There’s a lot of controversy going around right now about the two Super Bowl halftime acts last night. Bad Bunny performed at the actual Super Bowl and drew 135 million viewers, while the ministry/political organization Turning Point USA had an alternative halftime show that featured Kid Rock and drew 6.1 million viewers.
Rather than continuing the back and forth on why people chose what they chose, I thought I would share something that I was thinking about throughout the day.
Yesterday morning I read a New York Times article by David French called “A Movie about America Broke My Heart.” (Note that you may or may not be able to read the article with a free account). The movie he watched was called The Testament of Ann Lee, and it’s about the founder of the American Shakers.
French’s takeaway from his experience watching the film was that our country has always fought against those who were different from us or whom we simply didn’t understand. It doesn’t sound like that surprised him. What surprised him was the response that the Shaker community, and Ann Lee in particular, had towards this fear, hatred and persecution.
She called on people to love. She believed that love for neighbor was the highest call.
French then references the “Already and not yet” aspects of the Kingdom of God. This is a teaching that has played a prominent role in my life. All around us we see ways that the kingdom is breaking through. It’s already. We can be grateful for that and continue to play our role in pointing it out. But it’s also not yet. This is why Jesus taught us to pray, “Let your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” This is what fuels our love…if we will allow it.
French then mentions Micah 4:4, which says, “Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.” I don’t know when I first heard this verse, but it became prominent for a lot of us when we heard the song “One Last Time”, sung by George Washington in the musical Hamilton. This verse must have been very important to George Washington, because French points out that he referenced the verse close to 50 times in his correspondence.
Go here if you’d like to read all of Micah 4. That was where I headed next. It’s such a beautiful chapter.
A short time after reading this article I was at church, and Jamin Carter gave a great sermon called Covenant as a Subversive Act of Love. So much of it carried this same theme. Towards the end of the sermon he made a statement that stuck with me. He said, “The whole task of Scripture is us learning how to love one another as God has loved us.” The word “whole” is a big word. This is everything. God wants to transform our hearts so that we would be capable of love. I’m also drawn to the word “learning”. Yes, it’s transformation, but transformation does not mean overnight. It takes learning. It takes effort.
So much in our lives is working against us becoming the kinds of people who can love others as God has loved us, but it’s possible. That’s where subversion comes in. I like that.
French ends his article by referencing one of the times George Washington referenced Micah 4:4. It was a letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I. Washington said, “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Here’s what French says about it…
What a beautiful expression of American pluralism and religious tolerance. Our nation is not a place – it never will be a place – where we all agree with one another, much less look like one another, or even come from a common culture. But we can live together as neighbors so long as we recognize one another’s inherent dignity and worth.
Choosing the tangible act of love through word and deed is the only way that this will happen.
Be First to Comment