Awaken the Nation

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Proper 9, Year B
July 4, 2021
 
In a mere sixty days, it will be time to awaken the nation.  We have a ritual for game day.  I have a big red G flag that I fly proudly.  We prepare special foods.  We decorate the house.  We wear special clothes.  We sing special songs.  We chant special chants.  In a mere sixty days, it will be time to awaken the “Bulldog Nation.”
 
For the uninitiated, I am speaking the University of Georgia Bulldogs football team.  I grew up right by the campus in Athens.  My father taught there for thirty-five years.  Our family has had season tickets for more than forty years.  Ever since I can remember, fall Saturdays have been reserved for game day.  Some of you share passions for other teams.  To each her own.
 
If I am fortunate enough to be in town, I go to the massive cathedral of SEC football.  I go to tailgate party feasts.  I go to the “Dawg Walk” when the team processes into at the stadium hours before game time.  I get in my pew in time to see the Redcoat Marching band spell out G.E.O.R.G.I.A. on the field while playing Glory, Glory to Old Georgia before the team takes the field.  We tend to win, but the National Championship has eluded us since 1980.  I went to every home game that season. I can still name the players.
 
For the life of me, it all sounds like an Easter church service.  Special clothes, food, hymns, chants and other ritual.  More than one doctoral dissertation has been written on college football as modern religion.  But we have to remember that these are young men who fumble and drop passes sometimes.  Coaches are not perfect.  Our devotion to our cause is not ultimate or life giving.  Fandom may look religious, but life does not depend on a game.  It is important for us remember that.
 
Incidentally, my father played football for Virginia from 1958-1961.  They lost all but one of their first year Cavalyearling games in 1958.  In 1959 and 1960, they lost twenty straight.  In his fourth year they ended a 28 game Cavalier losing streak which was a dubious record at the time.  That year they won four of ten games.  Thus, the potential and reality of defeat is part of my DNA.  If football is religion, it is a bad one.
 
As you all know, today is a game day for America.  We celebrate the birth of the American Idea, wearing our team colors, feasting on grilled food, singing patriotic songs, and cheering with parades and fireworks.  My devotion to our nation is strong, and the national flag is flying at our home.  Many have given much more than I to preserve the best of American ideals.  And we owe them deep gratitude.
 
And yet, today is also Sunday, the day on which we remember and celebrate our ultimate devotion.  The cross stands above the flag, reminding us that we are but one nation in the Kingdom of God.  It is important for us remember that too.
 
Not without coincidence, the lesson from Second Samuel is all about the formation of a nation: Israel.  This is not the modern country of Israel’s founding, it is the establishment of an idea, a nation devoted to God and God alone.  The narrative is prescient and powerful.  David, who will be the greatest leader of that nation, ever, makes a covenant, a promise to lead faithfully with the people, but more importantly to God.  In doing so he is a uniter, bringing people of differing religious factions together for good.  All is well.  Until it is not.  David will come to abuse his power.  Subsequent leaders will go their own way.  Corruption and greed do their worst.  Eventually they all fail.  The nation fails too.  As nations are constructs of human design, they are never perfect, though they may aspire to the best of ideals.  In 586 BCE, the Assyrians and Babylonians wipe out Jerusalem and take them into slavery.  While they attempt form again after hundreds of years, it never really works to be a nation and practice faith in perfect harmony.
 
When God takes human form in Jesus, the people are under the thumb of an elite religious ruling class and the militaristic empire of Rome.  As Jesus challenges the powers that be as greedy, self-centered, and oppressive, he gets run out of his own home town.  Unfazed, Jesus goes to other towns and villages, and sends his disciples two by two to go tell the story of God as loving, forgiving, and just for all people.  He does not hand out jerseys.  They are not going out to conquer a foe.  They are to take nothing, and depend on the kindness of those they serve.  If that doesn’t work, he tells them, they are to shake it off are to keep on keeping on.  And when they do, they bring healing and help to hurting people no matter their nation, religion, or station in life.  That is what God does.
 
In this very parish, during World War II, the rector was a known and avowed pacifist. On a Sunday in 1942, The Rev. H Lee Marston processed down the aisle and when he turned to face the congregation, he saw a giant American flag hanging from the middle of balcony where the organ is today.  Promptly and with few words, he dismissed the congregation and left the building.  He held fast and proclaimed that the parish would worship God and not America.  That took courage, and showed deep conviction.  While we have an American flag in our sanctuary, it is a symbol, not an idol.  We have an Episcopal Church flag here too.  It is a symbol, not an idol.  There are no adjectives before the word Christian, neither American nor Episcopalian.  God does not do boundaries or play favorites.
 
Thomas Jefferson once said “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”  He was speaking of slavery which would not be abolished for another 82 years.  It is hard to question Jefferson’s patriotism, and yet his words stand as fair warning that striving for a more perfect union does not make us perfect.  Perfection is God alone.
 
The American idea is worthy of celebration to be sure, but liberty and justice for all does not happen just because we say it.  We have to remember that God calls people, not nations to embody God’s love.  Liberty and justice for all happens when people, people like us, awaken to seek and serve God’s power, God’s kingdom, God’s glory.  Glory, glory to God first and forever.  Amen.