Community Christian Church of Springfield
Roger Ray, pastor
Jeremiah 20:7-9
O LORD, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me. For whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, "Violence and destruction!" For the word of the LORD has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. If I say, "I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name," then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV4qg_l8HOw
In the decade following the Revolutionary War in the United States, a handful of men were charged with writing a constitution that would guide the government of this newly independent nation. Many among the former subjects of the British crown were reticent to invest a new national government with the kind of authority that they had only recently suffered from as colonists of Great Britain.
In order to persuade the wary colonists to ratify the constitution, James Madison presented ten amendments, a Bill of Rights, that were intended to limit the power of government and to insure certain rights and privileges to the citizens of the United States.
The fourth amendment says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This was based on the old English law concept of the Castle Doctrine that protected each persons home and private thoughts, speech and writing as their own business and not the business of the government unless there was probable cause to believe that there was something illegal going on. Even still, the government didn't have a right to search anyone's whole life on a fishing expedition to see if they could find some crime they could prosecute.
This castle doctrine, this 4th amendment, this corner stone of our Bill of Rights, was added to the constitution when we were a tiny, weak nation that had no track record, no proof that all of the colonists who had been loyal to the British crown or the new immigrants who might be willing to work against the new American government might not be hatching some horrible plot to overthrow the government.... When we were weak, we still guaranteed citizens that the government would not go snooping in the private corners of your life, looking for something they could use to take your freedom, your liberty, your property away from you.
The man that seems to have our Secretary of State, John Kerry, all wound up and huffy about is a young guy who used to work for the National Security Agency, Edward Snowden. Snowden saw that the government was ignoring the 4th amendment, ignoring probable cause, ignoring the due process of obtaining a warrant based on evidence and they were, instead, gathering what is called "big data" on absolutely everyone in the nation.
Snowden grabbed electronic copies of that data, headed for China and then began leaking the data to reporters to show that our nation's federal government had lost its way, was in the moral ditch, off the rails.
John Kerry tells us that Snowden is a traitor. He says that he has hurt our nation's ability to conduct intelligence gathering... that he has endangered operatives, shown terrorists our play book and has aided America's enemies.
Euphemistically, Kerry demands that Snowden come and stand trial but then he also pronounces his guilt in the same sentence.
Now, to be fair, Snowden took a lot more data than he could have looked at in a lifetime. He has, no doubt, leaked materials that he should not have leaked. He has handed useful information about our intelligence agencies, staff and procedures to the people who we really don't want to have that information. But is he a villain or a whistleblower? Which was the greater treason, elected officials ignoring the constitution and invading the privacy of the citizens, or a citizen who exposed the massive government abuse of authority?
And Kerry thinks he should stop hiding in Russia but even though Snowden is a young man with little education and not much international spy savvy, he does know what our government did to Private Bradley Manning after he leaked documents to Wikileaks regarding war crimes committed by American soldiers. Manning was locked into solitary confinement, naked in a cold cell without bedding for a year before he was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
We get bent out of shape about the torture of captured enemy soldiers who are suspected of having information about future terrorist attacks. Manning was tortured and he was one of us.... He was tortured for revenge.
And John Kerry thinks that Snowden should come back to the US and stand trial here.... When he already knows that the constitution and the Bill of Rights mean nothing to this government when they want to torture you in revenge for making them look bad.
John Kerry is not calling on the people who lied to the congress about Weapons of Mass Destruction, or aluminum centrifuge tubes that were part of making a nuclear weapon, or the secret trafficking of refined uranium... all of which led to more than 4000 American soldier's needless deaths and incalculable carnage in Iraq for the past 11 years and now, apparently, into the foreseeable future.
Dick Cheney is appearing on talk shows defending his record and George Bush is painting portraits of world leaders and his own toes in the bathtub. If Kerry wants to put someone on trial, why the whistleblower and not the war criminals? Tax payer employed guards escort Bush wherever he wants to go.... Though you will note that he does not travel abroad where most governments would arrest him and put him on trial for war crimes.... He is free, rich and protected.... But Kerry wants Snowden in a cell next to Manning.
I'm not saying that either Manning or Snowden are innocent of all wrongdoing. Both of them broke oaths and leaked materials that they had sworn to defend. I'm just saying that their crimes look small in comparison to the crimes they were trying to reveal.
I will defer to my favorite historian, Howard Zinn, who said it best:
"...you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem.... Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. ...Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem."
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for two years. There are people in the American government who want to arrest Assange and bring him here to put him on trial for treason... such is the imaginative reach of some of our Tea Party supported elected officials.... They are literally so stupid that they do not know that you can't put an Australian on trial for treason against the American government. You may think that I am exaggerating but Senator Joe Liberberman said on Fox News that he didn't understand why the Justice Department had not charged him yet. It was December 7, 2010.... Look it up. (http://www.nysun.com/editorials/wikileaks-and-treason/87163/)
He is not hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy because of treason charges. We did what we normally do when we can't find a real reason for arresting someone. He has been charged with having unprotected sex.... Not nearly as serious as the president's own married Secret Service agents having drunken sex with prostitutes while on duty.... No one mentioned arresting and imprisoning those bad boys...
But Assange is hiding because he knows that if he comes out this will not end as a simple civil matter.... He is in the cross hairs of a government that has shown it has no problems with torturing people for a long long time to get even with anyone who dares to defy their monarchical authority.
You have every right to wonder why I am all exercised about Manning, Assange, and Snowden today and if it is not obvious, it was this bit of scripture from today's lectionary reading... prescribed long ago for this Sunday in the A cycle of readings on the day that is called "proper 7".... It sounds better in Latin.
Long before Assange, Manning and Snowden were born, our church leaders carved up the Bible into bits they wanted read in church services for all time. So we hear Jeremiah's handwringing about the fact that nobody likes him. He is friendless in Jerusalem. The king thinks he is a traitor. The priests think he is a heretic. The population demands that he be put in chains and thrown into a dungeon, why? Why?, you ask.
Because he dared to tell the public the truth. Because he dared to tell the people that their government was lying to them. ... that their military was lying to them... does any of this sound familiar?
This text is being read in Catholic Churches, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran, UCC and Disciple Churches all across North America, Europe, parts of Africa and South and Central America today and I fear, I'm just afraid, that in almost every pulpit there is a history lesson going on.... "Jeremiah was the only one who knew that the armies of Babylon would defeat the defenses of the city of Jerusalem...." As if telling the truth was dangerous in the fifth century BCE and it is safe now.
What Jeremiah is saying is, he tried to keep the truth to himself.... He didn't want people saying he was a traitor. He wanted his neighbors to like him. He wanted to go to the coffee shop and talk about Obamacare, and Benghazi, and about how Obama wants to take our guns... but the truth burned him inside when he tried to keep it in and it tasted like honey when he said it.
We all want to fit in. We all want to avoid conflict. We would all like to have nice holidays with our in-laws, pleasant relationships at the office, and neighborly cookouts on the 4th of July and we would like to not become targets of the NSA, the CIA, or the FBI. But there is a price to be paid.
The 20th century Hindu teacher, J Krishnamurti, said: "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." I sincerely hope that in this time in American history that you will be the most maladjusted people in this nation. Popularity is over rated and honesty is far too rare.
