Of Politics and Restaurants

As I mentioned in passing yesterday, while I was otherwise preoccupied getting my knee fixed, a restaurant in Virginia joined the already famous Masterpiece Cake Shop in exploring the ethical dimensions of what kinds of customers to serve or not to serve. I refer, of course, to what happened when the owner of a restaurant in Lexington, VA, asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her restaurant after a number of the restaurant's staff had told her that they were uncomfortable serving the official spokesperson for an administration that has behaved so appallingly toward immigrants, and other minority groups.

As Saint Paul famously pointed out to the Christians in Corinth, just because something is lawful does not make it wise or prudent. As a matter of principle, presumably, the restaurant, a private business not a public service or governmental agency, has the right to take such a stand. The real question, of course, is whether it is wise or prudent to do so, what good it does or doesn't do in regard to anything that matters, and whether it further undermines that increasingly elusive goal of political "civility." 

And these are, indeed, difficult questions to answer. As with so many such symbolic protests, the protest itself tends to become the subject of debate, not the reprehensible behavior being protested. It could even be argued in this particular case that such symbolic protest simply plays into the hands of the Administration - distracting attention from our government's aggressive use of state power against helpless parents and children on our southern border. This easily happens in a media culture of false equivalence, in which the "incivility" of inconveniencing the Administration's spokesperson's dinner plans is presented as somehow comparable to the "incivility" of separating children from their parents.

That said, I have long been of the opinion that such symbolic acts of protest seldom accomplish much - and at worst can become self-righteous substitutes for doing anything about the actual problem.  At the risk of overgeneralization, those on one side in American politics and culture wars tend to be better at focusing on what needs to be done - mobilizing political power in support of their agenda. Those on the other side tend to be better at expressive political actions rather than consequential political actions. Crudely put, the Right votes, the Left demonstrates. Demonstrations may indeed dominate short-term news coverage, but voting wins actual political power and produces political results that make a real difference in real people's lives. Wherever one comes down on the merits of any particular act of expressive protest, the priority has to be on practical political action.

The Changing of the Guard?

A lot has been happening in our excessively fast-moving, circus-like, political world this past week, while I have been more personally preoccupied with the experience of knee-replacement surgery and recovery. 

As often happens at the end of June, there have been some extremely significant Supreme Court decisions - notably the Court's Janus v. AFSCME decision (yet another unfortunate consequence of Mitch McConnell and his comrades having gotten away with stealing a Supreme Court seat from President Obama in 2016). Then came Justice Anthony Kennedy's not unexpected retirement, which will surely light up the political sky with fireworks for weeks, maybe months. Meanwhile, a restaurant in Virginia has joined the more famous Masterpiece Cake Shop in exploring the ethical dimensions of what kinds of customers to serve or not. 

And, while all this was happening, there was also Tuesday's upset primary win of a 28-year old insurgent, Latina, "Democratic-Socialist," Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in New York's 14th Congressional District, where she bested a long-time, traditional ethnic Catholic Democratic party leader, Joseph Crowley, a one-time chair of the "New Democrat" coalition in Congress - in what must be seen as yet one more defeat for traditional, mainstream, centrist Democratic party politics.

"All politics is local," and for sure there may have been any number of genuinely local factors contributing to the upset - not the least of which is the obvious long-term change in the district's ethnic composition (a factor which is both local and national in its import). That said, politics today is a lot less local than it used to be. Elections - in particular, primary elections - are likely a lot more national (and ideological) today than in the heyday of the sort of traditional, mainstream, centrist Democratic party politics represented by Congressman Crowley, et al.  Ocasio-Cortz clearly represents the familiar pattern of ethnic succession, whereby a district's congressional representative belatedly comes to look like his or her constituents. But it also represents the continued national and ideological evolution of the Democratic party, that was so dramatically - and catastrophically for the party's electoral fortunes - on display in Bernie Sanders' successful challenge to Hillary Clinton in 2016 (successful in that, along with James Comey and Vladimir Putin, Sanders' stunt helped give us President Trump instead of President Clinton).

As Peter Beinart observed in The Atlantic on Wednesday, if some centrist political dinosaur like Joe Biden were to run in 2020, he would likely “face younger Democrats who, like Ocasio-Cortez, entered politics after the New Democratic era had ended, and older ones, like Bernie Sanders, who rejected it all along. And he’ll do so in an era in which, more than at any time since the early 1970s, the activist left is defining the Democratic Party. … For Clinton, for Crowley, and for Biden, the New Democratic ideology that they once proudly espoused has become a source of shame. And when you run for office ashamed of principles that animated much of your career, you’re vulnerable to people who aren’t.”

John the Baptist

Even as the world's attention this past week has been focused on our southern border and on our government’s deliberately cruel and aggressive policies against families and children, with all that in the background, the Church's calendar today invites us to focus on the birth of a baby – something of a rarity in the Church’s calendar, which typically celebrates saints on the day of their death. Only Jesus, Mary his mother, and Saint John the Baptist, whom the Gospel describes as filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb – only those three -  have their birthdays acknowledged in the Church’s calendar.

