Sermon for July 4, 2021 - The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, The Rev. Elise A. Feyerherm

This time of year is always a little fraught for me. The celebration of the emergence of the United States as an independent nation always provokes in me a mixed bag of feelings. My family celebrated July 4th as many families do, with friends and cook-outs and community fireworks at dusk. 

But during those same years, I was also formed by communities whose values challenged any kind of unquestioning patriotism. From kindergarten through 12th grade, and then in college, I attended schools founded by Quakers and governed by Quaker ideals of non-violence, equality, community, simplicity, and absolute truth-telling. Not only that, but these were the years of the war in Vietnam, years in which Americans were learning firsthand (and in a new way) all the gaps between what we said we believed as a nation and what we actually were doing in our own land and across the globe. It was an era of profound disillusionment and skepticism about government and about “American values.” So I learned very early as a child how vast can be the gap between our highest aspirations as human beings and our ability to live out those aspirations. 

This was also the era of civil rights, and the beginnings of the women’s movement. I learned how far short we had fallen in terms of loving our neighbor as ourselves, of treating all human beings with the justice and equality they deserve. And I was witness to the burgeoning movements that sought to bring our actions as a nation in line with our stated values.

I also saw, at an early age, how easy it was for the nation-state and all its symbols to take on a sacred character, to be identified with God and God’s purposes. In the 1980s I watched the Moral Majority attempt to merge evangelical Christian identity with American identity, an attempt that is still going on today. 

And all along, I was also reading the Bible, reading messages that challenged the idea that nation and God could somehow coalesce. I heard Paul say, as we did today, that the measure of divine power is found not in strength, but in weakness. I heard Paul also say that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free – in our terms, neither American nor foreign. I heard the prophets like Ezekiel warning against assuming that the nation’s values are the same as God’s. I heard Jesus, like the prophets before him, say that he had come to bring good news not to privileged America, but to all the oppressed and captive and suffering people of the world. 

Every year around this time is an especially good time to remind ourselves that only God is God, and that no nation of people is blessed by God more than any other. America first is not a gospel value – in fact, in gospel terms, it is idolatry. And if we ask God to bless our nation, we should understand that blessing not as granting any of us prosperity or power, but as reenergizing our commitment to justice and peace and abundance for every single person and nation on the planet. 

Across the globe, humans are tempted to make idols of their nations and national systems. We do it whether or not we believe in God, perhaps because a nation is one of the most visible and proximate ways we find meaning and purpose in our lives. There are symbols and rituals and songs meant to instill pride and encourage allegiance. It doesn’t matter whether you are in religious America or atheist China – the nation state will serve as a natural stand-in for the divine, if we let it, promising security and prosperity and meaning and purpose if we offer our loyalty. That’s what idols do.

This is a good time to remember that we have all sorts of idols in our lives, not just the obvious ones. The most tempting idols are all the good things in our lives, because of course, it is their very goodness that makes it tempting to put them above God. Mine are legion – financial security, reputation, intelligence, success. I value them often more than God because they are things I can grasp, at least comprehend, see, imagine. They make me feel good when I have them. And I think they are under my control. 

I value them because they are, actually, good things, in their place. To have the money to live a good life and do good things; to have the respect of one’s peers; to be able to think clearly and make sense of the world; to create things of value. These are all good, good things, just as our national aspirations of freedom and justice for all are good things. But they are not, and will never be, God. They do not last, they corrode easily, and they do not, ultimately, 

make us truly happy, nor truly good. Only God can do that. 

And our idols keep us from God, because we expect them to be and do what only God can be and do. They blind us to the ways our own weakness and selfishness create weapons out of what should be good tools for manifesting God’s love in the world.

These are hard words to hear. We do not like to be told about our idols. Jesus said, when the people took offense at him, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” We generally like it better when prophets expose other people’s idols, and not so much when the prophets are in our own country, our own home, our own heart. When a prophet is in my neighborhood, she is likely to go after the golden calf that I have been so lovingly tending – for some reason, she is not so interested in the idols that others have erected across town or across the world. And I do not like hearing that the things, people, and institutions that I value the most are at risk of taking God’s place in my life. As Jesus noted, this does not make for popularity. 

But we need to hear this prophetic word, over and over again. Our idols are especially dangerous when and because they create the illusion of us versus them, of a world in which we are the center and everything else is not only on the periphery, but a potential danger to us. Family, success, survival, nation, even church – all can become idols and put our lives and souls in mortal danger because they create divisions and battles that God never intended.

Brother Sean Glenn of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist wrote,

In truth, Jesus tells us no human being is our enemy—not even our own self. Yet we cannot recognize this until we begin the long process of inner demolition—of tearing down the walls that would keep us from letting God love and form us. We cannot let Jesus in until we have begun to search out those places in ourselves where we are too big and God is too small, where our dependence wanders to any other but [God]. https://www.ssje.org/2019/07/04/to-be-perfect-as-he-is-perfect-br-sean-glenn/ 

Not only on this 4th of July weekend, but every time we gather at this table, we lay our idols down and “search out those places…where we are too big and God is too small.” May we always know when and how there has been a prophet among us, and may we open ourselves to the God who transcends and embraces every people, language, and nation.