Roger Ray, pastor
Proper 12 July 21, 2013
Luke 10:38-42
38Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. 40But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." 41But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."
Though I was inspired by their passion, dedication and courage, I was not one of the people who watched the protests during the Arab Spring with much hope. My one week in Egypt nearly 20 years ago hardly qualifies me as an expert, but I was pretty sure that the massive public protests bent on ousting the secular military government of Hosni Mubarak would not necessarily lead to anything much better. Angry people tend to over correct.... If they are mad at one kind of government leadership, they will often race to embrace it's opposite only to discover that they despise that even more.
The strongly anti-Semitic and anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood looked like the cure to the excesses of Hosni Mubarak when the protesters in the public square but what they needed was a more sane middle path. As I had feared, the excess of the first democratically elected president in Egypt in its 5000 year history, Mohamed Morsi, infuriated Egyptians.
Democracy is not an easy thing. Democracy must mean more than the tyranny of a 51% vote. The Muslim Brotherhood, long denied a fair place at the table of power in Egypt, once they were able to muster a tiny majority in the polls, decided that they then had absolute power and could jail, torture and murder their political opponents.
We have more than two centuries of experience in democracy and, though we tend to be a bit more subtle about it, we're not very good at it either. In 2013 we are in possession of two houses of Congress that are more ineffective and more paralyzed than in any time in modern American history. Democrats control the White House and the Senate, Republicans control the Congress and, as sad as it is to say it, even our constitutionally non-partisan Supreme Court is controlled by the Republican Party.
When I see Mitch McConnell talking about anything President Obama wants to do, I get the distinct sense that McConnell just doesn't believe that our freely elected president has the right to be the president. There is a level of contempt there that makes you think that McConnell just feels that Obama is beneath him and his mere presence in the White House is a personal insult.
And, like many of my fellow liberals, I am generally inclined to return the favor and feel the same way about McConnell but it is exactly that kind of mutual contempt that has set Egypt and Syria on fire. There has to be a better way.
Still, there is clearly some point at which gridlock becomes something more than mere obstructionism. At some point it surely becomes such a challenge to the health of the nation that it begins to look like treason.
As Ron and June Hertenstein leave us this week to move to Florida, among their stated reasons for leaving behind the privilege it is to live in the Ozarks, is to devote more time to an organization called, "No Labels." No Labels is striving to create a problem solving conversation among politicians who are able to see beyond the partisan divide enough to actually work on solutions. Though I hate to see them leave, I wish them Godspeed in trying to find ways to get our elected officials to act like intelligent grown ups..... recognizing that in many cases it could never be much more than an act.
I am sincerely cynical about the prospects for success in getting our currently elected members of Congress to participate in a sane middle path but I would love to be wrong about that.
As I have watched the coups in Egypt with interest this week, I have marveled at how little influence America seems to have on Egyptian politics even though we give them $1.6 billion dollars a year in aid. Now, to be clear, this is not because we have a warm place in our hearts for the struggling poor in Egypt.... We basically pay them a huge annual bribe to keep them from attacking Israel.
I don't want to diminish the diplomatic success that is known as the Camp David Accords but when I gave my lunch money to the bullies in the boys room in elementary school so that they wouldn't beat me up, I didn't walk out into the hallway declaring diplomatic success.
Now that there has been a military coups, we can't give them their usual bribe money because there is no longer a legitimate government in Egypt.
So, Ron and June, if I may pass along a suggestion to the "No Labels" solution seeking committee, why don't we use our Middle Eastern bribe money to fund democratic elections in America.....because, with the corporate and billionaire money in our elections, they are not really free and fair democratic elections, are they? If we can get genuine campaign finance reform in American politics then we could let the people freely elect a government that actually represents our interests.
Without NRA political donations buying politicians we could get sensible gun laws and without Insurance and Pharmaceutical money we could get a national health care program and without a bloated military budget we could actually create a globally competitive education system and an environmentally friendly power grid. How's that for a workable solution?
And especially since you are moving to Florida where the "for profit prison industry" is in full swing you might want to spend some time on that issue. The state of Florida is becoming famous for their school to prison pipe-line.... By cutting funding of public schools, you create more crime and then you need more prisons. Housing a prisoner costs more than educating a kid but this is not a math problem, this is a for-profit-prison and political contribution problem.
And I can't really blame the public for not being more outraged about this because there just isn't much about it in the news. Here is my weekly rant about the media:
It is the job of a good journalist to make things that are important interesting.
They have to investigate it and be skillful enough in their trade to write about it in a way that informs us, that makes us take an interest in the things that matter.
But what we are getting in the media is entertainment. They are not making important things interesting, they are, in stead, choosing things that are interesting and by reporting on them they make them important.
The media will focus on a story about a missing white girl, or a political sex scandal or some recent revelation about a Hollywood divorce, a baseball player on steroids or the release of a new super hero movie but they don't tell us much about why 90,000 Syrian civilians have been killed in a civil war or even about the civil war raging on our southern border in Mexico that we are fueling with our drug money. You aren't being told which corporations are funding the political campaigns of your senator or members of congress or why your grocery store won't tell you what is in the food you buy.
Journalists are supposed to do the hard work of making what is important interesting enough for us to pay attention but in stead they are taking what we are interested in at a very juvenile level and making it seem like sex scandals and athlete juicing is important.
The gospel text today places two sisters in juxtaposition. One is focused on the task at hand.... Feeding a house full of guests, the other is seizing on what may have been, for her, a once in a lifetime chance to listen to the teachings of Jesus.
Now I clearly bear the marks of a man who has not missed many meals and I love Martha's devotion to getting dinner ready but we all know that Mary is making the better choice.
The media knows we are always interested in the smell of cookies in the oven.... We've all been to the movie theater when the popcorn was the most memorable part of the trip but we also know that is not how it is supposed to be.
Martha represents the responsible though unimaginative aspect of living..... of getting the leaves out of the gutter and the dishes out of the sink.... Of making sure we have our retirement fully funded before going on a trip to New Zealand. And Mary is probably also planning to eat dinner again.... If not that day, surely by the next day..... but she is able to discern what is the most important at the moment without getting into a fight with her sister about the mundane.
Martha wanted to start a fight. Martha wanted Mary to be more like Martha, which in Martha's mind, was the only decent way to be. Liberals think Conservatives are stupid and Conservatives think that Liberals are lazy and unrealistic. Democrats want to run the government and Republicans seem to think that they are the only ones who should ever be in power, regardless of who has been elected.
Somewhere between the ignorantly unaware and the angry arsonist, there is an intelligent middle way.
I accept that in my 20 years as an opinion writer in the NewsLeader, that I have come to be something of a cartoon character. It is my job to write columns that are sufficiently provocative for people to pause during their morning routine to read my 500 word screed but I know that if I tried to talk to my friends in that same tone that I wouldn't have any friends.
Here, in the still, contemplative environment of our church gatherings we want to find the truth. We never want to fail to speak or act due to lack of courage. We do not want to settle for peace without justice but we do not want to let our anger or our passion for justice to lead us to such extremes that we cut off conversation with those with whom we disagree.
I'm not a moderate and I'm not encouraging you to be either. There is a difference between what we call "the middle of the road" and what the Buddha called "the middle path." We have to remember that Jesus wasn't crucified for being a moderate.
Please remember this important truth: Peace without Justice is just Surrender. No one here is enamored with surrender.
We are interested in justice but we should not interested in revenge. We are interested in justice but we do not need to set the church, the government or even the banks on fire. We are interested in justice and we want to get there as sane, intelligent people of character and when we get there, even our opponents should still be able to speak well of us.
