SERMON: "Community Values"
Rev. Paul Beedle
July 2, 2006
I enjoy reading Rick Casey's column in the Chronicle. Last month he offered a commentary on Tom DeLay's farewell speech in the House. First he quoted the speech. DeLay had said: “[P]artisanship ... – properly understood – is not a symptom of a democracy's weakness, but of its health and strength. ... We must never forget that compromise and bipartisanship are means, not ends, and are properly employed only in the service of higher principles. It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle. For true statesmen ... are not defined by what they compromise, but what they don't.”
As counterpoint to Representative DeLay's remarks, Casey quoted an article written thirty years ago by historian Garry Wills. “The true test of a politician,” Wills said, “comes when he does not have to compromise, yet finds a way to do so. ... Compromise is just another name for the discipline [of] representation. Without compromise, a politician would not represent anything or anyone but himself.” Casey asserted: “This was a concept that held sway when America was seen as a pragmatic nation dominated by moderate voters. Effective politicians engaged in debate,” he went on, “but their real job was to solve problems.” He cited local bipartisan efforts to respond to the needs of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina as a survival of that ethic. And he ended his article saying: “Let the preachers and prophets stand erect on principles. We need politicians who bend to solve problems.” [1]
Well, that started me thinking about all sorts of things. Anyone – preacher, prophet or politician – who stands unbending on principles risks contracting that disease of the soul we call arrogance. Regard for principle easily overshadows regard for neighbor, and then the covenant is broken. How do we discern wisdom and truth, except in dialogue? How do we understand problems and divine their solutions, except in dialogue? And how do we have dialogue without love of neighbor? Only in dialogue do we come to understand why change, and in some cases sacrifice, is worth it. Anyone – preacher, prophet or politician – who bends to solve problems, in so doing finds higher principles. In that respect, DeLay was right: compromise is a means, not an end. But it sounds different when he says it.
I also think he was right when he said, “true statesmen ... are not defined by what they compromise, but what they don't.” But I hope it sounds different when I say that. I think a true statesman doesn't compromise love of neighbor and the search for wisdom. And I think the politicians who degrade public debate are those who don't compromise their pursuit of power.
A deep truth operates in all our communal activity, in congregations as well as in Congress. It is that the power of love is above and beyond the power of any person or group. My colleague Rebecca Parker has stated it most eloquently:
“Love is the wisdom of life that knows when connection can heal and when separation will make life flourish. Love is the capacity to use the powers of holding on and letting go in the service of life. Love is capable of detachment as well as empathy, differentiation as well as union, hierarchy as well as mutuality. Love is the guardian of powers. Love directs the use of specific powers, in response to particular circumstances, for the sake of creating, sustaining, or healing life. In every situation, love asks, `What will serve life?' This means human love comes from a growing wisdom about life itself. If one wants to love, it is life that one must seek to fully know. To love is to choose life.”[2]
Those words are scripture to me. Their application to politics is that power is also a means, not an end, and is properly employed only in the service of a higher principle, namely love. That “love directs the use of specific powers, in response to particular circumstances” shows the folly of standing unbending on principles. Love is not unbending. It bends “for the sake of creating, sustaining, or healing life.” “If one wants to love, it is life that one must seek to fully know.” And we can only do that in community.
