I suppose there is no end to the number of emotions people are experiencing this morning. Some are celebrating, they are glad and joyous because the candidate they supported has won. Others are mourning, they are sad and fearful because the candidate they supported has lost. Me? I’m neither celebrating nor in mourning, neither happy nor sad. A bit surprised perhaps, but my own feelings are not what concern me. Like the reason I cast my own vote, this morning is not about me, it is about my neighbor, the neighbor celebrating and the one mourning, the one who is joyous and the one who is fearful.

Fear and gladness are two sides of the same coin; they are real emotions that cannot simply be turned off because someone says so. Whatever you are feeling, it is ok to feel it, but it is not ok to let that feeling dictate how you treat your neighbor. Well, I should add the caveat that it is not ok to let that feeling dictate how you treat your neighbor if Christ has laid his claim on you. The call this morning is the same as the call yesterday and the call tomorrow, the call is to love the God who created and sustains all things and your neighbor. 

The question, of course, is how do you do that? How do you love God? Well, first you let God be God. He is the one who dictates terms, who tells us what the faith is all about, not power and prestige, but forgiveness and sacrifice. God is the one who has for generations called faithless people to faithfulness, and, spoiler alert, the people failed every time but God did not. No, time and again God has proven faithful, not by the candidate that won an election but by the Christ who won life eternal. If you want evidence of God’s faithfulness on the morning after an election you don’t look at the one who was elected you look at the one who was raised to life that morning after the crucifixion. Loving God is about receiving that life he has to give, on his sacramental terms, and then living for the sake of the other. 

It is that last part, living for the sake of the other that is hard the morning after. We are trained to look with suspicion and disgust at those who voted differently, at those whose emotions are different than ours, and yet, we are called to love our neighbor, our Republican and Democrat and Independent and (fill in the blank) neighbor. Thankfully, God has also told us what love is too. 

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. — 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 (ESV)

No matter what you are feeling, your call to your neighbor is a call to be patient, kind, not envious or boastful, not arrogant or rude, not insistent upon your own way, not irritable, not resentful, not rejoicing in wrongdoing but in the truth. No matter what you are feeling your call to your neighbor is to bear all things with them, to stand with them in whatever they are feeling.

I don’t say this to disallow you space to feel your feelings—feel them, I’ll stand beside you while you do. I understand the various viewpoints, the feelings of what was at stake with the possible outcomes, and I know that me telling you not to feel the things you are feeling won’t amount to much. So feel them, I’ll stand beside you while you do. And because you have me, others can have you do the same to them. 

Today is a day to love God, to remember that his faithfulness to a faithless people is not on display in the electoral college results but in the empty tomb’s resurrection reality. Today is a day to love your neighbor, not as you want to but as God has called us to. It is said that “perfect love casts out all fear” (1 John 4:18). That love doesn’t preside over a house or senate, sit in an oval office, or adjudicate cases with a panel of justices, he sits at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us, ruling over all things, setting us out to continue his work of loving so that fear might be cast out. Today is a day to love our neighbor because Christ has, and continues, to love us.