A Better Country … A Heavenly One

July 4, 2010

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-10, 15-16 and Matthew 5:14-19

Two hundred and thirty-four years ago today, a nation was founded.

Fifty-six men, representing thirteen “states” (not colonies, mind the difference!), declared independence from a government no longer concerned with the people it governed.

The Declaration signed by those 56 men – including one Presbyterian pastor – was revolutionary. By that I mean it was radically new … and just radical. Each person who signed it could have been hanged for treason.

Still, out of respect for global opinion, and at risk for their lives, those men drew up a list of “causes which impel[led] them to the separation” and laid out various “truths” they considered “self-evident” for any society to function justly. At the head of the list they proclaimed that …

• “All men are created equal” (a statement that, for a hundred and some years, did not apply to women or people of African descent),

• All “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” and

• Among those rights are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

A war ensued, testing how strongly those sentiments were held. 25,000 lives were lost on the American side alone – the first of many wars fought for the ideals and values the nation holds dear. A flag was designed too (ostensibly by Betsy Ross) to represent those ideals, with red for bravery, white for purity and peace, and blue for vigilance, perseverance and justice. A year later, Articles of Confederation were adopted to guide relations between the newly formed states.

In 1789, “… to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty,” a Constitution was written. Westward expansion also began taking explorers, settlers, and railroads over the Appalachian and Allegheny Mountains into the central plains and beyond.

And, “Four-score and seven years” after the Declaration, Abraham Lincoln turned the tear-fogged eyes of a grieving nation back to its original document, as he dedicated a cemetery at Gettysburg, PA. In a brief speech, immediately panned but never forgotten or surpassed, Lincoln reminded the nation that they had been “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Though women were still left out, African males were clearly included this time in the equality of “all men.”

* *

Even before 1776, our nation’s ancestors knew they were special. As early as 1630, Puritan John Winthrop preached a sermon to fellow travelers, telling them that the eyes of all people would be upon them, like “a city on a hill.”

He was right. The world is still looking at us, almost 400 years later.

• From Eli Whitney, George Washington Carver, the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Steve Jobs, we have a great tradition of innovation and invention that is the envy of other nations.

• From Lewis and Clark to the first humans on the moon, we have paved paths to uncharted places. Or, as the crew of the Starship Enterprise would have it: “Boldly gone where no man has gone.”

• From Stephen Foster to Aaron Copland, Woody Guthrie, and Bruce Springsteen, American composers sing our uniqueness and touch emotions on every continent.

• Jim Thorpe, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson and others excelled at sports and broke down racial barriers at home and abroad.

• American armies joined others to defeat fascism and oppose ethnic violence.

• U.S. Presidents, both Democrat and Republican, are looked upon as leaders for the free world.

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Smeal and others marched, picketed and went on hunger strikes to extend voting rights and labor laws to women here and worldwide – in the belief that not only “all men” but women too “are created equal.”

• Doctors, scientists, researchers, authors, and mathematicians, capture more than our share of the Nobel Prizes every year and countless other distinctions.

• Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks got on their feet – or off their tired feet! – to bring freedom, dignity and justice for all.

• Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and others spoke with moral outrage against racism and other evils gnawing away at the American dream and preventing the nation from achieving its ideals. Their words troubled many, seeming divisive and degrading to American pride. But those same words flowed directly from the stream of convictions embedded in the Declaration of Independence, about justice, liberty, and the obligations of government in regard to its people.

• And, for all the faults of our government, we are able to air differences, debate solutions, enact laws, and install a new government every few years without resorting to bloody coups, revolutions, or dictatorships. More than anything else, that makes us the envy of the world.

As British statesman Winston Churchill once quipped, “Democracy is the worst form of government on earth … except for all the others that have been tried.”

Lest we forget any of this bounty, the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell and monuments in Washington, DC inspire and remind us of the cost of freedom … while purple mountain majesties, amber waves of grain, redwood forests and gulf stream waters provide additional blessings to count – at least until globs of oil contaminate them.

