Today’s Word from Pastor Jim…
We are living through another unique season in our lives and in the history of our country. Many of us are weary. With romantic recall, we wish to go back to simpler days when civility was the norm, public decorum was valued, and our nation aspired to be as President Reagan said, a “shining city upon a hill.” We long to return to a time when a mighty woman with a torch, the mother of exiles, welcomed our ancestors to the shores of America.
Of course, there has never been a time when life in this great country has been uneventful, a time when the citizens of this land have not faced trials and tribulations. Our history is littered with war, scandal, recessions and depressions. The more things change, the more things stay the same. As the storm clouds of division build and we find ourselves adrift in uncharted waters, as we are greeted each day by a new series of distressing headlines, I thought it might be helpful to revisit the foundational truths of our lives. The North Stars of our faith and our service to country.
We begin where we should begin, with the words of Jesus as he simplified the tenants of religious life:
“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40
Here we have the call and the challenge of Christian discipleship. Somehow, we must learn to love God and to love ourselves. If we can do that, and it is not a given, then we will be able to love our neighbors. And who are our neighbors? They all are. Every tax collector and leper, every Muslim and Jew, every Republican and Democrat, every immigrant and minority.
We move now to the foundational truths that ungirded the founding of the United States of America. From the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
In all honesty, our forefathers often failed in the execution of this foundational truth. Missing the mark on equality should not deter us from the goal. Long after the founding of our nation, and after a brutal Civil War had torn us apart, these aspirations were still present in the words of the Pledge of Allegiance:
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Liberty and Justice for all. The question of who would be included in “all” brought our nation to the verge of Civil War as a new President was about to take the oath of office. Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address sought to avert war by reminding our citizens of their shared history. On March 4, 1861, Lincoln appealed to his constituents, seeking unity in the midst of division:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Four years later, on the 4th day of March 1865, 36 days before Lee would surrender the Army of Virginia to General Grant, Lincoln would again address the country seeking charity and unity. Lincoln understood that the pathway to healing would be paved by compassion not retribution. In that speech, just 41 days before his assassination, Lincoln stood on the Capitol steps reminding the citizens of the North and South of the common foundational truths of our nation:
“Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered ~ that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”
“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 lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Dear friends, in these uncertain times when many of the basic tenants of our faith and our nation are being challenged, may we be encouraged and emboldened by the teachings of Jesus and the aspirational voices from our rich national history. Let us not be paralyzed by fear, rather let us embrace the better angels of our nature for liberty and justice for all.
One beggar telling another beggar where to find bread, I am your,
Pastor Jim
PS: If you would like to respond directly to Pastor Jim, please email [email protected].
