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Across the Pastor’s Desk by Trish Reedstrom

This column is being written before the election occurs. When you read this, it’s quite possible that election results will still be uncertain. And even if a winner has been announced, we know that there will still be discord and deep division within our country.

I have been struggling for several days trying to listen for a Spirit-filled word to offer into this space and moment, but God’s voice seems hidden from me.

I don’t think that God’s voice is silent, however. Instead, I wonder if I am simply standing in the way of hearing it. Like you, I have chosen sides, and while choosing is necessary to mark a ballot, I’m not so sure that choosing sides is God’s desire for us.

Instead, in the aftermath of the election, what might we do — or, more importantly, what might God be calling us to do?

Choosing sides often means excluding those who have chosen differently, yet the example Jesus puts forth for us time and again is inclusion rather than exclusion. Even more than that, Jesus is intent on including those who are too easily excluded by the rest of us: the poor, the prisoners, the blind, the oppressed. (Luke 4:18)

The instructions in His “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5 remind us to reconcile with one another, give to those in need and love your enemy.

We can’t do any of these things if we have chosen sides though, can we?

And, in what might be the most difficult thing of all these days, Matthew 7 tells us not to sit in judgement of others, but instead, to remove the plank from our own eye before pointing out the speck in our friend’s eye.

It would be easier to just choose a side, wouldn’t it? To simply say “I’m right and you’re wrong” or “My side won and yours lost.”

However, I’m pretty sure God doesn’t want us to choose sides.

Instead, I believe God wants us to make a circle large enough to include all of us — right or wrong, win or lose.

Let’s be honest, my friends. To include rather than exclude, and to refuse to exclude those with whom we disagree is very difficult work. But it’s work that is ours to do.

How do we do it? I think we start by silencing hate and proclaiming love.

Brian Zahnd is a pastor and author who says, “To respond to hate with hate enshrines the status quo and only guarantees that hate will win. The only real hope this world has for real change is the Christ-like love that absorbs the blow and responds with forgiveness.” To do this — to silence the hate within ourselves and respond instead with love might seem impossible in this moment, but ‘with God, all things are possible.’ (Matthew 19:26)”

May it be so.

Trish Reedstrom is the interim pastor at First Lutheran Church in Albert Lea.