July 2, 2006 Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Independence Day Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 130; Acts 2:43-47; II Corinthians 8:7-15; Matthew 5:1-16
This week a Valley News front-page headline read, “Thetford Residents at
Odds Over Flying the Flag.” The controversy arose over a request by the Thetford
Center Community Association to fly several American flags on utility poles
continuously from Memorial Day to Columbus Day every year.
People feel strongly on all sides of this issue. The Select Board came up
with a compromise—the flags will be up from Memorial Day through the Fourth
of July, and then for other special holidays as well. That does not change the way
people will feel about the flags. Some will have a warm and proud feeling about
America when they see them. Some will be reminded of their fear of terrorist who
threaten America, or gratitude and fear for people they love who are fighting in
American wars overseas. Some will feel shame for America’s actions. Some will
feel uncomfortable, afraid that the flying of the flags is making a statement of
support for national policies that they oppose—including the very military actions
that make others want to fly the flags. Some will feel a mix of these and other
feelings, but few, I suspect, will pass by the flags without some emotions welling
up in them.
This is good. This is fitting if you look at if from the point of view of the
gospels. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “You are the light of the world.
A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a
bushel basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the
same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works
and give glory to God.” Later in the Sermon on the Mount he warned us, “If the
light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Jesus calls us to create a society that is a light to the world, a city built on a
hill that will stand as a model of what is good. Puritans who came to this land to
create a new society came with just that ideal. John Winthrop said aboard the
Arbella in 1630, “For we must consider that we shall be as a city built on a hill;
the eyes of all people are upon us.”
So it is good to see the flag and observe our feelings and be reminded of
how well we are fulfilling Christ’s calling to let the light of our good works shine
to the world for the glory of God. It is good to be forced to reflect on whether our
nation’s light is purely the light of Christ-like charitable lovingkindness and
humble self-sacrifice, or if it is to some extent the darkness of selfish greed and
arrogant pride.
Freedom of religion is essential to America’s founding vision. We should
never have any religion imposed on us by the state. Religion does have an
essential role in America, though, and that is to guide our moral and ethical
judgment, and to help us measure how well our state is living up to our highest
ideals as articulated by our religion.
Religion also leads us to the power that the Psalm was talking about today.
“With God is great power to redeem: It is God who will redeem Israel from its
iniquities.” It is God who can redeem America from all its flaws—Gods higher
power that is greater than the most corrupt corporate lobby in Washington; God’s
higher power that is greater that the unimaginably vast military-industrial
complex; God’s higher power that is greater than the political organization of the
religious right. God’s power will redeem us.
That force flows according to its own laws. The sacred way is not the way
of human pride or greed. We glimpse the society the Holy Spirit wants to create
when we read about some of those very early churches that were so close to
Christ. The Book of Acts tells about the first church’s wonders and signs, its
healings and beautiful words and most of all, its selfless, generous sharing of
goods with all who were in need. All we have comes from God, they believed,
and should be used to serve others so that the Creation can become full of the
mercy and lovingkindness of God.
The Apostle Paul expressed the same principles twenty years later. He
wrote, “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you,
but it is a question of fair balance between your present abundance and their
need,” or their abundance and your need. Paul pointed to the way God distributed
the manna in the wilderness, the one time since the Garden of Eden when God
stepped in and ordered the human economy. As Paul says, God saw to it that,
“The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not
have too little.”
These are among the most important principles of our religion. How are we
doing at creating a society in that image? When people look at the church is that
what they see? When people around the world look at the American flag, when
they look to us as a city built on a hill, do they see the light of these principles—of
generous, selfless sharing with all who are in need, making sure that the rich are
not too rich and the poor are not too poor? Or do they see a great darkness of
selfishness and greed, the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer, the
darkness of not caring what others suffer as long as we get what we want?
Certainly there is both darkness and light in America. In the struggle between the
two, which seems to be dominating and increasing?
There may be no more important document to guide a society that wants to
be virtuous than the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the Beatitudes. A
nation that treats the poor in spirit as blessed is a nation that has already become
part of the kingdom of heaven. A nation that values highly the meek will inherit
the earth because it will not have the arrogance to destroy it. A nation that
hungers and thirst for doing what is right will be filled, whereas a culture obsessed
with filling its gluttonous appetites will always feel empty. A merciful nation will
receive mercy, but a society that hates its enemies and pursues vengeance and does
not care how many innocent people it kills or impoverishes along the way, a
nation that tortures and imprisons illegally—such a society will receive no mercy
when its day of reckoning comes, unless there is a society in the world that more
faithfully practices the mercy Jesus preached. Blessed are the peacemakers, for
they will be called children of God, but whose children are the people who fail to
do what makes for peace—who fail to be so selfless and generous and merciful
that peace spreads across the world wherever their light shines?
The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in the voice of a wise
Christian elder named Zosima in the book The Brothers Karamazov. Zosima
taught that anytime we see another person’s sin we should consider ourselves to
blame, because if we ourselves were truly good, if we shined a pure light, we
might have influenced that person not to sin. Zosima also said that when we stand
before a great wrong we will wonder whether to respond with force or with love.
He said, always respond with humble love. He said, “If you so resolve once and
for all, you will be able to overcome the whole world. A loving humility is a
terrible power, the most powerful of all, nothing compares with it.” (p319, Vintage
1991 edition)
There are genocides happening in the world right now—Darfur is not the
only place. There are active tyrants far worse than Saddam Hussein. Israel and
Palestine are not the only neighbors in bloody conflict. America is a city on a hill,
a lamp shining out to the world, but what kind of message does its beacon send?
What does it stand for? Does it influence people by its goodness to stop their
violence, hatred and greed? Does it respond to the wrongs of the world and the
wrongs done against it with humble love? Does America live up to the ideals of
the Sermon on the Mount and the earliest church? Does America sacrifice its self-
interest and serve other nations in their time of need in the ways that Jesus did—
healing the sick, feeding the poor and standing up boldly but nonviolently to
injustice?
These are questions to ask yourself when you drive by the flags in Thetford
Center. And if you have to answer no, America is not living up to its own ideals,
do not despair. Remember that, “With God is great power to redeem.” God will
redeem America from all its iniquities.
It is not too late. If one person or one neighborhood or one church can live
up to these ideals, God’s power will flow through them to influence many others.
“Have peace in yourself and thousands will find salvation around you.” (St.
Seraphim of Sarov) Let the light of your good works shine, build a city on a hill
here, and one day that light may grow to tip the balance and change the world.
One day America may be the city built on a hill, the model of the realm of God
that its founders envisioned. The power of that goodness and humble love would
be greater than all our bombs. Have peace and justice and a spirit of charitable
lovingkindness in America, and the world will find salvation around us—in
Darfur, in Iraq, in Israel and Palestine, and in all the places like them.
Let us pray in silence that these things shall be…
Sermon 07/02/2006