The choice between cynicism and exhaustion is not an inviting one because both are forms of death.

I have pointed out before that the book, The Bible Makes Sense was written by Walter Brueggemann about forty years ago, when Jimmy Carter was in the first year of his administration and already, then, his discernment led him to predicting that American society was on a path that would go through where we are now.   Obviously, it wasn't Jimmy Carter who he saw steering us into disaster, it was the general trend of the modern-industrial-scientific culture in which that would seem to be inevitable.  I can't say that he foresaw something as base as the Trump regime but his professional study had certainly exposed him to the potential of even a more promising beginning, as is found in The Law, turning into something as corrupt as we live with now. 

Life Is a Gift 

The other side of the tension is that life is a free gift.  In the sixth century B.C., two hundred years after Amos and Isaiah, Israel was no longer proud and secure.  Now her institutions had collapsed and her nerve had failed.  She now doubted whether sustained life was possible.   Perhaps we are on the edge of such doubting in our society.  Disintegration seemed very near to Israel.  There was (and is) a frantic tendency to want to prop things up and, by being a bit more ingenious, to keep things going.  But to no avail. 

The prophets in the sixth century aserted the radical notion that a community cannot manipulate life because it is a gift from God, and he has not placed the gift of life at our disposal.   That is a warning for every community which takes itself too seriously or values its own resources too highly.  So Ezekiel announces that life for this community of despair is a free gift from God:

Behold they say,  “Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost,
We are cut clean off” . . .
Thus says the Lord God:
Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people:  and I will bring you home into the land of Israel  And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves,  O my people.  And I will put my Spirit within you , and you shall live,  and I will place you in your own land (Ezekiel 37:11-14)

The prophet uses resurrection imagery to speak of restoration of the community and rehabilitation in the land of well being and security.  It is pure gift.  It is new life in renewed relations.  

And his later contemporary also announced to exiles (lost, excluded, dead) that life is a free gift:

Ho, every one who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money, 
come, buy and eat!
Come buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, 
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?  
 Harken diligently to me, and eat which is good,
and delight your souls in fatness,
Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live . . . (Isaiah 55:1-3)

It is the continuing task of maturing for every faith community to embrace both realities that life is task and that life is free gift.  Unless they are kept in balance either we will be complacent people who are cynical in presuming too much, or we will be weary people who exhaust ourselves to no avail.   The choice between cynicism and exhaustion is not an inviting one because both are forms of death.

In listening this morning to Stephen Colbert's monologue - and I love Stephen Colbert - his saying that the Democrats caved did seem a bit uncharacteristically cynical for him, it's a cynicism that would seem to be the house mindset of the lefty chatosphere, online.   I wrote an early blog post in 2006 about why Democratic politicians don't do what we want them to do, asking people to try to consider it from the point of view of a Democrat who needs to be in office to do anything.   For Democrats who want to be in office so - if they are a majority - they can pass things like DACA into law, they have to listen to people for who that is a make or break issue but there are other make or break issues for other people whose votes they need to get elected.  There has to be a calculation of what they CAN DO out of the things they would love to do and WHEN THEY CAN GET THAT DONE.   I like Chuck Schumer a bit less than I like Steve Colbert but his explanation of how he and other Democrats faced the facts they have to deal with made more sense.   Anyone who wants to pursue the hard work of making the traditional American liberal agenda - exactly consisting of those teachings Marilynne Robinson pointed out were the hardest part of The Law to live up to - they can't take either of those alternatives of exhaustion or cynicism that blog blatherers and tweeting venters indulge themselves in.  I don't think going here is as out of line with what Brueggemann said in that passage as it might seem, I think it's not even that far removed from it.  In any case, that's the reality of what we face to welcome the sojourner among us and to treat them as we would want to be treated ourselves.  Not to mention the poor who are already here.