Sermon Title: "What's Good for America..."
Date: July 5, 2009
Ministers: Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Deuteronomy 4:1-8

As news of the bankruptcy of the United States’ largest automaker evolved, several writers recalled the famous quotation of President Eisenhower’s Defense Secretary, former General Motors president Charles Wilson, who declared in 1953, “What’s good for America is good for General Motors, and vice versa.”  That came but a decade after General Motors spent the war years manufacturing planes that helped defeat the Japanese in World War II.

Today, in light of the biggest recession to hit America since the Great Depression, something only our senior members lived through, in light of bank closures, General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies, including nearly two thousand dealers being closed, cutbacks at the state, county and city levels, the State of California again without a budget and issuing IOUs, in the midst of a war that has lasted longer than World War II and has seen nearly 6,000 servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan—average age 20-21—we might well ask ourselves on this Independence weekend whether we still know for sure what’s good for America.  Let me take you on a personal tour.

In February 1972, I took my first solo car trip across the country.  I was still in seminary, and headed from Berkeley to Philadelphia as part of my chaplaincy training.  I spent that summer as a seminary intern in a little rural church in upstate New York, whose congregation would call me as their minister at the end of the summer.  My first Sunday there was July 2, 1972, and my first sermon from their pulpit I entitled, “This Nation Under God.”  Four years later, when our nation’s Bicentennial fell on a Sunday, and there was no place better to celebrate the Fourth of July, 1976 than in small town America, the church moderator suggested I repeat that same sermon.

I no longer have a copy, having long since thrown out all my first-church sermons but one, but I do know I used the same scripture text I chose for today, and I remember I recounted stories of the people I encountered in my first solo drive across our nation.

By now, I have made ten car trips either east or west across our country, four alone and six with my family.  By count, I have worshipped in churches in eighteen states—more in California than I could possibly count; the others stretching from Hawaii to Vermont.  Here are my impressions.

In my travels, in nearly every corner of our nation, whether large city or small town, I see hardworking, honest, law-abiding people.  Certainly we read even in our local papers about gang violence, random killings, persons out to swindle innocent people, but I believe these are in the minority.  Even in these tough economic times, people are working hard to make a living for themselves and their families.  We read of people working two or even three jobs at a time to support themselves. 

I read a lot of church newsletters and some church websites.  I am impressed by the number of outreach programs they offer to the hungry and homeless, our own church certainly included.  As life becomes tougher for people laid-off from jobs, without enough to pay rent or mortgages or buy food, I see people in our country reaching out to help them.

On that first car trip in 1972, long before cell phones, I remember driving through Texas in the rain.  I passed a car alongside the road with the hood and trunk lid up.  A couple was standing there, drenched by the rain, holding some engine part in their hands.  In spite of my father’s warning not to pick up hitchhikers, I pulled over, asked if they needed help, and drove them to a gas station at the next exit.  A day or so later, I did the same for a man walking alongside the interstate carrying an empty gas can.

And in a reverse of pay-it-forward, many kindnesses were rendered to me on that trip.  The hospital chaplain in Philadelphia left a note outside my room where I would be staying inviting another intern chaplain and myself to dinner that first night.  After an auto accident that summer, people in that little rural church offered me the use of their cars.  One woman across from the church said, “You can see my car in the garage from your office.  They keys are in it.  Take it if you need it.”  The school principal gave me his son’s old VW while he was in Europe.  Church members often invited me to dinner that summer.  Driving west for my last year of seminary, a motel manager in Illinois gave me a room he had been holding in a sold-out motel, and another in Utah gave me a discount when he heard I was in seminary.  “Not too many of us Protestants around,” he said in the middle of Salt Lake City.

I could go on with kindnesses people have shown me and my family over the years, sometimes at moments of crisis, but I am sure you could counter back with just as many stories.  That’s the kind of people there are in America.

