As you may know, yesterday we elected the Rev. Angela Maria Cortiñas to be the next Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of West Texas.

Before we began the election Bishop Read reminded us that the election was not about one candidate winning and the others losing. It was not about choosing who we thought most aligned with our own agenda, or who we thought would be best for our personal or parish’s interests. He was inviting us to an alternative consciousness*, a different way of seeing and thinking about the election.

As he was talking I thought about our upcoming presidential election. We are sixteen days away from electing our next president and other public servants. Early voting begins tomorrow. Ads are attacking, rhetoric is raging, and divisions are deepening. I wondered what an alternative consciousness about this election might be like. What if Jesus’ name was on the ballot? Would you and I vote for him? Or would we vote for our personal interests and our party’s agenda?

I want to believe we would vote for Jesus. I hope we would. But when I see the ads, hear what people are saying, and scroll the posts on social media I’m not so sure. I think Jesus might have a hard time getting elected.  

• He’s the candidate who says we should love our neighbor as ourselves and even our enemies. 
• He’s the candidate who says we are to do to others as we want them to do to us.
• He’s the candidate who says we should do good even to those who do not do good to us. 
• He’s the candidate who says we should welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked.
• He’s the candidate who says we should sell our stuff and give the money to the poor.
• He’s the candidate who says we should put away our sword and turn the other cheek. 
• He’s the candidate who came to bring good news to the poor and let the oppressed go free. 
• He’s the candidate who privileges others over himself and asks us to do the same.
• He’s the candidate who offers an alternative consciousness to politics as usual.

That alternative consciousness is summed up in today’s gospel (Mark 10:35-45) when Jesus says,

“Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” 

Is that something you would vote for? Would you support Jesus’ campaign in which greatness means being a servant of others and being number one means being a slave of all? And if you so what would that look like and mean in your life today?

This is the third time in the last five Sundays we’ve heard these or similar words from Jesus. Last week he said, “Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” And three weeks before that he said, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” He’s reversing politics as usual and inverting the usual hierarchy.

Those words or words like them are in each of the synoptic gospels; Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is a theme for Jesus, a thread running through his life. What about us? Is it our theme too? Is it a thread that runs through our life and, if so, how far does that thread go?

In today’s gospel Jesus describes an alternative consciousness, a reversal that most of us do not aspire to and one the world rarely teaches and neither rewards nor encourages. That reversal makes no sense in a world whose rulers lord it over others and whose great ones become tyrants. But maybe it’s the reversal we need. 

We tend to back the one who will “do for us whatever we ask” of him or her, the one who supports our beliefs, the one who advances our agenda and commits to our interests. Isn’t that what James and John want from Jesus in today’s gospel? 

“Teacher we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you…. Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” They are privileging themselves over others. Give us. Do for us. That’s politics as usual. “But it is not [to be] so among you,” Jesus says. 

Jesus is not about politics as usual. He privileges others over himself. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” What if that was our politics too? What if that was the campaign trail we followed? 

What if we traded our self-privileging for the privileging of others? What if we met each other asking, “What can I do for you?” What if we sought the well-being of others first? 

What if we sought to be instruments of peace: to sow love where there is hatred, pardon where there is injury, faith where there is doubt, hope where there is despair, light where there is darkness, joy where there is sadness? What if we sought to console more than to be consoled, to understand more than to be understood, to love more than to be loved? (Adaptation of “A Prayer Attributed to St. Francis,” Book of Common Prayer, 833) That sounds to me a lot like one who is a servant to and slave of all. 

Isn’t that the kind of life you want for yourself and your loved ones? Isn’t that the kind of future you want for your children and grandchildren? Isn’t that your hope for Uvalde and our country? 

It’s what I want and what I hope for. And it’s also what I struggle with; how to live it, how to become it. How do we move from power over others to power with and for others?

That’s what’s at stake in today’s gospel and it’s what’s at stake when we vote in a couple of weeks. I have no quick or easy answers for how we do that, but I know this. Voting for an alternative consciousness is the only vote that will make a difference, and we need to get that vote out. 

Sixteen days from tonight the ballots will have been cast, the polls will be closed, and the election will be over, but the voting will never be over. We vote every day, not with ballots but with our lives, our choices, our priorities, our words, our actions. We vote every day.

How will you vote and what are you voting for?

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Image Credit: Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash.
* “Alternative consciousness” is a concept I received from Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination.