Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Pentecost

July 4, 2010

Readings

Well, here we are in church, not just on the fourth of July weekend, but on the fourth of July, and though your bulletin for today says clearly that we are celebrating the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, you will hear in a few minutes that that is only partly true. First some background.

One of the trickiest paths for church folks--and by that I mean all of us, clergy lay, everybody--to negotiate is the path running between the two entities of church and state. The historical line between the two is marked by areas of friction in which church and government rankle each other by claiming authority in the same area, and by times of such complete cooperation that the lines between church and government seem to disappear. In our own generation, we have seen people of faith marching in the streets to challenge laws that clash with basic tenets of their religious tradition and we have seen politicians rise or fall on their record of response to faith based causes like outlawing abortion or ending a war. People of faith do not tend to agree on what they would have their government do because people of faith, often reading the same scriptures, come up with different interpretations. The ability to hold those different opinions is part of what the fireworks will be about when they burst over the city tonight. But those different opinions about what faith should ask of government are a part of what makes the intersection of government and religion so fraught.

One of the debates church folks can get into has to do with whether the American flag should be displayed in church. I googled the subject a while back and came up with some interesting history. It seems we Americans are unique in displaying the national flag in church sanctuaries. The practice began about a hundred and fifty years ago in Catholic churches when Catholics were suspected of serving a foreign ruler, the pope. The pope was, until the 1870s the leader of a group of states that included most of Italy and his power outweighed that of the local national leaders. The flag stood in the sanctuary to show that American Catholics’ first loyalty was indeed to the U.S. The question of loyalty being cleared up by the presence of the flag was between pope and nation. The question was still alive in 1960 when John Kennedy became the first Catholic U.S. president. In 1978 the Catholic church issued a ruling that the flag should be removed from all churches because nothing in the sanctuary should distract worshippers from the central purpose of worship, which is to draw closer to Jesus. I ran across one posting in my flags-in-church search that started out, “if you want to get fired all you have to do is…” I had to open that one. It was by a pastor somewhere in Georgia who had tried to remove the flag from a church where it had been part of the service for a hundred years.

Over the years, in different times and places around the U.S. the line between loyalty to God and loyalty to country have often become blurred. They are seen as being similar, if not the same. The Boy Scout God and Country award seems to sum up the equality of these two components; that is until you do a little scratching and find that the award emphasizes loyalty to God first and country second and that all of the work done to achieve the award centers on God and faith, not country. The name is a bit of a misnomer. It makes me wonder if they had to attach the word “country” to the award to get people interested in it.

The line between church and state can get messy. Some people just avoid the problem by declaring politics and religion to be oil and water. They don’t mix, end of subject. Others see implications in the gospel that require some kind of engagement with the secular powers that be. There are strong feelings on both sides.

The subject of how to manage God and National issues is so challenging that it was one of the questions on the General Ordination Exams in my senior year at seminary. We had three hours to write a Fourth of July sermon that we knew would be read by graders who either had very strong opinions of how such things should be handled or who were looking for ideas in dealing with the question in their parishes. I told a story about some people in a small rural town setting up early in the morning for the day’s celebration. I don’t remember how or if I tied that story into the story of the Church.

So when Barbara contacted me about which readings we should use today, I realized that it was time once again to try bringing together the celebration of our nation’s birth and the primacy of our life in God. The task seemed to involve calling us to give thanks for this nation, its pioneers, it defenders of freedom, its dreamers, its great possibilities and potential--to give thanks for all of those and at the same time to do that with humility, a humility that we won’t see on the mall tonight or hear in the celebratory speeches on the steps of the capitol. It seemed to me that we needed to focus on some part of this nation’s heritage that won’t be addressed by fireworks and bands, by candidates and drums. I wondered for a while what “other” side of this great day I might find to hold up for you this morning, and the answer was sitting right there on my desk all the time in the lectionary readings for Independence Day.

I told you in the beginning that we were only kind of celebrating the sixth Sunday of Pentecost. Even though today is the fourth, the church calendar of seasons takes precedence over a national holiday, but we are allowed to transfer some of the readings for another day into the Sunday service. So, all the readings today are those appointed for the fourth of July. And the readings appointed for the fourth may just be worth posting on your refrigerator, or folding up and taking into the city tonight. They speak of why and how great nations are built and they point not to what we have become, which will always be a work in progress, but what was being sought by those who established this land we celebrate today. They speak of what it takes to create such a land. They speak, not about country, but about seeking a country. Listen.

The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords. the great God mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the stranger, providing for them food and clothing. You also shall love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

They confessed that they were strangers, foreigners on the earth, for people who speak this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

And about Abraham…..he looked forward to a city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

And this one, maybe most important of all in these times…..“You have heard it said,” says Jesus, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, “but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, for if you only love those who love you, what good is that?”

Today, on the day we celebrate our nation’s independence, the church would remind us that our ancestors--that some of us here today-- once sought a homeland. We are reminded of the hopes that all humans have, the hopes that bring people together. We are reminded that our dream has always been to live in justice and that the way to that better place involves caring for and even forgiving others. The national anthem you will hear today speaks of our persevering and triumphing through battle and that is certainly a part of what has brought us to the place we are today. The church reminds us today that the road ahead involves learning to love our enemies. Church is probably the only place you will hear that message on this day. We are still strangers in search of that better homeland.

Maybe one reason why celebrating our nation and worshipping on Sunday are not an easy fit is that on the fourth we celebrate having arrived at a kind of promised land. In the Church, we understand ourselves to still be on the way to such a place. Our ancestors made it clear that they were strangers and foreigners seeking a homeland. The trick for us on this fine day is to not let our celebration of what we have received quench our fierce longing for that better homeland.

JB