1 Independence Day, observed July 3, 2016 St. Luke s Church Slightly amended from a sermon first preached on July 4, 2011 Stephen H. Applegate +In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Then they sent to Jesus some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. And they came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not? But knowing their hypocrisy, [Jesus] said to them, why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it. And they brought him one. Then he said to them, Whose head is this, and whose title? They answered, The emperor s. Jesus said to them, Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor s, and to God the things that are God s. Mark 12:13-17 This morning, I m going to do something I rarely, if ever, do. And that is to preach a sermon I ve preached before. I m not doing it because I ve suddenly become lazy, or because didn t want to work as we approached this long holiday weekend. I m doing it because many people have asked me to preach the same sermon I preached five years ago now on July 4, 2011. So, with minor edits to the text, here goes: More than 30 years ago now, I served on the staff of St. Paul s Cathedral in Buffalo, New York. That building, like this one, is on the National Register of Historic Places, although its architectural character is very different. Rather than this elegant frame Greek Revival building we ve been busily restoring since 2009, St. Paul s is an enormous Gothic sandstone structure with all the features of the Early English style a triforium and a hammer beam roof and a great tall spire. The architect Richard Upjohn, who designed Trinity Church, Wall Street, also drew the plans for St. Paul s. Upjohn was the foremost church architect of his day and is single-handedly responsible for the way many Episcopal churches look. Gothic Revival was Upjohn s thing, and his influence was profound. When people think of what an Episcopal church building should look like, more often than not they think of a Gothic Revival building. Richard Upjohn is responsible for that. During the time he was active, a lot of Greek Revival buildings like this one were torn down to make room for the churches he designed. I m personally glad he never made it to Granville, Ohio. Because St. Paul s was on the National Register, tour buses would often stop for people to get out and see the church. Now if Buffalo doesn t seem to you like a tourist destination, let me quickly rise to its defense and say that the city is delightful... in the summertime. The city has a number of architectural treasures including Louis Sullivan s elegant terra cotta Guaranty Building located right across the street from the Cathedral as well as several homes by Frank Lloyd Wright. And it is on the way to that greatest of all Western New York tourist destinations Niagara Falls. Although several people served as volunteer tour guides at the Cathedral, these folks often weren t available on weekdays, so it fell to someone on the Cathedral staff to
act in this capacity. Such was the case late one July morning when a busload of German tourists showed up, fresh from a visit to the Falls, for a tour of the church. Every other staff member was either away or busy, so I threw on my jacket and walked across the street from the Parish House to meet the tour guide and the group. We started in the narthex and began our walk through the building. Europeans have more than enough churches of their own, and the vast majority of those churches are a lot older than anything built in 1851, but the German tourists were polite and interested just the same. We stopped in front of one of the side chapels, and I was about to tell them about some architectural feature or another maybe interpret the symbols on the mosaic floor or something like that when one of the German tourists spoke up and said, why do you have an American flag in your church? Like this church, the chapel there had an Episcopal Church flag in a stand on one side and an American flag in a stand on the other side. He went on to say, in America, you have a separation of church and state. The church is not supported by the state. Why do you have the flag here in the church? There was nothing antagonistic about the question the German tourist was asking. He was trying to understand why, in the midst of a consecrated, Christian space, we would have the foremost symbol of our government. It was a very good question, and I did not have time then to do a thorough review of American history, or to talk about the sociological phenomenon Robert Bellah called Civil Religion in his 1967 landmark article, or to discuss with the tourist the issues that come from being both a citizen and a Christian. I don t have time this morning to do any of those things, either, but I will make a couple of remarks that I hope will get us all thinking a bit as we celebrate this Independence Day weekend together. Here we are, celebrating the Fourth of July in Granville, watching fireworks shot off with patriotic music on Friday night, looking forward to the all-american parade tomorrow, and doing things that are quintessentially American riding carnival rides set up in the middle of the main drag, and eating kettle corn, elephant ears, and other carnival food. And here we are in this church with the American flag standing proudly to my right, and all of us singing National Hymns with great gusto at this 10 o clock service. What are we doing this morning? Or to ask the question in a somewhat different way, how we can celebrate this patriotic holiday as a citizen of the United States AND also be citizens of God s kingdom? For some people, the answer to this question is easy. The United States of America is a Christian nation, ordained by God for a special mission in the world. There are no conflicts between following Christ and being an American in fact, they are coterminous. As a nation, we have a destiny and a purpose. If we fulfill that destiny, we will fulfill God s will. When President Reagan s funeral service was held in June of 2004 at the National Cathedral an Episcopal Church, by the way Justice Sandra Day O Conner summed up this understanding when she read these words from John Winthrop s sermon which he had preached aboard the Arbela in 1630: The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people. For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. 2
