Temper Your Temptations, and Vote for a Better Country

Sermon for Independence Day, transferred
July 7, 2024
Deuteronomy 10:17-21; Hebrews 11:8-16; Matthew 5:43-48

As we celebrate our nation this morning and seek God’s blessings upon it, I’d like to tour a few documents I see as fundamental to our identity.  Now, on Independence Day weekend, you might imagine all these would be documents from American history, and two of them are.  But, you know, as followers of Jesus Christ, we hold sort of a dual citizenship, pledging our allegiance to both a temporal and a spiritual country.  So, I would argue we understand who we are through both civil and sacred sources.

First off, this weekend, we have to look to the Declaration of Independence.  I wonder how many of us have read it – or at least have read it since high-school civics class.  I think we remember the declaration more for what it symbolizes than for what it says, but it’s worth remembering the argument that Thomas Jefferson (with his bevy of editors) makes there.  Jefferson says human beings – at least in the inadequate scope he ascribed to humanity – human beings have been divinely created and thus are equal.  And because of that, they have rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that take precedence over the power of any human ruler.  Then, after articulating his principles, Jefferson outlines an indictment against King George III.  He begins by stating the charge:  “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”  After listing the king’s offenses, Jefferson concludes:  “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”¹  Jefferson’s foundational document is a call for us to cast off autocracy, to temper the temptation to power by working for the common good of people made by God to dwell in equality and freedom.

From Jefferson, my patriot heart next goes to Abraham Lincoln.  To me, his most penetrating document is not his most famous.  As much as I love the poetry and power of the Gettysburg Address, it’s Lincoln’s Second Inaugural that lays out our accountability for our nation.  Like the Biblical prophets he emulates, Lincoln both takes his nation to task and calls it to a holier future. 

Looking back on the four bloodiest years in our history, Lincoln seeks to answer the question haunting the Republic and every soul who’d lost a husband or a son.  It’s the same question that haunts us in every tragedy: Why?  Why has God allowed such horror?  Lincoln the prophet sets the responsibility with the nation’s original sin.  Bear with me for an extended excerpt:  

If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”² 

Then, having indicted the nation for the evil of slavery, Lincoln the prophet calls us to a righteous new birth that yet can spring from the ashes of God’s judgment:  

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.² 

Remember, this speech came just weeks before the end of the war. As the Union was nearing its victory, Lincoln could have called for the persecution of his enemies.  Instead, he called us to temper our temptation to seek vengeance and instead bind up the nation’s wounds.

For us dual citizens of earthly and heavenly countries, the documents of our identity go back much further than Lincoln and Jefferson.  Our readings this morning, appointed for The Episcopal Church’s feast of Independence Day, give us the words of the original prophet, God’s first spokesperson – Moses.  And here, Moses calls God’s people to provide for “the stranger” (Deuteronomy 10:19) – the “alien [who] resides with you in your land” (Leviticus 19:33).  Now, God’s people had been struggling to make their way through 40 years in the wilderness, feeling threatened at every turn.  But Moses names their need to embrace those who might seem threatening, those who aren’t like them.  And so, thousands of years later, Moses still calls us to temper our temptation to see some people as the other and instead embrace those we might try to keep at arm’s length.

Of course, the documents of our identity must include the words of Jesus.  And for Independence Day, the Church chooses a moment from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, his ultimate teaching about God’s reign and rule in day-to-day life.  You know the Sermon on the Mount.  It’s where we find the Beatitudes:  “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Matt 5:9).  It’s where Jesus critiques the religious leaders for their failures of righteousness (5:20).  It includes the Golden Rule, to treat others as you want them to treat you (7:12).  Well, from this hard and holy exhortation, we hear today what may be Jesus’ hardest teaching ever:  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (5:44).  Like Lincoln at the end of the Civil War, Jesus calls us to temper our temptation to hate those who stand against us, instead walking in Love to overcome evil with good.

