What Will You Preach on November 10?
Whatever happens, what are you going to do on that Sunday six months from now?
If you’re a pastor, what are you going to say on November 10, 2024?
That date is the first Sunday after the presidential election. We might know who won the race for the presidency, or we might not. There might be preparations for an upcoming second Biden term or people getting ready for a second Trump term. There might be political violence or not. Whatever happens, what are you going to do on that Sunday six months from now?
A few weeks ago, I asked that question to Joshua Gritter, a Presbyterian pastor in North Carolina for my podcast. He talked about how he and his wife wondered how their pastor would speak after the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and then said what he and his wife (they are co-pastors at a church) this year. He will not be talking about the election. Instead along with his wife, he will start a series on the Lord’s prayer. “What we're going to preach on that Sunday is Jesus told us how to pray this way, and God is the one to whom the power and the glory belong,” he said in the podcast. “God is sovereign. Jesus is Lord. And no matter who sits in that office, the church has a job to do, and that is participating in the life of this, of this God, this good God.”
I can imagine that some pastors might think such an approach is madness. What if Donald Trump wins? Don’t we care about democracy? Gritter responded with a real hypothetical: suppose a woman enters your sanctuary the Sunday after the election visiting your congregation for the first time. She is knee-deep in grief over the loss of someone close in her life. What does she need to hear on that Sunday? What she doesn’t need to hear on that Sunday is politics. This woman is looking for something bigger than her pain, Gritter says, but if he preaches against a certain candidate he does this woman no favors. “So that person leaves, not only with no comfort or hope about the grief they've experienced but feeling shame for the fact that they voted for someone in a free election. In my mind, that's irresponsible pastoral leadership.”
Gritter and his wife lead a mainline congregation in a “red” part of the country. In interviewing pastors from mainline denominations pastoring churches in more conservative areas of the nation, I’ve noticed there is more attention to the actual lived experiences of the people in the pews. I remember an interview with David Emery, a Disciples of Christ pastor in Tulsa who talks about how sometimes the church can get so much into social justice that we forget the people who might be living good lives on the outside, but who can’t keep it together and just need someone who can listen to them and pray for them. They need to know the God of the universe cares for them.
Morality has a funny way of separating us from God. There are a lot of conservative churches that reduce God to morality, to following certain rules and ignoring the actual person, but having lived in a very “blue” state, I’ve come to see the morality found in more progressive churches as well. We worry about the fragility of democracy or issues involving sexuality and gender and they are issues that are valid. But sometimes we make them so primary in our lives that we forget that we are called to be in a relationship with others even if they don’t vote the same way we do or fumble on using the wrong pronoun. In his book, the Spirit of Our Politics, Michael Wear recounts a story about a dear friend who was a supporter of former President Donald Trump. When the friend’s daughter was in distress this friend contacted Wear for help. It didn’t matter that they voted differently. What mattered was that his daughter needed help and his friend and fellow Christian was there to help. What mattered more was not someone’s voting record, but that he was in a relationship with Wear, and what mattered to Wear was that this was a fellow person, a dear friend, in need of help.
When many of us who are pastors step into that pulpit on November 10, we will do with a political maelstrom taking place. No matter who wins there’s going to be unrest. Especially if Trump wins, there will be a lot of concerns about American democracy and we have to take that seriously.
But there will also be people like that woman Josh talked about. What will we say to her? What will we say to the man who might have lost his job, or the family dealing with a child in mental distress? Because those people will be in the pews on that day. It might feel good preaching sermons against the other political party, but that won’t reach the hurt that people deal with.
I don’t know what I will preach on that day, but maybe I will take a page from the apostle Paul and preach Christ crucified. That won’t be a sexy let alone, fiery sermon. But it might be the message someone needs to hear: that the God of the universe cares for them.