Today’s readings ask us to consider to whom we belong. Zechariah speaks of his nation as the best nation and his joy in belonging to it, “Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion, shout for joy,” “See, your king shall come to you.” Jesus speaks of “little ones,” vulnerable people who form community, as those to whom we can belong.
Nations are formed by generals, kings, presidents and such – a master class who strategize their rule over a territory. They determine the soldiers, police, and subordinate political rulers needed to secure people’s obedience. They then set their borders accordingly. The master class propagandizes their bordered populace, Religiously so. We’re groomed for patriotic love of our nation as the best nation. You’d think we belonged to each other in such an arrangement, but we don’t. We belong to – or rather are bound to – the projection of master class superiority that coerces infighting about who does or doesn’t belong in their superior nation. Nations are not formed by Jesus’ “little ones.” Jesus’ little ones form communities. It’s how we belong to each other. It’s also how we replace the master class’ millennia-old supremacist rule through nations. We can start by replacing the master class’ national authority with the people’s conscientious authority – in ever widening circles. Conscience is the authority the master class targets when it propagandizes for patriotic love of a nation – ‘Love it or leave it.’ Author Patrick Mazza suggests that if we haven’t been exercising our conscience enough lately, we can consider a few facts about this nation. For example, the U.S. is not a democracy, rather it’s an empire. It’s always abused its domestic population and always waged wars on ‘foreign’ populations. It’s always centralized control in the master class to keep doing so. If these were not the facts, Donald Trump could not be doing what he’s doing. Amongst Mazza’s suggestions is to form community via “bioregional” care connections “in which power is decentralized, and resources are democratically managed.” It’s a way of making real our Declaration of Moral Independence, “We must declare independence from empire as a way of life, and develop economies that do not systematically abuse people or the planet on which we all rely.” “In declaring moral independence from empire, we open the way to a different U.S. or post-U.S. order altogether.” Some people, intelligent and well-intentioned, propose not a different U.S. but a restored U.S. We recover from the master class of MAGA/Trump by restoring the institutions he perverted to functioning order. Much good is done by common people across the nation in the U.S.’ many institutions being destroyed by Trump. That good needs to be done in community, because, institutionally, that good routinely gets cutback by the master class to benefit itself, specifically its war machine. Empire, certainly the U.S., is a war machine, even when operated under the supposed rule of law by liberal reformers. We cannot return to what was, it is the cause of what always has been and presently is – rule by a master class.
“Why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?… Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned,… blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.… I hear the mournful wail of millions!… to chime in with the popular theme, would be most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view.” “Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will… denounce… everything that serves to perpetuate slavery—the great sin and shame of America!” “We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused.” (What to the Slave is Your Fourth of July – Frederick Douglass)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, guide us in conscience with a willingness to belong to each other.
Question: What is my declaration of moral independence?
July 05, 2026 Gospel Matthew 11:25-30 Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
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