Gini and I were in email contact with each other before Tuesday's election. I wrote that I would have to wait for a message title until after the events of that day. I am sure I am one of many liberal' or progressive' pastor types who doesn't want to be preaching this sermon today. And, you are a group of folks whom I don't know personally, but I do know your denomination, and we share the same northern New England location, so I believe I can make some assumptions. This is NOT Kansas, Dorothy. And this morning, praise be to God!

I got more politically active in this past election than at any time since VietNam. I gave a day to MoveOn.pac. in Portland. And I wrote letters, and I made financial contributions, and I talked with people, because I am one of those who does NOT agree with the policies of this administration, and was caught up in the work to limit Bush to one term. I thought, and think, the stakes were high.

And the candidate I supported didn't win the election. One of my sadnesses on Wednesday morning was realizing that I trusted John Kerry to be gracious and appropriate in his acceptance of the election results. And he was. I want a leader for whom I can feel that trust a deep sense that he (or someday perhaps she) will behave with intelligence and integrity, expressing the highest human values at any given moment. I have seen that in our president only occasionally.

I am not here to talk politics. But it is hard to talk of spirituality and God's truth this morning without mentioning politics, at least as a doorway in.

What do folks who are part of the UUA tradition do when the country just elected a man to continue on as president riding on a glory train called VALUES? Values of pre-emptive war, of increasing wealth for the already rich, of self-righteous exclusion from equality for some? What does that mean?

As I watched the election results on Tuesday evening, there was a bit of a sense of d��vu. I have spent the last four years doing interim ministry within the United Methodist Church. The United Methodist Church had its Annual Conference last spring in Pittsburgh this is a body made up of clergy and lay delegates from across the country and is the group which basically sets policy for local UM churches and its structured hierarchy. Policies are tweaked in greater or lesser degrees every four years, but the United Methodist Church operates as a tradition which has evolved over about three hundred years.

A well researched and documented book was published and distributed in 2003 warning folks that the United Methodist Church was one of three denominations targeted by a coalition of conservative groups to have like-minded individuals in place to be elected to prime leadership and policy influencing positions at its General Conference. New England sent a wise and powerful delegation of folks to Pittsburgh, and the wisest ones of the denomination were present, but they were unable to prevent what had been threatened from happening. Thus it was that after much debate the United Methodist Church voted a statement once again affirming that homosexuality is incompatible with God's teachings, and this time a policy was added which stated specific consequences for ministers who might be moved to bless a same sex union ceremony. And there were some conservative folks who were appointed or elected to positions of real influence within the denomination. This work within United Methodism was well funded and aided by non-Methodist groups which also work within political circles.

Good and kind progressive and moderate United Methodists are struggling. Some are leaving for more inclusive bodies. Some are staying out of love for a tradition which has great depth and history of responsiveness to human need and a strong witness to God and Christ in the world.

So, you can perhaps see why I had a sense of d��vu Tuesday evening. We have what is to me a dangerous phenomenon in this country: the aligning of the neo-conservative political right with the religious right and this alignment is literally running the country. The religious right does NOT OWN the only way to interpret Christianity! But they wield increasing influence and power and in this election have been given the go-ahead continue and even expand their influence and control.

So what are we to do, we who are NOT part of the religious right, who I am assuming are not part of the political right? Right now there is an inevitable need to retreat and lick wounds. People are depressed. Despair is not too strong a word, when hope had begun to surface that we might be able to change course in our need to deal with the world as it is now with the reality of terrorism, with the reality of the global systems of which we are a part, with the reality of a deeply different outlooks.

But we can't stay in our caves, and we can't stay with despair. Because our very real attention is needed.

I have read somewhere about understanding God as VERB, rather than God as static NOUN God as dynamic living movement, rather than God as thing or person. I like this understanding of God as ground of being, but a fluid, changing ground. (Rabbi David Cooper: GOD IS A VERB) As I live with that sense of God, I have come to wonder something. You know the Hebrew understanding that they are the Chosen Ones of God? I have an idea that God chose the Hebrews NOT because they were so good, or had so much more potential for good than other folks, but that God chose the Hebrews because they were the underdogs of their day, and they needed God's help. I wonder if WHO God's chosen people are doesn't change with changes in circumstance and behavior.

I think it was Vatican II in the Catholic Church in the 1960s which articulated a vision of God having a preferential option for the poor'. That fits with my hunch that God tends to side with underdogs. If this is true, God was very much on the side of the Jews in Europe in the early 20th century, but whose side do you think God might be on in the current struggle between Israel and Palestine? And whose side do you think God might be on as the United States wields its unheard of power in a world which increasingly resents it and in ways which widen the gap between the rich and the poor? These are questions I live with I don't have answers, but I do wonder.

Arrogance and domination are not values that God seems to uphold in the history of the cosmos. Not for long, anyway. Why would God have a preference for the poor? Because a dynamic, moving, verb-as-action God would know the ebbs and flows of power that dominators are ultimately toppled by their own excesses, and their reliance on their own power. This is wisdom of the book of Ecclesiastes: for everything there is a season. This is the wisdom of Buddhism: the only constant is change. This is the wisdom of Jesus: the last will be first, and the first will be last. Ultimately. BELIEVE IN THE ULTIMATES.

So what now? Keep your eyes and ears and hearts open God needs you. The country needs you. The world needs you. And Stay tuned. Follow the wisdom of your religious tradition as you travel your path. Be critical, but don't polarize, or at least don't stay there things are not that simple. These are not dull days we are living in. BLESSED BE.