This particular campaign has occupied us in ways I don't recall previous ones doing, both captivating and horrifying us. Clearly there are important issues at stake. Still, I wonder if we don't sometimes overstate potential impacts. I wonder if we don't imagine the events that captivate and horrify us to have more earth shattering import than they truly do.
I have written previously of how I find it impossible to reconcile Christian faith with the stances taken by Donald Trump. I do think that those Christians who've made supporting Trump an article of their faith have done tremendous damage to the Christian "brand." But this does not mean that any sort of ultimate outcomes are riding on Tuesday's results. I think it unlikely that the apocalyptic scenarios imagined by some on the right or the left will materialize.
This is not to underestimate the human capacity to create genuinely terrible scenarios. Even a cursory study of history will reveal all manner of terrors that humans have wrought, but that doesn't mean that everything that scares us has such potential.
I will vote tomorrow and have my own worries about the consequences of the election results, as well as of the campaign itself. Yet as a Christian, I worry that we are overly fascinated with human capacity while nearly oblivious to that of the Divine. Surely there is some measure of myopia here.
In today's gospel reading, Jesus tells a parable that can be a little unnerving. Someone, clearly an important and powerful individual, sent out invitations to a fancy banquet, but when all was made ready, many of those invited has more pressing matters. Some of their excuses are pretty lame, but some sound legitimate. (I think my honeymoon would win out over anyone's party.) But the host makes no distinctions. People are herded in from the streets to fill the party, and the host vows that none of those originally invited will be allowed in.
This parable becomes especially problematic when we turn it into an allegory with the host playing the role of God, a God who is easily offended and remarkably unforgiving. But parables rarely work well as allegories, and this one isn't telling us anything about the character of God. Rather it is making a point about the all surpassing importance of the kingdom, of God's new day.
We humans tend to be caught up in our own events, some of them trivial and some of them important. But followers of Jesus must always have an eye on something bigger. Just how this "something bigger" intersects with our daily living can be an interesting and difficult negotiation, but if we do not have some sense of what God is up to, we will end up attaching ultimate importance to what we are.
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