A death has occurred. Oh, yes; Jesus is dead. We know this. We’ve based our religion on it. But there has been another death. Christ has been crucified once again. This time in 2011. And we’re still in the denial stage.
This death was not execution. It was from disease. The illness started at the turn of the millennium and the symptoms proceeded to worsen. In Wisconsin and the tumor blew open and ended when budget debate was over. Death came quietly. The breathing and the heart just stopped. It was over.
In watching the debates over the budget as well as all that has transpired in this new millennium, it has become apparent that the body has now been buried. Like the first disciples, few if any of us want to admit that it’s really happened. America as we know it is dead. The ideals of liberty, justice and healthy capitalism have died. The America we grew up in, the America our fathers fought for and our mothers did without for in fighting Fascism in the 40s has become what they had been fighting.
Americans are still allowed to vote, but for what? No matter whom we elect, we get the same thing: politicians whose pockets are lined with the cash of big business, politicians whose motives are to bolster the rich so they themselves can become richer. No matter how we vote or for what we vote, the result is always the same: protect the wealthy, protect big business who continues to give itself outrageous bonuses, bonuses from the money the American tax payer gave, free of charge, for their, big business’s greed and subsequent all expenses paid trip to the abyss of economic ruin. In some ways, this message is not new. (The Temple Authorities and the Romans were just the same.) But it’s what caused the tumor.
To that, we can add the eight years before during which time the surplus which had been accrued in the previous decade was squandered on a war which no one needed except those who wanted to line their pockets with that surplus. And in the process, countless billions were wasted on war and war profiteering all paid for by the American tax payer.
Now we, the American tax payer, are being told that it is our responsibility, our obligation, to pay for all the bills which have been racked up by war, profiteering, corporate greed and deplorable economic behavior. This is to be paid by laying it on the backs of the poor, the marginalized and the elderly, the last being the ones who scrimped and saved and made American what it had been.
The America which the Founders envisioned is dead. And only one Person came back from the dead. And I’m afraid that America isn’t he. There will be no resurrection.
The new America has shades of the fascism our parent’s generation tried to destroy. National Socialism was all about supporting big business at the expense of the people. It was also a totalitarian state which “discouraged” any and all noncompliance. Its intolerance and repression are notorious. And now it has come to our own shores masquerading as patriotism, piety and liberty.
The future looks as bleak now in America as it did in Germany in 1933, for Jesus in 29 AD. The Koch brothers – the I. G. Farben and Krupps Korporation of their time - those in our political leadership, and those like them want one thing: a passive American work force which will gladly work for $2.00 an hour with no benefits, pension or health care. In the process, corporate interests will continue to rack up trillions of dollars - through the labor of the American people - to keep them in the lap of luxury. Our military has now and will only have one objective: the protection of corporate interests and wealth – such as the oil fields in Libya and the destruction of any system which is perceived as a threat. We will live in houses we rent from the corporations and shop at corporate stores.
Already our liberties are in question. Freedom of religion is on the way out. Look at the xenophobia concerning Islam and the tight relationship between corporate and political leaders with “Christian” fundamentalists. Freedom of the press has been dead for a long time. It’s become “freedom of entertainment.” With few exceptions, the media is just an arm of those with power to keep the American people confused and frightened. It is the modern equivalent to Caesar’s “bread and circuses.” The judicial system is now based on winning cases, not on uncovering the truth or facts. Our other liberties and freedoms will be the next to go – all in the name of national security, patriotism and God.
In the process, an American’s life expectancy will plummet due to the unaffordability of heath care. Our elderly will go without medical treatment for lack of funds to purchase coverage. Most of them will die abandoned in substandard housing with no one to look after their needs.
Already there is talk of dismantling public education because government sponsored or supported anything is labeled as “socialism.” Only the wealthy will be able to afford an education. The closing of the public schools will enable those in power to raise up generations with only basic, rudimentary skills: people who will have no knowledge of our national or world history and the inevitability of its repeating itself. Intellectualism will be seen as a threat to those in power and scoffed at as old fashioned and outdated. The general populace, uneducated and ignorant, will certainly be much more pliable to meeting the ever-growing “needs” of those in power.
Fundamentalism will be portrayed as the only true interpretation of Christianity. Roman Catholic and Protestant fundamentalists will indoctrinate the American people with the fallacy that such an interpretation is the true word of God, never to be questioned. With the subtle rise of anti-Semitism in recent years, who knows what will happen to the Jews.
The ultimately sad part is that there is nothing which we, the American people, can do about any of this. Short of armed insurrection, which I am absolutely not advocating – I’m a strict pacifist – the only thing we can do is mourn the death, gird our loins and prepare for the worst. It’s coming. Even if we did take up arms in mass insurrection, those with the financial resources can out-arm the American people to the ultimate degree. It would be like the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
On a theological level, there is always hope. God is alive and well and always on the side of the oppressed, the marginalized, the outcast and the poor. The Hebrew Scriptures attest to the fact that when the rich got richer and fewer and the poor got poorer and poorer and grew to multitudes, God stepped in and yelled, “OK! Everybody outa d’pool! The party’s over. The Syrians/Romans/Babylonians/Whoever are coming in and carting off the rich into slavery. Those of you left behind can start all over again.
