by
Michael Hoy
As
of this date (January 24, 2020), President Donald J. Trump is on
trial with regard to his impeachment—and the impeachment stigma
will follow him all the days of his life and throughout history. What
matters most for me is not whether or not he will be formally
convicted, even though I concur that he committed impeachable acts.
What matters most for me is not even simply that U.S. Senators and
Representatives are likewise on trial for their decisions in this
matter in these highly partisan times in which so many continue to
support the folly of thinking that all that matters is winning or
losing, as if there is a victory when half of the nation goes unheard
or deprived of justice. No, what matters most to me is that we are
all on trial.
Truth
is, we have been on trial for some time now. We are on trial for our
reluctance to embrace peoples who come to us from other lands among
the weak and heavy burdened, and who have been treated shamefully,
even more so in the implementation of the current administration’s
“zero-tolerance” policies that ripped refugee infants and
children from their refugee parents at the border, put these children
in cages, and separated them from their parents. We are on trial for
the basic degradation of humanity in such actions, and for the deep
life-long damage this will do to the injured parties.
We
are on trial for Charleston and Charlottesville, for Selma and
Ferguson, and for so many other places where racism has been
practiced not only through rhetoric, but also with violence.
President Trump would not openly denounce the bullying and violent
activities of white nationalists, claiming that those who carried
torches and shouted Nazi chants were “good people”; and he
furthermore echoed an abundance of racist remarks in his open attacks
on the late Representative Elijah Cummings, showing no hint of
repentance for this egregious sin that has afflicted our nation
throughout the centuries since its inception.
We
are on trial for all the women who have marched in our streets
protesting the misogyny and sexual and immoral exploitation of their
very bodies by powerful men, among them President Trump and a few of
his predecessors, who have practiced, excused, victimized, bullied,
and even bragged about what they got away with.
We
are on trial for the LGBTQ community that has been treated shamefully
and violently simply for owning the truth of an orientation from
which they need not hide.
We
are on trial for the world, and for those allies in the cause of
democracy whom Mr. Trump has mocked, railed against, and abandoned,
thereafter having the audacity to wonder why some of them now give
him the cold shoulder and care less about America than they used to.
We
are on trial for how the rich have become richer and the poor poorer,
how the so-called economic growth of recent years has not been a
growth, let alone an even growth, for all Americans.
We
are on trial for having so long neglected efforts to curb carbon
emissions, and for having otherwise damaged our environment to such
an extent that we may have already passed the point of no return with
regard to climate change and the scarcity of water and resources that
will likely ensue. We are on trial for the multitudes of the poor
who, in particular, will pay the price of this neglect.
The
Trump administration certainly deserves a damning exclamation point
for the depth of these sinful realities; and I fervently pray that
this administration will be so exposed that it will not be allowed to
continue past the next national election cycle. But these problems
and the damage inflicted by them, for which we are all on trial,
cannot all be blamed on the past three years alone. They reach back
deep into our past and into the sinful truth of our own very beings.
It cannot be eradicated simply by the election of a more responsible
president and leaders in Congress, though that is an important civic
duty. It will do us no good to go on thinking in bifurcated,
Manichean ways, to continue judging one another by the legalistic
standards that have so deeply infected all our souls, whether right,
left, independent, apathetic, or nihilistic.
We
are on trial for these souls of ours, and for the sins of our nation.
And, if you believe in God (and even if you don’t) as the One
before Whom we must all make a final accounting, we may find some
merit in following Lincoln’s advice: “It behooves us, then, to
humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national
sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
When
the trial is understood to be before the very Author of our beings,
then we begin to understand how serious the matter is. In the
solidarity of confessing our sins and turning to our God in hope for
his mercy—and there is reason to hope in the One who was crucified
for our sake—then, in the strength of forgiveness, let us act for a
future where mutual care, love, justice, mercy, and reconciliation is
practiced and secured for all.
We
have all heard the refrain from this current national trial of
impeachment: “No one is above the law.” This is true, and so
deeply true theologically. It is also deeply true for the One who
bore the weight of that law for our sake, Jesus the Christ, about
Whom we as confessing people in the promising tradition bear our our
primary testimony of Truth. And because of Jesus the Christ, it can
be added that yes, we are not above the law, but the law is not and
cannot be for us the last Word. The peace of Christ is the last Word.
