Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
July 4, 2004
Judges 8: 22-28
In the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine, Jonathan Chait wrote a column in which he wondered why it is so important for our political leaders, and especially Presidents or those who would be President, always to appear so upbeat, cheerful and optimistic. In his words, “Every four years candidates strive to out-Pollyanna one another, laboring to maintain their smiles, never allowing a sobering thought to cloud their gaze. All this reflects the curious but widely held conviction among those who practice and cover American politics that optimism is a prerequisite for any Oval Office aspirant – almost a matter of patriotism.” In fact, during the Democratic Presidential primaries, John Edwards – someone who seems almost relentlessly optimistic, said, “Cynics didn’t build this country, optimists built this country!” Is that true? Was he right about that?
Actually there was a long and intense struggle among our Founding Fathers over just what the government should be about, how strong or weak it would be. At one point, Alexander Hamilton exclaimed, “The People is a great beast!” Not a very optimistic comment. In Chait’s words, “As a matter of fact, the Founding Fathers had a deeply pessimistic view of both the public and its prospective leaders, which is why they constructed an elaborate system to prevent not only traditional tyranny but popular tyranny as well. If the people could be trusted to elect saints, we wouldn’t need checks and balances, judicial review, bicameral legislatures, and so on.” As Ben Franklin said after the constitutional convention, “It’s a republic, if you can keep it.”
So you came this morning for worship and a sermon, what you get is a civics lecture – of course you will be tested later! In the meantime, with the civics lesson as a backdrop, let’s turn to our scripture lesson for today. The days of the Hebrews’ wilderness wanderings were over. They were no longer desert nomads. They had settled down in what they called “the Promised Land,” where they had become farmers and herdsmen. But all was not quite going to plan. They had a major problem.
At harvest time each year, bands of Bedouin raiders, Midianites, would stream across the Jordan River and plunder their crops, stealing their hard-earned produce, leaving them broken and bitter, not to mention facing starvation. The Bible says that these plunderers were like a “plague of locusts” devouring everything in their path.
The people had no response, no defense, and nowhere to turn. The future seemed grim indeed. And then along came Gideon. Here was someone who personified the phrase, “natural leader.” He refused to be intimidated; he refused to give in to despair. Instead he gathered around himself a band of warriors and, in short order, brought an end to the plundering of the Midianites. He secured the borders for his people, made their farms and land secure, and restored stability and peace. Indeed, as the Biblical narrative suggests, “The land had rest and peace for forty years because of Gideon.”
And how did the people respond to the deliverance? They went to Gideon and said, “Rule over us!” I guess it’s no surprise, really. How long has it been repeated in the long sweep of human history. A people, hard-pressed by problems, feeling afraid, insecure and troubled, sensing terror on all sides, decides there is only one way out – they will find a leader – more than that, a ruler – who will tell them what to do, better yet, do it for them, and who will bring order and the promise of security from any outside or internal threat. “Rule over us!” It’s what my mentor and colleague, Bill Nelson, calls “the totalitarian temptation.” In last Tuesday’s USA Today, there was a letter decrying the excess attention the media and others are giving to allegations of torture of Iraqi detainees by American forces. I wish I would have cut it out, but essentially this letter writer was insisting that a little torture is perfectly justified if administered in the name of American security. I found that to be an interesting letter coming out a week before our July 4th celebration. I wonder what Benjamin Franklin would say about that? Just how much are we willing to trade or give up? Even our long-standing national principles, I mean as long as I can remember watching John Wayne movies, I have learned that Americans do not participate in torture – ever! The other guy does that, we don’t do that. It is against everything we stand for. Just how much are we willing to give up in the name of safety and security? Again, the totalitarian temptation.
“Rule over us,” the people of Israel pleaded with Gideon. Again, not very surprising. What was surprising was his response. “I will not rule over you,” he said, “Only the Lord can do that.”
