God, hear our cry and help us. Hear our pain and mourn with us. Hear our rage and fight with us. And through it all, speak to us the truths we need to hear. Amen.

Here we are again, friends. Here we are again, as in, the man who became our president in 2016, who brought chaos and fear and dealt devastating blows to human rights, is about to be president again. And also, here we are again, as in, a man with ambitions of tyranny gains power with the support of people who believe that a tyrannical leader is a strong leader. This is not a new story. This is a story as old as human civilization, played out in various ways across the span of history. And on the one hand, that makes me sad, because, damnit, we _have history books, can't we learn anything? And on the other hand, it gives me a kind of reassurance. People have been where we are. People have fought and survived what we are facing. And there isn't one, set script that we are destined to follow. We still have agency, and power, no matter what anyone else says.

But it's so hard to feel that agency and power, isn't it? When the fear and the despair and the anger are white hot in your system, when you can't think through the static in your brain, when you can't get out of bed, or can't fall asleep .... I know. I am with you. I feel it too. I am scared, and I am grieving, and I wish that I could give you the full roadmap for how we get through the next four years, or that someone could give it to me.

But if we wait to hear from someone who's got it all figured out, we'll be waiting a long time. And one thing I do know is this: we have to feel these things. The rage, the fear, the despair. We can't push these feelings away, because they only grow stronger when you try. We have to give them space, because only then will there be space for anything else, for action. If you're the kind of person who jumps straight into action, who's been working nonstop since Wednesday morning: your next necessary action is a good cry, an intense workout, or a session screaming into or punching a pillow. Something that moves the stress and the emotion through your body, so that it doesn't stay trapped there.

Also on the list of necessary actions: check in on one another. Don't assume someone is okay just because they seem to be holding up better than you. Some of us—especially BIPOC folks, queer and trans folks, and others on the margins—have trained ourselves not to show our distress. Some of us have felt this kind of pain so often that we don't react as strongly anymore. Not because it hurts less , but because we're used to the pain. These members of our communities need just as much, or more, space to feel their feelings.

As I said, we aren't the first ones to feel like this. Take the widow in our scripture this morning. She is living in the midst of a drought. A years-long drought, the kind where the crops wither in the ground, and whole countries starve. The prophet Elijah has been living in the wilderness, but eventually he runs out of water, and so God sends him to this widow. He asks her for water, and she freely gives it. But when he asks for food, she answers, "As surely as the Lord your God lives I don't have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die."

In other words, she is despairing. She knows the limits of her resources, she thinks. She is committed to doing what she can, but beyond that .... Why bother? The drought and famine will take her and her family.

I know that this is where some of us find ourselves this week. There's a sense of, what's the point? The policies outlined in Project 2025 are death-dealing to many of us, and more than half the country showed us they don't care. So what the hell can we do now?

If that's you, what you're feeling is valid. You are not alone. But hold on. Because just because our feelings are valid, doesn't mean they tell us the truth.

There are other ways in which Elijah's story mirrors our own contemporary situation. See, this drought is one episode in a political conflict spanning years. As the book of 1 Kings tells it, the kingdom of Israel has been in a great deal of political turmoil: lots of coups and assassinations, kings reigning for as short as seven days. One detail I find interesting happens in chapter 16 verses 21 and 22. There are two potential leaders, Omri and Tibni, and the country is divided on who to follow. Hey, that sounds familiar, huh? We don't know much about either of them, but we know that the majority of the people side with Omri. And I can't help but wonder if the next several chapters would be different if they'd gone with Tibni.

Either way, the book of 1 Kings reports that "Omri did what was evil in the sight of the LORD" (1 Kings 16:25). And after he dies, his son Ahab becomes king, and he also does what is evil in the sight of the Lord (16:30). Ahab is king during the period in which our story unfolds, and he and Elijah are constantly in conflict. Now, I have some questions about how 1 kings portrays Ahab, and especially his wife Jezebel, and how much of their depictions as tyrants is exaggeration for political purposes relevant to the writers and editors of 1 Kings. One of these days, we should really do a Bible study where we employ some media literacy skills on the Bible—I think it'd be good practice. But for now, I'll just say that Elijah very legitimately believes his life to be endangered by the people who rule his country, and prophets of God could be considered an oppressed minority.

