I’ve gotten to where I really love the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July. I’m kind of holiday-obsessed, anyhow. But I love the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July, and I may now love it more than I love the Fourth of July. Because I can do things on the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July that my family does not want to share in and participate in on the Fourth of July. I can sing “My Country ‘tis of Thee” together with a large group, and my family won't stand in a circle and sing with me on the Fourth of July any more. They want to eat barbecue. And that’s not something that you’re asking of me here.

 

And also on the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July, you can pray together, which perhaps sadly, lamentably, is not something typically that people do in their Fourth of July gatherings at home. But I think it is a very appropriate thing to pray together as a part of our observance of our heritage as citizens of this nation. And for Christians, gathering on the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July presents a wonderful opportunity to share in prayer for this nation and the concerns of this nation. To share in prayer for the joys and concerns of those not only who are a part of our land, but those who live in the world with us. And to think about what the Scriptures say to us about our citizenship, both in this nation and also what the apostle says is our ultimate citizenship, our citizenship in heaven.

 

How does your heavenly citizenship influence or affect your Christian, your American citizenship?

 

I have about four points I want to make. I started the week with eight, and decided I needed to whittle those down to get to a manageable number for this morning. So if I leave out a point that you think is essential or significant to thinking about our Christian citizenship shaping our American citizenship, I assure you it is one of the other four I would have put in if time would have allowed. You can feel confident on that.

 

As I reflected on the scripture, these four points about our heavenly citizenship and our American citizenship seem to come forward to me. The first is that our Christian faith does not mean we are always right, but that we are simply right. Christians in the United States of America do well to remember that we are a part of a large body of Christ around the world, and so there are Christians in Bolivia who are good and sincere Christians, as well as good citizens of their own nation. There are good Christians in Africa who are seeking to be good citizens there. And Christians in China who are trying to understand what it means to be a citizen in the nation of China.

 

We are not the only ones who have to wrestle with the dilemma of what it means to be a citizen of a particular nation, as well as a citizen of heaven. And our faith does not mean that we are simply right; we are always right. There is a gulf between the holy and the human. The scriptures teach us that only God is the holy one, and that people are always in some way apart from God. To be human is thus to at least live with the possibility of being fallible. And some of us manage to enact that possibility into reality a couple of times every day as a reminder to ourselves that we are fallible. To be human means that we live with the regular occurrences, somehow missing the mark. We are not always completely right. And we certainly are not simply right because we are Christians.

 

I hope that the distinction is not too subtle a one. Let me try and make it simpler. It’s the difference between saying that one is guided by God in your beliefs and saying that you speak for God. We don’t claim, as Christian citizens, to speak for God, but rather we claim to be guided by the truth of God as we encounter it in scripture. In my lifetime, I think of several people, two in particular, who claim, who spoke with authority, claiming that they spoke for God. One was the Ayatollah of Iran, and the other was that fellow in Waco, Texas. They ought to serve as important reminders for us that we go astray when, as humans, we claim to speak for God.

 

So our faith does not mean we are always right, or that we are completely right, but rather our faith creates around us a kind of humility that helps us refrain from an arrogance that believes it is sovereign.

 

The second point is this: Our Christian faith calls for us to be engaged in our national citizenship. Our Christian faith is an impetus, a motivation to serve actively as a citizen in this nation. We are a part of the Christian family, protestant reformed branch of the family, that especially has emphasized the importance of Christians being engaged in the political processes of their community. We have not embraced the notion that one should live a monastic life, we have not been content, although some Christians have sought faithfulness this way. As a people, we have not been content to pull apart in an ascetic or hermitlike fashion. But rather, we feel the faith calling us to engage with the world, to build a church at Times Square. To counter and to engage with the problems and the hurts and the issues of the neighborhood and the city and the state around us. We are called to be engaged with the world, not to depart from it.

 

Our faith calls us to be engaged, even in politics. I delight in standing in the pulpit, in this sanctuary, and on some Sunday mornings I can look out and see an elected official of one political party on this side of the aisle, and an elected official of the opposite political party on this side of the aisle. I don’t know why exactly they always sit on opposite sides of the aisle, I can’t discern the meaning of that, but I delight in the inclusion of it. And I can testify to the authenticity, the sincerity, of the Christian faith of both.

 

Our faith calls for us to be engaged in the political process and the issues of the world around us. Politics in the Christian faith is meant to be an honorable profession, one that reflects our Christian faith. There is a wonderful story about two American Christians, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who were both friends and who were both passionately caring about the community around them. One particular year, they were very concerned about the working conditions of the laborers in their particular community there in New England. Thoreau, in his passion, made that known by speaking. Speaking on the street corner in such a way that it ended up getting him arrested. Emerson, who had quietly withdrawn, in his Christian care went to visit his friend, Henry David Thoreau, in jail. Peering at him through the cell bars, he said to him, “David, what are you doing in there?” David Thoreau looked back at him and said, “Ralph, what are you doing out there?” As if to say, “Why aren’t you in here with me as well?”

 

In a very real sense, our Christian faith calls for us to be engaged in the issues of the world that way. Because Christ is engaged with the world that way.

 

About fifteen years ago, I remember being seated on an airline next to John Kirkendall, who was, at that time, a well-known Presbyterian teacher and the head of an educational institution who is now retired. He is a pastor as well. It was the week in which the very sad story of Susan Smith had broken across the national landscape. You may remember that story of a woman who very tragically was accused and then convicted of drowning her own children in a lake in South Carolina. It was a hard story for the nation to hear. Amongst the deep feelings we felt, many of us and most of us experienced a sense of revulsion that someone could murder her own children this way.

