At moments, this week’s readings feel like a prayer for today.
We believe: we have the right to live in a world which acknowledges and honors the dignity of all human beings. This belief arises from the same place which feeds our faith in God. It’s woven into us, it seems; it sustains us, and translates into compelled action when we’re most in need.
It is also foundational to democracy, and expresses the dearest hopes and visions of the monotheistic traditions. In the States we’ve called that dignity a grace, and an inalienable one: our founding documents credit the creator with instilling our human drive to pursue full lives, full enjoyment of our liberties, and happiness. We accept freedom as a given, and here, we’ve frequently been fortunate enough to enjoy it.
The global events of the last month serve as a reminder that there are still those who would deny that all are endowed with dignity, or that political systems should be constructed in a way which honors them. Our attention has been repeatedly drawn to the reality that tyrants still abound. But the reactions of our brothers and sisters in the world community to their various oppressions have also renewed the idea that our drive to be free is innate.
In Tunisia, first, oppressive regimes were protested; then Egyptians awed the world by collectively and forcefully protesting their dictator out of office. Shows of support in Tehran evolved into protests on behalf of the Iranian people themselves; and now, in Libya, we see another brutish leader begin to fall. Our mutual humanity compels our celebration for those who now, because of their own persistence and principles, have new possibilities before them. In the Middle East and Africa, in places which mere weeks ago acknowledged no inborn human excellence, the citizenry have become effulgent. They humble us all.
Our readings in scripture this week exalt them, among all who have ever been shackled by arbitrary systems, alongside all who have ever preferenced defending the human spirit above everyday concerns. We celebrate what’s happening across the globe; the word of God celebrates all such movements with us.
In Isaiah, YHWH says, in some favorable time, “I have answered you [supplicating people]”(Isaiah 49:9). That answer came in the form of freed prisoners, people plucked from the darkness; the spiritually hungry were enabled to “feed along the ways all the bare heights…their pasture;” we are assured that “they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them” (Isaiah 49:9-10).
The pitying person has entered history in a number of forms. Jewish Messianic hopes look forward to this figure, and have seen hints of it in various great historical figures. These weeks in the East, pitying people rose up amongst the people, and soon outnumbered the tyrants by many—people have been led into freedom with themselves as guides, their own human ingenuity to thank. And we certainly know that, in the distant past and now with us always, that pitying freedom-giver was Christ himself.
We are all God’s, Isaiah tells us, and the Divine does not forget its children: “I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:15-16). That we are God’s and that God loves us does not always translate into history in the ways we might hope; seas are not always parted for the oppressed, nor does manna always fall from Heaven to feed the hungry. But we’re not forgotten; God desires our freedom, even when we must use what has been given to us to pursue it ourselves. And God looks forward to these days of great success, and rejoices in them: “Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing!” (Isaiah 49:13)
We’re learning from our brethren, and also from the scriptures. What has happened in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Iran and in Libya could not have occurred without human initiative. None of the movements has been entirely without its troubles, and some have been lost along the way; we can mourn that while simultaneously standing in deference before the strikingly simple beauty of vast groups of people asserting their rights to be recognized and respected.
The media have made us privy to various awesome sites from these protests and movements, which at the same time seem to remain unplagued by the unnecessary: like lilies of the field, like birds of the air, these groups of people have shelved concerns about creature comforts and appurtenances in favor of dealing with what’s immediate (Matthew 6:28, 26).
The gospel reading assures us that no being can serve two masters, a truth any person who strives to be free knows fully (Matthew 6:24). The regimes which are falling across the globe might have remained, if citizens beneath them had valued maintaining the unhappy status quo above human dignity; they continue to fall because people are serving, instead, freedom. They fall because the human impulse is toward grace and not false servitude.
The inclination toward grace, which is embraced as we struggle for freedom, seems to be spreading rapidly without abating. It’s skipping from nation to nation, and it’s something to behold. Our readings anticipate such flourishings as a consequence of God’s great love, and celebrate them at length; they choose such godliness above the “wealth” of temporal holdings.
We’re prevented, by space and other factors, from joining directly in the protests, but we can continue to awe, with the scripture as our cantor or the leader of our prayers, and to offer what support we can.
We can offer to our distant brothers and sisters the small gift of our remembrance, and the benefit of our prayers. We can, from the humble position of our different situations, say with the Psalmist: “O Lord, my eyes are not raised too high…I do not [pre]occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me…But I have calmed and quieted my soul” (Psalm 131:1). What the protestors are accomplishing is its own gift; it reminds us that God did, indeed, make a great world, one which, though frequently muddled by misfortune, nonetheless has the potential to be the dwelling place of greatness.
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