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"Freedom's Holy Light"

Sermon by Dr. Kit Schooley
given July 1, 2007

The weaving together of church with nation, faith with politics, comes to clergy in phone calls others rarely receive.

“Hello Reverend Schooley, I'm John Jones from the Mayor's office, ‘Will you give the invocation at city council meeting tomorrow?’ ” Or:

“Reverend Doctor Shooly, 'Can you come to the groundbreaking of the new Senior Citizen's housing and bless the building?’” (even when they haven’t begun the building!)

My first encounter with this was when Governor Carper was in office. One of his aides asked if I would serve on a committee to plan the governor's prayer breakfast. I accepted that first invite out of curiosity.

A few years later Governor's Minner's aides called with an invitation to work with others to create a worship service to commemorate her second inauguration. I accepted because, frankly, I suspected God was trying to get a message across to me about politics. It was challenging to pray for the Governor, but I never found it to be a revelation. And I was never convinced the Governor was more blessed due to my prayers.

Since then, I have, by choice, confined my personal connection of church and state to the thrice-yearly requests my legislator-wife makes of me when she volunteers to offer the prayer for the opening of a legislative session in Delaware's State House. Even that is diminishing, for the other day she said if I would just give her the prayer I prayed for Sunday worship a week back, she allowed she could turn it into a prayer proper enough for legislators!

All this leads us up to Wednesday’s national holiday, and the questions I wrestle every year? Maybe you wrestle then too. “What does the church have to do with politics; with the nation?” There is no fixed answer, but a couple of things come to mind to reflect upon while sitting awaiting darkness' falling prior to holiday-ending fireworks.

When the framers of the Constitutional Convention met for the first time on Tuesday, September 6 1774 at Carpenter's Hall up in Philly, and began setting a path for these divers people (as they called us), to mold us as more than a collection of colonialists, the first words were from a Boston lawyer, Thomas Cushing by name, who stood and asked the delegates to begin with prayer. Hard to know exactly how everyone reacted, but both John Jay of New York, a devout Episcopalian, and John Rutledge, a South Carolina planter, “objected strenuously.”

Political arguing had begun, and it was about religion. The delegates could have resolved the issue by ruling “no prayer, no religion, no God-talk, a totally secular state.” They didn't. Instead Sam Adams rose to say he was no religious bigot and “would be glad to hear a prayer from a gentleman (sic) of piety, and went on to propose Reverend Duche, an Episcopal clergyman of that city, be invited on the day next.” Duche appeared and prayed, using Psalm 35, in which the psalmist suggests God struggles together with people who have differing views. Adams liked the reasonableness of that kind of praying and the convention moved away from religious arguments.

For church people there is typically a little dis-ease with government and politics. We remember government’s abuse, as happened dramatically in Germany and a dozen smaller ways throughout the world.

Political leaders also have dis-ease with faith, for one has to look no further than the 9/11 events to point out the danger of religion.

What we each fear, is extremism: imposing a particular religious belief on all without their acceptance; or imposing a particular government on religious people without their will.

Those framers of our nation’s declarations were familiar with the 33rd Psalm’s statement: “Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord.” But how much more should be said?

I'm not going to tease out all the issues here. Rather, in light of them, let’s ask a different question, “What do we Presbyterians, (or Lutherans or Catholics or Jews) tell our children about the Fourth of July? Do we suggest God’s has a fixed and primary relationship with our country? Such an idea asks: Does the 4th of July have anything to do with being people of God? Should, or do national commemorations automatically have a place of importance in the church? Should we sing the Star Spangled Banner in church if the 4th falls on a Sunday?

We live near the place where the whole noble, wonderful, classy ideas of how to be a nation were put together. And, we all happily say: “Yes, the nationhood ideal of expecting us to live like grown-ups, free in the world, is really, a boffo idea!” I would underline the word “grown-ups,” if I may.

But beyond fine ideas, picnics with firecrackers, and reunions with family, what do faith and patriotism wish to say to each other? Two things Christians wish to say to politics: First, at its best, the United States of America is, and continues to be, an extraordinary ideal, a great nation; this is a nation claiming that believers in faith are worthy human beings. On its best days, this nation stands for freedom like God would have for all God's children. That's what we should tell our kids. They'll be exposed to a lot of other ideas about what this nation is, such as: It’s the best place on earth; or, “It’s arrogant, caught up in itself and doesn't see it's shortcomings.” But Christians know, at the bottom, freedom is needed from God and for country.

The other thing to say to children begins in the story we heard from “By Heart” this morning. (Luke 19:47-48; 20:20-26) In the story, Jesus was forced to take a run at religion and politics while the Romans were occupying Palestine, and extracting ruinous taxes. Jesus was cornered by the overtly-pious (in other words people like me) who sought to use the political situation to trip him. (“Catch him” is the way the Greek reads.) In fact, they weren't interested in whether God was on the Roman's side or Jerusalem’s side; rather, Jesus was threatening and they seeking, in a petty political ways, the removal of Jesus from their daily life. They thought they had the political power to do it, in their rather convoluted relationship between temple and Rome.

They delivered to the Lord an impossible question. “Jesus, should we support the Roman occupation; paying taxes…cooperating with our occupiers?” If he said “No,” he was disobeying Roman rule. If he said “Yes,” he was being inhumane to the poor strapped by those taxes.

Jesus said neither. Essentially, he said: “Don't drag me into it.” Over the centuries, many Christians have based their attitudes toward government on this passage. Many have thought Jesus' statement establishes two separate realms, Caesar's and God's, and that people should render to each accordingly. This interpretation strikes many Americans as obviously correct, given our separation of church and state. But, in fact, Jesus was saying “we are of a different kingdom. I won’t use politics for religious ends, or vice-versa.” That’s the second thing we say to our children and to one another.

National holidays are times when, hopefully, we recall we can be great citizens by making our country the best place possible. So, we vow to speak out when it falls short of God's will, for Christians know patriotism is a fine thing, but in it’s extreme it is dangerous to faith.

I remember the day Colonel Hamburger, a reserve officer in the Pennsylvania National Guard, called me to make my assignment as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. He said, “Young man, I expect you are a good person, but I don’t understand why you’re insisting on serving this way. There is no higher calling than service in the armed forces for your country. You are about to waste two years of life.”

I was young, and not good at talking to rank, nor power. I stumbled a bit, but I knew the world differently. I said something like this, quite haltingly: “Colonel Hamburger, my decision is not about serving or not serving if that’s what you are thinking. I am going to serve, but in a way that honors God first, rather than, as you say, honors nation. I belong God’s people everywhere in the world, not only here. It’s is only an historic accident that I was born here in this nation.

When those two years were over, I didn’t feel vindicated or proud. I felt sad. It was so hard to serve God in a time of war when people suggested being faithful meant being unquestioningly patriotic. We tell our children that there may be times when what we believe as Christians doesn’t fit so well with what we believe as a nation. But that, as long as both are working for God’s freedom, it’s worth living.

Amen and Amen.

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