I still believe in that hope. The problem is that things have changed drastically in the last three thousand years. Like with the ancient Hebrews, the only way in which things can change and get better will have to be after a relatively long period of time. The truth is that what the corporations and the politicians are working towards and will succeed in getting isn’t sustainable. It’s a house of cards and eventually a slight breeze will come along and knock it all down. What’s left of America will have to pick up the pieces and it may take hundreds of years before the light is anything more than a glimmer at the end of the tunnel. Certainly, this nation will never again be what it was except, like the Roman Empire, a subject in a history book. America may have to crumble as did the Soviet Union into several different nations. But, who really knows the outcome?
In the process, we as Christians have the obligation to live and move into the future – a future of which, like that of the disciples, the details are absolutely uncertain. How will we live and give witness to the message of Jesus against oppression and injustice? How will we stand with the marginalized and the forgotten? How will we care for the needs of those who’ve been left out in the storm to die? How will we live out compassion, love, mercy and forgiveness in a society which sees such things as the hysterical rantings of lunatics? How will we overcome our own fear and cynicism? How will we join with those who vision God in different ways and worship God using a different name but who understand through their own prophets and sages what Jesus taught us and for which he died? And how will we feed our own souls so that when the house of cards does fall we can be witnesses of hope?
I have no answers to these questions. I am no prophet nor sage. I’m not even sure I have the courage to meet the future as I perceive it. At the same time, I do believe that we need to begin the process of addressing who and what we will be as a people of faith as the present moves into an uncertain future with the possibility of chaos and tyranny.
I truly believe that Franklin Roosevelt was right: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The real question may well be: how do we move into the future with goal of overcoming that fear? The only answer I can think of is that we need to begin now, not just as individuals but as community, to begin to name the fears we perceive in the present and for the future. Naming the fear is the beginning of overcoming and disarming it. Naming the fear begins to let the air out of its tires. Naming the fear is the beginning of resurrection.
To confront the fear, we also need to pray. I’m not talking about Polly Anna prayer or the kind of stuff one reads in Helen Steiner Rice cards leading to diabetic coma. I’m talking about being silent and in awe before the Ultimate Power of the Universe, whom Christians believe became human in Jesus of Nazareth, and being connected with that Being in a place deep within ourselves. For many of us, this will be a new endeavor – this is not a criticism; the Church has failed us in this endeavor. For many of us, we will have to look to the more saintly around us for guidance and instruction.
For us Christians, we will need to celebrate the Sacraments with purity of heart. The Christian Liturgy is intended to lead us more deeply into the Divine Presence via ritual and ceremony which alone can express the unspeakable depths and longings of the human heart. We will need clergy and layfolk alike whose art and craft can make that moment where time and space dissolve and unity, if even partial, with the Divine is as real as the air we breathe.
We will need to “read, mark and inwardly digest” the Scriptures and the Sacred Tradition of the Church so that we know what they really say instead of the pabulum we have been fed for centuries. We will need scholars and teachers, philosophers and coaches to feed our minds as the clergy are called to feed our souls. And we will need open, nonjudgmental ears to hear the depths of our souls as we try to sort out, individually and collectively, the emotions and thoughts which will bubble up inside us.
The most difficult thing for us as Christians, though for the life of me I can’t understand why, will be to overcome our suspicion and fear of those who vision God in a manner different than our own. We will need to – because it’s reality! – see those of the other great Faiths as sisters and brothers whose experience of the Divine is just as valid and real as our own. We will need to gather and pray together – both corporately as well as in ways faithful to our own Traditions - in sincerity and truth. We will all together need to understand and affirm that our perceptions of the Divine can only ever be partial because we are limited in our humanity and that those of another Faith may have a more profound insight into God than we do and us for them. And we must be prepared to offer the profundity of our own Tradition. We will need to listen and hear with new ears to the witness of “the other” without trying to convert the other to our way of belief. For us as Americans this means that Jews, Christians and Muslims will need to affirm those things that unite them and deal with the things over which they have differing opinions at another time – if they’re still important then. And it means that we of the Abrahamic Faiths will need to offer the same openness to the rest of the Faithful. We may even need to be open to the witness of those who inhabited this continent for thousands of years before the Europeans showed up. Their witness is an invaluable part of Faith tradition.
OK, so maybe there is the possibility of resurrection; not just Jesus rising from the tomb almost two thousand years ago but also our own – rooted deeply in his. But we probably won’t see it in our own time. But we can plant the seeds. The time of planting is now. Where do we go from here?
The choice is ours.
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