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Two news stories from other nations are all we need to show us why we should cherish our nation on this Fourth of July weekend. 

One Nation, Many Patriots - Psalm 125; Romans 8: 1-8 - July 6, 2008 - Cicero United Methodist Church - Everett J. Bassett

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            Two news stories from other nations are all we need to show us why we should cherish our nation on this Fourth of July weekend. The first is from Columbia, where Ingrid Betancourt was rescued from captivity. Ms. Betancourt was kidnapped by militiamen in 2002 for having the audacity to run for president. She has been held in chains and tortured for six years, and was rescued this week in a spy operation, and reunited with her family. Praise God for her safety.

            The second news story is the ongoing tragedy of Zimbabwe. There, Robert Mugabe will continue as president-dictator. Mugabe, who was cheered as a liberator when he first took office in 1980, has become a tyrant. As a result, he was defeated in an election a couple weeks back. But instead of surrendering office, he declared the vote invalid.  Then he used the army to imprison his opponent, arrest and torture those who campaigned for his opponent, and threaten anyone who would speak for his opponent.

He declared anyone who would stand for any ideas other than his own a traitor. Mugabe will continue to be in office, thumbing his nose at the will of his own people.

            So, God bless America. It is not difficult to find fault with our nation. We criticize our government; we feel shame for some of the atrocities in our history - slavery and oppression of Native Americans, and so on; we grow weary of endless politics and public coarseness and commercialism. In many places, the so-called 'American way of life' represents shallowness and greed. Sometimes we can see more wrong than right.

But we should never forget how lucky we are. Some day - I know it's hard to believe - but someday, this current presidential campaign will come to an end. We will go to the polls and vote for the candidate we believe best for the job. And then, on January 20 next year, an amazing thing will happen for the 43rd time in the history of the United States ­there will be an orderly transfer of power from one president to another. And during that whole process, no presidential candidate will be kidnapped or imprisoned; no threats of physical violence will deter voters; no soldiers will intimidate opponents; no one who is voted out or whose term is up will refuse to step down. The people of Columbia, the people of Zimbabwe, the vast majority of people in this world - do not have those assurances of freedom and democracy. But we do, and for that reason all of us who live in America should feel gratitude and patriotic pride.

            As I thought about what God was prompting me to share this morning, I thought about what it means to be a patriot, and to express love for your country. People call each other a lot of names these days, but if you call someone 'unpatriotic,' you hit a nerve. No one wants to be unpatriotic. So, what is a patriot? How should a patriot act? As Christians, we look to the Bible to answer questions like that.

            And in one way, that's easier said than done. Because when you try to match American principles to the Bible, you have to squint your eyes a little bit, because our form of government is not there. There is no democracy anywhere in the Bible. In the

best of times, there might be a wise and benevolent king, or there might be a stable occupation like the Roman Empire. But the word 'vote' is not in the Bible.

            And yet I still believe that the values America represents are solidly biblical. They grow out of the love of God for every single person on this earth. They express the sacred worth of each person, and that each one of us is created in the image of God, and thus has the potential to express Godly wisdom and goodness. The idea of government by the people and for the people - with each person getting an equal vote - each person able to run for office - each person with the right to speak out - expresses that biblical affirmation of human worth better than any form of government ever invented by humankind. We don't always live it out. We foul it up royally. There are shameful chapters in our history. But I believe the principles of equality and human worth are still the best ideal for decent government ever tried, and for this we thank God.

            But if that's the case, why so much disagreement? Why so much nastiness expressed in talk radio, or on political blogs, or in letters to the editor? Most would say this nastiness has increased dramatically in the last twenty years, where what used to be courteous political discussion is now little more than a shouting match with neither side listening to the other. And yes, again, that word 'unpatriotic' gets thrown around. We get political books entitled Slander and Treason and Lies.

            The positive spin on this is that we live in a nation where this kind of expression is possible. There are plenty of other nations in this world where people using that kind of language would be arrested or worse. So, again, God bless America.

            But the other factor, I think, is that we are one nation, with many patriots - and patriotism can take many, many forms. And for this, we can look to the Bible. For example, who would be a patriot in the Bible? Would a patriot be Moses, who challenged the authority of his own king? Would it be David, who went into battle for his king, and then tried to be a good king himself? Would a patriot behave like the apostle Paul, who said that whatever government was in place should be blindly accepted as a gift from God? Or would we imitate the prophet Amos, who condemned his country and his government because of their sins? Would we follow Jesus, who was for all appearances indifferent to government, and taught, "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's?" All of them loved their country. But their views and behaviors were radically different. Patriots come in all different shapes and sizes. We should remember that when we are tempted to label someone unpatriotic because their words are different from ours.

            But, more than that, we should notice what all of those biblical examples have in common: and that is, an unyielding priority for the righteousness of God. For each of those I named, and for others in the Bible, loving your country meant fighting for the righteousness of God, and criticizing the country loud and clear when it falls short of that righteousness.

            The other thing that needs to be said is that the righteousness of God is pretty clearly defined. It has to do with two things -- putting God first, and then taking care of the disadvantaged. Moses, David, Amos, Paul, Jesus all had these same threads running through their patriotism: God comes first - a true patriot does not worship his or her nation instead of God - the Bible is crystal clear on this - putting your nation before God is contributing to the downfall of the nation. And a true patriot holds his or her country responsible for the fair and just treatment of the poor, the oppressed, the underprivileged.

            Given those two criteria, there has never been a nation on earth that was above criticism. We can thank God that we are in a nation that is so great that we can talk about that openly. We can criticize our leaders; in fact, we must criticize our leaders, America is the land where the people hold the leaders accountable, not the other way around. But we criticize in awareness that the freedom to do so has been hard-won, and is not to be taken for granted. If we think that comes cheap, we should think about Columbia, or Zimbabwe, or any of the countless nations on this earth where freedom is only a slim dream.

            On April 30, 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln said these words: "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God ... We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom of our own .. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before (God), to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness."

            Those are hard words; some people would call them unpatriotic, especially to a nation at war. But I believe they are eminently patriotic words, because they hold up a great patriotic ideal - a nation humbled before God, and dedicated to justice and freedom for everybody. With this patriotism, President Lincoln led our nation through its hardest time.

            Psalm 125, a patriotic affirmation of Israel's faith, begins with these words: "Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever." That could be our prayer for our own nation this morning. Not all will choose to embrace it; religious freedom is another of our great principles. But that doesn't stop we who believe in grace from praying for our nation - that America will be humble before God; that it will care for the downtrodden and struggling; and so long as it holds those as its most precious values - that it too will be like a great mountain that cannot be moved.