Notes for Sunday July 20, 2008

Read: Matthew 22: 15-22 Biblical Mythbusters: God Bless the USA?

It needs to be said. “God bless the USA,” is not a Biblical text. Most all of us have grown up in the luxury of freedom. We have wonderful access to education, arts, and employment opportunities. We can worship what we want, when we want, and with whom we want. That is a constitutional freedom. What an amazing country we live in today.

The rub comes when we begin at take for granted these wonderful freedom opportunities and assume that God has blessed the USA in such a way that we are different, unique, among all of God’s children. We forget that these freedoms were earned, not given. Freedom is painfully extravagant, even while our society blithely demands regression in the midst of recession without concern for the sacrifice needed to maintain even our current posture of freedom.

Does God consider the USA as the Promised Land, the chosen people, or the revelation of the kingdom of God on earth. I hardly think so. Let us turn that idea on it’s head and consider how the USA might Bless God, rather than the other way around. So is it wrong to sing along with Lee Greenwood, wrong to feel national pride, or wrong to say the pledge a allegiance, salute the flag, or shed tears at the national anthem? No, these are all fine and good. However, also be clear that the kingdom of God is a Kingdom of all of God’s children from all corners of the world.

From the second verse of the great hymn, “This is my Song,”
“My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean, and sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine; but other lands have sunlight too, and clover, and skies are everywhere as blue as mine, O hear my song, thou God of all the nations, a song of peace for their land and for mine.”


Worship Next Week
Scripture: Matthew 22:15-22 NRSV
Sermon Title: “God Bless the USA?”

Next Week: Biblical Mythbusters: Time is Money