Sermon: Dignity and Self-Direction

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Dignity and Self-Direction

By Charles Rush

February 6, 2011

[ Audio (mp3, 3.4Mb) ]

m watching hand-held camera's January 25th late in the evening as thousands of people are still on the street after the first day of the protest. No major media are even in Cairo, save Al Jazeera, so you have these wobbling hand-held cameras and reporters you've never seen interviewing any Egyptian that has taken 2 semesters of English. It had that feel of being literally ‘in the moment' that history is in the first birth pangs of something new.

The reporters are always asking these rather ridiculous questions about what the movement wants and where it is going, even as people are just showing up literally. They turned the microphone on a group of twenty-something and one young man spoke for the group off the top of his head, trying to describe why he was there and why so many people were behind him.

He turned to history. He didn't quote the leaders of the French Revolution, nothing from Robespierre or Saint-Just. He didn't quote Lenin or Trotsky or Che. He quoted Thomas Jefferson that “All people are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” He probably memorized that line for English class and when you think about it, they may be the most elevated words of the English language penned thus far.

Those words were the common consensus between the Christians and the Deists in 1700, the common sense conclusion from our secular philosophers Locke, Rousseau, Kant and the teachings of Jesus that we are all children of God, that we are all made in the image of God, and that this is imprinted upon the hearts of each one of us in such a way that no one can take this from you. You are my beloved Child in whom I am well pleased. You are somebody. You are loveable. You have a sacred dignity. “You are the Light of the World, and a city on a hill will not be hidden.” (Mt. 5:14). You are the Salt of the Earth (Mt. 5:13) which gives life its savor and meaning.

It was this growing sentiment that sparked the Humanists in the Renaissance to recover human beauty, human welfare and make it the center of our social and cultural life together.

This growing sentiment sparked the Protestants in the Reformation to recover religion and keep it in the service of developing our work in the world, so that making the earth a better place to live, making our communities fuller expressions of meaning, making our work in the world the actual place that we make sacred.

Everywhere this sentiment took root, freedom prospered. And, finally, when we had a chance to start a new constitution in the New World, all of these historical movements converged, and Jefferson enshrined them in the Declaration of Independence. They were bigger than he knew.

He could not have known because he could not have imagined that one day his own slaves would quote them and stand for their emancipation.

He could not have known because he could not have imagined that one day his great grand-daughters would quote them and demand the right to vote, work, and live independently.

He could not have know because he could not have imagined that one day some kid in Cairo would quote them on Facebook to galvanize Egyptians from every walk of life to stand up for themselves and take control of their destiny, and start to re-make the face of the Middle East.

It has really been something to watch, as these protests have turned more peaceful and the force of collective will has started to amass. We don't know what comes next but the old order is done, seemingly just like that.

Earlier this week, David Brooks, was probably right. He mused a loud, “I wonder if sometime around 50 years ago a great mental tide began to sweep across the word. Before the tide, people saw themselves in certain fixed places in the social order. They accepted opinions from trusted authorities.

As the tide swept through, they began to see themselves differently. They felt they should express their own views, and these views deserved respect. They mentally bumped themselves up to the first class and had a different set of expectations of how they should be treated. Treatment that once seemed normal now felt like an insult. They began to march for responsive government and democracy.”[i]

Sometimes at these moments, I remember a piece of tape that plays in my head ready to be re-cued. It was French women in Normandy waving handkerchiefs out the windows at American Soldiers liberating France from the Nazi's. That was a simple, but profound social moment. The Nazi myth of the Master Aryan Race had been punctured at Omaha beach by a bunch of ordinary boys, farmers from Kansas and mechanics from Brooklyn. At the time, it was just a wee little hole in this huge bolt of cloth if you remember that Hitler controlled most of Europe, Stalin all of Russia, and Mao was consolidating communist control of China. But to see their heart-felt joy at freedom was so moving and to be the good guys for a moment like that was very fulfilling.

And Brooks is right about the uplifting march towards freedom each time we have seen it: Mahatma Gandhi and his non-violent resistance movement that led to the formation of India, even as his heart was nearly broken by the violent formation of Pakistan.

In a different way, Dr. King and our own Civil Rights movement which broadened freedom and dignity in our country.

In the 80's, Václav Havel and Czechoslovakia leading the protest against communism and for self-determination.

Lech Walesa forming a union in Poland and through that a new democratic nation.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the release of all the Soviet satellite states.

Steven Biko and Nelson Mandela and the freedom marches that brought an end to Apartheid (1993).

The Orange Revolution in the Ukraine in 2004…

There are others that have started and not yet broken through.

Aung San Suu Kyi – and the struggle to end the military dictatorship in Burma.

The Dali Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet and the Chinese appropriation of their country.

Then Tunisia, now Egypt… with all the other authoritarian regimes of the Middle East suddenly on notice: Yemen, Syria, Jordan, even Sudan. Every monarchy and dictatorship is on edge and they should be. Something is a foot that is not likely to end all that soon.

Communication has proved a powerful thing. I shall never forget being in Moscow in 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We were invited to many social engagements. Over and over I would ask people what brought about the end of Communism. Of course, the deeper answer to that question is very complicated. But over and over, they would give me the shortest, immediate answer…

CNN… In the late 80's technology made it possible for more and more Russians to get TV signals from the West. What did they watch? They watched the news of Europe. And when they saw that the people in West Berlin were driving Mercedes Benz cars through this well lit, clean city, the gig was up.

