Fear Not: Embracing the Call to Love – An Election Message from Bishop LaBelle

Hello, beloved friends of the Diocese of Olympia.

We’re just a couple of days away from our national election. And throughout this season, we’ve been fraught by a lot of divisiveness, of fear and anxiety. I hear this both on the news but also in my times out on visitations with all of you. I’ve been asked again and again, “What will happen if…” With the if kind of left open because there have been different ways that phrase and sentence has gone. And I’m reminded of the call in Scripture to not be afraid. No, it does not appear 365 times, although I saw that once online. But it does appear a lot. God reminding us again and again that we need not be afraid because God goes with us, because Jesus is indeed Emmanuel, walking alongside us, even in the most difficult or troubling times.

And I’m also reminded of those words from the First Letter of John. He reminds us that perfect love casts out all fear, that it’s love that is the thing that allows us to counteract that of which we are afraid, that we are called to be people who follow the way of love.

Author and adherent to the Sikh faith, Valarie Kaur, writes, “What I want to remind all of us “is that as much as we must fight for our convictions “and stand for what is just, “remember that all those people who vote against you “are not just disappearing after Election Day “or Inauguration Day. “We have to find a way to live together still. “The only way we will birth a multiracial democracy “is if we hold up a vision of the future “that leaves no one behind, “not even our worst opponents. “So, you might be in the position,” she says, “to have that conversation “with the neighbor down the street, “or the uncle at the family table, “or the teenager who doesn’t want to vote “because she’s too cynical.”

We are given the opportunity, friends, to be in a relationship, to reach out beyond those who are just our immediate friends or who will vote like us, to make connections with those who might be different, not so that we can try to win them over to our side, whatever side that is, but so that we can listen to them, that we can hear their stories, that we can hope together for a brighter future.

While I was on the Civil Rights Pilgrimage last month, I was reminded so much of how that whole era was shaped around the idea of nonviolence. Dr. King made that the keystone of his belief that we could not return hate for hate, but rather we needed to respond with love. That didn’t mean that sometimes, there wasn’t good trouble to be gotten into, as John Lewis often reminded us. But it is a way to stand for what it is that we believe, that Jesus’ way is, in fact, a way of love.

And so as we go to the polls or here in Washington, as we fill out that ballot sitting at our tables, may we be reminded to vote for hope and love. For those who have been marginalized in our communities, that they might be lifted up to build the place that we want to live in, where all people are seen as they are, and that we treat them with dignity, and love, and respect.

Whatever might happen in the days ahead, I pray that we all might be people of hope and faith, of allowing our guiding principles of Jesus’ way of love to guide us still, so that we might stand proud as those who were able to not be afraid, and instead to embrace the call to love.

Thank you, and have a blessed day.