Sermon
Pentecost 3
July 3, 2011
Independence Sunday Service of readings and music
Gospel: Matthew 5:43-48
Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Three hundred years ago this nation was founded in protest against tyranny and fashioned in freedom for all men. At the same time, it was decided that the 1700’s were not the time for freedom and equality for women, or for slaves who had been imported from Africa. The matter of women’s suffrage was delayed whilst this nation took up, decades later, the matter of freedom for African slaves. This nation of freedom, liberty and justice for all, came to war over the matter.
In the readings for this morning, we heard the ending of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address:
“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.”
In the main body of that address, Lincoln wrote this about the civil war:
“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it. All sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war – seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war. But one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive. And the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
“…Each [side] looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes [God’s] aid against the other…The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully…Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.” (carved on the wall inside the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC.)
Today we Christians all over the world still read the same Bible. We share the earlier scriptures with Judaism. And Islam reveres our scriptures and Jesus. We Christians, with Jews and Muslims, pray to the same God. It is in how we each read the scriptures, and how we imagine God, that draws us into coming to blows with one another, Christian with Muslim, Muslim with Jew, Christian with Christian, and on and on world without end. All of us drawing from our scriptures the right to war, and all of us drawing from our prayers the strength to go to war.
I cannot speak to how Muslims and Jews understand their scriptures or how and who they believe God is. I can speak to the Christian scriptures.
Do we Christians not believe Jesus meant it as a command to us, what we read today from Matthew’s gospel?
“I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”
And do we not hear what Jesus is really saying when he says we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us? Does he say, “Love them, pray for them, and go to war against them”? Where in these words is the warrant for war, on the world stage, within a nation, or against one another in our families, our churches, our jobs, our acquaintances?
And are we always “the righteous”? If we have enemies, are we not also someone else’s enemy? And you know the history of persecution, how those who have been persecuted so often then turn and persecute others in return.
I’m no fool. I don’t think we will see an end to war or persecution on this side of life. We humans are too invested in possessiveness and greed and even fear of one another. Without these, England might have said to the colonies, “Oh, of course. We see the injustice in what we are doing. We will make you equals in this enterprise of colony building, or maybe we will even set you free from us to build your own nation!” But no, England wanted the revenue and the resources to be had, and the power and control. And so did we.
It was the same on both sides of our nation’s Civil War. It is the same when nations war on others in order to annex territory, or to gain access to some resource or other. And of course those on the receiving end of tyranny and war have no choice but to defend themselves. And we see no alternative to war when we see others being persecuted. And so we continue.
And so Jesus weeps, while he commands us to love one another, all others, and pray for one another, all others.
I believe in God. I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to make real the teachings of Jesus. I think that we would see a difference in the world if we Christians, all of us, took Jesus’s command to love and pray, without prejudice, unconditionally for our enemies and persecutors. I pray that I can be one who prays thus, “With malice toward none, with charity for all…to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
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