Jeremiah Wright: What They Don’t Want You to Hear

In a word, they don't like Jeremiah Wright because he forces us to face our sin.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, a campaign that has tried the patience of the American people has us examining our core values.  Through the cynicism of FOX News, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has pushed us back to 9/11 with a Malcolm X sound bite, "America's chickens are going to come home to roost!" 

Change vs. Experience is what we call in Maine, a "red herring" for business as usual.  Change for change's sake is merely a new spin on an old theme – dominant America as policeman and moral compass of the world.  Whether we institute change through force or through persuasion, the goal is the same – exporting and promoting America as the model for freedom and economic success. 

Rev. Jeremiah Wright wrenches us back to the reality of that greatness in the lives of the countless numbers of our citizens who have been left behind.  He attacks the illusion of being on top of the world while suffering in our relationships and losing hope.  His is the cry of the silent majority of people who have been left behind because of the color of their skin or their family history.  It is the story of an American Dream that for many has become a nightmare.

Change for change's sake can alter only the approach to masking the underlying problem – the core values that shape and direct our domestic and foreign policy.  We have become a nation ruled by elites – in Rev. Wright's worldview, a nation ruled by white elites.

Experience, likewise, is the watchword of business as usual.  It is the assurance that things will remain as is only with a steadier, authoritative hand.  Gov. Richardson, in his endorsement of Barack Obama, pointed to "Experience" as a bouncing ball – "Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton."

The change for which Americans yearn cannot be offered by either of the Democratic candidates who have become captive to a system that is broken.  They simply offer different approaches to reach an old, tired goal – the preeminence of American hegemony.  This is neither change nor experience.  It is simply tinkering with an old theme.

Sean Hannity wants us all to be a homogeneous people.  In a recent interview with Rev. Wright, his was a white person's America.  It is protracting the Christian ethic of the universality of the Kingdom of God onto a nation that has built its power on the backs of oppressed minorities, whether they be Native Americans, blacks, women or the poor.

In a word, Hannity's America is one in which the oppressed shuffle their feet and say nothing, while America goes forth triumphant.

It can't happen that way.  Somewhere, sometime, we are forced to grapple with the destruction left in our wake. 

In a word, they don't like Jeremiah Wright because he forces us to face our sin.

Rev. Wright, in his post-9/11 sermon[1], does a hatchet job on the 137^th Psalm to make his point.  Psalm 137 is God's judgment against Babylon by the Medes and the Persians because of the suffering of His people, Israel.  Wright keys on the 8^th verse, "…happy is he who repays you (Babylon) for what you have done to us – he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."  This is, in the viewpoint of the Rev. Wright, America's chickens coming home to roost.

His point, however, is well taken.

In the wake of 9/11, white Christians in particular have been seeking "God's guidance on our war machine," while those minorities who have borne the suffering of our nation's worship of prosperity and success have stood silently by, watching and wondering.  He warns us that we have moved from worship to war; from hatred of armed enemies to hatred of unarmed babies and have never have batted an eye.

By example, he points to Granada, Panama, Hiroshima and Iraq.  He insists that we took our country from the Native American tribes by terrorism and that it was terrorism that brought Africans to this shore in order to build on our way of ease.  While it does not fall on white America necessarily to make reparation, it falls on all America to repent of its hypocrisy and self-righteousness. 

Repentance cannot come through pseudo change or experience within the political system.  It must come from within the heart of every American regardless of what race, color or national origin.

"What ought to be our response?" asks Rev. Wright.  Rather than a time for examination of the evil in others, it is a time for "self-examination."  To him, this means for every American to turn inward and honestly examine his and her relationship with God. 

As a nation, we have violated the social fabric of what we call Christian principles in exchange for our comfort and at the expense of the comfort of others.

We would do well to think carefully on these thoughts.

[1] http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4x279GNMwvY