The more things change, the more history repeats itself. Jesus could very well have the same words for us today that he did back then: What is this generation like? It is like schoolyard bullies saying: We played the flute for you and you did not dance, we played a funeral hymn and you did not cry. We wanted you to feel guilty and let us get away with murder. We wanted you to be happy and ignore the ones in pain. We wanted you to like us best because we were afraid to be left alone. We wanted to make you feel the way we feel and you did not.
Manipulation seems to be the name of the game these days. Figuring out the rules to our advantage. We’ve been playing this game so long we don’t know how to stop. From crying our way out of a speeding ticket to those little white lies that get the boss to cut us some slack when he catches us watching cat videos at work, we even have entire TV shows dedicated to figuring out everyone’s tricks for lying, and we know what Bible verses to call on to prove our own point in whatever argument we’re in. But this game leaves us dead in two ways: either always on watch so we’re not caught in our lies, or we’re afraid of trusting anyone lest we seem gullible.
Because you saw John the Baptizer and he was so strict you said he was possessed with a demon. But then Jesus came along and seemed to enjoy eating and drinking with people, so you called him a sinner. Make up your mind! What do you want? A prophet who fasts or a prophet who lives with the people? We want the one we do not have and get upset with the change even when it’s what we seemed to ask for. When we have a Republican President we want a Democrat, and when we have a Democrat, we want a Republican, as long as we have someone to blame. And I’m just talking about basic human nature, here. Take it for what you will, it seems we are always struggling to keep up and make everybody happy. Or sad. You know, whatever gets us what we want. Even when the only argument is ‘the ends justify the means.’
There’s this great movie my family watches every 4th of July. It’s a musical called 1776. I’ve nearly got the entire thing memorized. It was where I learned my first dirty jokes, it was where I learned the names of men like John Dickinson and Mister Livingston, it was where I learned how much the north was involved in profiting from the slave trade even if we did not own slaves up here. “Molasses to rum to slaves.” It was my first real introduction to the idea of war, when the young messenger sat down and sang about his two friends who he saw killed ‘on the very same day. And it was at Lexington, too.’
When I first heard of the American Dream, most clearly heard it, was from the mouth of Benjamin Franklin as he told John Dickinson of Pennsylvania ‘we’ve spawned a new nationality here. Rougher, simpler, more enterprising, less refined. We require a new nation.’ And the most important thing, from the mouth of Abigail Adams, reminding John of himself: “Commitment, Abby. There are two people of value in this world: those with a commitment, and those who require the commitment of others.”
Which is where that story connects with today’s Gospel. Commitment. We are committed, more often than not, primarily to ourselves. To our survival. To our culture. To our prosperity. We are so committed to ourselves that we have turned against one another, or away from each other. And we do it in the name of freedom. We must protect ourselves from extremists, but only the ones who wear the hijab and pray facing Mecca. We must protect our religious freedoms, but only to the point of keeping birth control away from women, and not as far as housing the homeless. We can’t let the immigrants in, lest they stay, but we certainly can’t return land or respect to the Native tribes who were here generations before Christopher Columbus ever landed. All in the name of our freedom. And whichever side of any of those arguments you find yourself on, are we free to our own opinions or only free to all think the same?
Freedom, the ideals Jefferson put down in that declaration, seems to work far better on paper than in practice, even after all of the arguing congress did over the words in the draft document. But there is a bigger freedom than even the freedom our first colonial congress argued about. Bigger than that great independence John Adams shouted about.
I do believe Abigail Adams was on to something when she reminded John of the importance of commitment. We’re just mis-directed in our commitment. The power and freedom to have commitment in the first place comes from a God who is committed to us. One hundred percent. Our commitment to others is based on the freedom that comes from no longer needing to play into the game that will get us ahead of the game. It is a freedom which extends into the entire world. Yes, we have been singing a lot of “God Bless America” this weekend, and we certainly need God’s blessing. But God also bless the Afghan and the Indian. God bless the Turk and the Romanian. God bless the Jew and the Slovakian and the Korean and the Palestinian and the German and the Croatian and whoever it was who beat us at the World Cup, and God bless the enemy and God bless the friend, because without God’s blessing how will anyone know God’s love, and without knowing God’s love, how will anyone live in God’s promised peace that passes all our understanding?
God bless us all with the yoke of Christ, the burden of love, the lightness of freedom, the faith of a child who knows his own scraped knee hurts just as much as his friend’s and that his friend’s happiness can also be his if he chooses the empathy to share the celebration.
We do not have to protect ourselves from anyone anymore, because we are resurrection people. We do not have to prove ourselves to anyone, because we are God’s own people. We do not have to be committed to our own survival or prosperity, because God’s Kingdom of wholeness is here among us. God has taken our heavy burden of self-sufficiency and replaced it with light, with love, with the only true freedom that is our security in Christ.
It is contrary to the American dream, I know. Whether the next big thing comes by entitlement or a solid work ethic, even the American dream is not as big as God’s dream. There is no manipulation here, it’s not our game to win or lose because God has already won it for us. And we can trust that God who has spent all of history, even longer than we’ve had history, in loving us. Loving us regardless of the ways we are less than we were made to be, regardless of the ways we climb the ladder and leave each other behind, regardless of the ways we’ve been left behind, regardless of the games we play. God has broken that old game, yoked us to Christ, yokes us to one another, in this community of faith and love - where we are free to be ourselves, free to think differently from each other, free to speak differently and look different and still be welcomed to the very same table that has been feeding us all around the world for two millennia. At this Table we are interconnected, we are interdependent, we are truly free.
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