September 16, 2007
Exodus 5:1-9
2nd in a Series on
Faith and Public Life
“Engaging
the Powers”
Politics. The business of public life. Many of us feel an instant revulsion for the
subject, backing away as from a bad smell.
Small minded men and women who love the sound of their own voice and the
sight of themselves on television, arguing – loudly and incessantly – about
hopeless generalities they’ll never do anything about. Pawns, drunk on the delusion of power,
willing to do or say almost anything to feed their addiction to the next
golfing junket or campaign contribution.
Isn’t that all it is? Isn’t
politics, after all, just the poorer, tougher and fattier parts of our
collective greed and biases ground up with a little salt and pepper and shoved,
like sausage, into the bowel casings of civilization in a way that tastes OK,
depending on your appetite, but isn’t very healthy? No one in his or her right mind would want to
look or get to close, some would say; after all, who really wants to know
what’s inside a can of SPAM.
In biblical history, this was the
view of the Essenes – that secretive religious community whose writings were
discovered several decades ago by Bedouin shepherds near the Dead Sea community
of Qumran. The Essenes – at least the
strictest members of them – had withdrawn and established themselves in this
area 40 miles from Jerusalem during the century or so before the time of
Jesus. It had happened for all the
familiar reasons – revulsion over institutional corruption, civic disenchantment,
spiritual disgust at the “dirtiness” of public life. And so they simply left. There, removed from city smells, city sounds,
city crowds, and above all city sleaze, they insulated themselves in the
“uncontaminated air of the wild.” [1] They were the pure alternative, unsullied by
all the contaminants so endemic to public life.
As Eugene Peterson describes them,
“The Essenes crafted a simple, focused, morally pure, scripturally exact life
that contrasted in almost every way with the world of the Jerusalem
temple. The Essenes were a spiritual
elite…. They were the green berets of
the kingdom, the special forces. They
were a highly trained, highly disciplined, single-minded community of men who
had no sympathy with sloth or sloppiness or sin.” [2]
For a more modern and
individualistic example, look to the passionate convictions of some of those
cabin dwellers in remote parts of Montana who bunker themselves in behind
rifles and locked doors against any possible tainting or encroachment of the
government. Government, as far as they
are concerned, is the enemy – a deadly, contagious disease against which the
only way to protect yourself is distance; isolation. Prevent contact at all costs.
Public life as polluted, dirty,
dangerous and beyond redemption.
Of course, that’s not the only way
of looking at it. There are those who
view the work of politics – of statecraft – as so noble, so lofty, so confined
to the rarefied air of the intellectual elites that ordinary mortals – common
folk like you and me – couldn’t possibly dare to distract the attention of the
professionals or gum up the works of public business by interjecting our
opinions or experiences or desires.
Politicians, after all, are the final and expert words, glamorous and
almost god-like figures from whom the most we can expect is a friendly wave
from a distant platform or, if we are most enviably fortunate, a handshake as
he or she departs along a snaking line of fawning admirers. Our job as citizens is to keep quiet and stay
out of the way, lest we disturb their important business.
So which is it for you: politics and public life as unsavory sewer,
or elite and specialized ivory tower?
I would submit that the real
answer is neither. It is certainly
true that public business is often transacted corruptly or toward the end of
personal rather than collective gain.
And it is certainly true that some aspects of public business draw from
– indeed rely on – the expertise of experienced hands and the wisdom of
sharpened intellects. But both of those
extreme characterizations are ultimately caricatures
that fail to accurately reveal the truth.
There are too many good people investing themselves in public life to
warrant such a generalized slander. And
the truly enlightened – those who have worked the hardest and studied the
deepest – know best of all how easy it is for anyone to make a mistake. Expertise does not equal infallibility. That’s why we must depend on each other.
But what about that idea we spent
some time with last week: that public
authorities are in their places by God’s own choosing? Doesn’t that suggest that the proper role of
faithful people is to obediently acquiesce?