We are a nation that puts ourselves at peril.  Why were we involved in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and now Iraq and Afghanistan?  To protect our nation from foreign enemies in many cases.  But we are a nation that risks sending armed forces to nations for humanitarian causes, hoping to overtake a dictator or a terrorist, hoping to bring the same kind of democracy and freedom to speak and worship as the people wish as we experience in America.  Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we fail.  I am saddened to read in the Los Angeles Times every Sunday the obituaries that honor the California servicemen and women who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I read of their young ages, their families, their hopes and dreams, now all brought to an end.  None of them were drafted; they signed up willingly for the armed forces.  There are regrettable tragedies of war, both for those who fight and those who are innocent casualties.

I would not go so far as to absolutely declare this a Christian nation, although there may be more Christians among religious groups than any other.  It is surely a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values, and those ideals still influence us.  It is a nation where people are free to worship God in a variety of settings and forms, including Christians, Jews, Unitarians, Muslims, Buddhists, Ba’hai.  And I have known, sat with and worked with many of those people in my time on the board of the South Coast Interfaith Council.

I don’t know if you ever ponder the presence of the United States flag in our sanctuary.  William Willimon writes of attending a large conference of pastors, and the worship leader at one of the services.  “Alan Storey, a young pastor from South Africa, stood up before us, handed out the bulletins, and walked us through the service.  Then, at the end of the instructions, he said quietly, ‘One more thing as we begin our service.  Could I just say, as a visitor to your country from another place, that I wish you would consider removing the American flag from your sanctuary?  I was shocked when I entered this church today and found your country’s flag so prominently positioned near the altar.  That would not happen in my church.  My church law forbids us to have flags and other secular political paraphernalia in our services.  I wish you would think about this and how this flag clashes with the symbols of our faith. Of course, I am from South Africa.  And we’ve learned the hard way, about the difference between the ways of God and the ways of the world.’”  (William Willimon, Pulpit Resource, July-September 2003, p. 7)

Flags in church do cause a rift between some pastors and church folk.  Sometimes the flag is sent out for cleaning, and just doesn’t reappear.  The sanctuary is remodeled, and somehow there is no place for the flag in the new set-up.

Bob Kaylor, senior writer of a clergy publication I receive, addressed the topic in this month’s issue with his own experience when, after the flags were removed for cleaning, he just never returned them to the sanctuary.  He was confronted at the narthex door after worship one Sunday by a woman who pointed a finger at his chest and said, “My son is a Marine, and you should be honoring this country by having the flag up in the front.”

Admitting that he is an Army veteran who served his country and believes himself to be a patriotic American,

Kaylor cites in his article the U.S. Flag Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Section 175.k, which states:

“When displayed from a staff in a church or public auditorium, the flag of the United States of America should hold the position of superior prominence, in advance of the audience, and in the position of honor at the clergyman’s or speaker’s right as he faces the audience ....”

(I remember this from learning the proper display of the American flag during my Boy Scout years as color guard.)

Kaylor goes on to write:  “When I exegete that passage of the code, it seems to me to be saying that in a public meeting place, the flag should have the greatest position of honor to the right of the speaker.  And, in most cases, that’s exactly where it should be as the prominent symbol.

“The way our church is set up, however,” Kaylor points out, “there is another symbol of ‘superior prominence’ immediately to the right of the pulpit that is hard to miss and seems to cry out for the place of honor.  It’s the cross, of course — the center of focus for just about every worship space in all of Christendom.

“While the flag reminds us of the sacrifice of men and women who gave their lives in defense of the United States of America and its freedoms, the cross reminds us of a Savior who gave his life for the whole world.  It reminds us, too, that if we are truly following Christ, then our primary allegiance must be to his Lordship, no matter where we live.  Patriotism has its place, but it is always less prominent than the place of discipleship.  When we come into a place of worship, we’re called to recognize that we are citizens of the kingdom of God, first and foremost, and Americans second,” Kaylor concludes.  (Bob Kaylor, Homiletics, July-August 2009, p. 8)

I am proud to say, looking back 33 years, that as the plans for the celebration of our nation's Bicentennial were planned in that little community of one church in McLean, New York, the local citizens on the planning committee thought our worship service on the morning of Sunday, July 4th should have prominence among the weekend’s activities.  And in that sense, I believe we were true to the same notion that Moses lifted before the people of Israel when he said, “And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?”  (Deuteronomy 4:8)  Freedom of religion, and freedom to worship God are principles that this land was founded on, and that is still good for America.