They looked around at their dysfunctional society and they knew for a fact that their leaders had been lying to them as much as they had suspected lo these many years. They had that bitter moment of realizing that the cesspool that was their cities was not the socialist vanguard paradise and they just quit following en masse.

I too wonder if what is happening in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Jordan is that people are starting to become connected with each other, finding out that there are a lot of people all around them that are genuinely unfulfilled. I wonder if they aren't connecting more to the rest of the world through the internet and slowly starting to realize the depth of corruption, the depth of police brutality, if they just don't compare themselves to the first world and realize that there are enough dysfunctional internal handicaps to their society that they won't live like this anymore.

If that is true, that is very hopeful, because it suggests that what is happening on our screens right now is not going to come to an end very soon. People will keep organizing, keep pressing for change. And you might be able to close down the internet for a season. And you might be able to organize a security force that can keep them at bay for a season. But the bar has been raised higher for freedom. People want a stake in determining their future. People want to own their collective future and they are not going to put up with anything less.

The Bible has an expression for these seasons when there are so many surprising leaps forward that you are just riding your work out cycle rather slack-jawed at what you are seeing. These days, it seems to revolve around a rate of change happening simply more broadly and more quickly than most any of us ever would have imagined possible. You just sort of stand there in wonder, watching the monitor in the airport just to get an update because it is just… unbelievable.

The Bible says “In the fullness of time”. In the fullness of time… “But when the fullness of time had come”, writes Saint Paul, “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children of God. (Galatians 4:4-5, ESV)

Perhaps when you least expect it, probably after a really long wait, so long that you have really stopped expecting much. Perhaps after so many subterranean tectonic shifts have taken place that you were only barely aware of, they suddenly come together and something new and wonderful is birthed in your midst. It is a harvest season of life, when things are converging.

We are living through one of those seasons if we could only zoom out.

Of course, it doesn't mean the age of Aquarius is upon us. What is already evident is that the denizens of Egypt have no real idea of what they are asking for or what comes next. As one commentator put it, this is no Jeffersonian moment. That is not even a real option for Egypt.

When we founded our country, we had several major advantages that the Egyptians do not have, as Hannah Arendt used to remind us.[ii]

We really didn't have a revolution in our country, certainly not like France or any of the nations from the Old Country. They literally revolted against a moribund aristocracy and they had to first overthrow the Old Regime. So the French Revolution is remembered as much for the wanton use of the guillotine as anything else.

The Americans really had a Constitution, as Professor Arendt liked to underscore. We were already made up of Colonists who were largely equal in station of life. They were almost all farmers, small business owners, mercantile and guild workers. They had quite similar educational backgrounds. They were from quite similar religious backgrounds, voluntary congregations that supported themselves.

They already had a very high percentage of people that had democratic values they practiced in their business, their church, their schools. Even listening to our news anchors on TV, it is painfully evident that they don't really have any actual idea of just how corrupt and limited countries like Egypt and Syria are in reality. They have no idea how few people own anything, have a stake in their business life, their school life, their religious life. The Egyptians long for self-direction that is part and parcel of self-dignity. But they have so few traditions that support the virtues of self-direction. Americans completely underestimate the difference between the New World and the Old World and how much will have to be re-structured in their institutions and in their values and self-understanding.

Just like we discovered after the fall of Communism, democracy does not just spring into action, after you end generations of deformation. It will not just spring into life here either.

And Americans forget just how much work went into the Constitution. As Professor Arendt used to remind us, the Founding Fathers sent a substantial delegation to the library at Rome where they studied all of the Constitutions from Greek City-States and Roman prefects that they could get their hands on to devise a system of governance. It took quite a lot of study, debate.

Meanwhile, the Egyptians have a population of 80 million people, not self-reliant and agrarian like the founding of our country, they are unlikely to have the time or the luxury of a substantial Constitutional Congress such as they really need.

No, the differences will be great, fraught with compromise and even reversals even. They can't really understand what they are getting into. As one Iraqi politician put it this week, “be careful what you wish for”. Self-determination is a lot of responsibility and a lot of work.

But it is still a “Kairos Moment”, a harvest time, a time when pregnancy is about to give birth to something new. It is the way of the future. And it has the validation of the now. You can feel it. Anderson Cooper found someone marching through Cairo, one of the only women on the street. She is from New York. He asked her what she was feeling as she stood in the Square at night. She clenched he teeth for a moment and said, “I'm proud of my country. Tonight I'm proud to be an Egyptian.” And he said back to her, “You weren't proud before?” Without a moment's thought she said, “No”. At those moments, you can feel the future pulling you forward more than the past pushing you to where you stand. It is the draw of hope.

The scriptures teach us that the Spirit of God is at work in our lives and our world like that. We are all connected and through this huge Web we exchange a transcendent force that evolves, matures, gets broken, gets healed, shatters from the trauma of terror, and multiplies through synergies of reciprocal prosperity and well-being. And in these latter days, the complexity of this inter-connected web is producing faster change, more far-reaching change than any of us really anticipated. We live in interesting times. Let us pray for the collective wisdom and moral character to realize our potential. Amen.

[i] “The Quest For Dignity” New York Times, February 1, 2011, p. A27.

[ii] Arendt, Hannah On Revolution (New York: Viking, 1963). I used Professor Arendt in my dissertation. Someone once asked me which man was the most influential theologian that I studied. I replied, “he was a woman, a Jew, and actually taught in the philosophy/politics department- Hannah Arendt.” I was glad to read that she actually gave the lectures for this book at Princeton. Unfortunately, she was never granted tenure at Harvard or Columbia either and ended up teaching at the New School for Social Research. Nevertheless, a brilliant mind.