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LINKS TO THE SERMONS |
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| Thoughts on Greatness Deuteronomy 8: 17-20 & Mark 10: 35-45 July 1, 2007 I watched the funeral for Ronald Regan on TV as many of you did. It was quite an event, all to pomp and pageantry, solemnity and grandeur. The military band played a dirge while rows and rows of soldiers marched slowly down Pennsylvania Ave. But the TV commentators kept insisting on talking over it as if it was on radio. We don’t need color commentary like a football game; we know what’s going on. If an alien came from another solar system and landed on the parade route he would know what was happening; this was a tribute to a great man. I knew that even before the TV commentator said it, “This is a tribute to a great man.” When they ran out of something else to say, they began to discuss whether Reagan would go down as one of America’s greatest presidents. It got me thinking about the meaning of greatness, the essence of greatness, and its companion questions; is greatness something to be sought after or does it just happen to people? Can greatness be achieved in one’s lifetime or is it always conferred posthumously? Are people born to greatness or is it a matter of the confluence of circumstances that an average person then rises too? Is the definition of greatness the same for a nation as for an individual? Everybody agrees that America is a great nation, some say the greatest nation of all time, but what do we mean by that? It can’t be that we are the toughest kid on the block. Isn’t greatness a matter of character rather than might? My mother used to say, “Right makes might,” and I believed her. Tom Brokaw wrote a book in which he identified my parent’s generation as the greatest generation; why? Because in the fickle flow of history they were in their prime during the world’s greatest war. When I was in elementary school, I was taught that our two greatest presidents were Washington and Lincoln – both defined by wars. Maybe the greatest presidents were those who found ways to avoid wars, who expanded liberty and opportunity for a larger percentage of Americans, then settled into relative obscurity not having a war to clearly define their presidency. Maybe Woodrow Wilson was one of our greatest Presidents. If the world had followed his compassionate lead at the end of The Great War instead of acquiescing to the baser instincts for revenge, the second installment of the Great War may never have happened. Adolph Hitler would have remained a fringe radical, superfluous and forgotten by history. What is the essence of greatness, really? Jesus said that the essence of greatness lay in humility. To be humble means to have an accurate assessment of ones self. For Americans, part of that assessment is the conviction that we stand at this pinnacle of power and wealth because of the grace of God. We sing it in our hymns, “America, God shed his grace on thee.” The founders of our nation were convinced that the democratic experiment could only work because the nation was steeped in the principles of its Judeo-Christian heritage and virtues. Moses warned the people of Israel not to forget how they had gotten to where they were; not to start thinking they had done it be their own strength, cleverness or ingenuity. They did forget and paid the price. They surrendered their humility for pride and it was their downfall. When humble dependency turned to arrogant self-sufficiency, the decline began. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. Jesus warned his disciples over and over that the only way to preserve the humility that is at the heart of greatness is by seeing one’s self as a servant. He who would be great must be a servant. Our elected officials pay lip service to service but behave like royalty. The well documented feud between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson was over that precise issue, the presidency, a servant of the people or and elected king. George Washington was neither, he was an honorary president. But the federal government had very little power back then and nobody quite knew what it was for. The Union was essentially a mutual defense pact but each state was sovereign. The presidency was awarded to Washington as an expression of gratitude. The most profound thing Washington did as president was to model the two term principle. He left the office after his second term insisting that it was the office that was permanent and not the person in the office. He could have been president for the rest of his life; no one had ever even run against him. But he walked away for the good of the nation – an act of humility. That act alone qualifies him as a great president. It was Adams who tried to establish what was called an “imperial presidency.” Adams refused to work with or even acknowledge congress. They were beneath his dignity. A king doesn’t ask permission, he just does. The only reason Jefferson agreed to run was to counter that image of the presidency. He wanted to retire to his estate in Virginia and work of that university he helped to establish. But he became president to remold the presidency into what he envisioned at the founding of the nation, not a privileged monarch but a servant of the people subject to all the checks and balances built into the Constitution. Greatness is in every case aligned with humility and servanthood. I insist that when