Musings of the REV

Further Reflections on Sunday’s Texts

July 27, 2020

^“3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3, NRSV).

“He’ll never be satisfied. I’ll never be satisfied.” from the song, “Satisfied,” Hamilton.

I took the opportunity for a short while this morning to listen to a portion of the opening testimony of the Capitol police officers as the hearing begin on the January 6 Capitol riot. Since I listened, via WNYC, and did not watch the proceedings, I was not influenced by any visual cues of the officers, only the tone of their voices and their spoken words. You could hear the trauma they experienced that day in the words they spoke and the emotions that overcame them at times. We need to, and will, I hope, hear more direct testimony of the those who were on the front lines that day.

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit.” Capitol Police officers and Washington Metropolitan Police Department officers took there mission seriously and put their lives and bodies on the line to protect the Capitol Building, the Vice President, the 535 members of the House and Senate, and the many staff members and visitors in the building that day. In the line of duty, they acted selflessly, and have paid a high price for that.

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit.” Yet, since that day, so many in Congress have, for their own selfish political ambitions, sought to minimize the attempt to disrupt the peaceful transition of power that has existed in the country since the time of the first transition from George Washington’s administration to that of John Adams. All in defense and support of one man’s conceit, one man’s ambition to remain in power regardless of the will of the majority of the American public. The Big Lie – one man’s conceit that he could not possible have lost an election. The result of one man’s utter lack of humility or the ability to consider others as equal to or better than himself.

“He will never be satisfied.” Sad to say, that is reality. Ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, he continues to insist he won the election of 2020. More than 60 courts have ruled that the objections raised by the many lawsuits filed had no merit whatsoever. In fact, the lawyers that rushed from state to state in an effort to gain some legal traction for the Big Lie are now finding themselves under investigation for violating the ethics of the legal profession. One has even had his law license suspended pending potential disbarment proceedings.

“He will never be satisfied. I will never be satisfied.” Unfortunately, far too many are seizing on this time for their own personal selfish political ambitions and are showing their true colors. Others follow blindly along to their own detriment. No one in the camp of the Big Lie has yet voiced regret. No one has “repented” for the actions of January 6.

I am currently reading Anne Lamott’s book, Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage. Lamott describes repentance as: “to change directions so that you don’t end up where you are heading, to change your mind in the deepest center of yourself in a way that changes you, so that, as in the Mary Oliver lines, we “never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often.”” 

Speaking of Mary Oliver, the poem in last week’s bulletin speaks volumes:

Of the Empire

Mary Oliver

We will be known as a culture that feared death

and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity

for the few and cared little for the penury of the 

many. We will be known as a culture that taught 

and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke

little if at all about the quality of life for 

people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All

the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a 

commodity. And they will say that this structure 

was held together politically, which it was, and 

they will say also that our politics was no more

than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of

the heart, and that the heart, in those days, 

was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

Let us together guard against the invitation to be small, hard, and full of meanness. Instead, let us pray that God grants us the willingness to remember Jesus’s command to love one another – and not only remember it, but live it – for all our days. 

When our love for one another makes our burdens light to bear,

            find the sister and the brother, hungry for the feast we share;

            bind all our wounds again.

Every time our spirits languish, terrified to draw too near,

            may we know each other’s anguish and, with love that casts out fear,

            bind all our wounds again.

                                                                                            New Century Hymnal 552, vv. 3 & 4

God, in your mercy, hear our prayers. 

Help us to be satisfied and humble.

Fill us with love for You and our neighbors, today and always. Amen.