And finally this morning, I want to raise up our reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, maybe the source of our sense of dual citizenship.  The writer of Hebrews names some heroes of the faith – Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob – who understood themselves as sojourners through hard and broken times, waiting in faith for God to complete their journey of redemption.  They’d believed in God’s promises, trying to live faithfully while also trusting that the present was pointing toward God’s purposes to come.  As Hebrews puts it, these ancestors “died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them” (11:13).  This hope allowed them to see themselves not bound by the fears and failings of the present day but instead to seek the life of “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (11:16).  Hebrews calls us to temper our temptation to despair, pointing us past the present darkness to follow the torch of Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (12:2).

Today, in this fraught and anxious national moment, it’s easy to give in to our temptations.  And for me, at least, the first of those temptations is to be politely quiet in the face of sin and evil.  As I said a few weeks ago, the power of “not God,” at individual and corporate levels, still threatens us, and it knows no political boundaries.  Sin and evil visit us dressed in the rhetoric of simplistic answers, and we’re tempted to buy in.  We’re tempted to reward leaders who villainize others and manipulate the truth.  We’re tempted to reward leaders who refuse to name the long-term costs of popular proposals.  We’re tempted to reward leaders who deep down seek their own interest at the expense of the nation’s interest.  We’re tempted to choose the easy path ourselves and back the policy that asks the least of us.  We’re tempted to believe that darkness is inevitable, that only the strong and self-interested survive.  We’re tempted to turn away from the power of Love.  And when we give in to those temptations, we get leaders who do the same.

As we approach this election season, our nation may seem to be teetering on the edge.  But our hope lies in following Jesus’ way of Love by calling our leaders to follow “the better angels of our nature,” as Lincoln said.³  If American democracy means anything, it means our national life hangs on “the consent of the governed,” as Jefferson put it.¹  And if being a follower of Jesus in this democracy means anything, it means giving our consent to that which aligns with our Savior’s way of Love.  As political leaders seek to manipulate us into powerlessness and despair, we must remember that our nation is “we, the people,” empowered to give or withhold our consent.

I can’t change our politics.  But I can speak.  I can write to legislators and to the president, which I’ve done, by the way.  And I can vote.  In fact, I must vote.  To help us with that, as we approach the primaries and general election to come, I want to leave you with the last thing you expected to take home today – a voter’s guide.  We Episcopalians don’t do that, right?  Well, you can find this voter’s guide in the prayer book.  As Episcopalians, one of the documents of our identity is the set of promises we make when we commit ourselves to Jesus’ way of Love.  It’s the Baptismal Covenant, a Christian’s job description.  In addition to guiding our personal discipleship, it provides a roadmap for offering the consent of the governed.  So, for each office and each question, I encourage you to ask yourself:

·         What choice best represents the apostles’ teaching and fellowship?

·         What choice best resists evil?

·         What choice best proclaims the Good News of God in Christ?

·         What choice best serves Christ in all people and loves our neighbors?

·         What choice best strives for justice and peace and respects the dignity of every human being?

Our democracy depends on us.  In a national moment when the powers of darkness seek to convince us we can’t change a thing, we must remind them that our nation follows a different narrative.  Our votes, guided by our faith, can make our nation “a better country,” something more like the one to which we aspire.  So don’t let governing happen without your consent.  Temper your temptation to despair, and cast your vote for “a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” 

1.       “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription.” National Archives. Available at: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript. Accessed July 6, 2024.

2.       “Image 1 of Abraham Lincoln papers: Series 3. General Correspondence. 1837-1897: Abraham Lincoln, [March 4, 1865] (Second Inaugural Address; endorsed by Lincoln, April 10, 1865).” Library of Congress. Available at: https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.4361300/?sp=1&st=text. Accessed July 6, 2024.

3.       Image 1 of Abraham Lincoln papers: Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833-1916: Abraham Lincoln, [March 1861] (First Inaugural Address, Final Version).” Library of Congress. Available at: https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.0773800/?st=text. Accessed July 6, 2024.