A Sermon
Presented by Rev. Merlin T. Batt
Intentional Interim Pastor
St. Matthew’s United Church of Christ
Maiden, North Carolina
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 8, 2007

Scripture Lesson: Luke 10:1-16
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Two things happened last week which, together, set me up, as it were, to approach the interpretation of our Gospel lesson in a certain way. The first thing began with Charles Van Goor loaning me his copy of Jon Meacham’s new book, American Gospel. You may recognize the author as the managing editor of Newsweek magazine and a frequent guest on TV programs having to do with politics and current affairs.

Mr. Meacham speaks with insight and authority about the history of religion and politics in American society. That, in fact, is the subject of his book which was published just last year. Writing for the back of the book jacket, Tom Brokaw said, “Jon Meacham has given us an insightful and eloquent account of the spiritual foundation of the early days of the American republic. It is especially instructive reading at a time when the nation is at once engaged in and deeply divided on the question of religion and its place in public life.” Now I tell you this as a way of alerting you to the fact that, thanks to Charles, these matters have been swirling around in my head all week. So, if you don’t like this sermon, see Charles after the service!

The second thing happened late Wednesday evening. We turned on the TV and watched for the better part of an hour the July 4th celebration televised live from Boston’s Hatch Shell along the Charles River, specifically the last part of the Boston Pops concert and the spectacular fireworks display which followed.

For Adele and me, celebrating the 4th is not complete unless, first, we hear the Boston Pops play Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” followed by the sound of live cannon fire from the river bank and of church bells ringing wildly all over the City of Boston; and, second, John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” followed by the night sky bursting to life with color and ear-splitting sound! You see, many times over the 27 years we lived in New England, we traveled into the city on the 4th of July to be among hundreds of thousands crowded along the river to hear the music and watch the fireworks display.

And it never fails to happen. When the orchestra strikes the opening notes of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and the huge crowd begins to cheer and dance and wave American flags to and fro to the tune of the music, I choke up. I lose it! A wave of patriotic emotion washes over me, and I am filled with love for my country. At that moment I can’t talk about what’s happening in me because, as comedian Dana Carvey used to say when imitating the speech of a Yiddish-speaking woman on Saturday Night Live, “I’m getting all verklempft!”

I needed to tell you these two things – reading Meacham’s book about religion and politics and my reaction to the telecast of the 4th of July concert in Boston – because they raised for me a question which I brought to this morning’s Gospel text from Luke. The question is posed in this sermon’s title, “Christian and Patriot: Can One Be Both?”

The answer seems ridiculously obvious: of course one can be both a Christian and an American patriot. But the more you think about it, the more the question seems like a real one. For example, to say “Jesus is Lord” meant in the first century that Caesar wasn’t. And that, by the way, was a very dangerous to say, and it cost many Christians their lives! To make the claim today that Jesus is Lord is to say that all other authorities have lesser claims on our lives, and all other loyalties are beneath and judged by faith in Christ, even with regard to one’s own nation. I can think of situations, can’t you, when a believer’s faith in Christ enters into tension with a patriot’s instinctive support for his or her own nation. Hence the question raised by this sermon, “Christian and Patriot: Can One Be Both?”

With this question in mind, let’s go to the text from Luke’s Gospel. There we find Jesus and his disciples on their way to Jerusalem for the climactic events in Jesus’ life and ministry. You may recall the line about Jesus from last Sunday’s Gospel text, “He set his face toward Jerusalem.” Today the journey continues.

Apparently Jesus is feeling a sense of urgency about his mission as it moves toward conclusion. He knows he will not pass this way again. If people don’t respond to his mission this time, it may be too late. So Jesus appoints seventy of his followers (and you may have thought he only had twelve!). He sent them out ahead of him, two by two, to enter into the small towns where later Jesus himself would go as he journeyed south toward Jerusalem.

Their job was much more than simply the work of getting the details arranged for Jesus to visit later. You see, Jesus charged them to preach the same message he had been preaching: that the long-awaited reign of God was now breaking in upon the nation of Israel, as the prophets of old had long promised. And, therefore, now was the time for the people to re-orient their whole lives – their thinking, their behaving, their believing - in light of the new thing God was doing. What’s more, these seventy were empowered by Jesus, not only to preach this message, but also to enact this message by healing the sick of body, mind, and spirit, as a way of proclaiming powerfully that God’s reign was breaking in upon the nation.

Listen to part of what Jesus told the seventy as he sent them out: “I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.” In other words, you can expect trouble. “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road.” In other words, travel light and don’t get sidetracked. Then Jesus tells them, “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.” What is this about?

At the heart of Jesus’ call to his nation was the message of peace. The people of Israel under Roman domination were hell-bent on war. For the most part, they wanted an all-out war which, they believed, would bring God’s help swiftly to their aid and get rid of their feared and hated enemies, the Romans, once and for all. Jesus’ contemporaries believed thereby these pagans would be kicked out for good, and Israel would be free to worship her God and conduct her life freely according to her ancient Law.

But Jesus’ message of God’s in-breaking Kingdom was moving in the opposite direction. As far as Jesus was concerned, the idea of fighting evil with evil would have disastrous results for the people of Israel. If his nation continued along this violent path, warned Jesus, God’s judgment would fall on it, but the judgment wouldn’t consist of fire falling from heaven. Instead the judgment would take the form of Roman invasion and destruction. In other words, Rome’s punishment for rebel subjects would be the direct result of God’s people turning away from the way of peace and acting with violence just like the enemy.

That explains why, a few chapters later in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus draws near to Jerusalem, and as he looks out at the city from the Mount of Olives, he begins to weep. And this is what he says,

If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.

Jesus’ concern for his nation was realistic, for within four decades of his speaking these words about his nation’s refusal to live according to God’s ways, Jesus’ tear-stained prophecy was fulfilled. In the year we call 70 A.D., the Roman army under a general named Titus, who would later become emperor, laid siege to Jerusalem, killing tens of thousands and utterly destroying the city.

It was just as Jesus had said with tears. In spite of his warning, his nation had not recognized the things that make for peace. Refusing to be God’s light unto the nations, Israel had become just like its pagan enemies. And, as a result, Rome crushed Jerusalem and brought an end to the nation, As Jesus prophesied, the Roman destruction was complete – they left not one stone standing upon another.

The point is: Jesus loved his nation so much that he dared to speak God’s truth to it, a hard and challenging truth which his countrymen were neither wanting to hear nor willing to take seriously.

Vaclav Havel is a more recent example. I don’t know if you remember the name Vaclav Havel. Eighteen years ago, in 1989, Czechoslovakia boldly and bravely threw off the yoke of Communism. The newly free nation turned to a Czech writer and dramatist named Vaclav Havel for leadership. He would be the nation’s ninth and, as it turned out, its last president. On New Year’s Day of 1990, Havel gave his inaugural speech, his first public address to the people of Czechoslovakia. In part this is what he said:

For the past forty years on this day you have heard the same thing, with variations, from the mouths of my predecessors: that our country is flourishing; that so many million tons of steel have been produced; that all of us are happy; that we trusted our Government; and that beautiful prospects were opening up before us.

I imagined that you did not propose that I should take this office to hear similar lies from me.

Our country is not flourishing. The great creative and spiritual potential of our two nations is not being meaningfully exploited.  Whole branches of industry are producing products in which nobody  is interested while we have shortages of products we need. The state, which is called the workers’ state, has been humiliating and exploiting the workers.

We have spoiled the soil, the rivers, and the forests inherited from our ancestors, and today we have got the worst environment in the whole of Europe. In our country, life expectancy is lower than in most European countries…

None of this is the main thing. The worst is that we are living in a  ruined moral climate. We have been taken ill morally because we have grown accustomed to say one thing and think another. We have learned to believe nothing, to pay no attention to each other, to care only for ourselves.

In this vein President Havel spoke the truth to his nation and lifted up before it the values which came from its long Christian heritage, values which many in his nation had rejected or forgotten. In this bold and faithful way, Vaclav Havel was doing for the nation Czechoslovakia what Jesus had done for his nation Israel…and, I suggest, what we Christians are called to do as an act of faith in Christ and an act of love for our nation, America.

We can be both Christians and patriots. But to do that, we must not be uncritical lovers, that is, people who support whatever our nation undertakes or whatever it is becoming. Rather, we must act out the more difficult and more faithful role of being loving critics, Christians who love America by holding it accountable to living in God’s way, by urging it to honor the values revealed in Jesus Christ, and by challenging it to be a light unto the nations, a city set on a hill. 

It goes without saying that you and I are not the movers and shakers of our national life, but we are citizens, Christian citizens, and as such we have a voice. Like the seventy sent out by Jesus to the towns and villages where he planned to visit, we, too, are sent by our Lord into the life of our society to give witness by word and deed to God’s ways. In this way we can indeed be both Christians and patriots.