The View from the Vicarage June 26, 2022
To my admittedly limited observation and experience, it seems that most Americans these days are suffering from either an overwhelming feeling of fear (expressed predominantly through defensiveness and anger) or an equally overwhelming feeling of sadness and loss—or both. And given the many levels of alarm clambering for our attention and commitment, this is certainly understandable, yet even crippling or enslaving at the same time.
For me, it is the sadness which claims my heart and mind’s energy, especially as I hear of and reflect on the outward state of our beloved country. If what I am led to believe is true—from both ends of the political spectrum, filled as they are with moral outrage and hate—we face the real possibility of the end of the great American Experiment in self-government with its focus on promoting the common good. Could the dictator of Russia, Vladimir Putin, really be right on this one, relying as he does on the lessons of thousands of years of authoritarianism the world over? In the end, are we very human creatures so flawed and fickle as to be truly unable to conquer our own self-centered egos and the insecurities they breed within us that we simply cannot understand and accept how deeply intertwined our love of self is with our love of neighbor?
One of my favorite seminary professors challenged the rampant individualism of this age, and all ages, by stating the simple truth of God in Christ: “If we are saved at all, we are saved together.” Lying at the heart of the Christian life of faith we find the radical assertion that, while we are “saved”—redeemed—as individuals through the sacrificial love of God expressed most clearly in the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, we are reborn into a new family, a new community of love and faith bound together forever by God’s Holy Spirit.
It breaks my heart, as it must certainly break God’s heart, to watch us squander that incredible gift of community because we either cannot or refuse to accept the revolutionary notion that every person, indeed all of creation, stands equal and valued simply by the gift of being beloved of God. Isn’t this what lies at the heart of Thomas Jefferson’s earth-shattering assertion: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men [people] are created equal…”? How very tragic it is that, after the mere blink of 233 years of existence, we have torn the divinely-inspired fabric of our beautiful, diverse, and dynamic nation into tatters. May God help us and bless all the people of our land.