Fifth Sunday after Penteost

Lectionary Texts:

Saturday

OT: 2 Samuel 5:1-10

NT: Mark 6:7-13

Sunday:

OT: 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10

Psalter: Psalm 48 (UMH 782)

NT: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Gospel: Mark 6:13

 

The Daily Office Lectionary and the Revised Common Lectionary don't always correspond. The latter is Sundays only; the former, every day. I'm finding that often the Sunday Lectionary repeats the Saturday of the Daily Lectionarty.

 

This is normally Bible Study day, but since tomorrow is July 4, I thought I would talk a bit about Christianity and patriotism. We'll do three Bible Studies next week.  

 

Christianity and Patriotism. Many of us are disturbed by the conflation of the two that goes on in many Evangelical churches. How did the early church stand on this?

 

Jesus was no patriot. He lived and died under Roman oppression. He opposed much of what was going on in the Judaism of his time. His oft quoted statement, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's," is hard to interpret as implying anything other than separation of Church and State. The United States was founded under that principal. Most of the founding fathers were not Christians in terms we would use today. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington were deists/unitarians. They admired Jesus but did not believe he was divine. 

 

None of the founding documents, The Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, ever mentions Jesus Christ. God is not mentioned by name but only in the word "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence.  Thomas Jefferson wrote a revised Bible that took out all the miracles and references to Jesus as Divine.

 

After the resurrection of Jesus, many of the early Christians took a conciliatory attitude toward the Roman Empire. Paul in Romans 13 and 1 Peter both counsel Christians to be exemplarty citizens of the Roman Empire. Contrariwise, the Book of Revelation displays a not too veiled contempt for the Empire. The Paul/1 Peter view would prevail. 

 

2020-2021 have been an odd time in and for American history. Coronavirus has made us more aware of our interdependence. The Black Lives Matter movement has made us more aware of the dark side of American history, slavery of African origin people and genocide of indigenous peoples. Like Rome, our history is a mixed bag. 

 

In my 76 years few things have disgusted me more than the January 6th violent insurrection. The perpetrators and participants should never be allowed to own or wave an American flag again. 

 

As we find in the Book of Hebrews, we are citizens of two realms. We can be and should be patriotic Americans. But our greater citizenship is in God's kingdom.

 

Our nation has blessed us in many ways. Perhaps the greatest is freedom of religion and separation of church and state. Tomorrow is America's annual celebration of independence. It is also Sunday. May we always clearly know the difference.

 

God of our nation, God of all nations,

We give you thanks for the blessings afforded us by our form of government and the freedoms our Constitution guarantees. We confess and lament our nation's failures and sins. Help us to be better citizens and our nation to more fully embody its ideals. Amen. 

 

Faithfully,

Christian