any person or nation allows themselves to become defined by arrogance rather than humility they are in for a fall and are no longer great – just a bully. Then the democratic ideals we hope to model for the world will be misunderstood and fall dreadfully short. The world tends to see the democratic system as meaning purely that the majority rules. The majority group wins and gets to do things the way they want with total disregard of the minority. In any system where the rights of the minority are trampled, there will always be revolution. In a republican style democracy like ours, the first responsibility of the ruling majority is to protect the rights of the minority. That way they continue to be the loyal opposition and not disenfranchised revolutionaries. I was in The Soviet Union back in the Brezhneff era and in a conversation with some party members was asked if it was true that the United States still had Nazis. It was hugely important because of their hatred for the Germans and the Nazis in particular. I answered truthfully. Yes, we have Neo–Nazi groups. They are very small and get little or no support but they exist. “Why don’t you eliminate them?” was the question. I answered with a question of my own, “How would you propose that we do that?” “You get President Reagan to declare them illegal and arrest them,” was the answer. And this was my response: “Would it surprise you to know that President Reagan doesn’t have the power to declare things illegal? Also, President Reagan’s first responsibility is to guarantee the rights of groups like the Neo–Nazis, regardless of how repugnant their views are, as long as they obey the laws and don’t advocate the violent overthrow of the government.” My comment effectively ended the conversation. They had never heard the like of it. These were smart people who had studied democracy and thought they understood it but didn’t have a clue as to what made it work. Our minorities and dissenters are an essential part of the whole process. The majority Black government of South Africa can’t survive unless they protect the rights of the White minority. A majority Shiite government in Iraq must see to the security of the Sunnis and the Curds and make them an integral part of the process or it will fail. If the democracy we have helped establish thinks democracy means that the majority has the right to stomp on the minority then they have failed, and so have we. The truly great never stridently ignore the rights of the disenfranchised but rather pick up the burden of guaranteeing those rights to the powerless. Jesus not only said that the essence of greatness lay in serventhood but serventhood to the least among us. The conflict in this country is not, nor has it ever been between the liberal and conservative poles. It takes that entire continuum to maintain perspective. Humble greatness acknowledges the essential roll played by the opposition in keeping our self-assessment honest. The conflict is between those who see majority rule as arrogant privilege and those who know it as humble responsibility – to the disenfranchised first. There was a bumper sticker that appeared back in the sixties, back when cars had bumpers. It read, “America, love it our leave it.” Soon another sticker appeared in response to it, it read, “America, fix it or forget it.” But neither the stance is that of a true patriot; neither the actions of the un-loving critic or the uncritical lover contribute to greatness. The true patriot loves deeply but with humility, and having an accurate assessment of the condition of the nation he loves, bends every effort to correct her errors and to help her, as MLK said, to rise up and claim the true meaning of her creed. That’s in our song too; “America, America, God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control.” I believe we are at a point in this land when we need more true patriots and less polarized dogmatists. True greatness acknowledges that we have much to learn from the views of the opposition and that they are essential to the survival of the whole. Back in the 80s I saw an interview with Art Buchwald who was an articulate liberal and outspoken critic of the Reagan administration. One of the other guests on the show kept biting his lip but was obviously becoming enraged by Buchwald’s tirade against the government. Finally he could contain it no more and he interrupted the host with this challenge to Buchwald, “Is there anything you do like about this country?” Buchwald said this, “Yes, I like the fact that I can say all the things I just said on national TV without any fear that a Gestapo is going to break into the studio and arrest me. I like the fact that what I do and say is the act of a patriot and will be seen as such by most Americans. Even the ones who disagree with everything I say will welcome me into the conversation. That’s what I like about America.” Me too! I’ll go one further
– it’s the key to America’s greatness. And any
President who will defend the rights of his or her most virulent
critics and invite them into the conversation, that person is a
great person. Even if I disagreed with their politics and policies,
when the funeral procession rolls by I will stand and salute and
give thanks to God for a person who understood what makes America
a great nation and who humbly took on the task of being a servant
of the people - all the people - we the people.
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