Letter from the Pastor – October 2024

Hello Church,

Last week I started re-reading the book Letters to the Church: Encouragement and Engagement for the 2020 Election by William Kincaid (a former seminary professor of mine). As the title indicates, the book was written in the lead up to the 2020 Presidential election, between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. It was a very divisive time in our country, and the election was being touted as “the most important election in our history.” I got the book out again recently because we are now in the final month before the 2024 Presidential election, and all those qualifying statements seem to still apply to this race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

In the book Dr. Kincaid endeavors to name some realities of life in the year 2020 that were causing us anxiety and fear in our lives, as well as the ways in which our Christian beliefs call us to respond to these realities.

There is one issue the book raises that I want to focus on now, because it leads to still more issues. That is unresolved grief. Kincaid suggests that the country is grieving many losses – the loss of lives to violence of many kinds, the loss of jobs and economic security, the loss of a way of life, just to name a few. Kincaid goes on to say that

Grief that goes unnamed, unaddressed, and unresolved turns into other things, like depression, anger, conflict, and violence. I do not think that our future can be as bright as we want it to be until we are honest about our losses and we learn to live with each other in those losses in a more constructive way than we have so far.

I think this is correct, and we can see it as the root of many issues that plague us today. Unresolved grief can lead to uncertainty and fear about who we are and where we are going, as a country or individually. It can lead us to make idols out of our own opinions and ideologies, which leads us to make idols out of those individuals who promote those opinions and ideologies we agree with. Also, the complicated emotions that accompany unresolved grief lead us to try and simplify things. So, we tend to diminish other people by narrowing their identity down to one trait or opinion we dislike. When we do that it becomes easier to dismiss people rather than deal with the complicated reality that even though we don’t like something about them they are created in the imago dei, the image of God. Just like we all are.

Furthermore, working through our unresolved grief -as a country and as individuals- can serve to help us focus on what are priorities are in an election year. If we can think and talk about loss, name what losses we are grieving, or what potential losses we fear, then we can take stock of what is important to us. If we do this, and have good partners with us on the journey, we might discover that what matters to us is not a battle of left versus right, Democrat versus Republican. To go on that journey, we must first be able to respond to each other appropriately. Dr. Kincaid suggests that, for Christians, this means responding with tenderness. Too often in this world people’s grief, anger, fear, depression, etc. is viewed as weakness. It is criticized, ridiculed, and people attempt to capitalize on it for their own benefit. Instead we should normalize tenderness in response to people’s grief and struggles, because we worship a God that believed tenderness was a remedy to the world’s problems. We can know this because the life of Jesus is one of tenderness and care toward humanity, especially those who have lost and grieve.

So, as we enter this election season, which will be full of attack ads, politicians playing the blame game, and winners and losers, let us approach it with tenderness. We all grieve some loss, we all have something that is important to us when we go to the ballot box. We are all created in the image of God. So, in these divisive times, let us treat one another with the tenderness Jesus demonstrated. We may find it a better remedy to the world’s problems than anything suggested in a political ad.

Peace and health,

Pastor Zach