Which Commandment is Greatest?

You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. If you do afflict them,
and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry.
For I am a compassionate God.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Underlying these simple words is a very great question: Who is the King of this World? Who is the Highest Authority? Which is the Court of Last Appeal? These are the questions we ought to be asking our selves here on the last Sunday in October, Christ the King Sunday.

Imagine, if you will, an American society in which school children stood up each morning and pledged, not an allegiance to the flag, but rather to Donald Trump, our sitting President. Imagine an American society in which public servants pledged not to protect and uphold the U.S. Constitution, but rather to love and serve and obey the President of the United States. This is hard to wrap our minds around; for many, the very thought of it is bitter and unacceptable. Yet, not so very long ago — indeed, nearly within living memory — all nation-states were governed by a king or a queen to whom one pledged loyalty and devotion.

When the great experiment of democracy was begun on the American continent in 1776, nearly all onlookers predicted a collapse of both economy and government being pulled down by the chaotic and bruising power of the mob. And these skeptics would not have long to wait to be confirmed in their fears. For the decade beginning 1789 in France would devolve into bloody tragedy. A dog-eat-dog world unfolded with the fall of the king and the queen. And during successive reigns of terror, the Church, herself, was gutted and a statue exalting human reason was planted in the heart of Notre Dame Cathedral. This thuggish world would eventually be supplanted (thank God!) by an absolute dictatorship, even a self-proclaimed Emperor, Napoleon I. And it would be this Emperor who would restore the Church together with the renewal of a moral society. We begin to see a faint outline: the rule of the mob versus the unacceptable institution of absolute dictatorship.

Last week I visited the Diocese of Quincy at its annual Synod in Peoria, Illinois and was asked several times if things in Haiti were improving. Avoiding complexities upon complexities, I offered a root-cause explanation. First, we must understand that Haiti was a failed state nearly from its beginning. True, it is the only instance of a slave population (West Africans brought in by the French to work the plantations) who overthrew their slave masters to establish a modern nation-state. Tragically, though, Haiti's first President, Toussaint Louverture, would become himself a slave master emulating his French masters and, indeed, would make a bloody pact with the French to ensure his security as a lifelong dictator. He would cripple his own country's economy in order to pay tribute to the French, who were his enforcers. Louverture's successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, called the Father of Haiti, wasted no time in proclaiming himself Emperor. He also enslaved his fellow Haitians though a model of American democracy was only 600 miles away.

Attempts at democracy in Haiti have not succeeded as pervasive corruption and "me-first," "dog-eat-dog" thinking continues to dominate tracing back to Haiti's earliest leaders. I add, in a spirit of hope, that Haiti's last two presidents appear to have been sincere, and culture change is glacially slow. But make no mistake about it: you cannot do anything in Haiti without encountering corruption. It is impossible.

If you speak with elderly Haitians and ask them to relate their happiest memories, they will tell you that the golden age of Haiti was (ironically) under the dictator, Francois Duvalier (a pediatrician adoringly known as Papa Doc who eradicated Yaws, a disease that had plagued Haiti's children). Under Papa Doc, little old ladies would tell me, the streets were paved; people had jobs; you could walk late at night in Port-au-Prince without fear of being killed or robbed. Detesting dictators, we nonetheless can see the point of an exhausted people who give thanks for a respite from thuggery and unending darkness. That is, if you must live in a dog-eat-dog world, then you better have one Big Dog who is able to master all the lesser dogs. (The same story is told of Kamehameha the Great in Hawai'i, who brought an end to chronic tribal warfare by conquering all the rest.) Being privileged, as I was, to view the world of Haiti-past through the eyes of elderly ladies, one is inclined to consider the difficult question, Which do you want? Roving packs of dogs who pose as public servants enriching themselves while their fellows starve and suffer? Or an absolute dictator who holds the grip of power through terror?

You might say, "But that's not the situation in our country!" But the glaring question would be, "Why not?!" The story of democracy is ever the story of a wolf who is always at the door. Which wolf? The dog-pack mentality of mob rule. Mob rule was feared by our Founding Fathers, who followed the Roman model of Republican governance and despised the Athenian model of pure democracy (which explains the architecture of the period; Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello, is a splendid example of Roman Classicism). As the brilliant historian Gary Wills pointed out in his classic, Lincoln at Gettysburg, when Lincoln uttered the words, "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people," such a concept was seen as being a radical and dangerous idea. Yet, these words would presage the America that was to come.

The riddle before us, then, as our democracy became a purer and purer form of governance of the people by the people, is how were we able to avoid the extremes of demagoguery and mob rule? It is not as if immorality has spontaneously departed from the fevered, human brow. It is not as if a food-chain existence of unscrupulous businessmen and corrupt leaders has somehow vanished of its own accord. How is it, then, that the United States has not devolved into mob rule — where excesses and reckless impulses of an uncontrolled group pour into the streets or where the strong prey freely on the weak? The answer is very simple. I will borrow another phrase from Lincoln's very brief Gettysburg Address: "this nation, under God."

During the past half century, we have seen a steady descent from being "this nation, under God" to one that has either explained God away as a discarded superstition or has remade God in the image of a step-servant and footman who "understands" and yields to our every whim and urge. During that same period, we have watched as the gap between haves and have-nots has grown to an extreme that would have embarrassed the robber barons of the turn of the last century. Families supported by decent jobs have become armies of homeless people, and they are seen everywhere. Those suffering from mental illness go without care and rove the streets. Illicit and casual sex has become so rampant that it now defines our culture. Who does not sit in the public square or a cafe and hear the most graphic and coarse language? Recently, I sat in a fast-food restaurant having a hamburger with a religious sister of this Community and had to endure the most outrageous things being said by a group of boys, and I actually had to intervene. "Do you speak this way in front of your grandmother?" I asked. One of them looked down sullenly and said, "No." "Then don't speak that way in front of us. We are also that age." But I am unable to do the same thing when I am sitting in the waiting room of a service center and must be exposed to one half-hour program after another displaying the most outrageous content you can imagine with jokes that depict our culture's public preoccupation with every kind of sex act. I have sadly arrived to the conclusion that that is what our culture has become. Signs of "mob rule," in this sense, are all around us. And we have no recourse.

