The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
July 6, 2008

Proper 9-A
Zechariah 9:9-12
Romans 7:21--8:6
Matthew 11:25-30

“Americans Balance Patriotism and Reflection,” the headline read on July 4, 2002, the first Independence Day after the attack on the World Trade Center, as if patriotism were one thing and reflection another, as if patriotism were fireworks and flags and flag lapel pins and bratwurst and beer, while reflection is just something unhappily thrust upon us by September 11 – which shows just how far down the slippery slope we’ve slid, just how close to the bread and circuses of ancient Rome we’ve moved, because if patriotism is fireworks and flags and agreeing with the government, and not reflection, then we might as well throw in the towel, because, as our Founding Fathers remind us, liberty has a price, and the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Both Sundays and the Fourth of July, both religion and patriotism, were made for reflection, for remembrance and for prayer. But – sigh! – both our vigilance and our prayer are anemic, so we just forget. We just forget what freedom is.

What irony! What irony that on Independence Day we should have such a low opinion of reflection when the document of the Fourth of July is almost entirely reflection, rather profound reflection ending with a radical remedy to a dire situation. Like the Bible, the Declaration of Independence analyzes our rather lousy circumstances, and then proposes a radical solution. Like the Bible, it reflects upon where we have come from, and then calls us to move ahead with purpose into the future.

Do we still believe what the Declaration of Independence calls for? Not just those of here this morning, but we as a people. Are we still committed to its truths? Do we still believe that there are certain truths that are self-evident and that among them is the truth that it is God, not government, who creates us and gives us certain unalienable rights? Do we still believe that because it is God, and not government, who is the author of both life and liberty, then it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish a government when that government becomes destructive of the the just ends of power? Do we still believe that it is not only the right of the people, but also our sacred duty, ”to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for [our] future security”? Do we still rely upon “the protection of Divine Providence” and “appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,” and do we still believe that the healthy order of our common life requires that “we mutually pledge to each other,” not the lives and fortunes and sacred honor of our Founding Fathers , but our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor?

If we in the Year of Our Lord 2008 are to measure our political independence today by that of our Founding Fathers, then reflections such as these are what patriotism is all about, what just and proper government is all about.

So, among all the fireworks and flags and other Fourth of July hoopla this past week, it was encouraging also to find some serious patriotic reflection about the current state of our national life. “Anxious in America,” Thomas Friedman called his article last Sunday. And what Friedman contends is “the most gripping source of anxiety for Americans” right now is not Al Qaeda or Iraq, but the state of America itself. He argues that nation-building is indeed going to be the number one issue in this fall’s election. Not nation-building in Iraq or in some other place around the world, but nation-building here at home, because our current economic and political uncertainties indicate that we simply don’t have the slightest clue where we’re headed.

“My fellow Americans,” he writes, ”we are a country in debt and in decline – not terminal, not irreversible, but in decline.... We are the ones who need a better-functioning democracy – more than the Iraqis and Afghans. We are the ones in need of nation-building. It is our political system that is not working.” And Friedman trots out some big guns from The Wall Street Journal and Goldman Sachs International for support: “Today our political system seems incapable of producing a critical mass to support any kind of serious long-term reform,” offers Robert Hormats of Goldman Sachs. “America and its political leaders, after two decades of failing to come together to solve big problems, seem to have lost faith in their ability to do so,”and “a political system that expects failure doesn’t try very had to produce anything else,” adds Gerald Seib in The Wall Street Journal.

Then just yesterday Bob Herbert joined in with his assessment of the state of America this Fourth of July. Despite the flags and fireworks, he says, “there [is today] an undercurrent of anxiety in the land.... But the anxiety seems more intense than the usual concern for a cyclical economic downturn. Something fundamental seems to have gone haywire,” as David Boren, former U. S. Senator from Oklahoma has observed in his book A Letter to America: “The country we love is in trouble,” says Boren. “In truth, we are in grave danger of declining as a nation. If we do not act quickly, that decline will become dramatic.” “I couldn’t agree more,” Herbert then adds. “The symbols of patriotism – bumper stickers and those flags the size of baseball fields – have taken the place of the hard work and sacrifice required to keep a great nation great.... Waving a flag is never a good substitute for [genuine patriotism], for serious thought and rolling up one’s sleeves.” (The New York Times, July 5, 2008)

“We used to try harder and do better,” Friedman concludes. “We need nation-building at home, and we cannot wait another year to get started.... We’re at a thirty-four year low. And digging out of this hole is what the next election has to be about and is going to be about....” (The New York Times, June 29, 2008)

The hole Friedman and Herbert and Boren are talking about is, of course, a political and economic hole, and they are asking if we have the genuine patriotism – the will and the national purpose, the stuff effective freedom is made of – needed to respond effectively to the political malaise and lack of direction in which we find ourselves today.

For political and economic decline is, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. Political and economic decline is a sign of a more general and pervasive spiritual malaise. Expectations of failure indicate a loss of will, which is a spiritual loss, like the despair of those lost in the wilderness, a loss of purpose, a loss of hope.

But people of faith, of course, do not measure their freedom and their purpose solely by that of their secular leaders and fellow citizens. People of faith measure their freedom and their hope by that of their spiritual Fathers as well. And if we Christians are to measure our freedom and hope today by the freedom and hope of Moses and Jesus and the other Fathers of the Scriptures, then must we not also reflect on some additional questions? Not as a substitute for the political and economic questions, but in addition to them:

Do we still believe that God is God of gods and Lord of lords, and that our true freedom rests in the measure of our trust in God’s promise, in the measure of our trust in the One who brought us out of slavery in Egypt? Do we still believe that even this fine land is not our true home, and that real freedom leads us to follow wherever God beckons, to follow even as Abraham followed, living in tents, if necessary, as Abraham lived with Isaac and Jacob as heirs of a promise, and longing for a better country, for a city with firm foundations, whose architect and builder is God?

