Mister President, Madame Speaker, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, kids of all ages:
The State of Our Union is rotten.
Can I say that? Can I criticize, in love, an institution that is floundering like a whale on a beach? MLK and RFK would say yes, but look where that got them.
Jesus would say yes, but he had also had a pretty bad day as a result.
Here’s the thing: I love this nation, I voted for this president, but we have lost our way, and I don’t know what it will take to get it back again unless we turn around.
And I’m not speaking of returning to some mythical Golden Age in the 1950s, when white men had it really good, and women and not-so-white-men not so much.
And I’m not speaking of rediscovering some mythical Founding Age, where some of us have turned the Founding Daddies into the First Great American Christians when many of them didn’t even think Jesus was the Son of God.
But as a Christian who is an American, here is how I see the state of the union: We are such creatures of self that the very idea of union is almost laughable.
We are so afraid of the world outside that some of us want to hermetically seal our borders to prevent others from gaining the comforts our own ancestors came here seeking. We are so afraid of the world outside that we spend more on defense than every other nation on the planet combined (and then complain about how social programs have led us into deficit spending). We are so afraid of the world outside that we (or at least a majority of American church-goers) say we accept torture, the demeaning and maiming of another human being made in the image of God, in the spurious hope that it will make us safer from attack. Where is our thought of union with others?
We cling to our use of resources and our way of life when we have been told by the mass of scientific opinion that it is making the planet unlivable for our children and grandchildren. We buy SUVs and advocate drilling more oil wells when the mass of scientific opinion tells us that the poor around the world are already suffering from the environmental results of the petroleum age, and will suffer more. We rest secure in the thought that oil will probably last for years, and why should we sacrifice so much as a trip to the mall in a big, air conditioned vehicle? Where is our thought of union with others?
We lament the use of our tax dollars to help provide medical care for those who lack it, or housing for those who lack it, or education for any other children besides our own—and that’s here in America (God help the poor who are in other lands—because we don’t want to). We insist that the homeless stay off our block and out of our part of town, herd them into places where we don’t have to look at or interact with them. We feel great sympathy for victims of disaster here and elsewhere, and sometimes respond with great generosity to their plight—but never enough sympathy or generosity to alleviate the conditions people like the people of New Orleans or Haiti lived in before their disaster—or will live in after the relief workers have gone. Where is our thought of union with others?
Even when we try to do the right thing, our self-interest screws things up. I am disgusted that the fight to make health care available to every American has been twisted into partisan battle, and political and business-as-usual deal making. I am disgusted that our need to safeguard our economic system has rewarded banks and economic institutions whose own greed and lack of foresight and moral vision caused the disaster in the first place. I am disgusted both by people who say that President Obama has to do things the way they’ve always been done because it’s the only way to get things done and by people whose memory is so short they believe President Obama leads the most corrupt, or dangerous, or dishonest administration in history.
I am disgusted that we cannot call ourselves to something higher, better, nobler.
A dangerous unselfishness is what Martin Luther King advocated, and I know, you’re saying, that can get you killed. But you can also get killed walking across the street, or by a bolt of lightning from out of the sky, or by a man carrying explosives in his underwear, for crying out loud.
Safety is an illusion we cling to, but that we cannot guarantee ourselves, no matter how we cling to our money and things, no matter how many guns we own, no matter how we clamor for law enforcement and the military to defang the dangers of the world. I mean, honestly—once we agree to do body scans and the occasional orifice search of all airplane passengers, Al Queda will start implanting bombs in people’s pacemakers or something. There is no safety in this imperfect world.
What is there? Love, faith, trust.
We are here to be good to each other, to give and to sacrifice, to do what is right even when we know it will be difficult, to learn and act on the belief that we and those we love are not at the center of the universe, to treat every human being as though she or he is beloved by God, made in the image of God.
What did Jesus do? He broke down barriers. He reached out to the poor, disenfranchised, despised. He healed. He fed. He blessed. He taught. He was dangerously unselfish.
I don’t know what that looks like as American domestic and foreign policy.
But Mister President, Madame Speaker, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, kids of all ages:
I can tell you that, for the most part, this is not it.
May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America–and remind us, as Stanley Hauerwas says, that with God’s blessing comes accountability.
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