The homeschooling movement, with nearly two million children participating today, is primarily driven by one, single, cold fact: a certain point of view, which is everywhere to be seen, has taken over our public schools. This change was not debated in the public square; there was no vote about these fundamental changes in policies; I did not consent to it, and neither did you. And that point of view is not compatible with "this nation, under God." Incredibly, five-and-a-half million children today in the United States avoid public schools for religious reasons. In a survey of parents who provide homeschooling, 77% said that the moral teachings found in public schools were unacceptable, and 91% said that they wished to avoid the "environment" of public schools. The question is phrased delicately and cautiously, for one can easily find him- or herself facing some kind of charge from a local, state, or federal authority for committing what are ingeniously labeled, "hate crimes." I submit that a more accurate phrase would be "thought crimes," and as George Orwell uncannily predicted in his prophetic book 1984, "Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."

I asked a few minutes ago, "Which do you want? Mob rule or dictatorship .... now that God is out of the picture?" In the American scene today we find a miscreated combination of both. It has already taken firm hold of our public schools. It seized control of cinema and television decades ago. Not surprisingly, then it has become the "religious creed" of many of our young people. Ask a young person what they want, what is their inmost desire, the thing that drives you forward and makes sense of your world. I have been asking this question for years now, and most of them tell me the same thing: "To be happy." And as you unpack that simple phrase, you discover that they mean, to pursue pleasure, to own a certain inventory of material things, to have the leisure to enjoy them, and to be financially independent in order to make this ideal come true. This is a very different world from the one we knew a half-century earlier, when people were more likely to focus upon world peace, which is to say loving, or upon world hunger, which is to say caring. For these are the things that go to the heart of "this nation, under God."

The God and Creed one finds in 2017 is "Live and let live" and "Don't judge me," which are the societal safeguards for a general anarchy of immoral life, whether practiced in the business sphere or in one's personal life. But in the hoggish pursuit of happiness, a great spiritual principle has been missed. For who in that selfish life has time or the inclination to notice spiritual things, much less to discern them and reflect upon them?

A great battle rages around us. It does not have to do with terrorism or with the influx of refugees across our borders. No. It is a battle that rages for the kingship of this world. On the one side, a night of darkness spreads — in our cinemas, on television, and across the Worldwide Web. Should we be surprised at women teachers preying upon young children in their uncontrolled sexual urges? If you are, or if you simply turn away saying, "Disgusting!" and give it no further thought, then you are not paying attention to the troubling and much larger picture that is emerging. Base desires are constantly inflamed in our culture, and selfish motive and business one-upsmanship is praised, encouraged, and groomed. A Kingdom of Darkness spoils all the good we once knew and insinuates itself in the souls of our children. And if you do not believe in demonic possession, then you have not met the men and women who willingly destroy their families in the pursuit of cheap and tawdry, not to say momentary, pleasure. These people (and their numbers are legion) have become willing instruments of the Evil One, who bow down to him and who serve his purposes. Their numbers are great, and through them the forces of darkness run rampant over the field of engagement .... which is everywhere.

Small wonder that Americans are the least happy people in the world. While the United States lags the rest of the developed world in healthcare — U.S. News reports the United States as having the worst healthcare system among high-income nations — and and while the United States lags the rest of the world in scientific literacy — the U.S. ranks near the bottom in mathematics among developed nations — the U.S. does the lead the world in one category: anxiety. In its World Mental Health Survey, the World Health Organization found that no place on earth is more anxious than the United States as measured by the numbers of people who seek therapeutic help for "anxiety disorder."

On this subject, please indulge me in a detour. One of the leading professors of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School told me that many of his cases present with anxiety — an anxiety that prevents people from sleeping, prevents them from having peace. And he has concluded after many years that they do not suffer from what he would call mental illness. They suffer from moral illness. Now, he is not a particularly religious man, but knowing that I was, he told me that most of these people were suffering through the consequence of leading an unconscionable life. And while they think they have mastered their consciences which they viewed as being nothing more than an irritating and unnecessary feeling of guilt, they cannot. No one can. For this is the bedrock of the human being, which our sovereign God has made.

Do you know which geography is the least anxious country, which is the happiest? It is a mysterious geography and among the least reported or generally known. It is the human heart that loves God. In that geography is perfect happiness and perfect peace, living in "God's country," where He is King. It does not profess to seek personal pleasure or gain. It does not keep an ever-active inventory of material things-to-be-acquired. And it does not ignore the welfare of others, practicing a false compassion of live-and-let-live. It cares. It loves. And it seeks love among all people. And every morning it is asked by the God Who alone is peace to pledge allegiance: "Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." This was our Gospel reading this morning .... from a lectionary that does not account Christ the King Sunday to fall on this day.

Our pledge is not to flag nor to a nation hot in the pursuit of pleasure. But to a King. He is meek and lowly of heart. The cries of the poor and the afflicted come quickly to His ears. Take His yoke upon you, for He is good, and His burden is light. And you will find peace, peace unto your very souls.

He is the King of this World, and His Father is the Emperor of the Universe. But He is no dictator, nor will He compel your allegiance. On love, love alone, He will build His Kingdom. And He has called us to be His friends.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.