Our Last, Best Shot at a Covenant Culture

You hear the word “crisis” used regularly these days to describe the nation’s financial mess, although most of us “regular” folk feel no regret that the boys and girls playing on Wall Street fell off the monkey bars. But as much as we enjoy seeing these narcissists get their due, we as a culture have no choice but to fix the mess before their pain trickles down in a way their gain never did.

In the short term Congress will craft a fix that keeps the boat afloat without addressing the basic design problem. We will remain a nation in absurd contrast to our vision of ourselves. Hopefully, at least, the bailout cost will prevent us from starting any more foolish wars around the world. Sometimes it takes a crisis to initiate change.

When I look out on the landscape of our country, I’m reminded of Jesus looking upon Jerusalem and calling it, “… the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often,” he said, “have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate.”

These words in the 23rd chapter of Matthew conclude a long section in which Jesus rails against the religious leaders of his day, calling them “blind guides” who strain out gnats while swallowing camels whole. And since we in America have become more and more like the Judea of Jesus’ day, a land for the privileged few which he saw as neglecting “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith,” it’s no surprise our churches are indecisive about our own social-economic plight. Like the Pharisees, they strain out gnats while swallowing camels.

As our modern Jerusalem falters, the boys and girls at Focus Action, the James Dobson political group, are sending out dire warnings on what will happen if Democrats capture the White House. Their main fear is that gays and lesbians will be allowed to seek God’s face in peace. Talk about straining out gnats -- here we are at a watershed moment when religious leaders could join forces to encourage the true covenant society described in the Old Testament, but all they can think of is whose zipper is up or down. By the way, just decades after Jesus’ warning, Jerusalem became a dust heap.

Something like a year ago, as the presidential campaign was warming up, conservative NY Times columnist David Brooks said the central issue we face as a nation is the failure of our leadership class. His message is similar to the one Jesus brought to Jerusalem, and Brooks also has been proven correct. Fortunately for him, he hasn’t been crucified for his words, which I guess shows we’ve made some progress in two thousand years. But like Jesus he has been pretty much ignored.

Still, I’m going to take this moment to think positively -- not about the crisis melting away, but about the change it might bring. Jesus couched his criticism in spiritual terms because he knew that was the only quarter from which true reformation could emerge. It’s no different today. But our churches must quit worrying so much about gnats and focus on camels.

We see now what comes to us when we allow the material to dominate the spiritual. Masters and servants both suffer. Marx predicted that capitalism would sow the seeds of its own destruction. The one things he didn’t count on was the power of God’s love to moderate the forces of selfishness. This might be our last, best opportunity to recapture a society that truly embraces what Jesus calls “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.”