Today’s celebration transports us in spirit into an Old Testament atmosphere of pious, devout senior citizens in sterile marriages, whose youth is symbolically restored by the great gift of fertility. In the world of the Bible, few fates could be worse than not having any children. Quite unlike the me and my generation mainly mentality so emblematic of our own time, fertility and the future it made possible were seen as the greatest of gifts, a great grace, a true blessing. This blessing was now granted to Zechariah and Elizabeth. But, again quite unlike our modern mentality, this blessing was not granted to Zechariah and Elizabeth simply for themselves. Hence, the Gospel recounts a whole series of special events surrounding, first, the conception, and, then, the birth, circumcision, and naming of their son. These circumstances served Zechariah and Elizabeth and their family and friends as visible signs, so to speak, of their son’s special status and mission, indicating the purpose of this miraculous event in God’s great plan for the whole human race.

According to the account in Luke’s Gospel, when Zechariah and Elizabeth’s family and friends heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward Zechariah and Elizabeth, they naturally rejoiced with them. At first, however, they still had their own pre-conceived understanding of what they were celebrating, as reflected, for example, in the way they thought the newborn should be named. But they – and, through them, we – must be made to see that this miracle birth was about so much more than the Lord’s mercy to one couple, to one family, Hence, the physical miracle of John’s birth was augmented by even further signs dramatically highlighting his fuller significance.

In the world of the Bible, naming someone was an act of authority. In the case of a newborn, it signified the father’s recognition of his child. But, as the angel had foretold to Zechariah, many would rejoice at this boy’s birth. He would belong not just to his parents but to the special mission God had made him for. Hence, his name was chosen by God himself and announced by an angel. Zechariah and Elizabeth and their family and friends recognized in this a sign that God really was still present and active in the world. So, unable to keep the good news to themselves, they immediately anticipated John’s own special mission by spreading the word throughout the hill country of Judea.

Today’s feast focuses on John’s birth. The familiar details of his preaching and baptizing we will hear about again, as we do every year, in Advent. John’s actual public career was quite brief – quickly cut short by his arrest and eventual execution. His martyrdom is recalled in the Church’s calendar in August, but it seems appropriate today to recall, that martyrdom as the Preface of the Mass does, to recall his imprisonment and execution by King Herod Antipas. The Gospel account suggests that Herod may have actually admired John and that Herod liked to listen to him, but that he was very much perplexed by John’s challenge to his misuse of political power (Mark 6). Just as John had pointed ahead to Jesus in life, his death also pointed ahead to Jesus’ own death at the hands of Roman political authority – and beyond that to the many martyrs in every age, including our own, whose heroic witness would put them at odds with unjust and immoral aggressive political power.

John’s birth, which we celebrate with such solemnity today, continued the process that began with the promise God long ago made to Abraham, then renewed over and over to his descendants, and finally fulfilled in Jesus, whose own birth we will celebrate exactly six months from now. Today heralds the hope that the dry desert summer will eventually yield to the autumn rains and the life-giving wetness of winter – nature’s way, perhaps, of symbolizing the effect of the coming of Christ whose birth into our world of injustice and oppression it was John’s mission – and is now our mission – to announce to the world.

Homily for the Nativity of Saint John the baptist, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, June 24, 2018.

Toast of the Town

As I have often previously observed, 1948 was in so many ways such a wonderful year. I was born. The State of Israel was born. The present Prince of Wales was born. It was a great year too in the infant industry of television. On June 8, The Milton Berle Show made its debut. And then, 70 years ago today, an hour-long TV variety show called Toast of the Town, hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan (1901-1974), also made its debut. It ran every Sunday, every season, until June 6, 1971. (On September 25, 1955, the show officially changed its name to The Ed Sullivan Show, and that is how it is remembered.) 

I was four years old when my family purchased its first television; and, as far back as I can remember, The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday at 8:00 p.m. was a regular routine in my family - as it must have been in many families. Often we spent Sunday afternoons and evenings with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was at one of those gatherings that we all watched together Elvis's famous first performance on Ed Sullivan on September 9, 1956. 

A lot of successful performers were introduced to the mass TV audience on the Sullivan show. The most famous instance of this, of course, was The Beatles. Sullivan had accidentally encountered the Beatles while passing through London's Heathrow Airport in 1963. Seeing their fans' over-the-top reaction, Sullivan sensed that they were, as he put it, Elvis all over again. A few months later, on February 9, 1964, the Beatles (photo) made their American TV debut on his show (a broadcast that drew an estimated 73 million viewers). And the rest, as the saying goes, was pop music history!

In addition to introducing new talent to a mass audience, Sullivan has also been credited with improving American attitudes to and treatment of mental illness, after a May 17, 1953, show at which Broadway director Joshua Logan talked publicly about his experiences in a mental institution.