I wonder, do you suppose our Founding Fathers were familiar with the story of Gideon? As they were setting up the constitutional government of this country, do you suppose they took a look at that story? I wonder if they might also have considered the story of the Exodus and the leadership of Moses. You know the story: Moses leads the people of Israel out of Egyptian slavery to freedom. They pass through the Red Sea and out into the wilderness. But in the wilderness, things get a little challenging. They run short of food and water, they fear they are lost, they fear that they will perish. Suddenly freedom doesn’t seem quite what it was cracked up to be. In fact, they plead with Moses to take them back to Egypt. “At least as slaves” they said, “there was plenty to eat. Life as a slave wasn’t so bad. Their fear and their immediate need override any long-term hope for freedom and well being. They are willing to trade freedom for the security of slavery. And Moses job as a leader is not to rule over them, but to keep them oriented toward the future God has promised and not toward a bankrupt vision of a past that never really was. Do you suppose the founding fathers knew that story?
It can happen so easily – not all at once, but little by little, bit by bit. Bill Nelson says it like this: “An emergency arises. A crisis develops. And there is always the temptation to let a ruler or the government assume powers that would be intolerable in normal times. It is the old martial law’ syndrome, in which freedom is surrendered only for a brief moment, only until order is restored, only until the crisis is past. But the trouble is – as the long history of governments suggests – what are adopted as emergency measures often become frozen in concrete.” And so, in the name of security, we arrest immigrants and detain them indefinitely, without trials, without any charges being brought. In the name of security, our government claims the right to try individuals secretly before military commissions. There were even proposals that the government should start monitoring what library books we are reading! Don’t worry, we are told – just temporary – just until the crisis passes, and most people affected are not U.S. citizens anyway. Why don’t I find that comforting?
And I hope you don’t suppose that what I am talking about this morning is only politics. It is in fact profoundly biblical – is very much what biblical religion has always concerned itself with: order at the price of freedom, security and rules at the cost of one’s humanness. And so, Jesus insisted, “The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” According to Jesus, even the religious law must first concern itself with the dignity and value and well-being of persons; even the religious law is accountable to the people and to God.
The theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, was a hard-eyed realist. The murderous excesses of Stalinism in the Soviet Union in the 1940’s and 50’s horrified him. We’ve heard a lot of talk about the struggle between good and evil in recent months, and in Stalinism, Niebuhr saw evil, an evil which had to be resisted. He wrote, “The proper attitude toward evil is anger, ” but then went on to say that in dealing with evil, we must avoid anger’s two temptations – hatred and vengeance. Instead, again in his words, “We must allow love, justice and integrity to shape our response to evil.” Love, justice, and integrity: they enable us to name the evil, engage it, but not be overwhelmed by it.
Love, justice, integrity – not fear, not security at all costs, not the oft repeated cry, “rule over us.” Those who founded this nation, who wrote the constitution we celebrate this day, understood that a free society cannot merely be inherited. It must be chosen anew by each generation. Clearly Gideon understood this. And so he told the people that no one person’s voice is the voice of God and no single person should have too much authority over our souls. He also reminded them that God and God alone – no ruler, no party, no nation – commanded their ultimate loyalty.
But freedom can be disorderly and unruly at times, particularly in a time when things seem to have gotten out of hand and the world seems a very dangerous place indeed. Surely some controls are necessary; some limits on liberty must be endured, if even for a little while. But what price are we willing to pay for our security…or for our liberty? Israel said to Moses, “Let us return to slavery.” To Gideon it said, “Rule over us.” In a time of uncertainly, what do we say?
Consider this: what if the round ups, incarcerations, and the deportations following 9/11 managed to avert even one terrorists attack – saving one life or thousands of lives? What if...? Did that possibility make the effort worth it? How do we measure such trade offs? From the Christian Century: “The ideal, of course, is fully to protect civil liberties while fully preventing terrorism. But in practice, no system is without flaws. Commonsense suggests that a system will err more in one direction than the other. So what direction do we want to go?” As I said earlier, what do we choose? In a fearful time, what do we choose?
There is a story, doubtless apocryphal, in which Tom Lincoln says of his young son, “He can’t sing; he just can’t sing at all.” To which his wife, and the mother of young Abe replies, “No, Tom, he can’t. But one day he may make the world sing.”
And Abraham Lincoln did just that. But the question remains: have we heard the tune? Do we know how deeply Biblical it is? And on this 4th of July, in a time of fear and very real threat, do we continue to choose – to choose anew – that government, “of the people, by the people, for the people?” That “…one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”