Republicans will take the House by a small margin but the Dems may hold onto the Senate.
No Red Wave, by any means.
The Biden mid-terms were better for the party in power than either Obama or Trump did.
Could have been worse.
A lot worse!
The race for my district's House seat is still up in the air.
Lord help us!
I went to vote just after 11. There was nowhere to park at the High School so I had to park at the Rec Center and walk up the hill.
There was 25 people ahead of me in my line and as many in the other line--determined by alphabetical order of the street where you live.
When I got my ballot, I had to wait a minute or so for an empty voting booth.
When I turned the ballot in (straight Democrat, as you might have guessed!) I asked if the crowd had been this big all day.
The woman at the machine gave me a I loved sticker and said, "Yes, since 6 a.m.!'
Bern voted earlier and told me it had been like that for her.
There was already a line when the poll opened.
People in my district really voted.
Hope you did too.
There is good news and bad news in today’s lessons.
And the good news is ‘very good’ and the bad news is ‘very bad’.
Let’s start with the good news.
The reading from Isaiah, God promises to create “new heavens and a new earth”.
We are told to “be glad and rejoice forever” about the new creation.
And it does sound fabulous.
No infant will die too soon and everyone will live to a ripe old age.
Everyone will have a house to live in and fields to plant.
There off-springs will be blessed.
God will answer prayers before they are prayed.
Even the wolf and the lamb will feed together and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
Sounds pretty wonderful, don’t you think?
And Canticle 9 continues the good news.
God will save us and make us safe so we can trust in God and not be afraid.
God is our ‘sure defense’.
We will draw water from the springs of salvation and rejoice.
We will sing praises to the Lord for his good things and ring out our joy.
Thessalonians is not very joyous—not full of ‘good news’.
We are commanded to “keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the traditions they received”.
“Anyone who is unwilling to work should not eat,” Paul warns them.
But the news gets really dire when Jesus addresses those who are talking about the Temple.
He predicts the destruction of the Temple and the coming of the End Days. “As for these things you see,” he tells them, “the days will come when not one stone is left upon another and all will be thrown down.”
Then it gets worse.
“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately. Nations will rise against nations, and kingdom against kingdom, there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”
But it gets even worse and more personal.
“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you…because of my name.”
In fact, he says, “you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death.”
Jesus is accurately describing what went on against the early church. His predictions were accurate.
However, he ends with a promise: “But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
Pretty brutal stuff!
And what are we, sitting here in Milton today, to make of all this?
Well, we already know and know fair well that there is always good news and bad news.
It’s the way life is.
Many of the people in this nation were sorely disappointed by how the elections went last Tuesday.
But many were also pleased.
Good news and bad news come together and, in fact, cohabitate in our world.
What we must do is cling to the promise of God to bring a new heaven and a new earth. We must cling to the promise of Jesus that by endurance we will gain our souls.
In a time of silence let us cling to God’s promise and Jesus’ promise in this time of good news and bad news.
(Amen and amen.)
On Youtube I got a message that Michael J. Fox had died.
I told Bern and she couldn't find anything about it on her phone.
I went to aol and saw notices that it was a death scam.
Apparently there have been a lot of those.
Maybe we should shut down the internet--though I'd miss writing on my blog--just to keep things sane.
So much craziness and disinformation is out there.
Makes me anxious and worried.
Be careful what you believe, beloved, and don't trust everything you read on line.
Really.
Truly.
Always.
The past president is getting closer and closer to announcing a 2024 run.
What could be more awful than that!!!
He's a crook and a criminal and has nearly driven the country into the ground with his endorsed election deniers running for office.
Please save us from this!
What can we do?
Vote. Vote. Vote.
(Not three times, obviously, but keep out his folks from holding office.)
I'll be a wreck on election night--believe me.
The country and our democracy is on the ballot.
God help us.
Have I ever asked you if you've read him?
He writes novels about an on-again, off-again lawyer named Andy Carpenter. Carpenter inherited a fortune and doesn't like to go to court, but he pays his staff and gets roped into mysteries, mostly involving dogs.
Carpenter is co-owner of an animal rescue place called 'Tara's place' after one of his dogs.
I love dogs and dogs in books, so I'm a real Rosenfelt fan.
Try him out.
Especially if you love dogs.
Don’t mess with Jesus
If this wasn’t church, I would use another word for ‘mess’. (I’ll give you a moment to imagine what it might be!)
In today’s gospel, some Sadducees (who did not believe in the resurrection) come to mess with and try to trip us Jesus.
You can always remember the name of those Jewish officials who didn’t believe in the resurrection by remembering that that’s ‘sad you see’. (I know I’ve told you that before, but I couldn’t resist.)
They want to rope Jesus into not declaring the resurrection with a pretty complicated story.
In Mosaic law, if a man dies and leaves his wife but no children, one of the man’s brothers must marry her.
That was because women were essentially non-persons—they needed a husband or a son to support them.
In the Sadducees’ tale, the man who had died had seven brothers. Each of them, in turn, marry the widow and each of them, in turn, dies, leaving her childless. Then she dies.
Either the woman or the brothers had some pretty bad ‘karma’!
But in the next life, they ask Jesus, who will the woman be married to?
But you shouldn’t ‘mess’ with Jesus.
He answers their inquiry without hesitation.
Listen to what he says: “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor or given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.”
And to add insult to injury, Jesus himself quotes Moses.
“And the fact that the dead are raised,” Jesus goes on, “Moses himself showed, in the story about the burning bush, where he speaks to the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
It’s not in today’s gospel, but the next two verses of Luke say: “Some of the teachers of the law responded, ‘Well said, teacher.’ And no one dared to ask him any more questions.”
So, don’t you dare try to mess with or trick or out-smart Jesus!
On a personal note—and one I hope you’ll reflect on—I’m a bit of an agnostic when it comes to the Resurrection.
I must admit, I don’t know what I think about that part of our system of belief and creed.
I have a priest friend who is on my zoom meeting every Tuesday morning who is as confident as all get out about the resurrection. Interestingly, he’s Jewish and converted to Christianity, but he obviously isn’t a Sadducee.
In the hundred or more times I’ve sat next to death beds, I’ve been assaulted by the patient’s family members about the resurrection.
I usually halt and stumble about verbally before saying, “I leave that up to God.”
And I do leave that up to God.
It is my hope to live a life ‘worthy’ of resurrection, if that is what is in store for me.
I’m much more fascinated with ‘this side’ of death than with the ‘other side’.
Feel free to report me to the Bishop—wouldn’t be the first time, for a variety of reasons—but I stand by what I think….I’ll leave that up to God.
I won’t ask you what you believe about the resurrection, but it is helpful to dwell on it and ponder it.
I’ll bring you to that moment of pondering by remembering the last prayer of the burial service.
And these words are said by the priest, facing the body or the urn:
“Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend you servant. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of you own redeeming. Receive him/her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peach, and into the glorious company of the saints of light. Amen
Ponder, my friends, ponder…..
