It has been an interesting week for the news. We have had more news about the coronavirus. Each evening I have checked to see what the number of new infections has been in Ireland that day. News comes about the rates of infection in other European countries and throughout the world.

There has been news here and there of Brexit, of war, of refugees, of weather.

And then there has been the American election. It dominated the news, for days. And in some respects, it still goes on.

I won’t get into the question of why it is took so long to decide who was elected. The details of the American electoral process is hardly an appropriate topic for a sermon, and you can read the answer in a variety of news sources anyway.

Instead, I note the juxtaposition — the occurring together — of the American election and the collect, the prayer, given for today. I pause to pray it:

Almighty Father,
whose will is to restore all things
in your beloved Son, the king of all:
Govern the hearts and minds of those in authority,
and bring the families of the nations,
divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin,
to be subject to his just and gentle rule;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

We pray this prayer on this particular Sunday in November because today is Remembrance Sunday in the Church of Ireland, the day that we remember all those who died in World War I, and more generally those who died in any war. On a day that we remember those who died in war, how right it is to pray to God about nations divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin.

For that is where war comes from. It comes from sin. It comes from the sin and brokenness of nations.

As I’m sure you can imagine, I have been rather focused on the outcome of the American election — not just the election of the President, but also the elections to Congress, the legislature. So during the past week or two, Kirk and I have added to our daily prayers a prayer for the United States. It comes from the American Book of Common Prayer, and we have been quite impressed by the words of this prayer. I’m not going to pray it here, because this is Ireland, but I noted that the prayer expresses well what is meant to be the best of the United States, the values and ideals. These ideals have become distorted in recent years, not just by one side or party, but throughout American life and politics.

But this is also not a sermon about the United States. The States just has provided lately a good example of the sin and brokenness of nations.

Instead, sermons are about God and our relationship with God and our standing before God. And specifically a sermon addresses who God was in Christ, because Jesus Christ was God become flesh among us so that the sin and brokenness of this world, the sin and brokenness of human nature, might be healed, so that we human beings might be whole, reconciled with God.

In our first reading today, we heard about a choice being presented to a nation to be reconciled with God, to choose God above any other loyalty. What we heard was from the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament. Joshua is the successor to Moses, who had led the Hebrew slaves who had escaped from slavery in Egypt across the desert for 40 years to the Promised Land. Before they enter this land of their ancestors, Moses dies, and Joshua takes over.

In what we read today, they are in their new land, and Joshua has gathered all the people together. He tells them that they have a choice: one choice is to “revere the Lord,” and serve God “in sincerity and in faithfulness.” If they do not wish to do this, Joshua tells them, then choose whom they will serve. And then, as leader of these people, he sets an example by saying, “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

When the people say, basically, “Oh, yes, of course, we will serve the Lord,” Joshua warns them that they have to mean this, that they cannot say they will serve God and then turn aside to their various idolatries. He says, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him.”

Yes, of course, sure, they say. Well, as the history of the Bible goes, they sometimes do and they sometimes don’t serve the Lord. That human sin and brokenness takes over. It pervades the people, and in the end the nation suffers, again and again.

And yet, there is always hope. Out of brokenness can come reconciliation. Out of war can come peace. That is one reason God came in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, to give us hope that the sin and brokenness is not the final answer, that these do not have the final word. The collect prays that the families of the nations might be “subject to his just and gentle rule.”

The nation that Joshua was leading would not have known Christ — they were a good many centuries before that — but they were given a choice, whether to serve God as they made a new home as free people in a new land.

We also have a choice. As Christians, we say that we follow Jesus Christ. Jesus looked with compassion on the world, and he came among us to reconcile us to God and to one another, to heal brokenness, to forgive sin, and to guide people in ways of peace. We can choose to follow him in this path, to know that this is the way to life, to freedom, to wholeness. We can choose to be subject to his “just and gentle rule.”

If we were in church today, and I was there leading the service, we would shortly be having Communion. And after Communion, I would say another prayer. It would be this:

God of peace,
whose Son Jesus Christ proclaimed the kingdom
and restored the broken to wholeness of life:
Look with compassion on the anguish of the world,
and by your healing power
make whole both people and nations;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

We are not in church today, because of a virus wreaking havoc on the lives of the nations of this world.

And still Jesus Christ comes, among us wherever we are, at home, in hospital, in a nursing home. Jesus comes in compassion, to bring healing, forgiveness, peace, and hope. There is always hope.

And each day we are given the choice: “Choose this day whom you will serve.”

Let each one of us each day say, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”