Sermon

Today is Flag Day, and in these particular times, that may raise as many questions as it answers. Changing circumstances in our country and in our world challenge us to rethink many things we have taken for granted. To take two examples, our assumptions of America being ¡°the melting pot¡± are confronted by efforts to preserve distinctive ethnic and national practices. I learned only last year that Canada has tried to operate on a ¡°mosaic¡± rather than a ¡°melting pot¡± theory, encouraging diversity, and is currently seeing problems of its own in this respect.

For a second example, we are seeing a drastic shift in the role of our country in world affairs. In one presidency, we went from being the world¡¯s greatest creditor to being the world¡¯s greatest debtor. The collapse of the Soviet Union has taken away what was the central axiom of our foreign policy. Throughout the western world, we are seeing realignments, often with fearful violence, as questions of sovereignty come to the fore.

What is our role as a nation in all this--and more to the point here in church on a Sunday morning, how does all this connect with our religion? The doctrine of separation of church and state has been taken to a point which would surely astonish our forefathers, while at the same time we look with dismay at the intolerance of regimes where church and state are hand in glove.

The place to start is Scripture, and it is a rich source indeed on this particular subject. If we look at the broad sweep of the story, we find that it is in fact about a nation. God promised Abram that his descendants would become a great nation. After many trials and tribulations, they succeeded, only to find that it is at least as hard to maintain a nation as it is to found on in the first place. In course of time, the nation split in two and was conquered by the great empires of Mesopotamia.

The original promise did not die, however, and ultimately Jesus emerged with claim that in him, prophecies of restoration were being fulfilled. However, it is spectacularly clear that he made no effort to reestablish the nation of Israel, the dynasty of David. He spoke instead of a ¡°kingdom of God,¡± a ¡°kingdom of heaven,¡± a kingdom ¡°not of this world.¡±

For me, this general outline carries an urgent message concerning our own nationalism, concerning ways in which we may love our own country. It says first and foremost that we cannot look simply at the surface of things, at what we might call ¡°the political realities.¡± Time and time again, Scripture points to the folly of trusting in military power, and insists that in the last analysis, national security depends on national righteousness. Amos said it supremely well: ¡°But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.¡± Psalm thirty-seven says, ¡°Trust in the Lord, and do good--so shall you dwell in the land, and truly you will be fed.¡± We need only note that in this context, to ¡°dwell in the land¡± is to be secure nation in the Promised Land.

When we turn to the New Testament, this tendency is carried even further. Now it is not merely justice in a legal sense, but mutual love that is demanded of us. ¡°The kingdom of heaven¡± is the rule of angelic qualities in our individual and our community lives. It presses us to look beyond duty to generosity, to ask not simply what we are obliged to do but what we can find to do.

This may sound hopelessly idealistic, but it is not necessarily so. We are not required by law to contribute to charities, but the amount given by individuals and churches each year is impressive. That given by churches alone is substantially more than what is given by corporations, incidentally. We are not required to give volunteer time to service organizations, but the number of people who do so is surprising, and if we could calculate the hours given, we might find ourselves wondering whether the world is such a bad place as the news media suggest.

These actions make a difference. They reduce the number of people who are distressed, troubled, and therefore often hostile. Without these voluntary gifts of money, time, and effort, our country would be far more unstable than it is. If we add in all the people who simply do a little extra on their jobs, who add a touch of patience or courtesy and caring to the performance of their duties, we cannot help realizing that even in these times of moral and ethical confusion, there is a great deal that is solid and good.

In very practical terms, this is the bedrock of our national security. We will hold together as a nation to the extent that we can, in the main, trust each other. Only this really keeps the fabric of society coherent and whole. We will hold together as a nation to the extent that we can honestly believe that holding together is good for us.

This is why threats to trust are frightening, and we can see threats from two sides. There is on the one hand the threat from the bottom--from people who seem to want something for nothing, and will freely resort to violence to get what they want. This attitude is of course fertilized by drug addiction and by a general insensitivity to the actual ugliness of violence.

Then there is the threat from the top, especially from the attitude that wealth and power bring privilege primarily, and not responsibility. We are seeing people who have made millions of dollars out of other people¡¯s losses, which ethically is theft on a grand scale, and who are using some of that gain to escape legal penalties. We are seeing people at the highest financial levels buying into the call for ¡°no new taxes,¡± even though this has meant that as a nation we are simply refusing to pay our bills. Every bill that we do not pay when it comes due we pass on to our children, with interest.

If we love our country, and would do more to demonstrate that love than flag-waving, we must call for righteousness, and beyond righteousness, for compassion. As individuals, we can look at everything we ¡°own¡±--the house, the car, the appliances and tools, the bank accounts--and recognize that we are not so much ¡°owners¡± as we are stewards. Yes, our economic system is founded on the concept of private property. It will defeat itself if we do not wake up to the fact that every bit of private property entails a responsibility.

This is currently at issue in matters of real estate development. Does the owner of a lot have an inalienable right to maximize profit on it, or does that owner have responsibilities to the neighbors, the surrounding community, and the ecology? In my home community of Sharon, Lake Massapoag is surrounded by well-to-do homes, mostly with well-kept lawns--and the lake tends to suffer from the runoff of the fertilizers that keep the lawns looking so elegant. Or to look at a major problem, our national reliance on the personal automobile is incredibly wasteful, yet we seem mesmerized by our ¡°right¡± to this convenience and strongly resistant to looking at its long-term costs.

In broadest terms, it is fairly obvious that if our nation is to survive, then the people who have the property must be willing to use it for the welfare of the nation. We need a significant shift of consciousness, a shift from a focus on privilege to a focus on responsibility. From those to whom much has been given, much is required, and if we look at our standard of living in a global context, we have been given much indeed.

In a way, Swedenborg¡¯s Heaven and Hell is a tremendously relevant work in regard to our national security. The heaven we find described there is a society in which the joy of each individual contributes to the joy of all, and the joy of the whole is felt by each individual. The hell we find described there is a society in which each individual can find satisfaction only at the expense of others. This latter society is not merely insecure or unstable, it is actively self-destructive. It is virtually a definition of national insecurity.

Heaven, and heaven alone, is inherently secure, because only in the design of heaven does each individual¡¯s benefit enhance rather than diminish the lives of others. To put it in crass terms, the more I win, the more everyone wins, and the more everyone wins, the more I win. There is no competition whatever between my welfare and that of the commonwealth. It is not just a workable system, not just ¡°feasible,¡± it is absolutely foolproof. It goes beyond being merely ¡°practical,¡± and is ideal.

We may look back at the past with nostalgia, under the illusion that things used to be better than they are now. If it looks that way, it seems that it is simply because so much was still hidden under the surface. We may look ahead with envy, thinking that eventually we will work through all these problems and achieve the society of abundance and peace that we dream about.

But these are our own times. These are the years providence has given us to tend, and the decisions the Lord has put into our hands. In these times, our country stands in need of ¡°tough love,¡± of a love that is not blind to faults, but that remains aware of the immense and solid basis of generosity and goodness that is providing the measure of stability we know. We may think of these as insecure times, but there are few places on the face of the earth where (and there have been few times when) so many people could feel as assured as we of enjoying the fruits of our labors.

May we be grateful to our Lord that this is so, knowing that every goodness of heart and every compassionate insight is a give from the Divine. May the beauty of heaven so appeal to our souls that we seek out what we can do to make the prayer come true--¡±Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.¡± May we lend our own being to the goodness which is the only lasting foundation of national security, finding our citizenship on earth permeated by our citizenship in heaven.

Amen.