And the winner is...

From my earliest childhood, election night was – next to Christmas Eve – the best night of the year.  I was fascinated by the constantly changing wall of numbers.  I would be glued to the television, cajoling my parents to stay up later and later.  For a numbers nerd like I was (and still am), this was numbers nirvana.

As I grew older, I'd stay up until all hours of the night to see how things turned out.  From the beginning, I became used the thrills of victory and the agony of defeat.  My first presidential election of memory was 1960, Kennedy vs. Nixon.  For a third-grader at St. Joseph Catholic School in Endicott, NY, Kennedy’s triumph was the ultimate thrill of victory.  Twelve years later, I was able to vote in my first presidential election.  As an idealistic college sophomore, I proudly cast my vote for George McGovern.  Ouch, the agony of defeat!

Today, I am still fascinated by election night and the internet has opened up a whole new stream of data.  On television, I could only see the numbers they wanted to show me, but now I have access to all the numbers – exit polls, results on every state and many local races and referenda.  What bliss.  I still stay up until the end, I’m not so concerned about who wins.  Sure, it’s nicer if whoever I voted for wins, but it’s not that big a deal.  I probably don’t agree completely with my candidate and don’t disagree totally with the opposing candidate, so in either case, I win a little and lose a little.

In one those "God-incidences" which seem to be more present the more we are attuned to them, all of today’s scripture passages remind me why it is senseless for a Christian to excessively celebrate or grow despondent over any election results.

Psalm 27 is our psalm of the day – “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom should I fear?”  Well, nobody, of course.  Who could be greater than the Lord?  Even my worst nightmare of a candidate, one with whom I would struggle to find any common political ground, is no threat at all if the Lord is my salvation.

St. Paul reminds us that we live among a crooked and perverse generation.  Okay, he is reminding his disciples in first century Philippi, but haven’t all generations since been crooked and perverse, that is, turned away from the true source of joy and freedom?  Hence we see wars around the world, rampant abortions, millions of children being born and being raised by single parents, and intractable, imprisoning poverty and despair.  Still sounds pretty crooked and perverse.  And this crookedness and perversion has been with us, no matter who wins the elections from year to year.

 

Yet St. Paul, says that we, who have accepted the good will of God, can act without grumbling or arguing, can act with love and innocence, and thus become a beacon of light in the world, a source of hope for all creation.  St. Paul is echoing Jesus, who tells us to let our light shine before men, that they may see our good works, and give glory to God our father in heaven.

Finally, in the Gospel passage, Jesus tells us that we cannot be his disciple unless we “hate” our father and our mother, our spouse and our children, our brothers and our sisters, ever our very life.  We cannot be his disciple until we pick up and carry our cross, renouncing all our possessions.  This sounds ugly to our twenty-first century ears.  However, in Jesus’ language and culture, the word “hate” would not carry the hurtful, vindictive sense we assign to it.  It would rather mean to “put in second place” or “put in a lower status.”  Thus, our discipleship with Jesus means more to us than even our own families.  It means more to us than all of our “possessions,” those things we think of as “mine” or “ours” that are truly just gifts from God, entrusted to us as God's stewards or creation's caretakers. While he may sound harsh, Jesus is simply restating the first commandment, “I am the Lord your God, you shall not have false gods before me.”  If I view my family, my possessions, my country, my form of government, my anything of mere earthly origin as salvific or a source of true joy and happiness, if I allow any of these things to dominate my feelings and my life, if I am always ecstatic in their presence or despairing in their absence, I have set up a false God.  I am truly lost.  It is Jesus’ cross and resurrection – and that alone – which sets me free, not some victorious presidential candidate or political party.

For a Christian, every day is election day.  Every day, choose to let Jesus reign in your heart.   That’s an election you cannot lose – you're a winner every time!