The promise of our land is as nothing without the promise of God. The promise of our land is feeble – indeed, impossible – without the promise of God, without God’s promise to bring us fellow immigrants, all of us, to that Promised City.

It is a promise that reaches back long before the United States of America. It is a promise first heard by Abraham, that ancient pilgrim who set out not knowing where he was to go, but who went, by faith, looking for the promised City. It was later heard by Moses and the people of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. It was heard later still by Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. And it is heard even now in the wilderness of our present world, as Jesus calls us much as Moses called the people in the wilderness of Sinai: “My fellow immigrants,” he says. “My fellow immigrants, you have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for them. Pray for those who persecute you, so that you and they, all of you, fellow aliens and sojourners in this world, may be children of your Father who is in heaven and inheritors of the promise.” Do we still believe this?

Do we still believe that God also loves those who are not of this particular fold, and that, therefore, our trust and freedom in God leads us to love the alien among us, because it was as aliens in a foreign land that God first loved us when he brought us into this promised land? Do we still believe in God’s mercy and realize, therefore, that our freedom and trust in God will lead us to seek justice and mercy for the fatherless and the widow, as God expects? Do we still believe in that radical freedom of Jesus, who calls us to a freedom that seeks more than “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” to that freedom that leads to giving our coat as well as our shirt to him who just asks for the one? Do we, today, still hear these words of Our Lord?

Reflection, prayer, memory, and commitment – this is what the Declaration of Independence and the Fourth of July are all about. And it’s what the Bible is all about. And that’s why these words of Jesus, assigned to be read and reflected upon on the Fourth of July, are also appropriate for this Eighth Sunday after Pentecost.

More questions: Do we still believe that Christ has freed us, truly freed us as he freed St. Paul, freed us to choose what is good, and freed us enough that we are also free not to choose those things that are harmful or evil? Are we still committed, in Christ, to that noble freedom we sang about on Friday: “My native country, thee, land of the noble free, it’s thy name I love.”

Are we still committed, in Christ, to that noble freedom we pray for – to the freedom to love not only our neighbors, but also our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us, so that we can be children of our heavenly Father? If we are free to love only those who love us, what kind of freedom is that? Any old tax-collector or heathen has that much freedom. Do we still believe that Christ has freed us, truly freed us? Do we cherish our freedom in Christ enough that we can choose to put no limits to our goodness, just as our heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds?

True liberty is that liberty St. Paul holds before us – the freedom, through Christ, not to indulge our sinful natures, but to choose what is good, to serve one another in love. That is our purpose, without which economic and political reform is only a shell game.

In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, the nineteenth-century French observer of American life, concluded that “America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” And this is the choice that stands before us: to be a good people and therefore a great people, or to surrender our greatness by neglecting our goodness.

Both as Christians and as Americans, we are free. We are free to choose that which is self-serving and base or that which is good and noble. It’s a choice that stands before us continuously, because of the freedom God has granted us. Both as Christians and as Americans, we sing not of that freedom our Founding Fathers called “license” – the license to act in any way we want to act – but we sing of the liberty we have in the Declaration of Independence and in Christ, the freedom to be the noble free, to be those who seek liberty and justice and well-being not just for a few, but for all.

What a powerful word, “noble”! We should never slide over it unreflectively. It comes from the same root as the word “to know.” To be noble means to have discernment, to understand the real value of something. “Noble” implies superiority of mind and character. Noble freedom is the freedom to be for all that is outstanding and above reproach and the freedom to resist that which is petty or common or cheap.

Noble freedom is the freedom St. Paul is praising and giving thanks for today: “I find that in my mind I want to obey God,” Paul says, “because it is his law that I approve of. But in my sinful nature, I find that I am unfree to do it, because I am a slave to the law of sin. But thanks be to God! For because of Christ Jesus, the Spirit of life has now set me free from the law of sin and death. Christ has given me a new outlook and freedom. (NEB) He has set me free from the law of sin, so that I might live for the life of the Spirit.”

Freedom, in other words, is not its own end. The end or purpose of freedom is not just to be free. Freedom is a gift that carries responsibility, a gift God has given us to use for a purpose or an end beyond itself. The purpose or end of freedom is nobility; the purpose of freedom is to do what is good and right and just and merciful. This purpose, this end, Paul reminds us, we are, in Christ, now free to choose.

Well, I leave it to you to answer all these questions for yourselves. What Jesus insists, however, and what his Church insists, is that reflections such as these make up the substance of any patriotism worth crowing about. Without such reflection, tyranny and slavery prevail, and setting off fireworks and waving flags is just so much clanging of gongs and clashing of cymbals, as our fathers, both spiritual and temporal, remind us.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right,” another of our fathers exhorted us in an earlier time of national crisis. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

And just so will we end our Eucharist today as we began it – with an appeal for “the protection of Divine Providence,” and with a plea for guidance from “the Supreme Judge of the world.”

O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guide while life shall last,
and our eternal home.

----------------

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by thy might led us into the light;
keep us for ever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee;
lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee;
Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand,
true to our God, true to our native land.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.