Behind the Lines
The Rector at All Saints was out of town on Palm Sunday, but he still made his mark on the day. On Facebook he posted this tantalizing line from the sermon he heard that morning:
I kept hoping to find the full sermon somewhere, but alas it hasn't turned up. Maybe it will eventually. In any event, it resonated with me because of some realizations I've had in recent weeks.
I've never felt more American than I have in the weeks since the election, protesting and writing against the current administration's agenda. I've never felt more Christian than I have in the weeks since the election, objecting to the way that "white Christian America" has so completely abandoned its Christian principles. And I think that's because I'm no longer part of the empire.
What empire do I mean? This one:
See that? That's our country, folks. We have met the empire, and it is us. Hillary Clinton may have won the popular vote back in November, but most of her voters are clustered together in a few concentrated islands. In the rest of the country, most people embraced the Trumpocalypse with open arms, or at least crossed their fingers and hoped it wouldn't be so bad.
But in some ways, maybe not getting to be the empire isn't so bad. Personally, not being the empire is looking like a way for me to be more of myself. Do you think that's true for everyone? The preacher of that sermon, Traci Blackmon, seems to think so.
Sadly, those who want to Make America Great Again are all about being the empire, and they're liable to stay that way even as that desire hurts more and more people, including themselves. And the one inevitable thing about empires is that they always fall sooner or later.
Getting out of this mess is hard, because there's always the temptation to replace the old empire with a "good" empire. An empire of Democrats, or of "real" Christians, or whatever. But it won't work. Becoming an empire is in itself the root of failure. What's needed is a new way of thinking, a way of living that doesn't involve someone being the conqueror and someone being the conquered. Is such a thing really possible for a country this size? Let's hope so, for everyone's sake.
And meanwhile, if you find a copy of Traci Blackmon's sermon, let me know about it, okay?
"It's not that we care that there is an empire. It's that we care that we are not the empire... Jesus exposes that the very aspiration to be empire is evil."
I kept hoping to find the full sermon somewhere, but alas it hasn't turned up. Maybe it will eventually. In any event, it resonated with me because of some realizations I've had in recent weeks.
I've never felt more American than I have in the weeks since the election, protesting and writing against the current administration's agenda. I've never felt more Christian than I have in the weeks since the election, objecting to the way that "white Christian America" has so completely abandoned its Christian principles. And I think that's because I'm no longer part of the empire.
What empire do I mean? This one:
See that? That's our country, folks. We have met the empire, and it is us. Hillary Clinton may have won the popular vote back in November, but most of her voters are clustered together in a few concentrated islands. In the rest of the country, most people embraced the Trumpocalypse with open arms, or at least crossed their fingers and hoped it wouldn't be so bad.
But in some ways, maybe not getting to be the empire isn't so bad. Personally, not being the empire is looking like a way for me to be more of myself. Do you think that's true for everyone? The preacher of that sermon, Traci Blackmon, seems to think so.
Sadly, those who want to Make America Great Again are all about being the empire, and they're liable to stay that way even as that desire hurts more and more people, including themselves. And the one inevitable thing about empires is that they always fall sooner or later.
Getting out of this mess is hard, because there's always the temptation to replace the old empire with a "good" empire. An empire of Democrats, or of "real" Christians, or whatever. But it won't work. Becoming an empire is in itself the root of failure. What's needed is a new way of thinking, a way of living that doesn't involve someone being the conqueror and someone being the conquered. Is such a thing really possible for a country this size? Let's hope so, for everyone's sake.
And meanwhile, if you find a copy of Traci Blackmon's sermon, let me know about it, okay?
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