Saturday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 394

Woe to those who plan iniquity, and work out evil on their couches; in the morning light they accomplish it when it lies within their power. They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and they take them....

With the election of another minority president in 2016, many in the United States have begun to look more seriously at the dark side of our nation's ethos. The twin victories of the Second World War over Germany and Japan are far behind us. We have seen a nation's ascent to dominance over the world, and the beginnings of its descent as the unifying spirit of that terrible war ebbs away. 

We have felt the challenge of civil rights for minorities, especially for African-Americans and women; and, at first, many thought the most powerful nation in the world could readily make these concessions. Didn't we free the slaves in 1865 and give the vote to women in 1920? After those major hurdles, it should be easy to grant "full equality." Surely the best way to maintain our dominance is to cultivate the best talent from the largest possible pool. A good surgeon doesn't have to be "white;" a competent scientist might be a woman or transgender; an airline pilot could be Muslim. 

But we're learning that "we" didn't free slaves or grant votes; slaves freed themselves and women took the right to vote. Women and African-Americans attained these freedoms despite much opposition and foot-dragging many years after Thomas Jefferson penned his famous dictum, "All men are created equal." Neither he nor his founding brothers meant it literally. They stumbled into those words in the same manner that Communist Russia agreed to the Helsinki Accord, not realizing that they were agreeing to freedom of the press. 

Black Lives Matter and Me Too are the current manifestations of these movements for civil rights, and they challenge our darker natures once again. 

(I was struck recently by a reference to Donald Trump Jr's "girlfriend" in the New York Times. This "girl" is fifty-one years old! I know of no man who would want to be called a boy at that age, and yet our liberal media still describes some women as girls. Hello?)

Perhaps the mood is changing and we're realizing America never was great for many, perhaps most, of its people. Some of us are ready to ponder our sins against freedom. We might yet try to atone and make reparation. 

I have been reading the poetry of George Herbert lately, a young Anglican priest of the seventeenth century. The gentle prelate had finally surrendered to his priestly vocation, ceding his aspirations to public office, to lead a quiet country congregation far removed from London. 

The poet's Catholic religion did not hesitate to recognize personal sin: 

Church-Lock And Key

I know it is my sinne, which locks thine eares,

                    And bindes thy hands!

Out-crying my requests, drowning my tears;

Or else the chilnesse of my faint demands.

But as cold hands are angrie with the fire,

                And mend it still;

So I do lay the want of my desire,

Not on my sinnes, or coldnesse, but thy will.

Yet heare, O God, onely for his bloud's sake,

                Which pleads for me;

For though sinnes plead too, yet like stones they make

His bloud's sweet current much more loud to be.

I hear in his poetry a humble estimation of himself; he sees himself as God sees him, both blessed and sinful. 

Can a nation recognize its blessedness, it's aspiration to freedom; and, at the same time, address its innumerable sins against freedom? Many phrases come to mind as we struggle with this; none of them adequate: 

• We didn't realize...;
• Look how far we've come;
• We meant well;
• You've got it better than most;
• God knows we've tried;
• and so forth....

Penance begins with a readiness to hear the worst of our sins, and even to be accused unfairly as we have used unfairly. I can do this only if I am sure of 

"his bloud's sake / Which pleads for me...." 

When we feel sure of God's love for a nation which is just as beautiful and just as cruel as every other nation in history, we will be ready to atone and repair the damage we have caused.