Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/stephenphelps/page/3/)
In 1908, Winston Churchill wrote, “The seed of Imperial ruin and national decay [lies in] the unnatural gap between the rich and the poor [and] the swift increase of vulgar . . . luxury.” In the same decade, Republican President Teddy Roosevelt said, “The supreme political task of our day is to drive the special interests out of our public life.”
Blindness and sleep are figures for ignorance and denial in all the people. A group who cannot face their crisis is sleeping; most of its members are blind. The word of the LORD is rare—not because the Eternal ever ceases from communicating, but because so few are awake and able to discern the word.
When John comes down to the Jordan river saying God is on the move, the kingdom of heaven is near — hundreds of years have passed since any prophet offered a word worth keeping about God’s power to save. So far as the Hebrew Bible tells it, after the Jews headed home from exile in Babylon, God pretty much retired from the mighty works business, a.k.a. politics.
This sermon by Rev. Stephen Phelps, the interim Senior Minister at the Riverside Church in New York, is the first in an ongoing series of sermons by the Reverend. Romans 12: 1-13; Matthew 22: 16-22
Almost 180 years ago, the French citizen Alexis de Tocqueville traveled the new America and later described the character of our people in essays which still startle us Americans with features so recognizable. He saw, for example, our vaunted individualism. He defined it this way:
a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass
of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society
formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself . .