Scripture: Psalm 39 and Psalm 146
Tuesday is the Fourth of July and that has had something to do with the direction of my thoughts for this morning in a way that I’ll try to explain in a few moments. But with the Fourth of July in mind, I was putting together the worship materials for the service and, although I’m not real big on singing patriotic songs in church, I thought “why not?” Let’s go ahead and sing “America the Beautiful”. As patriotic songs go, it’s a pretty good one. I like it anyway. And its words are actually pretty good, or at least ok…I think…better check. So I turned to America the Beautiful in our hymnal, and I found…not what I expected.
I expected some slightly different language in the hymn. Our hymnal has taken out the “thee’s”, “thou’s”, and “thine’s”. It uses inclusive language with regard to gender and in other ways as well, and sometimes makes various other changes, for instance to tone down military images. So I knew there would be a few changes in the words. What I found, however, is a different song. Since we didn’t sing this version, let me read you the words:
I’ll skip the first verse which has some significant changes but is a version of what you’re familiar with. But then there are these verses. “Indigenous and immigrant, our daughters and our sons, O may we never rest content till all are truly one. America, America, God grant that we may be a sisterhood and brotherhood from sea to shining sea.” How beautiful, sincere lament, the wisdom born of tears, the courage called for to repent the bloodshed through the years. America, America, God grant that we may be a nation blessed with none oppressed, true land of liberty.” “How beautiful, two continents, and islands in the sea that dream of peace, nonviolence, all peoples living free. Americas, Americas, God grant that we may be a hemisphere where people here all live in harmony.” This obviously was not just some adjustments to the language. It was an alternative version, a statement, a dissenting statement, and a statement whose sentiments I am sympathetic to. But I had started out just wanting to sing a patriotic hymn in the spirit of the Fourth of July, and now here I had to decide whether to do that, or to go along with the approach of the New Century Hymnal and use the hymn to register a protest.
You know what I chose. The version we used—it’s from the Disciples hymnal—does make some adjustments in the language, but it’s basically the traditional version. I stuck with my original intention to sing the familiar hymn, for those of us who would enjoy doing that. But I struggled with it some. I didn’t lose any sleep over it, but I did wrestle with it, because I felt tugged in two different directions. And I bother to tell you about this difficulty over something that might seem simple, like choosing a hymn, I bother to tell you about it because that tension that I was feeling about what spirit to sing American the Beautiful with is actually related in a significant way to what I want to talk about this morning.
I am a person who enjoys singing America the Beautiful with the traditional words by Katherine Lee Bates. I am also a person who believes that “sincere lament” would be a good thing on our part and would indeed be beautiful, lament for the ways we have failed to be a sisterhood and brotherhood from sea to shining sea, and for the self-centeredness by which we casually assume that America is another name for the United States, that we are the only America that counts, ignoring the rest of the Americas. I am a person who believes that sincere lament is called for but who doesn’t believe it is going to happen.
I am a person who was moved by the ceremony when David Marshall became a citizen at Monticello last July 4, moved because it was David, but also moved by the ceremony itself and the image of people with rich life stories coming together from all over the world to be part of a democratic experiment that I do cherish. I am also quite well aware of the dark underside to the story of immigration in the United States, the people who have been brought here against their will, the people who would love to come but have been denied, the people who come illegally amid much hue and cry over their illegality, but who often die trying to come and who we are glad to have work for practically nothing so we can save a few cents on the price of produce.
I am a person who—I admit it—enjoys a good rendition of a Sousa march, especially Stars and Stripes Forever, and who can sometimes find myself unexpectedly emotional when the national anthem is played. I am also a person who is hostile to overt displays of patriotism, tired of hearing people asking God to bless America, and frequently in deep opposition to the foreign policy of the United States and its reliance on the military.
I am a person who has been very grateful to come home to the United States after being in other countries even for a short time, but I am also a person whose travel has not been in very prosperous parts of the world and who has found it sometimes hard to come home, hard to readjust to the insular life many of us lead, has found the affluence we take for granted almost obscene, an affluence that I am very much a part of and that I benefit from.