The Ed Sullivan Show reflected the mores of the era (and its host's Catholic moral rectitude). Inevitably that would conflict with the emerging values of the late 1960s. Thus, when the Rolling Stones appeared on the show on January 15, 1967, they were famously required to change "Let's spend the night together" to "Let's spend some time together." By that time, inevitably, the show's viewership was beginning to decline, its audience increasingly older (a demographic disaster in the mentality of advertisers). So CBS cancelled the show after the end of the 1970-1971 season. And that was that!

Variety shows fit the mood of the 1950s. It would be hard to imagine such a show today., when viewers would likely channel-surf throughout. While that reflects our changing tastes and reduced attention spans, it also highlights how TV and popular entertainment no longer represent any kind of shared common space in our society, in which we have mostly all retreated to our separate cultural silos. Because at that time there was usually only one TV set in a home and there were only three networks and hence limited TV choices, families watched TV together and shared a common inter-generational experience, an experience they shared with individuals and families across the entire country, creating a common national cultural framework which now no longer exists. That loss of shared experience and common cultural framework is hardly the sole cause or primary explanation for the many social, cultural, and pollitical divisions we are experiencing now, but it does represent one contributing factor.

Seeds Silent and Small

Jesus did much of his public preaching and teaching in rural Galilee. So it’s no surprise so many of his images and parables are agricultural in inspiration. That may make obvious sense, but it also may make them hard for most of us in contemporary society, whose background is non-agricultural, whose background is completely urban, to relate to. To me as a non-gardener, gardening seems incredibly complex, physically demanding, and just generally difficult. Wy would anyone want to do it? To me as a non-farmer, farming also seems if anything even more complex and difficult. And, of course, real farming really is hard work. Only non-farmers romanticize farming! But the parables we just heard [Mark 4:26-32] focus less on the human work involved and more on a more mysterious and silent part of the process. The kingdom of God, Jesus says, is as if someone scattered seed on the land and over time watched it sprout and grow and yield fruit for the harvest.  If that first parable focuses on the mysterious, silent, and patient process by which the seed once originally sown sprouts and grows on its own, the second parable contrasts the full fruition of God’s kingdom with its seemingly modest and maybe even inauspicious beginnings.

Obviously, a lot of what we do in life involves effort, even strenuous effort at times. Yet we all know that sometimes there is only just so much which work and effort can accomplish. However ambitious and elaborate our plans, sometimes all we can actually do is plant some seed, so to speak, and then wait patiently to see what happens. If that is true enough in ordinary life and in our ordinary activities, how much more true is it in the mission of the Church? Much of what we do in Church life and in ministry is like that, planting seeds so to speak, sometimes in lots of different ways, and then waiting – patiently and hopefully – to see what happens.

Yet even in the first parable about the seed growing of its own accord, the farmer does do his part. There is activity on the farmer’s part, just as there is activity on the Church’s part - on our part - in the coming of God’s kingdom. The farmer makes his contribution, as God expects all of us to do. But, in both cases, the crucial action is God’s action – action, which occurs mysteriously and may mainly seem hidden.

When I was a student, I remember being surprised to discover that the first of these parables is unique to the Gospel of Mark, and is not included (as most of Mark’s other material is) in either Matthew or Luke. That seemed strange to me then and still seems so now, although all these years later I have no more or better insight as to why that should be. But, however obscure this parable, however easy it may be for us to overlook, I think this remains a really powerful parable. It speaks to something many modern people in particular seem to worry about – God’s silence, his apparent absence from the world. The point of the parable (or so it seems to me) is to acknowledge God’s silence - but also to exclude our misunderstanding or misinterpreting that silence as being due to inactivity on God’s part. Silent God may well be, but absent he is not.

Both parables are about the wonderful way the kingdom of God grows – unstoppably mysteriously in the first parable, unstoppably successfully in the second.   So, despite whatever other human narratives it may be competing with for our attention, the narrative story-line of the kingdom of God is unstoppable mystery and unstoppable success.

Echoing Ezekiel’s prophecy of making the withered tree bloom [Ezekiel 17:22-24], Jesus’ parable illustrates the unstoppable mystery and unstoppable success of God’s kingdom in the mustard seed’s growth into such a great plant that all the birds of the sky can find space for themselves in its large branches. What an amazing aspiration! What an appropriate image for what the church is called to be in our time and place - what we, as Church, are called to be in our conflicted, fragmented, strife-torn world!

Our culture encourages us to be busy all the time and to be efficient, accomplishing a lot in our busy work – often at considerable cost to our health, to our happiness, to family, and to community. But, just as the farmer in the parable scatters seed on faith, with no certain knowledge of how it will grow, the Church has to sow the seed of God’s word in the world, not knowing how or when our efforts will find fulfillment but confident about the coming of God’s kingdom in our lives and in our world – the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ, that we say we pray for in every Mass.

Homily for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, June 17, 2018.