“Rejoice Not in Power, but that We Are God’s People” - Sermon July 3, 2016

“Rejoice Not in Power, but that We Are God’s People”
Sermon, Year C, Proper 9, July 3, 2016
© Rev. David J. Huber 2016
Plymouth UCC, Eau Claire, WI
Focus Scripture: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Listen to the sermon:




What Jesus said right at the end of this passage is extremely important. He says, “You have been given all this authority and this power and can do great things,” he’s saying to the people he sent out and who have come back, he says, “Don’t rejoice at that. Don’t rejoice at that. Rejoice that you are people of God. Rejoice that your name is written in heaven. THAT is worth rejoicing! Not your power or skills, but that your name is in heaven.” I think that is good for us to remember. We who often like to rejoice in power, whether it be economic, political, military, whatever the power might be. To think, “Ah, I am powerful, and I rejoice in that and celebrate.” But, celebrate instead that we are God’s people. That we are God’s sons and daughters.

This weekend is July 4 weekend. Our celebration of independence of this country. Certainly a very important day in the life of this nation, and in some ways in the course of history as well. Not that we were the first country with a constitution or certain freedoms, but there in the beginning many good things that are worth celebrating.

But Independance day is not a church holy day. It is not on the liturgical calendar. People in churches in other countries are not celebrating American independence day. They may celebrate their own country’s independence, but we don’t celebrate this holiday in the church because it is not a Holy Day. But there is some truth that what happens outside the walls of this sanctuary is also worthy, and should be included, in what happens in this sanctuary. As people we bring all that we are. All of our successes, our failures, our foibles and skills, our hopes and dreams, our regrets, and also our culture is brought into here with us, as citizens of this country and of the world, as people of Eau Claire and the Chippewa Valley. We bring who we are as people into this space. And so it is okay to bring things into this sanctuary, into our worship, just as what we do in this space and time together goes out past these doors into the world. They are not separate places, that when we are in here we are Christian and when we are out there we are something else. It’s all of a piece. It all comes together. We bring who we are into here, and we put that into a context as a Jesus follower, and take it back out into the world as we are about the business that Jesus has called us to do. To be healers and repairers by being people out in the world. To bring to people what we talk about in the church, like new life, forgiveness, second chances, freedom in Christ, the power of confession and forgiveness, the importance of reconciliation and being in right relationship with other people, and the primacy of love. The importance of love as our prime motivator.

And so on this Independence Day weekend I think it is okay to celebrate our country, who we are, who we have been. But we are a church, this is a holy gathering, so we must also be careful that celebration does not become triumphalism. That it doesn’t become a “we are better than” kind of celebration. Celebrate who we are and what we have, but not in a way that compares us to others and make us seem better. So don’t do it at the expense of other nations or other people, many of whom around the world are our baptized brothers and sisters. So let us not be eager to proclaim that we are number one, or the best, or the greatest. That’s not a celebration, not for people who follow Jesus. I don’t think that’s what he would have us do. But we can celebrate what is good and give thanks for what we have. That we can worship how we want. That we can petition our government, like I did a couple weeks ago: go to DC and talk to our senators and representatives about what is important to us. Celebrate the good, confess the bad, ask God to help us hold closer to our ideas and make us more faithful as followers of Jesus.

That’s one reason I don’t like to use specifically patriotic songs in worship. We have some music that celebrates us, the beauty of our land, and talks about freedom, but not specifically patriotic in a political or military sense that make us seem better than others. As people of God who gather around this common table of bread and wine, I don’t think triumphalism is a good way to go. We ought remember that our vocation is inviting others to this table. So to say that our is better than others is to miss the point of the universal nature of Jesus’ mission and God’s love. We invite others to this table without regard to national boundaries, or political differences, or cultural divisions. To remember that we are bound around this table worldwide, and our citizenship is first as people of God We are citizens of God’s realm, first, and then everything else secondary.

As I have thought of our Independence Day this last week, my thoughts have gone more to the song America the Beautiful and less on the scripture text. The words have been going through my mind a lot this week. I didn’t expect that it would end up in the sermon, but it must. It became a part of what I have been thinking of. Perhaps partly because of my recent experience lobbying in DC and walking around the capitol mall and seeing the Lincoln and MLK Memorials, the museums, the Washington monument, the WWII, Korea, and Vietnam war memorials…

What I like about the song is that it is a celebration of America, but not a celebration of us being better or unique in some way, but a celebration of the land itself. Which means that it is a celebration not of what we do, but what God has done. It’s a celebration of what God has created that we get to live on. The beauty of the land. The one that we will sing, also includes confession and lament asking God to help us be more faithful, and more true to our ideals of justice, to be more united, to work more for people’s freedoms and liberty.

“How beautiful our spacious skies, our amber waves of grain, our purple mountains above the fruitful plains.” I’ve been singing those words since I was a child. Probably one of the first songs that we sang in elementary school. Some of the words I did not fully understand until I took my first trip out west in 1998 when my mom and I went out. Before then, the farthest west I’d ever travelled was the twin cities, except for the two years that I lived in Hawaii. That’s pretty far west! But the places between the twin cities and Hawaii I only ever saw from the air.

Mom and I took this trip out west driving to Wyoming and back, and through it I understood where these words come from. I saw mountains for the first time, real big mountains: the Rockies. Which can be purplish. The spacious skies, I understood them there in Wyoming in big sky country. It really is big! To drive by the endless fruitful plains and waves of grain, though in our case it was mostly waves of corn in our trip through Minnesota and Iowa. We saw lots and lots of corn! Which gave me an idea, too, of the size of this country. To drive for almost two days and still be driving by corn. On and on and on. To go a couple of days and still not at the rocky mountains yet, either. This is a big, big country, and a really big continent.

I’ve not been to every state in our country, but I’ve been to a lot of them and some of the Canadian provinces and territories as well. From Maine to Hawaii, and Alaska to Florida. I’ve been on farms and in cities, out in the woods and in deserts, I’ve been in caves in West Virginia and seen glaciers in Alaska. This is a really beautiful country. I think all of it is beautiful. Some people like to poo poo South Dakota and Nebraska, but I find them beautiful in their own way. This is a beautiful and a resource rich land that we live on and in. But so, also, are Canada, Russia, Europe, China, and other places around the world. We are not unique in that way. But we can still be thankful to live in such a beautiful place and thankful that generations before us had the wisdom to put aside a lot of our beautiful spaces to protect them as national parks or refuges. This year, in fact, marks the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service! Other countries have followed our lead, including countries like Kenya and Nairobi that have been creating spaces to protect the largest of the world’s land mammals.

There are also words in this song calling us also to be discontent until we are all one. Not to say that we are all free until we are truly all free. Until all are free, and all of us are one, a sisterhood and brotherhood from sea to shining sea. And to have the courage to repent until we are a land of true liberty. A land of people living free without violence, and extend that beyond our borders to all the Americas, the two continents that have “America” in their name. For all to live in harmony.

I think that is who Jesus would have us be. To rejoice in what we have and celebrate what we have, but not to do it in a way that celebrates the political, economic, or military power, but celebrates this beautiful land we live on, and to rejoice also that we are God’s people first and foremost, and see it as a call to be even better as God’s people becoming more and more faithful, becoming one in Jesus’ name.

Amen.