In other words, the Bible is telling us a story about someone working outside and against established power structures. And this is far from the only Bible story to follow that pattern. From Moses, to prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, to Jesus and the apostles, our sacred texts tell many stories of people who spoke out against the powers that ruled them, people who pushed back against state-sanctioned violence and oppression. We know this; we know that our Bible teaches to resist oppression and marginalization. But how often do we remember that many of these conflicts were specifically with governing authorities? And not all of those governments were foreign, imperial powers; Ahab was an Israelite, a product of his own country, as were many of the rulers the prophets of the Hebrew Bible protested against.

For nearly two thousand years, Western Christianity has most often been aligned with the ruling powers. From the Roman empire to the Medieval kings, all the way up to our very own "one nation, under God, indivisible" and all that. There are of course exceptions. Protestants and Catholics have persecuted one another, various denominations or groups have dissented, resisted, and protested. But overall, in the West, the religion of those in power has been Christianity.

But that's not how we began. Our Hebrew Bible tells us our spiritual ancestors are a wandering group of people who sometimes ruled and sometimes were ruled. And our New Testament tells us that we belong to a movement begun by a poor carpenter from a backwater town, who argued with his own people about what it looks like to live justly, who resisted the Roman Empire, who taught that no earthly power can subdue or contain the kindom of God, who proved it when the Roman empire murdered him and he would not stay down, who refused to rule and dominate, even when some who followed him urged him to do so. And after he left them, his followers formed communities that defied their government's authority to tell them how to live, who to be, or who has value in society.

White supremacist Christianity says that Christianity is the religion of the rulers, that tyranny is strength, that you can conform the world to what you think God wants it to be by force. That is not what I find in the teachings of Jesus. I find, rather, that the Gospels, and great parts of the Hebrew Bible, have a great deal of skepticism about earthly rulers. "Do not put your trust in princes," says the psalmist. "Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God" (Ps 146:3, 5). If we let it, scripture can teach us how to be a force of resistance, against a government that means us harm.

So, how do we do that? The answers are varied and complicated. Scripture shows many different ways of pushing back against power, not all of which I would recommend for this moment in time. See, for instance, the pretty intense amounts of violence Elijah participates in later in 1 Kings.

But one thing stands out to me: we take care of each other. And it is miraculous.

When the widow tells Elijah of her despair, that she has nothing to give him, for she and her son will soon die, Elijah tells her, "Do not be afraid." Do not be afraid. He tells her to make that one morsel of food for him—and then make more for herself. Because her jar of flour and her jar of oil will not be emptied. They will be filled as long as they are needed.

And we're lead to believe the miracle of the story is that the jars stayed full. But friends, I think the miracle is this: the widow believed him. She made that morsel of food and gave it to a stranger, trusting that there would be more. In a world that gave her every reason to believe there would not be enough, she gave what she had. And there was more. How many of us, or of those with whom we share this country, can find it in ourselves to really believe that caring for our neighbor is good for us, too? Can we let ourselves believe in the miracle of community?

My dear friend and colleague, Paul Fogle, always said, "We take care of each other." Paul was a disabled activist who spent his life doing just that: taking care of his loved ones and community. Because like so many marginalized people, he knew that systems could not be relied upon to do it. Disabled people have known for a long time that our health insurance and livelihoods are dependent on the powers that be believing we deserve them—and even in good times, they're apt to change their minds about that. BIPOC communities, queer and trans communities, disability communities—so many of us have learned that we must take care of each other. And at our best, we've learned that "each other" means _all of us, not just our current in-group.

Paul died on Election Day this year, hours before any results were in. At the time when we needed people like him most, we lost him. We lose too many of the people we need the most: the truth tellers, the organizers, the dreamers, the ones who take care of us. And the best way I can think to honor him and everyone like him is to take care of each other, to do all that is in my power to prevent more truth tellers and organizers and dreamers and carers from dying. When the famine comes, we take our handful of flour, turn it into a meal, and then we do _not die. We take care of each other.

So friends. My beloveds. _That is where we find our power and agency. It does not come from any government, and no government can take it away. It comes from each of us, taking our handfuls of flour, and showing up to be the miracle of community, together with our God. Feel all that you need to feel today: the grief, the despair, the anger, the fear. And then remember: the jar is not empty. And it never will be. We are here. God is here. And we will take care of each other.

God, hear our cry and help us. Hear our pain and mourn with us. Hear our rage and fight with us. And through it all, speak to us the truths we need to hear. Amen.