July 3, 2008
Confidence
Pentecost 8/9A
The Supremes are in the news again. Their latest decision to reach deep into the lives of the people is their interpretation of that eternally challenging second amendment to the Constitution.
It is only one sentence long, but in the ways we govern ourselves it seems one of the most puzzling statements of all. It says simply, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” It is beloved of the NRA. It is a daemon for the ACLU. Yet it is the law of the land.
Nobody is above it, we insist. The judiciary ranks on a par with the executive and the legislative in our system of balanced authority — the framers, the enforcers, the interpreters. But when push comes to shove as it often does, the courts are the system to which we turn to set things straight, to remind us that even they are not above the very laws they themselves make and implement.
This is at the heart of what is so often called the American political experiment. It is the greatest gift we can give to the rest of the world. We give it best, of course, not by force, not by breaking it and wrangling over it and being underhanded with it, but by show and tell, by the authority that comes by minding it and showing how it work for us. Thus can it become a major source of our confidence.
The proper lections this Sunday are in their way about that confidence. The prophet Zechariah cautions Israel about placing its weary confidence in temporal rulers (Zech 9.9-12). With the strangest of irony, he even calls them “prisoners of hope.” Paul warns Jewish Christians about placing absolute confidence in the law (Rms 7.15-25a). Even its most careful keeping hardly liberates us from sin, he counsels.
Matthew reminds us not to romanticize the historical Jesus (Mt 11.25-30). If the law veiled this with a reverence for ordinances and stipulations to protect our frailty, the incarnation of the Word tore that veil away once and for all.
Further, the confidence of the faithful community is of a kind that binds friends together, no longer the kind that binds lawgiver and subject together. Such confidence finds wisdom in loving, not killing one’s enemy. The faithful community’s confidence is robust from within and based on the Christ. It makes nothing relative but the irrelevant. Jesus turns the common tradition of the Judaic yoke of legalism through his own offer of gentle leading. “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Where, then, is our confidence? Many claim us to be a Christian nation. Many more confirm that it is our religious pluralism that is the better source of our strength. We pledge to be one nation under God, but even that is often questioned. We’re never quite sure exactly when and where prayer and the location of the Ten Commandments is really appropriate.
As Christians, where, then, must be our confidence? If, as Jesus so calls us, we place our confidence in him and accept the offer of his gentle yoke, we then become agents and servants of his love for God and neighbor and self, implementing that in our lives.
Once again in this season of our Declaration of Independence and for better or worse, we live in this land and in such a system by God’s grace. We pledge the kind of citizenship that makes it work. Might the law by some strange turn incarnate grace, be motivated by the Great Commandment as it takes shape in justice and peace for all? Might that be our mandate? Might that be where we place our confidence?