 

Seated on that airline, I remember turning to Dr. Kirkendall and saying to him, “What do you think the Christian stance should be towards someone who murders her own children? How should Christians now act towards her?” And I remember he turned to me and with tears in his eyes, he said to me simply this, “Jesus Christ died for Susan Smith.”

 

This has always been an important reminder to me that Christ himself calls for us to be engaged with those in the most desperate situations. Those whose actions are important to us. In some way, we are driven by Jesus to be engaged with the care of the world.

 

There is a long history of Christians in American history who have been active leaders. In fact, so many so that I have to work to think of great Americans who have not been deeply influenced by their faith. I know that there are some there, but I have to work to think of who would be on that list, whereas the list of those whose citizenship has been deeply impacted by their faith is a long and quick one. I think of Sally Ride, and I’m only going to name Presbyterians here. Lutherans and Methodists and Roman Catholics make great Americans too. But I know the Presbyterian names better. Sally Ride, the American astronaut who is also a Presbyterian officer. Billy Sunday, the preacher in the first part of this century, who preached even at the University of Tampa and was a Presbyterian traveling preacher. Williams Jennings Bryan, the great political orator, a Presbyterian elder. Andrew Jackson, the only American president to have ever killed a man in a duel, and then later repented of it greatly. And in his sorrow, he became a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee.

 

There is a long line of American citizens whose involvement in their citizenship was influenced and shaped by their involvement in their heavenly citizenship. And their lives, even on different sides of the questions, are witnesses to us of how people can be good Christians on either side of an issue.

 

Back in the last century, Herbert Hoover ran against Al Smith for the presidency of the United States. I’m sure a number of you remember that (I meant that facetiously). You probably don’t remember that Herbert Hoover was a Presbyterian, and he ran on the Prohibition ticket. Al Smith, who was a Roman Catholic, ran on what was called the Wet ticket (meaning he opposed prohibition). I know from reading history that the Southern Presbyterian church in particular was a passionate supporter of Herbert Hoover. Indeed, the moderator of the Southern Presbyterian church sent a letter to all of the Presbyterian churches in the south, asking pastors to tell their congregations that really good Christians would vote for the Christian candidate in this race, who was undoubtedly Herbert Hoover.

 

Now we can read that story with some amusement, amusement at the thought that anybody would passionately argue that Herbert Hoover was the only Christian candidate in that race. Who, now, would seriously argue that Al Smith was not a sincere and committed Christian also? I don’t know of anyone. And yet, they did run against each other. Two committed Christians, each of them deeply involved in their own traditions, whose faith influenced them as they sought to be good citizens in this nation.

 

The third point I want to make is that our faith does guide us. Our Christian faith does give us a deep and good treasure chest of values that can influence and should influence us, on specific questions before us as a community. The Old Testament scriptures teach us about the vulnerability of the dispossessed, and God’s care for the hurting. It talks to us about the importance of leaders who seek to discern the will of God.

 

Jesus speaks to us telling us to be like yeast in the loaf of bread. To be like a candle lifted up that helps illuminate the world around us. To be like salt in the soup of life, bringing seasoning to its flavor.

 

Our Christian faith does guide us. In serious reading of the Scripture, reflection on it, discussion about it with others in the faith with you, praying over issues, will help bring insight on how to vote and act on specific community questions.

 

Our faith does guide us, and it has guided Christians for centuries. We claim that now as well. You should find confidence in that, and to lean on the tools of your faith as you face national and community issues.

 

The fourth point I raise, and the last one, has to do less with the specific positions that we take on political issues and more about the character, the shape of our lives in the community. The Christian faith says that our lives, our very characters, should have a certain word that the New Testament uses, a certain “fragrance” about them that shapes the kind of community we live in. In some places, it says we should be again like a beacon that helps to bring light to the darkness around us.

 

We take it for granted now that Christians can be good citizens. But it hasn’t always been taken for granted. Indeed, it once was hotly debated. In the year 200 A.D., the Roman Empire generally did not believe that people could be citizens of heaven in the Christian faith and good citizens of Rome as well. In fact, the civic authorities argued that Christians by their faith were undermining the state. They did not see how one could say, “Jesus is Lord” and at the same time say “the Emperor is Lord.”

 

When the great apologist, St. Augustine, began to make the case about how Christians were not only to be citizens of Rome, but how they could be good citizens of the state while they were active Christians, he said this in a quote that seems to be wonderfully relevant to me, still today: “Christians are not distinguished from the rest of the community by their speech or by their dress or by their customs. They live in Greek and barbarian cities, and follow the same local customs in dress and food, and the rest of their living, as many of the Greeks and the barbarians do.” (He is writing as a Roman here.) “They live in their native lands, but sometimes they look like foreigners there. They take part in everything like citizens, but they have to endure some things that the other citizens do not endure. Like everyone else, they marry and they have children. But they do not expose their infants to the elements. They set a common table, but not a common bed. They obey the established laws, and in their own lives they seek to surpass laws. They try to love all people, even when they are persecuted by many. They are put to death, and yet facing, hoping for life in the resurrection. They are often poor, and yet through their productivity, they help to make many rich. They may be reviled, and yet in their character they try to bless others.

 

“To put it briefly, what the soul is to the body, Christians seek to be to the nation.”

 

This is a wonderful day. I think an appropriate day, the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July, to give thanks to God for the blessing we know as citizens of this nation. It’s also a good day to reflect on and remember how our Christian citizenship should influence and shape our national citizenship. Christians are called to live in the midst of the community and the nation with a certain quality to their actions. A quality that smacks of the Gospel. We live as if our ultimate citizenship is in heaven. May God give us the grace to be able to live not only as obedient disciples, but as faithful citizens in this great land.

 

 

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2006