Saturday, January 21, 2023
Memorial of Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
We are not as strong as we think we are
A tabernacle was constructed, the outer one, in which were the lampstand, the table, and the bread of offering; this is called the Holy Place. Behind the second veil was the tabernacle called the Holy of Holies.
And then there are the capitol buildings in every county, every state, and in Washington, DC. Whether or not anything of consequence gets accomplished within the inner sanctum, the outer walls are mostly beautiful with their marble and granite and sandstone and slate. Although nothing like the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
We are proud of our buildings and our history but it’s true, as pointed out by historian Heather Cox Richardson, that “the American Revolution was only a piece of a global conflict that included Great Britain, France, Spain, the Dutch Republic, Jamaica, Gibraltar, and India.” We are not as strong as we think we are. Or as all fired important, either.
Hakim Jeffries, Minority Leader of the US House of Representatives, delivered a long speech long after midnight on January 7, 2023, as he handed the majority gavel to Kevin McCarthy. It’s kind of like our political version of Psalm 119: as the poet worked through the Hebrew alphabet in Psalm 119, Rep. Jeffries did the same thing in his speech with our 26 letters:
We will always put American values over autocracy, benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues, economic opportunity over extremism, freedom over fascism, governing over gaslighting, hopefulness over hatred, inclusion over isolation, justice over judicial overreach, knowledge over kangaroo courts, liberty over limitation, maturity over Mar-a-Lago, normalcy over negativity, opportunity over obstruction, people over politics, quality of life issues over QAnon, reason over racism, substance over slander, triumph over tyranny, understanding over ugliness, voting rights over voter suppression, working families over the well-connected, xenial over xenophobia, ‘yes, we can’ over ‘you can’t do it,’ and zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation.
How do you like that? I know he must have been so proud, even just to have gotten through his paragraph. I would have been, anyway.
And then I think of St. Agnes, barely a teenager when she was martyred in the third century. The Wikipedia article details exceptionally ugly violence on the occasion of her young beauty, undesired by her but desired by everyone else. When she insisted that God had claimed her for his own, one young suitor turned her in as a Christian. And that was the beginning of the end for Miss Agnes.
Our lives are rarely interrupted like the life of Agnes. Most of our violence occurs in courtrooms and prisons, behind the walls of our capitols. Not to say that good things do not happen back there too, back in the smoke-filled rooms. (No smoke anymore, of course) But so little of what really happens trickles into the news stories, that we find ourselves assuming either the best or the worst, but not actually knowing anything much at all.
I see I’m getting negative and cynical. Stop that, David!
The blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished unto God, will cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God. All you peoples, clap your hands, shout unto God with a cry of gladness!
(Hebrews 9, Psalm 47, Acts 16, Mark 3)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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