The Table of Confederates

On January 17, 1961 radios and televisions across the United States broadcast President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the American people. This speech has become well known for Eisenhower’s warning against the military-industrial complex gaining undue influence in the government.

For my purposes, I find these two paragraphs to be at the heart of the foreign relations nightmare where the United States currently lives:

“Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”

“Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.”

Commentary on this could go in many directions, but I am most intrigued by the imagery of the table of confederates. This is the imagery that so powerfully described Jesus’ ministry and visions of the fulfilled Kingdom of God. We stop short of the full scope of Jesus’ actions if we believe that it was merely a social or religious scandal when he shared the table with prostitutes, tax collectors, and “the least of these”. Such a scandal was not merely fodder for a mudslinging campaign by Jesus’ opponents, but was a concrete oppositional statement to the ruling authorities of the day.

The power structures in 1st Century CE Palestine were built and maintained by exploiting division. Jews vs. Gentiles. Palestinian Jews vs. Jews of the Diaspora. Aramaic speakers vs. Greek speakers. Priests vs. scholars. Violent revolutionaries vs. accommodationists. Each power broker carved out a piece of the ideological spectrum and banked on eschatological vindication.

Jesus chose instead to invite as many different kinds to the table as would come, and in so doing threatened authority that was based on division. In dealing with the Roman occupation, he chose neither violent opposition nor passive accommodation. He chose instead the nonviolent proclamation of the Kingdom of God with healings and exorcisms, and the call to repentance - turning - from the pursuit of kingdoms built on violence, be it Satan’s, Caesar’s, or the Pharisees’. We know how his opponents ultimately responded.

We today would do well to learn the lessons of 1st Century Palestine. If you have been overcome with busyness in your 10-mile radius, I plead with you to take just one hour of a weekend afternoon and read what is going on in the world. If you commit to read reports from two parts of the world each weekend (especially from different sources), you will be amazed at how this will impact your life. The conflicts in the world today are not so different from the time when Jesus walked the dusty roads of Galilee.

However, I would also urge you not to be distracted from your more immediate communities by what is going on in the wider world. The horrors of sectarian violence in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and countless other locales should not be ignored, but let them teach us the appropriate lessons about our own struggles. Power structures maintained by division are ubiquitous throughout human history, and certainly today in the United States of America. As the engines rev for the 2008 presidential election, remember how both Democrats and Republicans have used division in the past to engineer political victories. Though we are not fighting in the streets right now, don’t think for a moment that the perpetual exploitation of ideological differences by politicians and lobbyists can’t eventually cause rifts deep enough to produce civil war. It has happened before and it could happen again.

If we have ears, let us hear Eisenhower as a prophetic voice. Do any words ring more true in describing our current international relations program than “dreadful fear and hate”? Do any words sound more foreign to the rhetoric of war and strong-arm “diplomacy” than “mutual respect and trust”? Now think about your most recent conversations on church denominations, immigration, socioeconomic classes, race, or political parties. Which characterizations best fit the tone of your conversations?

Establishing tables of equality can start nowhere other than in our own lives. Who do we invite into our homes? Whose are the voices that we let speak into our lives? If we find ourselves agreeing with everyone we spend time with, it might be time we broadened our social circles a bit. This is not simply a matter of being cosmopolitan. This is a foundational step in what it means to move toward a different society, a better kingdom—a kingdom where the weak come to the table with as much confidence as the strong that they will be heard.

I want to live in such a kingdom. Would you join me at the table?

(Eisenhower’s speech in its entirety can be found here.)