We are done. Now that Wall Street has engineered the liquidation of our national treasury, and Congress has given the power of the purse into the hand of the Executive, the coup that began in November 2000 is complete.
Our national covenant, the Constitution, is broken beyond repair. All that remains is the inevitable bloody violence to come as we await the next, final shock to the system that ushers in martial law.
As a Christian the death-script currently embodied in our national politics is familiar. We are the generation living at the end of empire. Having shattered our covenant with each other, we are now enslaved to the dictates of the pharaohs that govern our economy and military. This generation will not see a return to liberty. Rather we are entering a time of exile, bewilderment and confusion. No longer held together by the Constitution, we have become non-people.
Biblically speaking, this is the time of wilderness wandering. It is a time of intensified suffering. As the smoke clears from the great swindle we will find ourselves rapidly reduced to Third World status complete with enforced structural adjustments. Massive cuts are coming in programs that promote commonwealth. Unemployment will increase, the middle class will continue its decline into a service (servant) based economy, pension funds will continue to shrivel, our razor-thin health care benefits will decrease even more, and those programs that once stabilized the living standards of our elders will vanish. The final dismantling of FDR's legacy is at hand.
The Constitution, with its separation of powers, was our center as a people. Without it we will have to relearn lessons of spirit and covenant. A friend reminded me that the task of the Hero is to learn to find the truth in the wilderness, bereft of hope, help, safety, friends, and protection from the fierce elements that are encountered. The Hero has to be stripped of comforts in order to remember who was once worth the effort of sacrifice. Out of our need to live together, we will have to find a new way. Or not.
The Biblical truth of the matter is that the generation that enters the wilderness does not live to see the Promised Land. None of us now living will see the covenant re-established. That will be work for future generations. In the meantime our task will be to lift up the idealism that once was, a summoning to remember in order to foresee. One day liberty will again call us into a renewed covenant, and a new generation will awaken from the trance of materialism, and will throw off its yoke of military bondage. One day our nation will live again. But that day is not today. Today we begin our lamentation, sorrows ever deepening, and woe is us.
Rev. Rich Lang is pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Ballard, and can be contacted through the Trinity United Methodist Church website: http://www.tumseattle.org2