Three young women are walking home late at night. The first says “We should split up so that if someone attacks us, one of us is free to get help.” The second says “We should stay together so that if someone attacks us, we can fight him off better.” The third girl says “If I knew you two were planning on getting attacked, I would’ve never agreed to walk home with you!” Is it a joke? Is it also a reality that too many people have to plan on getting attacked? It is the reality for most women, most immigrants and asylees. It is the reality for the disciples in today’s reading, who were attacked by “the leading men of the city, (who) stirred up a persecution against” them. But all any of them are wanting to is find their way home.
What does it mean if we accept the personal likelihood of being attacked, of devising never to be alone, of taking different routes home, or to purchasing different weapons to defend ourselves when attacked. It means we have accepted Militarism. Militarism makes surviving an attack our responsibility. U.S. culture is currently calling victims of gun attacks ‘heroes.’ Even children are called heroes when they sacrifice their lives attempting to stop their gun wielding attackers. Who has groomed us for such a perverse life of unapologetic attack – no, persecution? It is attackers who have done so, in so many ways. Even the sentence structure of this reflection begins by making attackers invisible. Attackers are the cause of it all and yet are generally absent from consideration – unless they are a minority or an immigrant. That is bigotry. It is not bigotry but a fact that the vast majority of attackers are men, a number having military training. Male militarists groom us to be responsible for the harm they do to us. So groomed, we craft conversations and take actions for safety so that male attackers are made absent from even consideration let alone conversion. For example, we live in a time in which we might be attacked by a man, with a gun, in our home or office or school. Yet such male attackers and their attacks are defended, even facilitated socially by an attacker system – no, a persecution system; a persecuting GOP, a persecuting capitalist weapons industry, and a persecuting military that sanctifies it all. It is an international perversion presently being expanded at the U.S. southern border. Militant white males are attacking – no, persecuting – immigrants who are brown and black and women and children. Yet all these travelers are wanting to do is find their way home. The travelers are seeking their way home because the home they love has been plundered or shot up or bombed out by these very same male militant attackers – no, persecutors. In the U.S., the militants are the cause of that which they now claim is a crisis at the border. Militant conservers and their liberal co-rulers use dictators, corporate pillaging that produce or align with drug cartels, and train paramilitary groups. All the militants are the cause of people fleeing their homes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. Current calls for inclusion can contribute to stopping the U.S.’s militant attacks – no, persecution – on Central American democracy and people’s rights. As well, we can stop rulers from putting up borders – whether its borders on the truth or on thinking or on the human right to move across land and sea because people are seeking home.
For centuries, militants have been persecuting us and our right to a home and violating borders to do so. The ancient and still operative slave trade is an obvious example. U.S. railroad titans crossed every possible border in their persecution of indigenous peoples and their right to a home. The same is being done by militants wanting various mineral resources, most recently oil. The history of humanity is ruling capitalists setting and /or invading borders for their desired capital gain. They treated every border as porous and every immigrant as cheap labor. When human rights claims arose, the capitalist slave trader class attacked – no, persecuted – immigrants and set the dominant mostly white population against them. Ruling capitalists are militant in presently claiming the border’s supposed sanctity from immigrants who are seeking a way home. It is time for the attacker / persecutor class to stay home. It is time for free people to create home – a home of communion among all people.
Prayer: Spirit of Freedom, help us to create a home of communion among all people.
Question: How is the ruling party an attacker party?
May 12, 2019 Gospel John 10:27-30 Fourth Sunday of Easter