The Incense Of Our Vote

My age—three score and ten plus five (75)—is impressive.  If you are as old as I am or close to it—younger or older, it makes no difference—your age is impressive, according to Antoine de Saint-Exupery..  We must never regret growing older, someone else once wrote, for it is a privilege that has been denied to many.  My age, your age, is impressive because it sums up our life.  Just think what we’ve dealt with on our journey to maturity Saint-Exupery reminds us.  We’ve faced many an obstacle and somehow made it through.  We’ve had the mumps, measles, and chicken pox (if you are as old as I am) and some of us escaped infantile paralysis (polio), while some of our peers did not.  We’ve known grief of many kinds and we’ve known deep despair, but somehow we survived both.  We’ve had our hopes dashed.  We’ve passed through so many forgotten things, loves, desires, regrets, failures, etc. Our age is impressive because it “represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories.”  Do you realize how impressive you are—not because of your success, wealth, or any of that stuff—but just because you’ve lived as long as you’ve lived?  What an impressive story our “age” has to tell.  Someone reminded me just the other day that I’ve lived through thirteen presidents—FDR (32nd president)  through (well, not quite, but I hope I survive) Mr. Trump’s term as the 45th president of the United States.

My “impressive age” wants to remind everyone this morning of what Timothy Ware says in his book, The Orthodox Church.  Ware quotes Clement of Alexandria, “When you see your brother or sister you see God,” and then quotes Evagrius, “After God, we must count everyone as God Himself.”  “This respect for every human being,” Ware continues, “ is visibly expressed in Orthodox worship, when the priest censes not only the icons but the members of the congregation, saluting the image of God in each person.  The best icon of God is the human person…as the words of a hymn sung by Orthodox at the Funeral service suggest:  ‘I am the image of Your inexpressible glory, even though I bear the wounds of sin.’” “We cense a lot of things,” writes an Orthodox priest. “we cense everyone and everything.”  

The biblical message I hear, after all my years and at my impressive age, is that we (as followers of Jesus and as human beings) are to “cense everyone and everything.”  To “cense” is to bless, to bless is to ask God to look favorably upon, and to cense means to honor, love, support, encourage, and care for “everyone and everything.”  I believe, at my impressive age, that our vote next week is an opening for us “to cense” rather than to fear, denigrate, belittle, and dehumanize others.  Our vote “to cense” (to release a fragrance into our society again) will recognize the image of God in each person.  It will be a vote for the biblical message:  “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:19).