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Rev. Ben Cooke is the pastor at Emmanuel Lutheran Episcopal Church in Augusta.
As an Episcopal priest, I write a sermon every week. That means I spend a lot of time thinking about the stories Jesus told, called parables, stories that show how Jesus wanted people to live in the world. So here is my parable for this summer.
Once upon a time, there was a couple who got married. They were delighted at the new life they were creating together, so they invited everyone to their wedding. Everyone came, and the couple gave everyone bouquets of flowers. The whole town held their flowers tight. The couple had given all the people something beautiful. But within some of those bouquets were thistles.
From the outside, all you could see was the beautiful purple thistle flowers poking through the top of the bouquet, looking just like any other flower, but for those holding a thistle, they could feel the spikes of the stems. They began to drop their other flowers. No matter how hard they tried to pull the thistles out of their hands, they remained embedded in their flesh.
Those around picked up the dropped flowers. While the families of those with the thistles tried to help each other, they just became entangled with the spikes as well. By the end of the wedding, some families found themselves holding very small bouquets with a painful thistle in them, whilst their neighbors held large bouquets made up of all that had been dropped.
Whatever the original intentions of the couple, now some people had more than others. For those who had the thistles, they knew their pain and could clearly see what they had lost, and others had picked up. For those who held the most flowers, they would not see that their neighbors were suffering. They only saw that their bouquet, though smaller, still contained some of the same flowers; even the thistle’s purple flowers looked beautiful, and they were jealous of them.
I believe our nation is like the end of that wedding. Our Founding Fathers were delighted with the world they were creating through the marriage of freedom and justice; they took joy in giving us all bouquets of civil rights, but they were not equally distributed. Those who were Black, indigenous, women, gay, or just plain poor were given thistles in their bouquets.
Over 250 years, they have dropped many flowers; lost many rights. Rights that were often picked up by rich white men in the form of wealth and social capital. Now the party is over, and we are in a place where some have more ability to exercise the rights we should all hold equally. They even look at the thistles and only see the flowers on top. They look at our history of racism and see DEI hires; they look at two and a half centuries of homophobia and see only Pride Month; they look at the genocide of Native Americans and see only tribal casinos. They are flowers that hide pain.
Our Founding Fathers intended that all should receive a bouquet of beautiful rights: freedom and justice for all. Yet through no fault of their own, many have thistles and cannot hold those rights. We need to ensure everyone keeps all the rights given to them, including the right to vote.
The proposed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act) would suppress the votes of those who have already suffered so much throughout our history. It would be a theft of one more flower from those who have already lost so many. It is time to pick up our phones, call our representatives, and demand they oppose the SAVE Act, which would strip so many people of their votes.