Jesus is disobedient to the rulers of his time; the “scribes and Pharisees,” so too “the Sanhedrin.” He will not be chained by them, made subservient to their divisive rules or system. He is free and encourages others to be free. He encourages people’s common unity; “be reconciled with your brother.” As agitating as the free Jesus is to the rulers, more agitating is Jesus teaching and witnessing for others to also disobey the rulers and be free, be united. He tells them it is good to do so, “your goodness must surpass that of the rulers.” Jesus provides a witness to the many people who foolishly obey rulers and their divisive system.
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 and their rules. The obedience to the current U.S. ruler, Donald Trump, is cult-like. The obedient ones will not be honest about this ruler and his consequences. Their ‘goodness will not surpass that of the rulers.’ 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, dates back to Jesus and shows him dealing with it 2,000 years ago. It is a ruler system that enables slaveowners and renders others as slaves to them. It is a system made holy by its rulers – aggressively so – as shown by the current GOP ruler and his supplicants. It is unlikely to simply disappear. There is no reason to think the ruler system will make even a course adjustment, certainly not on its own. 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 is still waging war. The ruler system ebbs and flows, passing through periods of more overtly aggressive unto violent resurgences. We in the U.S. are currently living in such a resurgence, a white supremacist neo-Nazi resurgence. The reason may well go to Jesus’ challenge – the people who will not be free of the ruler system. So very many people chain themselves to rulers and act as slaves to them and their system. Given evidence from the current presidential cult, is it possible there are people who need to be slaves? The need seems to surface in people who match characteristics of the slaveowner; for example, in the U.S., 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; to the African, the Italian, the Puerto Rican, the Mexican, and to the Arab who will be abused all the worse. Who will tell the obedient white male he too is but a slave to the slaveowner class? He too is abused, chained. Who will 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 not only by field slaves but by those manipulated into being obedient house slaves. They especially need to 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