On the 234^th birthday of our nation, we have a lot to be thankful for, and reason to be proud – and patriotic. We can wave our flags, “ooh” and “ah” beneath fireworks we watch bursting like bombs o’er the ramparts, complain about things we don’t like without fear of going to jail (or disappearing). We can enjoy rest from our labors too, and openly, freely thank God for all that is good.

We are fortunate – even blessed – to live in these United States of America.

* *

Yet even on this most patriotic of days, scripture invites us with Abraham and Sarah to recognize that no nation on earth – not even this one we so dearly love – has a right to demand our final or fullest allegiance.

Our true citizenship is not here. Our identity is not limited to these borders, this government, its armies, or any set of rights, values and freedoms we establish for ourselves.

We are “endowed by our Creator” with unalienable rights. So our citizenship, loyalty, and allegiance belong first and foremost to God. In that regard, our ultimate patriotism belongs, not to any realm or nation on earth but to the kingdom of heaven. Our highest devotion and greatest loyalty is not in what we have or see, but what awaits us.

The letter to the Hebrews puts it this way regarding Abraham and Sarah, while using them as ideal models for us all:

If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God. Indeed, this God has prepared a city for them.

Abraham and Sarah and family knew that their citizenship was elsewhere – not with earthly territories or governments, but with God … not a particular nation, tribe, race, ethnicity or language, but with God … not in border security or economic prosperity or creative ingenuity, but with God. And, in that knowledge they had found freedom.

Their identity, allegiance, and wellbeing was from God – as is ours.

Today’s “Call to Worship,” from 1 Peter 2, conveys that same theme:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.

Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people.

Gathered in this room, we transcend national boundaries. We become “a holy nation,” with a citizenship that is not of this world. Life, liberty and happiness are vouched safe as “unalienable Rights,” not by national decree or declaration, but by God in ways that the world cannot overcome. We are not just Americans. Our calling is bigger than that. With people from every continent on earth, united by Jesus Christ, we are “God’s own people.”

The church I served in Massachusetts had a significant number of African members. One of them once summed up the essence of what I am saying to you today in ways I’ll never forget. He said,

When I come to church, I do not feel like I am in America. And I do not feel like I am in Kenya. I am in God’s house.

That man came to the U.S. looking for education and economic opportunity. He knew that when he returned to his homeland, others would look up to him. But beyond Kenya, and beyond the United States, he was always looking for “a better country, a heavenly one,” where race and passport and native language do not matter.

And he found it. Every Sunday morning, every Wednesday evening at choir practice, and every other time he walked into church, he left the countries of this world, and entered a better country: God’s house. It could have been Worcester, MA, Wauwatosa, WI, or a village in Kenya – the address did not matter. To be in church was to be in “a better country, a heavenly one” – where life, liberty, and happiness are secure. It was to experience, if only for a while, a realm where justice, tranquility, the general welfare of all people, and blessings abound.

* *

I worry a lot these days that people confuse Christianity and American patriotism. I worry too about people being unable to differentiate between Muslim faith and the nations of Iran or Iraq (say), or between the state of Israel and Jewish tradition. I worry that in too many churches in America the cross and flag will be given equal status today.

All of those examples assume that God has no “better country” in mind aside from the countries we now see, and where we put our earthly allegiance.

Yet, beyond my worries, I have hope. Just as God called Abraham and Sarah … and just as they thought not only of the country left behind, but one lying ahead … I hear God calling us (in the words of Ephesians 2) to

… Remember that you were … aliens … and strangers … having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who were far off have been brought near. For he is our peace … He came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and to those who were near … So you are no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

I believe in a “better country” comprised of all the saints and members of the household of God. And so I also have hope of a better world here and now. I have hope that by believing in a better country, we can create a better world, working for its wellbeing, and keeping all our earthly allegiances in perspective – neither too great nor too small.

And finally, above all, I have hope, knowing that God gives us bread to strengthen us on our journey to that country – bread that no earthly government can give … bread, like manna in the wilderness, when we are uprooted from one place and on the way to another … bread that opens our senses to see and touch and smell and taste the heavenly realm and desire it not only as a “better place” but as the best place of all … bread that will surely sustain us until we arrive at the border and pass through its gates and feast at the table prepared for us there …

In the risen power of Jesus Christ, and to the glory of God.