There is a story of Jesus on a hillside overlooking the beautiful temple in Jerusalem. He is mourning. He sees all the potential yet knows with certainty that the future will bring chaos. Like a skilled chess player, Jesus can see three, four moves ahead of him. He knows that the beautiful city has already sealed its fate. And sure enough, about 30 years after Jesus’ death, a wave of violence swept through the nation that eventually led to its utter destruction at the hands of imperial Rome.
Sometimes I feel the same way about our nation. It is obvious that the stratospherically wealthy have looted our economy. The financial institutions that they own have been cooking the books, selling the snake oil, and suckering the massive herd for about 30 years now. Reaganomics, still in vogue, has come to its inevitable end point: a nation in bankruptcy.
Had we been wise, we would have continued to invest in infrastructure whose commonwealth is the engine that allows for individual prosperity. We would have focused on education, health care, maintaining a job base that actually produces things. We would have strengthened unions and developed global policies that ensure fair trade. Had we been wise, we would have downsized our military, kept our progressive tax codes, regulated capitalism, limited the growth of corporations, created alternative energy options, and, most importantly, we would have invested in people knowing that the good of all outweighs the good of one, or some, or simply an elite few.
But the way of wisdom is not what was followed. Today we are living its consequences. Like Rome, and other empires before us, our global expansion has blinded us to a moral code that understands all life as sacred, not just American life, not just the life of the stratospherically elect. We live in the downward spiral of economic and moral bankruptcy, the hollowing out of our institutions, the absolute destruction of our commonwealth. We are living on the front edges of the war of all against all.
It’s enough to make one weep. There is another story of Jesus on a hillside teaching about generosity, sharing, caring, and compassion. But at the end of the day the large crowd that has come to hear his words of hope have grown weary from the sun and hungry from a long day of teaching. It was then that Jesus instructed his friends to start sharing whatever food and snacks they had. The example spread and the crowd itself started to share with each other until not only had all been fed and refreshed, but there was even surplus left over to share with still others, perhaps those others not merely hungry but famished.
When we, as a nation, learn to lament, turning our mourning into sharing, then the new day will come, and then we will be renewed. |
