Our Help and Our Hope, a sermon based on Psalm 121 and Revelation 21: 1-6a, preached on November 3, 2024

Our first Scripture lesson began with a question. Verse 1 of Psalm 121 reads: I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where will my help come? It’s not a statement. It’s a question. “From where will my help come?” In the King James Version that many grew up hearing, it’s different. The King James Version reads, “I lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence commeth my help.” That translation has been corrected because it wasn’t in the original scrolls written thousands of years ago, and the correction makes more sense anyway because our help doesn’t come from the hills. Right? Where does our help come from? Our help comes from the Lord. That’s what the Psalm says. As Christians, we all know (in our heads) that to be true, but do we know (in our hearts) that to be true? On this All Saints’ Sunday, when we remember again our hope for eternal life in the Lord Jesus Christ and the promise that those goodbyes we’ve said were not farewells but “See you later on that Golden Shore,” let us also remember that no matter what happens on Election Day, our help and our hope is the Lord who made Heaven and earth. You know that in your head already. But do you know that in your heart? Sometimes I forget it because I listen to the news too much, and I feel the anxiety too much. Anxiety is contagious, and it spreads through our phones. We read articles written by people who tell us that the future hangs in the balance, and we get worked up and worried. That’s what happens to us. That’s what has been happening to me anyway. Then, I turn my attention to the candidates, who tell me that the future will be secure if I just put my hope in them and help them make it to office, but let us go back to our first Scripture lesson: I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where will my help come? From the hills? From the candidate? Or from the One who made Heaven and earth? My wife, Sara, and I have been watching this TV show called, “Nobody Wants This.” It’s on Netflix. We can’t watch the evening news, so we watch “Nobody Wants This.” It’s about a Rabbi who started dating a blond who has no religious convictions, and because she’s not Jewish and he’s the Rabbi, nobody wants this. Not his family. Not his congregation. Especially not his mother. There was a time when Presbyterians were like this, too. When a Presbyterian married a Methodist or, heaven forbid, a Catholic, it was a big deal. That happens with religion. In this country, it also happened all the time with race. Up until 1972, it was illegal for a white person and a black person to marry in the state of Georgia. Up until 1972. Thanks be to God, things have changed, but if you look it up, according to the institute of family studies, only 4% of marriages are between Democrats and Republicans. 4%. What’s going on here? My friends, on this All Saints’ Sunday, I’m thinking back to how many times I’ve stood at the grave to read our second Scripture lesson from the book of Revelation: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… I was reading those words in the old South, still scarred by the days of segregation. Back in Columbia, Tennessee, I did so many funerals at the old Rose Hill Cemetery. A place like Rose Hill Cemetery, with old trees on the side of a hill, is a good place to be laid to rest, but right on the other side of the hill was Rosemount Cemetery. I did just two graveside services at Rosemount. Rose Hill and Rosemount were separated by an old chain-link fence, and if you know about old, Southern towns, then you know that the cemeteries were once segregated as though Heaven would be as well, yet the preachers read: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. Think with me, not of what is, but of what’s coming: A city where God will make His home with all mortals. All people. Regardless of skin color or religious conviction. We’ve come a long way here in the South, and so now we know in our heads that Heaven will not be segregated by race or religion, but, if we won’t marry someone who votes differently than we do, then do we really know in our hearts about what’s coming? If we look across the aisle and see anything other than a brother or sister, who have we become, and what kind of a future do we believe we’re heading towards? As your pastor, I want you to go and vote on Tuesday if you haven’t already. I’m not going to tell you whom to vote for. Rev. Billy Graham endorsed Richard Nixon, and I have learned from his mistake. Instead of endorsing one or the other, I’m just going to tell you to vote, but as your preacher, I’m also telling you that as a nation, we’ve got to learn to love people who vote differently because Heaven will not have a separate section for democrats and republicans. Now, I don’t mean you have to agree with everybody. It’s our obligation to vote, and it’s in our blood to disagree. It is one of our constitutional rights to form an educated opinion, to think for ourselves and then to vote and to debate and to argue. If we stop thinking, we will stop maintaining our democracy, but if we stop loving our neighbor, we are no longer following Jesus. His greatest commandment was: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” I learned a new word that I like while I was in Brazil the week before last. The week before last, I was with a delegation of pastors trying to help Brazilian church leaders develop new programs for their congregations, and while there, I learned a word I hadn’t ever heard before. It wasn’t a Portuguese word, either. It’s an English one: philoxenia. You might not have heard that word before either. Its antonym is more well known. The opposite of philoxenia is xenophobia. Xenophobia is fear of neighbor. Philoxenia is love of neighbor. If ever there were a word our society needed to hear, it’s philoxenia. If ever there were a word that we needed to practice in a society where so few of us even know our neighbor’s names, it’s philoxenia. We’ve got to practice that word. We’ve got to get into the habit of loving our neighbors because philoxenia, love of neighbor, is the word that will define our eternity. Not fear of our neighbor, but love. Love despite difference. Love over division. On this All Saints’ Sunday, I urge you to practice philoxenia now, for this is the way of Jesus, Who is our help and our hope. Amen.