Community is singularly lacking in Congress these days. At the end of his new history of the House of Representatives [3], historian Robert Remini notes several recent changes in Congress, and the decline of community is one of them. The workweek of the House used to run from noon on Monday until 3:00pm on Friday. “Members moved to Washington, brought their families, learned to live with the discomforts and benefits of life in the District of Columbia and, most important of all, got to know their colleagues, frequently crossing party lines to make friends. ... No more. ... [When jet travel allowed members to] fly home for an extended weekend, including those from such distant districts as Hawaii and Alaska[, f]amilies chose to remain home in their districts rather than disrupt the schooling of children and separate themselves from relatives and friends for long periods of time. Taking advantage of this situation to save money while in Washington, many House members now sleep in their offices and shower in the physical fitness complex ... in the basement of the Rayburn Office Building. ... In addition, the sharp increase in partisanship in the 1980s and 1990s, and the personal abuse members flung at one another in debate, made the House an unpleasant place to spend one's time. Socializing across party lines has become a rarity. Members hardly know one another. Friendships are frequently limited to colleagues one serves with on committees. ... As a result of these many changes, the workweek of the House of Representatives was reduced to two days and one night. Members left town late Thursday or early Friday and did not return until Monday or early Tuesday. ... Mondays are [now] called “Pro-forma Mondays,” meaning it counts as a legislative day but nothing gets done, nobody is present in the House. Frequently what happens is that the Speaker pro tem calls the House in session, approves the minutes of the previous day, and then adjourns. ... Since much of the workload necessarily shifted to ... staff, their number increased tremendously ... A congressman in 1960 had a budget of $20,000 for staff salaries. By the middle of the 1990s, it was $515,760. Today there are 17,800 paid staffers and an additional 7,000 unpaid interns and fellows. The staff often writes the legislation that goes before the full House for approval. It is not uncommon for members to vote on bills they have not read or studied or know much about.”
So I'm not so sure the grounds on which Tom DeLay was denied a place on the ballot are the right ones. He was kept off because he doesn't live here any more. It's much more important that he has his residence in Washington. Ideally, he'll have cultivated substantial relationships with his constituents here to get elected, and can maintain them long-distance while he gets to know his colleagues in Washington in a substantial way so that he can be effective there.
You might be saying to yourself, “Yes, Paul, but the ideal isn't real. That's not how it works.” To which I would reply, “And that's the place of religion in politics.” If we are religious people, we strive to live by the best values and to embody the best virtues in all areas of our lives, including politics. Religious people live from the inside out, discovering within ourselves and between each other those values and virtues that are best to cultivate in our outward lives, as individuals and as communities. If political life isn't working according to the best values, and if statesmen aren't defined according the the best virtues, then we must ask ourselves what we can do to change that.
Needless to say, the answer doesn't lie in a particular candidate or policy, nor in money or power for one party or another, nor in constitutional amendments, nor laws, nor court decisions. The answer lies in the substance and the quality of our relationships with one another, and our willingness to be a community, to bend, to be changed, to love our neighbors and to seek with them for greater wisdom and understanding of life. That's important here, and it's important in Washington. The role of religion in political life is to foster community as a safe vessel for the rough and tumble of politics.
Perhaps we ought to adjust our expectations about where our representatives and their families will live. It's interesting that Tom DeLay has chosen to move nearer to Washington. Many think he will become a lobbyist. Robert Remini reports that a study completed last year “found that 43 percent of the members who leave government to return to private life register as lobbyists. That had not happened before. As late as the 1980s, few lawmakers became lobbyists because they considered it beneath their dignity.” Remini mentions that many “found employment with lobbies that had foreign governments as clients!” – obliquely suggesting another way that the discipline of representation has become compromised. Statesmen are defined not by what they compromise, but what they don't.
Love of neighbor and the search for wisdom are those highest values that should not be compromised. Both depend on our willingness to be a community, to bend, to be changed – in families, in congregations, in town halls, and in state and national capitals. In community we can lift on high the good we find, trust it and build on it, and heal the hurts of life. Community values hold the promise of liberty, for they flow from love which casts out fear, [4] a power above and beyond the power of any person or group, a power that liberates us from the uncompromising pursuit of power.
May love be the guardian of our powers, and may we find ever greater understanding and wisdom in community. So may it be. Amen.
[1] Houston Chronicle, June 11, 2006, page B1
[2] Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs of Ashes (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001) pp. 198-199
[3] Robert Remini, The House: The History of the House of Representatives (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006) pp. 498-500
[4] 1 John 4:18