I woke up Wednesday morning, turned to Andrew, and said: “we’re now less than a week from the election; it feels like the countdown to Christmas except not as much fun.”

You all know what I mean? It’s like the same level of stressful waiting and wondering with none of the joyful anticipation. I don’t know what we are going to get but it’s not new shoes.

As I stand here now, we are just two days away, and it’s hard to think about anything else. Given that today is All Saints Day, we are gathered here to remember the ones we have loved and lost, and I don’t want to lose sight of the holiness of this moment.

But I also know that we are only human, and that even as we sit here in all of our grief and gratitude, we are also juggling feelings of fear and uncertainty, faith and hope, loathing and love.

The truth is that we have no idea what is coming. We have no way of knowing what will happen on Tuesday or if we will even know anything on Tuesday. This may well be the closest election in the history of our nation, which means that all we really know is that whatever happens, roughly 49% of registered voters will be disappointed or worse when the results are made known.

Now we could spend our precious time this morning lamenting how we got to this place of deep division, but given that we are looking at the book of Revelation this morning, what I’d really like to focus on is where we’re going.

I don’t know the future, but I know that whatever the future brings, all of the people who vote one way or the other on Tuesday will still be with us on Wednesday, we need to figure out how we are going to live together,

and I don’t just mean for the next 4 years.

Friends, we need to figure out how we’re going to live together for all of eternity because one of the most wonderful awful truths of our scriptures is that God loves all of us and wants us all to live together in mutual love, forever, with God.

Yeah, I know. I’m not crazy about this idea either. But if I’m reading this right, that seems to be the plan. On that day when the first heaven and earth shall pass away, God will not set about making all new things - a new and improved Adam and Eve, say, or a brand spanking new earth.

No. God’s plan is not to make all new things, but “to make all things new.”

Apparently, nothing is wasted in God’s economy. Unfortunately, uncomfortably, inconveniently, no one gets left behind.  God’s plan is not to scrap the whole creation/human experiment and start from scratch with a better model. Heaven and earth and all the people therein will not to be destroyed and replaced, but essentially recycled, refashioned, redeemed, and rejoined.

This is not a vision where the best and brightest, worthiest or holiest will make their way home to God, the rest of the world be damned, but the promise that in spite of the mess we have made of this life and our world, that God is not going to give up on any one of us but will one day come and make God’s home here among all of us.

Which I think means that we have some work to do before God gets here.

You know how, when you find out company is coming over unexpectedly in like 10 minutes,  you run around the house as fast as you can throwing dirty dishes all higgledy-piggledy into the dishwasher, stacking mail and books and magazines that have no business being stacked together into absurd but neat towers, gathering up all the errant socks and shoes and tossing them in the coat closet?

Anyone?

Maybe it’s just me, and now you know why you have to give me at least a 10 minute warning before you come. But I think we should all feel that same sense of urgency when we read this passage in Revelation, only with the knowledge that it’s God who is right around the corner. God, who is not just coming for a visit, but coming to stay, and the mess we’ve made is not in the house, but with each other.

“See, the home of God is among mortals,” says the voice from the throne, and not just the good mortals. Not just the mortals we happen to like. Not the mortals who were believers or Christians, liberals or conservatives, Jews or Palestinians, Russians or Ukrainians, the basically good or the barely tolerable. No God’s home is with mortals, period.

God’s home is with everyone ever born and everyone who will one day die. “God will dwell with them as their God and they will be God’s people…God will be with them;  and wipe every tear from (every) eye. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things” will pass away and every last one of us will drink from the water of life.

In an article for Christian Century, Norman Wirzba observes that “this passage (from Revelation actually) shocks many Christians. It shouldn’t, because God’s trajectory throughout scripture has always been toward earth rather than away from it,” he says.

But once we see that, really see that - and this is me now - I think it’s clear that our trajectory should probably be toward one another too. Our trajectory should be toward care and understanding and finding ways to work with one another, no matter how other, for a better world.

“Christians,” says Wirzba, “need to reject all … escapist models of salvation” (you know, the idea that the purpose of life is to get out of here and go to heaven) “and learn to participate in God’s restoring and redeeming ways with the whole world….” (the idea that the purpose of life is to bring heaven to earth). If God is coming here, we need to get our act together.  “Do we really want God to live with us in (such) a poisoned, degraded (and divided) world,” he asks? No. At least I hope not. If God’s coming home to us, and Revelation indicates that God is, then:

“We need to rethink salvation as the art of permanent and life-giving homemaking,” here on earth. …We need to get in touch with the truth that “there is no such thing as life alone or life separated from others. To exist, “ says Wirzba, “is necessarily to be rooted and entangled within places with a multitude of (seen and unseen) (souls).

Our essential work is not liberation from places or from others. It is, rather, to learn the art of hospitality, which welcomes, nurtures, and releases others into the fullness of their lives, so that our presence contributes to the healing and flourishing of all (people)” (https://www.christiancentury.org/review/books/climate-change-failure-incarnational-nerve?utm_source=Christian+Century+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4a939e2c39-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_09_11_08_32_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b00cd618da-4a939e2c39-82656707 ).

Friends, our purpose, as Christians, as receivers of this ancient wisdom, ought to be the healing and flourishing of all people in the here and now. And believe it or not, another word for that, in its purest sense, is politics. Not the partisan rancor we’ve all become accustomed to, but political engagement for the sake of building a world we can all call home.

The word “politics” comes from the Greek word, “polis” which means city.  Politics, in it’s original sense, is simply the art of learning to live in community with one another. It is, or at least it should be, the act of building a physical and social infrastructure where all can thrive.

I guess what I’m realizing as I look at this passage, is that politics is not just good work, it can be holy work if we engage it with an eye not just toward our future, but towards God’s future; a future that is good for all people.

That’s hard to even imagine in this moment of such deep division. Given how divided we are, it’s hard to imagine a future we’d all be happy with. But it’s still worth a try.

Friends, I don’t know what is going to happen on Tuesday and it’s very possible that things may get much worse before they eventually become better. And I fully realize that a lot can happen in the meantime. But this vision at least gives us a sense of where we are going in the ultimate sense, what we should hope for, and what we need to work toward.

This vision re-affirms for me that we are not going to hate a better world into being. We can only love a better world into being.

We are not going to force a better world into being, but this Tuesday we can each do our part to vote a better world into being.

We are not going to beat a better world into being by exercising our power over others, but we can work everyday to bring a better world into being by lifting one another up…extending a hand, a listening ear, a merciful heart toward one another until we come to that day when we realize that there is no other.

Not any more.

There’s just us.

Every last one of us, a child of God, waiting with open arms to welcome God home.

I just hope They doesn’t look in the coat closet when they get here.

Amen