Sermon for Year C, Proper 9 (July 4, 2010): Glory and Duty

Preached on Sunday, July 4th, 2010 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

This July the 4th of 2010 finds us a long, long way from the Jerusalem of the prophet Isaiah’s day. In that time, the 8th century BC, and in that place, Jerusalem, capital city of the southern kingdom of Israel, Isaiah and the prophets understood God’s will to be inextricably linked to the fate of the nation of Israel.

Isaiah tells the people of Jerusalem that a time of triumph and prosperity is coming – and that those good fortunes can be directly attributed to God’s grace and favor toward the nation of Israel, his chosen people.

The political and the spiritual are seen as one in this period. If Israel suffered from foreign attack and captivity, famine or natural disaster, then it is a sign of God’s displeasure. And if Israel enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity and dominance in the region, it is a sign of God’s approbation.

Now there are some who like to adopt and adapt the causality of the Hebrew prophets to our own time and place. And there are those that will say that hurricanes and oil spills and terrorist attacks are evidence of God’s displeasure and they are God’s punishment for sin committed by those adversely affected by such disasters. But have you ever noticed that those same folks don’t sound off so much when the weather’s nice? We don’t hear so much from them when unemployment is low and the market is up and there’s a drop in the crime rate.

You never hear them say, “Enjoy! It’s obvious that God is pleased with everything about you – why, just check out the 5-day forecast! God loves you -- it says so in the gospel according to the Weather Channel!”

But the prophets of Israel did sound off in good times as in bad. Often their message during the good times was to remember the duties owed to God, the bringer of the good times, and to remember the responsibilities written into God’s law to care for those whom the good times had skipped. The prophet Jeremiah, speaking a bit later than the time of Isaiah in the 7th century BC, proclaimed, “They cry peace, peace, but there is no peace!” (Jer 8:11 para), he meant that while there may be an absence of war, there was not the deep, full peace that can take up in our hearts when we are at one with our God and we are doing the will of our God.

And nearer the time of Isaiah, the prophet Amos warned the people that their God-granted prosperity had resulted in greed, and that God would punish Israel because they had forgotten their duty to the poor, and misused the bounty God had shown them. Amos was quite clear -- to accept God’s bounty and then to misuse it, to the detriment of those in need, was not God’s way, not God’s intention. The laws of God in that day were explicit in the prescriptions of charity and care for the poor, and the proscriptions against unjust dealings and selfishness.

Prophets in our own day have echoed Amos in their call to remember the less fortunate, and to remember that God’s bounty, God’s peace and God’s justice must be shared by all. As Martin Luther King put it during the civil rights struggle – and the same words were used recently by Lt. Daniel Choi, US Army infantryman and leader in the effort to repeal the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy -- Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Or as Amos would put it, if you aren’t a caring child of God, it may come to pass that you become the child of a less caring God.

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But Jesus seems to have a more complex understanding of God’s peace and God’s justice. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus sends out 70 missionaries to proclaim the gospel and to offer God’s peace to those they visit – to take part in a harvest that going to be plentiful. The number 70 is significant. In Genesis chapter 10, the Gentile nations of the world are listed, and the number of those nations is 70.

There are other parallels for the number 70 in Scripture, but this one is, I think, key. Jesus himself, at this point in Luke’s gospel, is headed toward Jerusalem and all that he will face there. But even as he heads to the heart of the nation, he sends 70 emissaries in a different direction, out to the world, out (it would seem) to all the world. They are told to take very little with them, certainly no weapons to do battle, and no money with which to buy favor or special treatment. They are to wish peace upon every household they enter. They are to engage in fellowship with those they meet and to alleviate the suffering they find. They are to assure those they meet that the kingdom of God has come near.

Jesus has a broader vision. His interpretation of the law comes to a different conclusion. His focus is outwards rather than inwards. He’s not concerned only with the well-being of his own city or country, he’s concerned for all the world, and he’s taking positive steps to do something about it. How might his message of peace be spread to others, how might compassion be shown to all those who suffer? He sends people out to proclaim the gospel to all the world, to heal the sick and to preach peace. And when his emissaries meet with success, he tells them not to gloat, but to be glad in the fact that they are doing God’s work.

William Sloane Coffin, one-time chaplain of Yale University and Senior Minister of Riverside Church just up Riverside Drive from here, wrote a prayer for our nation. It begins,

O God, mightily we pray for wisdom, courage, and strength to serve thee and this nation faithfully… Remind us of our duty to promote the general welfare, to secure the blessings of liberty for all, to see to it that justice and compassion reign from sea to shining sea, and that the bountiful resources of a favored land are not only thankfully received but also gladly shared with the whole human family.

I think we are right to be proud of our country. This nation has served as a beacon to those around the world who seek the right to freedom of speech. Our military might has helped save the world from domination by tyrants. Our wealth has enabled us to offer vast amounts of aid to some of the world’s poorest people. We have, at most times in our history, served as a shining example of stable, peaceful governance by the people being governed.

But like all nations (and all people, for that matter) we are guilty of sin as well. We may now point proudly to the universal suffrage enjoyed in our nation, but that has not always been the case. Women have had the right to vote in our nation for less than 40% of our history. And the voting rights of African-Americans in parts of our nations were in need of special legislative support within living memory.

And for children born in this country, the quality of the healthcare they receive is not a function of the quality of healthcare available in this country, where more healthcare resources exist than anywhere else on earth, but rather, the quality of the healthcare children in this country receive is largely a function of how good a job their parent or parents may have, whether their parents work in a place with a heath insurance plan that covers them or simply how rich their parents are.

Yes, we have many sins to repent of as a country, but we also have many things to offer others less fortunate than ourselves. Our collect this morning reminds us that that Christ taught us that by loving God and our neighbor we are keeping all God’s commandments. And St. Paul echoes that assertion when he tells the Galatians in our epistle reading today, "Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."

It’s that last line of our gospel reading that I want to leave you with this Fourth of July Sunday, before we head out to the picnics and parades and fireworks. Let us not rejoice in the power that we may have in the world, but rather rejoice in the fact that we use that power to spread peace, and to be emissaries of justice and compassion. Let us not look to ourselves and what favor we may feel we have in God’s eyes, but rather let us look to those who might rightly believe they are bereft of God’s favor and assure them that is not the case -- prove to them that they are loved and cared for by God by the fact that they are loved and cared for by us, God’s emissaries to this troubled world.

As we celebrate our nation and its history, let us rejoice not in what glories we can lay claim to, but rather let us rejoice in what we are able to do for others -- and on the Fifth of July, let us set out with a renewed sense of our duty as Americans and as Christians, to spread peace and justice and compassion to those who don’t enjoy the privileges we do, both here at home and around the world. Amen+

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins