Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

This last weekend after church, I drove over to Fullerton for a meeting hosted by CAIR – Council on American Islamic Relations.  I was surprised by two things: the size of the crowd, and that it included a fair number of Christian allies.

I was also impressed by the quality of the three speakers.  One of which was a woman activist from Brooklyn, Linda Sarsour.  If ever there was a woman on fire, she was it!

The passion out of which she spoke was the result of having over seventy members of her extended family killed these past several weeks in Gaza.  “This is a genocide we are witnessing.  A genocide bought and paid for with our tax dollars.  This is not something long ago in a history book.  It’s happening now.  It’s being reported live by the people being killed.  Daily!”

As I took my morning pills this past Friday with a refreshing glass of cold ice water, my mind flashed to the images of those dying of thirst and hunger as the result of the Israeli policy of collective punishment of the people of Gaza.

Today, in our readings we turn to what are known as the Ten Commandments.  Not the “ten suggestions,” as some of my secular friends would tag them.

Here is the reason we have this law code — to preserve the gift of freedom won for us from the hand of Pharoah.   In the text, God makes very clear to Moses and those who would come after, “You didn’t do this.  I DID!  I parted the waters and led you out.”

If you go whoring after other sources of meaning and salvation – false gods – you will lose it all.  You don’t need to steal, lie, covet, defame to have a good life.  Don’t screw this up. I’ve already given you everything you need – the freedom to enjoy the blessings of life in community with one another.  Don’t flush it down the toilet.  Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing.   In the words of that old spiritual, “Free at last.  Free at last.  Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last.”

That is the order of God’s action.  First Grace, then Law.  The purpose of the Law is to “Keep our Eyes on the Prize.”  Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing.

It’s easy to become distracted, to go off chasing rabbits.  Especially if you’re one who has attention deficit disorder as an adult.  Runs in my family big time.  When I get sidetracked, my friend Jim always reminds me, let’s keep the Main Thing the Main Thing – which is addiction recovery. 

Now concerning Gospel Action, the Main Thing for those in the Jesus Movement it’s building the Beloved Community.  That certainly begins with “the Least of These.”

You read of them every morning over coffee or tea.  You see them on your TV screens in your living rooms.  Right now, they’re in Gaza.

Linda Sarsour reported that her ten-year-old daughter every day – every single day – calls her congress representative before heading off to school to express her outrage at what we are doing to her people.

I felt guilt that I did not have my congresswoman Judy Chu’s number on my speed dial.  This young girl knows what the Main Thing is for her people.

Her mother’s book, We are Not Meant to be Bystanders,[1] is an incredible read.  It is the story of a life of consequence.  As Michelle Alexander, writing in the New York Times, commented, “If you’re wondering what kind of activism holds the potential to free us all, this book offers an answer.”

Linda is no more a bystander than Simon of Cyrene, compelled from the side of the road to carry Christ’s cross to Golgotha on Good Friday.  Each of us is likewise summoned to heft our cross, to engage a suffering world.

As I sat in that CAIR assembly, I thought, here are many Muslims bearing the Cross far, far better than many of us Christians soothed to sleep in a comforting land of plenty.  Lulled to sleep with entertainment and sumptuous meals.  A roof over our heads and gallons of cheap tap water.

Peace and quiet is not the Main Thing of our faith.  Have I mentioned “Necessary Trouble?”

In John’s telling, Jesus chases the money changers out of the temple early on in his ministry.  Making a bunch of money off people’s faith, he did not consider “The Main Thing.”  In fact, the Wrong Thing, it was.  This one incident would foreshadow Jesus’ entire journey to Golgotha in John’s telling of the story.  God’s definitely “a-gon-na trouble the water.”

For the Main Thing, read Micah,[2] read the bit in our gospels about God’s demands.  “And what does the Lord require?  Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.”  The Main Thing indeed!  Not burnt offerings.

This conflict with ensconced, comfortable, self-serving authorities – this conflict over the Main Thing was what led to the Cross.

I hope our main takeaway this Lenten season is an awareness of our mutuality.  As Dr. King was wont to say that all of us “are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Do you remember the flack Elizabeth Warren got for telling a businessman that in fact, he didn’t build his company himself.  “You didn’t do this,” she insisted.

When he took umbrage, she persisted, “You didn’t provide the schooling that educated your workers.  You didn’t build the roads that transport your goods.  You didn’t enact the laws that provide for a level playing field for fair dealing.  YOU didn’t do this.  You relied on others.”

As a vet, I took strenuous exception to the Former Guy’s dismissal of the sacrifice that those troops had made as he visited our national cemetery at Arlington and later in France, just off the beach of Normandy. 

“What was in it for them?”  What did they get out of it but “dead?”  Utter foolishness as St. Paul would say.

Listen, Guy: what they got is something you will never understand; are incapable of understanding.  A free and liberated Europe.  I know of a ten-year-old girl who gets it.  A Muslim girl who hoists her Cross every morning before class!  She gets it.

As Alexei Navalny’s body was lowered in the ground this week, I thought: he understood the Main Thing.  He knew the point of living — a Russia free for all.  Led his people just like Moses.  Though he spent the last three hundred days of his life in solitary confinement in a Siberian prison, he died a free man.  The Main Thing.  Again, something the Former Guy just doesn’t get.

As we approach the climax of our Lenten journey, arriving at the foot of the Cross, we too behold that Man of Sorrows, one who kept the Main Thing the Main Thing the entire journey long. 

Have you stepped off the side of the road to help ease the load?  Might you also stay awake and pray with him in the dark night of the soul of this world? 

As the Gospel Freedom song proclaims, “Come and help me build a land where we all can live.”  That’s what a ten-year-old girl is doing.  Every morning! 

“There’ll be singing in that land.  Big gold bells a-ringing in that land.  Gonna ask my sister, come along with me.  If she says no, gonna go anyhow.  Gonna ask my brother, come along with me.  If he says no, gonna go anyhow.  We’re on our way to build a Freedom Land where we all can live.”  Amen

---

[1] Linda Sarsour, We are not Here to be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance (New York: 37 INK, 2020).

[2] Micah 6:6-8.

March 3, 2024
3 Lent

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Exodus 20:1-7; Psalm 19;
1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

“Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing”