awesome! Wow! Do you have a clue what happens now?

Oceans rise. Empires fall. It’s much harder when it’s all your call

All alone, across the sea. When your people say they hate you, don’t come crawling back to me.

I’ll admit that the cheekier part of me continues to find solace in the king’s biting sarcasm. In the wake of your election, however, the song I have found most meaningful is the one George Washington sings to Alexander Hamilton before he leads troops into battle:

History has its eyes on you.

History doesn’t care much about reality television stars. No one is going to be writing magisterial biographies of the Kardashians in a hundred years. History is also not terribly interested in whose names were on Manhattan skyscrapers. Even unsuccessful presidential candidates rarely merit more than a footnote in the history books (though, in fairness, yours would have been longer than most). History does, however, remember presidents. Moreover, history is pretty unsparing about them: presidents are either remembered as flawed statesmen of consequence, or their administrations are lamented as regrettable mistakes and cautionary tales.

You were noticeably more disciplined in the final weeks of the campaign. By the standards you established over the last eighteen months, your victory speech was astonishingly gracious. Moreover, in every interview you’ve given since your election, you have looked overwhelmed, even terrified. Perhaps you were just afraid you would lose. Perhaps you’ve realized how difficult this job will be. Or perhaps you’ve begun to comprehend that your presidency will be subject to the judgment of history. The presidency is a sacred trust. Though you managed to earn the trust of those who voted for you, you now have the trust of many, many more people. You must prove to the American people that you understand this and that you are worthy of our trust.

I want to congratulate you on your victory and wish you the best of luck. I will support you when I can and oppose you when I must. All the while, I will remain thoroughly committed to the glorious, frustrating American experiment in self-government. In the meantime, I will be praying for you, your family, your administration, and our country. More than anything else, I pray that you remember that history has its eyes on you.

Sincerely,

David

Winning, Losing, and Becoming Saints

Sermon on Luke 6:20-31 offered to the people of the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

It finally happened. After 108 heartbreaking seasons, the Chicago Cubs are World Series champions. When the Cubs were last champions of baseball, the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires were major geopolitical powers. The first Model Ts had just begun rolling off Henry Ford’s assembly lines in Detroit. In the 108 years between Cub championships, Pluto was discovered and subsequently lost its planetary status. Even the venerable tradition of singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch didn’t begin until almost thirty years after the Cubs’ most recent title. In other words, it has been a very long time since the Cubs were winners.

Despite their long history as baseball’s loveable losers, the Cubs were actually favored to win it all since spring training. Between a potent offense, a lights out pitching staff, a savvy front office, and a sagacious coaching staff, Chicago was the team to beat this year. Indeed, they dominated the competition, winning 103 games during the regular season. Nevertheless, more than a few people considered the Cubs underdogs as they entered the postseason. Despite their dominance during the regular season, many wondered whether the Cubs could overcome their long history of losing. This is to be expected in baseball. The fact is that the worst teams win games from time to time; the best teams occasionally suffer a loss. As a result, baseball fans are required to be comfortable with failure. They can’t get too exercised about wins or losses. Baseball teaches its fans to take winning and losing in stride. More than any other sport, baseball recognizes that both winning and losing are fundamental to the human experience.

The Beatitudes in the gospel according to Luke provide a sharp contrast to their more famous cousins in Matthew’s gospel. Matthew records eight “blessed are” statements. Luke, on the other hand, balances four blessings with four corresponding woes. “Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus declaims, but “woe to you who are rich.” “Blessed are you who are hungry now, but woe to you who are full.” Luke’s point seems obvious: those in the first group are in good shape; those in the second group have work to do. To co opt the language of the day: those in the first group are saints; those in the second group, not so much.

This interpretation, however, misses a crucial detail in Luke’s narrative. In his list of blessings and woes, Jesus uses the word “now” half the time. Moreover, there is a precise rhetorical symmetry between the blessings and the woes. Not only are there exactly four of each, they are set up in direct contradistinction to one another: blessed are you who are hungry now; woe to you who are full now; blessed are you who are weeping now; woe to you who are laughing now. While this temporal detail may not seem all that significant, it is actually the lens through which we are meant to read Luke’s Beatitudes. As we noticed a moment ago, our first inclination is to assume that each blessing and each woe describes an existential condition: there are those who are hungry and will remain hungry, and there are those who are full and will remain full. By adding the word “now,” however, Luke signals that these conditions are actually temporary: those who weep will someday laugh, while those who laugh will someday weep. These beatitudes, in other words, are not a catalog of who’s blessed and who’s cursed, who’s in and who’s out. When read together, they provide an honest description of the human condition. Jesus tells those who are listening that if they feel poor, they shouldn’t get down on themselves too much because a day will come when they will feel rich. Meanwhile, those who feel rich shouldn’t get too cocky because a day will come when they will feel poor. In his Sermon on the Plain, Jesus articulates what baseball fans understand implicitly: winning and losing are fundamental to the human experience.

Now if this is where Jesus concluded, Luke’s Beatitudes would not be terribly unique or all that earth shattering. In fact, they would fit very nicely into the traditions of Zen Buddhism, which encourages adherents not to get too excited about positive experiences or too depressed about negative ones. But Jesus doesn’t end with this this list. In fact, Jesus makes a crucial rhetorical turn. After describing how winning and losing are part of the human experience, he offers a corrective: “but I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Jesus outlines the stark inevitabilities of the human condition, the weeping and laughing, the hunger and satisfaction, the winning and losing, and then shows us how to transcend them. To be frank, the way Jesus recommends transcending the endless cycle of winning and losing looks an awful lot like losing: loving your enemies? doing good to those who hate you? turning the other cheek? Jesus must think we’re a bunch of saps! Yet there is a crucial difference between losing because of circumstance, losing because someone got the best of you, and losing because you have chosen a different path altogether. That’s exactly what Jesus offers. Jesus invites us to live as though binary categories he describes don’t matter. Instead of being imprisoned by the uncertainties and vagaries of the human experience, Jesus encourages us to take control of our lives by surrendering control to God. Jesus calls us to transcend the binary categories of this world with a third way, a way that’s not about winning or losing, but is shaped by a profound sense that we belong to God no matter what.

This past Friday night, the 233rd Convention of the Diocese of Pennsylvania gathered for Eucharist at the Cathedral. Among many other things, we commemorated the life of Richard Hooker, the Anglican theologian who lived during the late 17th century. In the face of the bitter controversy between those English Christians who remained loyal to the Roman Catholic Church and those whose allegiance belonged to the Reformed theologies of Luther and Calvin, it was Hooker who conceived of the Anglican middle way, a sense that the Church of England could embrace both the catholic and reformed religion. Hooker believed the Anglican vision could transcend binary categories. In the words of the collect for his feast day, Hooker was given grace to “maintain the middle way, not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth.” This is the third way that Jesus describes in Luke’s gospel. This third way is not about splitting the difference or making the best of a bad situation. It is about transcending binary categories altogether. It is about lifting our hearts above the bitter controversy and tribal allegiances that are so destructive of our common life. Jesus calls us to reject and transcend every binary category: rich and poor, winner and loser, even life and death. The path to sainthood, (the path that Anna is embarking on this morning), the path that we are called to walk, is about recognizing that winning and losing do not matter and understanding the only thing that matters is that we belong to God.