For other people, the answer is also simple: the conflict between being an American and being a Christian is so profound that there must be for them the wall of separation between church and state a phrase that Thomas Jefferson coined in 1802 when he wrote his now-famous letter to the Danbury Baptist Association explaining why he would not proclaim national days of fasting and thanksgiving, as had been done by Washington and Adams before him. Being Christian and being American are antithetical to one another. Here s a story by way of illustration: I vividly remember a third grade classmate of mine. He was a Jehovah s Witness, and he did not say the Pledge of Allegiance with the rest of us when we stood facing the flag in the front of our classroom each morning. It was the first inkling I d ever had that what one believed about God might have any relationship to how one felt about the country. For my classmate, the phrase under God in the pledge was something he couldn t say. Remarkably, we are still discussing whether that phrase should be in the pledge all these many years later. These two understandings of the relationship between being a citizen of the United States and a citizen of the kingdom of God are the polar opposites of each other. For most of us, and I include myself, the answer to what it is that we are doing here this morning is much more nuanced. The relationship of our patriotism and our religion comes in shades of gray rather than in stark blacks and whites. One of the reasons for this is that we live in a world where we have seen the devastating impact of theocracy where God and the state are one where nations and groups claim the approval of the Deity for what they do and where what they do can t be questioned because is it done in God s name and because it represents what they believe to be God s will. It makes us cautious about how we pledge our allegiance to our country and our allegiance to our God, or it should! Our German tourist friend who asked the question about the flag came from a country where, in its recent history, Christian ideas and symbols had been used to propagandize an entire population. Ultimately under Nazism, the state became a kind of religion in and of itself. Who among us does not respond viscerally when I say the word, Taliban? (or more recently, ISIS or ISIL?) And who among us really wants to live in a place where others religious beliefs and values dictate what we do and how we live, what we read and what we wear? I am glad that I live in a secular republic where the power of the state derives from laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people rather than from the absolute claims of a set of religious beliefs, and I suspect that you are, too, if you think about it. But if the vast majority of us break out in a rash when we think about what it would be like to live under the kind of regime that would be run by the Nazis or the radical Islamists with their ideologies of the absolute, it gives the same vast majority of us considerable comfort to think that our unalienable rights were endowed by our Creator. In other words, we don t mind mixing religion and politics as long as the religion is the sort of vague Deism that seems to have been more the religion of our Founders than anything specifically Christian. In other words, for most of us, religion without specific content and a God without specific attributes can co-exist quite easily with our notion of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. 3
4 As Christians, though, we do not believe in a God without specific attributes or practice a religion without specific content. We believe in a God who sent Jesus into the world, a Jesus who wasn t out to overthrow the established government of his day. It was Jesus who, in today s passage, told his followers to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar s and unto God the things that are God s. In spite of this, he ran afoul of that government anyway and was, in the end, put to death by it. It is this same Jesus who speaks the words that were appointed to be read for the Gospel for Independence Day when I was preaching five years ago: 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. If these words don t highlight the tension of being both an American and a Christian, I don t know what does. We were at war in Afghanistan in 2011. We are still in a time of war throughout the world. Back in 2011, I told two stories that still haunt me and that I still find relevant this morning. The first was this: I had recently spent several hours in O Hare airport watching military personnel soldiers, sailors, and marines in their uniforms traveling to their destinations in many cases destinations that would put them in harm s way. The second, was something that happened just before Friday s fireworks, when I saw the young airman in camouflage get down on one knee to propose to his sweetheart hoping she d say yes before he deployed to Afghanistan a few weeks from now. Several of this parish s member have served or are now serving throughout the world. We pray for them and for all who serve on this holiday weekend. They serve because our country still has enemies. And it s in the question of what to do about our enemies that the tension between being a patriotic American and being a faithful Christian may be the most profound. Jesus words about loving our enemies challenge what our patriotic instincts are regarding those enemies. What patriotism asks of us is that we love our neighbors and hate our enemies because enemies threaten the very existence of our country. What Jesus Christ asks of us is that we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, so that we may be children of our Father in heaven... It seems highly unlikely that that the Department of Defense will adopt Jesus words as its mission statement anytime soon. The world as it is does not even begin to resemble the Kingdom of God. So Christians regardless of what country claims them as citizens have to live in tension between faithfulness to God and duty to Country to sort out our allegiances again and again to examine thoughtfully and regularly what it means to be citizens of two jurisdictions: citizens of the United States of America and citizens of God s kingdom. I welcome this tension and embrace it. And I think about it especially during these days when this central Ohio community does the Fourth of July weekend up in the most extraordinary, over-the-top, classically Americana way possible. It s fun, and wonderful, and terrific and a lot of food for thought! Amen.
Statue of Liberty, July 4, 2016 in New York City 5