Jesus is disobedient to the rulers of his time; the “scribes and Pharisees,” and “the Sanhedrin.” He will not be chained by them, not made subservient to their divisive system, as others are. Jesus is free and is teaching others to be free. Jesus keeps encouraging common unity. Therefore, he keeps encouraging reconciliation, “be reconciled with your brother.” Rulers are agitated with Jesus. He is teaching and witnessing freedom and reconciliation between people the rulers want to enslave and divide. Jesus consequently tells listeners, “your goodness must surpass that of the rulers.”
Rulers today continue to divide people against each other; wealthy against poor, men against women, citizen against immigrant, whites against so many others. There are people who still obey such rulers. The obedience to the current U.S. ruler, Donald Trump, is cult-like. The obedient ones won’t be honest about this ruler and his consequences and therefore aren’t free. Their ‘goodness will not surpass this ruler.’ Thus, for good reason, people of conscience are concerned. To allay concern, some public commentators offer that once this current ruler is deposed from office, so too his party or system will be deposed. How so? While the GOP system is egregious in its rule, the ruler system, no matter the party title, is 2,000years old; Jesus was dealing with it back then. It’s a ruler system that claims to be Godly and is devised to enslave others. Reform alone will not change it. Nor will violence. In the U.S., the ruler system did not disappear after the South’s defeat in the Civil War. So it is that a system of white supremacy persists in the U.S. and is still waging civil war. On the world stage, the ruler system did not disappear after the Nazi’s defeat in WWII. So it is that a system of Nazi white supremacy persists in the U.S. and across the world and is still waging war. The ruler system ebbs and flows. It passes through periods of being more overtly aggressive with violent resurgences. We in the U.S. are currently living in such a resurgence, a white supremacist Nazi resurgence. The reason may be the same as it was in Jesus’ time. Some people will not be free of the ruler system. Such people chain themselves to rulers and act as slaves to them and their system. Is it possible there are people who need to be slaves? If so, in the U.S., it seems to be the desire of people who match qualities with the slaveowner, for example, white and male. What is not a match between them is their degree of control. Slaveowners keep taunting white male slaves with token possibilities of having the ruler’s greater degree of control while knowing it is rarely attained. Thus, the white male slave forever salivates and forever mimics. They are the Lord of the manor that is their hovel. They are the paymaster of the money that is their slave wage. So it is, they obey; to their own diminishment. Because all the wealthy white slaveowner ever really promises the poor white male is that he will always be a kept house slave as compared to the kept field slave. The white slave is superior to the African, the Italian, the Puerto Rican, the Mexican, to the Arab, and so forth who will be abused all the worse. How do we tell the obedient white male he too is but a slave to the slaveowner class? He too is abused, chained. How do we tell them Jesus’ challenge to be free of divisive rulers is directed at them? The system of slaveowners will not die out until freedom is desired by those manipulated into being obedient house slaves. We can help them hear Jesus’ unifying and freeing message, “go first and be reconciled with your brother.”
“Let the inchained soul, shut up in darkness … look; his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open;… For empire is no more… For everything that lives is holy.” (Let the Slave – Van Morrison, William Blake)
Prayer: Spirit, I vow a life witness to reconciliation.
Question: To which divider or division might I be enslaved?
February 16, 2020 Gospel Matthew 5:17-37 Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time