7-02-2006

Celebrating the freeing, supportive presence of God. So your experience of God may become your experience of life. It is wonderful what God can do!

“Come Unto Me, All”

July 2, 2006

On Tuesday we, as a nation, will celebrate our 230^th Year. Although that may sound like a long time, in the overall scheme of things, we are yet a new nation often referred as “the experiment in freedom.”

We are called “the experiment in freedom” because the final chapter of our country’s history has not yet been written. We are unaware as to whether or not such powerfully divergent views can ultimately exist in peace. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” takes many people in many different directions.

From the beginning, the United States was seen as a great country based on liberty, freedom, and justice. For the most part it has been well respected down through the years and looked to as the guardian of freedom and human rights worldwide. It is a country known for giving credit to God for its founding and its continued existence.

This is the day that we, in our churches, acknowledge and offer praise and thanksgiving to God for our creation, our redemption, and God’s sustaining grace. Without God, I fear we would be a nation quite unlike that which we know today. It is our country and yet it is a country for the whole world.

The Statue of Liberty points toward a mission of sorts as it extends an invitation to the world’s tired, poor, and huddled masses. This reminds us of Jesus words, “Come unto me all who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

There are those who believe, however, that since the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks, our country has been changed from its glorious past. They say we are hard at work restricting our borders and the very huddled masses that made this country great.

I believe myself to be a patriot, as was my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before me. I love this country and served it willingly in Vietnam, as did my father in World War II, and my grandfather in World War I. As a veteran, as a patriot, as a Christian, and as a pastor, I am greatly concerned about the future our great country. God has placed these three concerns on my heart this morning:

First of all, as we stand before God, we should be gravely concerned about our nation’s willingness to initiate war. We have always responded to those who have attacked us and our allies throughout our history because we had to. The attackers were led by evil leaders reaching out to destroy a faith-filled and peace-loving people. But because of the very nature and gruesomeness of war, people of faith have always struggled with the dilemma of killing both those who attacked and those who were innocent bystanders including children. But today, people of faith must struggle with a new horror in our national history. We have chosen for the first time to attack a nation who not only did not attack us, but had no plan to do so. We are told that this is the new policy—that we will attack at our leaders’ discretion wherever and whenever they deem appropriate. We need not be concerned about the loss of world respect and prestige, because it is God to whom we must ultimately answer. We should pray daily that God will forgive us as a nation for initiating war and destruction and choosing it as a policy. Who are we to determine who will live and who will die, and when. God forgive us.

The second area of great concern for us as people of faith is freedom of religion and our nation’s willingness to repeat a historical error of the past. Once upon a time, there were certain people of faith and good intensions who attempted to make our country better by prohibiting the production and use of alcoholic beverages through the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution. The 21^st Amendment repealed the 18^th. The lesson we learned was—morality cannot be legislated. Moral living is generated from the heart and the soul—not the law books. There are current calls by people today for another restrictive amendment which is based on religious fervor and religious preference. Restrictive amendments are contrary to our Constitution’s purpose of the granting of freedoms, and would further alienate us one from the other.

The history of our country shows that immediately after our founding, the individual States began to legislate issues of morality and religious preference based on the majority’s religious interpretation. These laws stood for many years until our society, through its courts, finally faced the truth that legislating morality puts a religious bias into law thereby restricting freedom of religion.

The third area of concern for us is that of the dispossessed, the marginalized, and the needy. Our great-great grandfathers assumed that the white protestant male majority should rule in all things public. They had forgotten about God’s call on our lives to be an advocate for the marginalized, the unloved, and the poor in our great nation.

Historically, the minorities were seen as being morally deficient. Our Scripture was even used to keep them in their “proper place.”

At one time, women were restricted from voting, or from receiving equal pay and promotion; they were restricted in their career choices and were prohibited from being pastors or being ordained. My grandmother remembered the days before the 19^th Amendment when she and her sisters were not permitted to cast ballots. I remember radio preachers preaching that women were morally deficient because of Eve in the Garden of Eden making a wrong moral decision for all time, and being the cause of man’s downfall.

At one time, Black Americans were forced into slavery and designated as being the equivalent of 2/3 of a white man. I remember my grandmother, bless her heart, referring to the moral deficiencies of the Black race as late as the 1960s by saying, “they just can’t help themselves, that’s the way they are.”

At one time, in the community and schools in which I was brought up, there were strange or different persons in our midst. A few kids smelled very badly, another kid would unexpectedly fall to the floor in an epileptic seizure, there were kids with handicapping conditions, there were effeminate kids, some of whom probably had different orientations, all of which were considered morally deficient. We would think to ourselves, in our limited and immature way, that they were like that because God made them that way for some reason. Nevertheless, we did not treat them well or with respect. God forgive us. Hopefully, we are now much more sensitive.

Jesus said, “Inasmuch as you have done unto one of these—the least of my brethren—you have done it unto me.” Hence, there were times when our nation restricted Jesus, and at other times offered him equal treatment. Jesus, while on earth, ate with the sinners and fellowshipped with the despised Samaritans. Is not God calling us to be in ministry and fellowship with today’s marginalized and despised?

In response to Jesus’ call to “come unto me all you who are heavy laden…” The United Methodist Church has chosen the theme of “open hearts, open minds, open doors” in an effort to point us to a “more perfect way” to use a phrase from the Apostle Paul.

The “more perfect way” is to be more Christ-like in our approach and our openness to other people and their ideas, including our openness to the disenfranchised, the minorities and those that may still be called morally deficient. The “more perfect way” is to be more Christ-like in our willingness to turn the other cheek and not to seek retribution and violence as a way to solve our human problems.

Think of where we might have been today with our Muslim neighbors if we as a nation had exercised the teachings of Jesus Christ. Think of where we might have been today if we would have exercised the attitude of an “open heart” and an “open mind.” Think where we might have been today with our Muslim neighbors if we had exercised respect and sought understanding as opposed to flexing our superpower muscles. My grandmother always used to say that one can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. Kind of sounds like a Christian principle, doesn’t it?

The writer of Hebrews tells us this morning, “Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb (or part of the body) which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one is forbidden the grace of God, and that no root of bitterness springs up to cause trouble.”

There are many angry and loud people today shouting many angry and hateful words towards persons they do not even know. Let us determine to be responsive to God’s Holy Spirit each day as it seeks to empower us with the words of hope, the words of love, the words of grace, and the words of peace.

God, we thank you this day for our great nation. Forgive us where we see only human means of eliminating problems. Help us to turn anew to you as the source of supply, the source of our wisdom, the source of righteousness, and the source of all morality. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord and the Savior to whom we offer honor and glory and praise. Amen.