Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
We are blessed to
be both grandparents, and through our daughter in law, now great grandparents.
Our great
grandson was over for dinner last year, getting to know us, and one of the
things that stood out for him was that we prayed before the meal.
One of the next
evenings, at home, he asked his parents to hold hands and pray as we had, and
then proceeded:
“I pledge
allegiance to the flag. . .”
It was one of the
few things he knew by memory, so it made sense to him. Obviously, we all got a kick out of it.
Today is Super Bowl
Sunday and one of the questions hanging over the NFL regards an issue that has
been part of the public discourse for the last couple of years. Will some players take a knee during the
national anthem in order to draw attention to matters of justice and equality
in our country?
If some do, there
will be many in our country who will be critical of them for showing disrespect
to our flag and our country, and others that will applaud them for using their
position as a stage to take a stand for something that they believe deeply in.
Regardless what your
feelings are on this matter, it has lifted up the various symbols of our
democracy and created quite a conversation.
The National
Anthem.
The flag.
The Pledge of
Allegiance.
In its original form it read:
"I pledge
allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
In 1923, the words, "the Flag of the
United States of America" were added. At this time it read:
"I pledge
allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for
which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for
all."
In 1954, in response to the Communist threat
of the times, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words
"under God," creating the 31-word pledge we say today. Today it reads:
"I pledge
allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for
which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice
for all." (from USHistory.org)
For me the most
important words in the pledge, are the last words added, “under God”, and
without them I could not say the pledge.
You see, as
Christians, or people of faith throughout the world, our allegiance is first
and foremost to God, and not to any of the countries in which we might live.
We have another “pledge
of allegiance”.
For the Jewish
people that pledge, the Shema, is:
“Hear O’ Israel,
the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
Muslims likewise
have a pledge, the shahada, or witness:
"There is no
god but God; Muhammad is the messenger of God"
And finally, as
Christians we have a pledge, simple and straightforward:
“Jesus is Lord.”
Our pledge of
allegiance as Christians was formulated very specifically as a rebuttal to the
pledge of allegiance in their day to the Roman Empire.
In the Roman
Empire, people were expected to make the pledge of allegiance to the Roman
Empire with the words: “Caesar is Lord.”
The Christians
would not, instead affirming their faith that “Jesus is Lord.” And understood in their confession that “Jesus
is Lord” was the very strong belief that “Caesar was NOT Lord.”
This was a really
big deal. A really big deal.
Today, when
football players take a knee during the national anthem, those who take offense
at their stance have often chose to criticize them, and in some cases, simply
refuse to watch football.
When the first
Christians refused to say the pledge to the Roman Empire, “Caesar is Lord”, but
instead declared “Jesus is Lord”, they were executed.
It was a really
big deal.
The Church also
had to deal with the question of what to do with Christians who had caved in,
and rather than risk their life, just said “Caesar is Lord.”
Apostasy is what
it was called, when Christians failed to make the confession “Jesus is Lord” in
order to save their own skin.
Can they be
forgiven was the question.
Our lesson today
from Isaiah states:
“Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has
it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the
foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and
its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a
curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.”
Have you not
known?
Have you not
heard?
The rulers of the
earth are nothing when compared to our God.
“Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and
they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will
you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.”
Think about this
for a moment.
Think about how
absurd it is that we concern ourselves with earthly rulers when our God, who
alone is sovereign, reigns.
Earthly rulers
rise and fall in the blinking of an eye.
God has reigned
throughout all of eternity.
I mean really,
earthly politics are like shifting sand.
One ruler will
issue a decree, an “executive order”, but before the dust has even settled on it,
the next ruler will issue another decree.
Compare this with
the decrees of God, that the Bible tells us stand for all eternity.
To whom then will you compare me, or who is
my equal? says the Holy One.”
“Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and
they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
This image really
resonates with me after spending time in Eastern Montana.
We tried to
garden there. There were numerous
challenges.
We had a garden
plot that we tilled. Our organist came
by one day when we were working in the garden and heard that we needed some
manure, and immediately went home, got her husband, and went out to their ranch
and loaded up two truckloads of incredibly rich, well seasoned manure from
their stock yard.
With it, we
tilled the soil, and planted our garden.
The seeds took
root, and the plants shot up.
Everything looked
great until the summer wore on.
And then in
August, as often happens in Eastern Montana, we had a heat wave.
100 degree
temperatures. And the wind blew.
100 degrees, dry
arid heat, and a wind of thirty miles an hour.
The plants all
whithered. Even if you watered them
constantly, there is no way under those circumstances for them to replenish the
moisture they were losing.
So it is with the
rulers of the earth.
God alone endures
from age to age.
There is a
conversation I’d love to have in the Church.
Too often we
concern ourselves with whether one party or another, one ruler or another, is
better.
And we never
agree.
The truth is,
none of them are that hot.
That’s why Isaiah
declares that God “brings princes to
naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.”
I don’t want to
talk about whether Democrats or Republicans have the best answers, and
certainly not whether one party or the other is more Christian.
The conversation
I’d like to have is what it means to confess that Jesus is Lord, and God is the
Ruler of the Universe.
You see, politics
should not divide the Church, because God is neither Republican nor Democrat.
With one mind,
one faith, and one hope, we should pursue to the best of our ability to
understand the will of God and seek to conform our lives and the land we live
in to his will.
That’s what it
means to say “Jesus is Lord”, or “the Lord is our God”, or there “is no god,
but God”.
When we confess
that God created the heavens and the earth, what does that mean for our daily
lives and how we care for this world God created?
When we confess
that every human being is created in the image of God how does that affect the
way we treat one another?
When we confess
that God is the author and giver of Life itself, what does that mean with
respect to our honoring the sanctity of all life?
What does it mean
for us that Jesus came to us, declaring that the Kingdom of God is at hand?
These are the
questions that we should seek to answer, not as Democrats or Republicans, not
as Americans or Russians, not as Christians, Jews, or Muslims, or any other
faith, but rather as people of God of every time and place.
The ultimate
question is simply this: “What does it
mean that there is a God?”
To whom then will you compare me, or who is
my equal? says the Holy One.”
The obvious
answer to this is that no one is equal to the God we confess as Lord and Ruler
of All.
What does that
mean for our lives?
It either means everything,
or nothing at all.
Amen
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