I don’t assume that everyone here will be in exactly the same place I am on these matters. Some people here may find themselves somewhat less at odds with our nation and society and culture than I am, others maybe somewhat more than I am. My own feelings can certainly change depending on what’s going on in the world at any given time. But I’m guessing that many of you will have some sense of what I’m talking about, the sense of belonging yet not belonging, the sense of living in a land that is so deeply part of us and yet feeling alien somehow. As I say, some of us may feel more one way than the other. Each of us may feel more one way than the other at different times. But there is, for me there is always this kind of tension between feeling like I am fully part of my country and my country is part of me, versus feeling like I am an outsider and a dissenter, a patriot but to say the least an uncomfortable patriot. It’s a tension that naturally arises on an occasion like the fourth of July and that was represented in my little bout over how to deal with American the Beautiful.
My thought for the morning, if I am connecting here at all, is that this double life I am trying to describe, this uncomfortable position of belonging and not belonging at the same time, this position is where we are supposed to be. It is a spiritual question. Do not put your trust in princes, Psalm 146 says. More pointedly, Psalm 39 in a voice that is speaking to God says “I am but your passing guest.” A simple truth for Sojourners, maybe, but a needed one. As Christians it is not just an uncomfortable reality but our calling to live in an uneasy relationship with these human creations we call countries, whether it is the United States or any other country. As Christians it is not just an uncomfortable reality but our calling to live in an uneasy relationship with the world, not because the world is such a bad place, but because we are called not to lose ourselves in it, just as we are called not to lose ourselves in patriotism.
Just a few quick thoughts in this regard this morning—I’m going to be relatively brief today. It is important for us to place ourselves, spiritually speaking, on the edge of belonging not at the center…probably for lots of reasons, but let me just sort of let my mind wander in a couple of directions. It is important for us to see the world with the eyes and with the heart of outsiders, important for us to be in touch with that part of ourselves, which I believe we all have, that part of us that has this sense of being aliens in the world, strangers in a strange land, misfits in a way. It’s perhaps especially important for those of us who because of the color of our skin or of our gender or other marks of social privilege can pretend that we are insiders. But if we refuse to make that distinction between insiders and outsiders, if we put ourselves in a position where we are all outsiders until there is sisterhood and brotherhood from sea to shining sea, we are much better off spiritually. That sense of being alien in your own land is an act of solidarity with all those who reside on the margins of society and who have no choice but to feel like outsiders. That sense of solidarity is where we spiritually belong. It is also where I believe God most fully dwells.
I am talking in part about the spiritual grounding for bringing about social change. One of the reasons Jesus was sometimes so hard on people who had riches was that they were too tied in to the present order of things, too much invested in the world as it is, not sufficiently desirous of the new order that he called the kingdom or the realm of God. It is hard, he said, in my way of paraphrasing for this morning, for the rich to get close to God, because where God is is at the edges of the current order, where the need for a new order is most clear and most deeply felt. It is sometimes hard for the privileged to let themselves be in that space, but not impossible. With God nothing is impossible.
But this has to do not only with the way we view the world but with the way we view our relationship to God. For me, sometimes God is at the heart of things, present in every face, present in every plant or creature, present in every dawn and sunset, at the heart of everything that is, and in the core of my being too, no stranger but One I know intimately, or who knows me intimately. But then God is also one who stands at the edge of this holy creation, imaging a new creation and One who stands at the edge of me, whispering a holy presence into the commonness of my days, calling me to some deeper awareness, some greater mindfulness, calling me to prayer as a way of life, not prayer as some special activity, but prayer as a way of life.
It is important for me to experience God in both of those ways, as being somehow truly at my center and at the center of all, but at the same time as the holy presence at the margins of things and at the margins of me, present amid the stirrings of a new life for this sometimes hard, always troubled world of ours, and encouraging new and deeper life in me as well. To use the words of still another Psalm, with which we began worship today, God will indeed keep our going out and our coming in, God will be present at the core through all our wanderings, but God will not let us rest content or give ourselves over to any false sense of belonging. For we are sojourners on the earth (that would be sojourners with a small “s”), passing guests, never truly at home. May God grant us a true sense of being aliens on the earth. May God also grant us a full measure of love along the way. Amen.
Jim Bundy
July 2, 2006