Sermon For November 12, 2000
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
CHRISTIAN GOSPEL: Withholding Nothing ~ Mark 12:38-44
SERMON: Grateful and Committed
It has been an amazing week. My scratchy throat began Tuesday night, when I started watching the election returns early on, and watched as it grew later, and later, and later. I watched with many of you as Florida was declared early for Gore. When it was taken back, I shook my head in surprise. Then, when George Bush was declared the President, I almost called it a night and went to bed. But I decided to watch and see what Al Gore had to say. He didn't come to the microphone, and didn't come to the microphone. As I channel surfed between networks watching different new anchors, it was amusing to see that they didn't know what to do with the situation. They were backpedaling and trying to fill in time while they sorted out the confusion. That was entertainment all by itself. Then the word finally came that there were problems with the vote in Florida and that the networks were taking the state away from George W. At that point I thought, "This is amazing!" Dan Rather said, "We've been looking into the crystal ball so hard that our mouths are full of broken glass." They had all sorts of clichés about how badly they had performed during the reports of the election. The thing that many commentators have said in the time from Tuesday until now is that what noteworthy is that we are able to go through this whole difficult process without worrying about troops in the streets. There is no fear of a military coup - no concern about the kind of response we might observe in many other countries around the world. The United States, perhaps more than any other place, is prepared to go through this kind of confusion in a civil way. The last word on that obviously remains to be spoken. We don't know if we will come to an even graver constitutional crisis in the future, but I don't expect that to be the case. I think, one way or the other, this will be resolved. As the candidates have said, when the Electoral College declares a winner, that man will become the president of all the people.
This is the kind of freedom that we have in this country, a freedom that has existed for only a very short time in the history of the world, but a freedom that comes out of the spiritual lives and the religious longings of all of the people of the planet. Many people of faith helped to bring this country into being, and to give it the foundation of democracy that we celebrate. The most important of the freedoms that we enjoy is the freedom to worship. It's also the freedom that would be most easy for people to take away, saying (with good intentions), "We should all be Christians." Or maybe, "We should all be Unitarians," or Jews, or Hindus. People are driven by a deep faith. People who believe that their understanding of god is the one true understanding almost have no choice but to say, "My understanding of God would be everyone's understanding of God. But the thing that has made this country such a wonderful place is that our Pilgrim ancestors, who came here so that they might have freedom of religion, early on realized that if freedom of religion was going to mean anything, it had to mean freedom for everyone to worship in their own way. There are those who would like to tear down Jefferson's wall of separation between church and state, turning this into a Christian Nation guided by the Bible. But even then, the question would be, what kind of Christian state, and whose Bible, and whose prayers? Because of our freedom of religion, scholars often describe us as the most spiritual country on the planet. We all people to pursue their faith without legislating what that faith should be. We truly live in a democracy.
Whenever I have talked to veterans, I have not yet run across one who wanted to stand up and brag abou6t their role in the war. People will tell stories about training camp, different experiences along the way, but they will only speak reluctantly about how difficult war is. They will only share, in quiet times of reflection, what it means to face death, what it means to see your buddies killed next to you. They will only speak on rare occurrences about how difficult it was to be separated from family and friends back home. I think this is what Jesus was talking about in our scripture reading today. Jesus said there are those people who want to stand out on the street corners and have others recognize how important they are, how religious they are. It's not just the loud prayers on the street corners, but the special robes that are talked about in the passage. These robes were worn by religious authorities and people were supposed to recognize those signs of authority and speak first to show that they were subordinate. Jesus called for modesty. He said, "Don't try to put yourself about others. Don't try to get people to tell you how wonderful you are. Instead, give of yourself, give what you have to give, share out of your love for God. " And then he tells the story of the widow, and her very little bit of money. She brought that money and gave it to God, speaking of her faith, her gratitude, and her commitment.
As I looked at web pages about Veterans Day, or Remembrance Day as our friends to the North refer to it, one of the phrases that appeared over and over again was "All gave some, and some gave all." As we live our life, as we defend our freedom, we are all called to contribute. Some of us are even called to lay down our lives. But we don't do it in a desire to glorify ourselves or even glorify our country. We should only pick up our guns when it is the only way to fight against the evil that is oppressing people. We should pick up our guns to fight when our faith calls us to do so and, even then, we should continually ask the question about whether we heard God correctly. We should commit ourselves to working for peace, to working for love for all of God's people. We give thanks for those who served and especially for those who served and died. The best way that we honor them is to strive to put an end to war, so that no soldier needs to die again. We pray for the guidance of God's Spirit with us. Amen.