Listen and obey? Say “Yes, sir,”
or “Yes, ma’am” and get ourselves in line?
In last week’s opening consideration of this question of the
intersection of faith and public life, we did, indeed, begin with the Apostle
Paul’s counsel to the Romans that authorities are, indeed, part of God’s design
for sustaining order in the face of constant attempts by chaos and anarchy to
mount an insurrection. I offered the
assertion that Paul’s words calling for our respect of the powers represent an
essential place to start. We simply do
not have permission, as Christians, to discount, denigrate, or discard the idea
or the practice of governance. But I
also suggested that, while Paul’s words must necessarily be the first, they are
just as certainly not the last.
Authority
is a role, not a position nor an entitlement.
It is about more than fixing potholes and settling disputes and seeing
to it that new businesses are successfully recruited; it is about creating and
sustaining the collective space for thriving.
And when the conduct of that role runs contrary to its divine intent –
when God’s people are used or abused or diminished or forgotten – then people
of faith do not have the luxury of standing aloof and indifferent. It is incumbent on us to get our hands dirty
in the muddy work of social reconstruction.
How do I know that? Just
following God’s example.
Consider
God’s little reorganization project in the city of Sodom. Now some assert that Sodom fell because of
rampant immorality and they would be correct – just not in the way they expected. According to the prophet Ezekiel, “This
was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of
food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy” (46:49). God cannot abide the abuse of the poor, and
those authorities who neglect them are sending an invitation to God’s own people
to stand in opposition.
Or consider
this. One of the most pivotal and
formative stories in scripture begins to crystallize in the 3rd
chapter of Exodus. You are likely to
remember it. Moses, a Jewish-born man
raised in the Egyptian Pharaoh’s own palace, had fled into the land of Midian
where he married and tended his father-in-law’s sheep. One day, something unusual caught his
eye. What he described as a bush that
was burning without burning up got the better of his curiosity, and he moved
closer to examine it. Once near it he
heard what he concluded to be the very voice of God, calling Moses to a special
undertaking. What had so dramatically
and decisively gotten God’s attention?
The government, in a sense, but more specifically the “governed.”
Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery
of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their
taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the
Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a
land flowing with milk and honey. The cry of the Israelites has
now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to
Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
The purpose of authority is to
serve God’s intent for the people’s well-being; and when, instead, the product
of that governance is suffering, misery, and demeaning oppression, God will not
sit still for it. “I am
sending you to Pharaoh.”
Which is to
say that if it is true that always we are to respect the authorities, there are
those times when it is equally true that we are called to confront them. And so Moses went to Pharaoh to insist, to demand
and to persuade. And when, in his obstinance,
the Pharaoh refused to listen, Moses brought to bear the very plagues of divine
persuasion.
I’m not
suggesting that we call down plagues on anyone, but I am suggesting that a
letter, every now and then, to a congress-person may not always be enough. Sometimes it will require a second letter and
a third; a phone call, perhaps a visit.
There are those times when organization is demanded, and mobilization of
those who, along with us, can help to bring a persuasive, redirecting
word. When elections roll around, we do
our best to exercise good and discerning judgment. We mark the spaces beside those candidates
whom we have come to believe will govern in ways most in keeping with those
holy and organizing principles: justice,
protection of large and small – the majority as well as the few; restraint of
evil, policies and initiatives that enable the flourishing, rather than the
stifling of its citizens whether rich or poor.
But our stewardship is not
completed once we go home on Election Day.
The voting booth is merely the beginning, not the end, of our faithful involvement. For then begins the responsibility for
reminding our leaders of the good for which they were elected, helping them to
accomplish it, or opposing them when they neglect or pervert it. For the truth is, though our roles are very
different, we – no less than they – are called to be instruments of God’s
coming reign, and sometimes that requires us to stand up and say “No more,”
instead of quietly, wordlessly and complacently sitting back.
Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery
of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their
taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from their
oppressors. Indeed, I am sending you.”