"America, Of Thee I ... "

A sermon by Bill Neely
Summer Minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church, Rockford IL

Sermon

"America, Of Thee I ... "

Bill Neely

Driving around the town of Canonsburgh, Pennsylvania on Fourth of July weekend is, I suspect, similar to driving around many small towns on Fourth of July weekend. Flags hang from every street light and directional sign and posters celebrating America's birthday plaster the fronts of the many mom and pop businesses that line the town's main street. The town is buzzing with anticipation over the upcoming parade, a truly magnificent event that people from all over the region travel to see. The parade is so popular that people line the route with lawn furniture and kitchen chairs and sofas, yes sofas, days before the parade actually begins. People want to make sure that have prime real estate to witness the event so they reserve their space with their furniture days in advance. Some even lock their chairs to light poles, not out of concern that they might be stolen-the concern is that the furniture might be simply moved, thus relegating the parade viewer to a less-than-stellar observation station. Even the statue of hometown boy who made it big, Perry Como, yes that's right, the Perry Como, seems to be, in his dreamy, confident way, excited about the parade to come.

And the parade, is indeed, worth all of the excitement. It's really spectacular, complete with marching bands and twirling cheerleaders, fire trucks and police cars, and aging veterans of every military branch and of many different wars marching together in their solemn and proud uniformity. The guest of honor, this ongoing experiment called America, has never in my eyes looked as beautiful as she does with these people celebrating her. These plumbers and teachers, these nurses and carpenters, these ironworkers and bank tellers, these proud aging patriots and young, hopeful high school sports stars, these babes in the arms of mothers, these babes on the shoulders of fathers, these people of this ongoing experiment called America, these holders of her unrealized promise in their hearts. While America herself seems to be the subject of scorn as often as it is the subject of admiration, in those moments with the people of the parade, she became my lure again, a lure toward the fruits of true democracy, communal accountability, and radical equality.

These fruits have never fully ripened in America's history. They seem to always get plucked from their vines by our anxious and fearful fingers before they reach maturity. But these fruits grow back, and surrounded by the people of the parade, I began to think that maybe, just maybe, someday our collective wisdom and communal heart might unite to let America reach her maturity. To let her grow into the wise, loving mother whose heart breaks when her children suffer. To let her grow into the wise, loving mother who knows that when people starving for meaning and freedom attack each other, it is better to feed both than to arm one. To let her grow into the wise, loving mother who sees in all of her people the spark of the eternal and values their lives accordingly. To let her grow into the wise, loving mother continually shepherding in the tired, the poor, the huddled masses within her land and outside of it. To let her grow into the wise, loving mother who measures the moral temperature of her people by how the most maligned and marginalized members of her flock are treated.

This mother that I dream America may become is, on many days, not enough to temper the despair and disdain that I feel when I consider the reality of my country. Indeed, this wonderful, idyllic parade that I've mentioned here occurred just last July, when the presidential race really began to boil after a ridiculously long period of simmering. It was becoming clear to me and many others that while my choice of who to vote for was very easy to make, the tone and tenor of the election was going to be something that I had to endure, rather than respect. I found myself contemplating who might not make things worse, rather than who would advocate for the policies and programs that I truly believe in. Who is less likely to endorse policies that would add another million or two to the numbers of children living in poverty? Who is more likely to use government to assist those on the margins, those on the cusp of survival, instead of using it to further the riches of the already-affluent, the already-prosperous?

And let me clear about this, I think there are politicians on both sides of the political aisle who are more and less likely to govern in accordance with these values. This is not a passive aggressive promotion of a party, this is plea for good, responsive governance that has at its center the lives and well-beings of more than the top donors to political parties, something that both major parties engage in. I do prefer one political party, but I don’t see the other one as the scourge of Washington. I think the scourge of Washington and many state houses is money, money that hardens the hearts and closes the minds of donkeys and elephants everywhere.

Money is America’s idol. The prosperity gospel explored in Melissa Harris-Lacewell's words shared earlier is, indeed, a theological shift away from liberation theology, and it is a reflection of the secular values rising in prominence in America today. And this makes sense, as all theology is always contextual. History and tradition and scholarship are important to be sure, but those fields are always shaped into a theology created in conjunction with the world views and societal realities of the people doing the work of theology. The prosperity gospel, this system of thought that associates divinity with monetary success, evidence of an eternal love in those with less-stressful lives, increased levels of religiosity in those who are able to remain unburdened by the trials and hardships of this world, is not a theology unique to the black church in America, although that is one of Dr. Harris-Lacewell's areas of expertise. It's influential in various nondenominational and evangelical churches across the land, particularly churches that grow fast and large and are more successful than many in being multi-racial and multi-ethnic. The prosperity gospel is a reaction to a society that asks and often demands that people put financial success and individual contentment above most, if not all, other values in their lives.

Now, I have nothing against financial success or individual contentment. In fact, after three years of seminary and looking ahead to one more, I look forward to the day when there is a touch more financial success in my life. But the prosperity gospel runs the risk of mirroring society’s obsession with material wealth at the expense of familial wealth, communal wealth, spiritual wealth, cultural wealth, vocational wealth, charitable wealth. Because segments of our society, the government and entertainment industries in particular, value material wealth so highly if not always openly, the prosperity gospel seeks to make sense of this by identifying heightened holiness in the pursuit of these secular values. God’s presence is most evidenced in your life when you are productive and prosperous. The prosperity preachers never say the flip side of this, but coherence demands that the opposite be considered. If God’ presence is most evidenced by times of personal productivity and prosperity, then God’s absence is most noticed during times of poverty and difficulty.

It is the exact opposite message of that famous Footprints poem, the one where a man identifies a set of footprints next to his own in the sands of a beach. The man finds out that the other set of footprints are God’s footprints and the man becomes upset when he sees only one set during the difficult times in his life. The man assumes that the one set of footprints means that God abandoned him during his hour of greatest need. But God assures the man that during his times of greatest need, God carried him. That’s not the message of prosperity theology, but it is the message of liberation theology, a system of religious thinking that envisions God supporting and nurturing the disadvantaged and demeaned in society and the pained and marginalized parts of our own lives. God is to be understood as present in our hurt and pain, and present in everyone else's, too. With this understanding, to walk humbly with God means to align one's self and resources with people bound by ties of oppression and poverty. Further, it means that one should seek to identify sources of divine strength in our own times of discomfort and despair. Liberation theology is the message that the parts of ourselves and society that are marginalized and oppressed are the same gardens where we might experience the Divine.

There's a similarity in this and a piece of history that is particularly important to Unitarian Universalists. In the earlier days of our country, there were some religious thinkers uncomfortable with the idea that eternal damnation awaited some of God’s children while eternal paradise awaited some others. These thinkers grew impatient with the many religious leaders who saw in the wealthy, the proper, the educated, the landowners, the white males of good stock, the stuff of good religious character and thus, the stuff of eternal paradise. In response, these thinkers imagined God so loving, so patient, and so powerful, that all people would be eventually reunited with that God. That no one would live in hell for eternity. That at some point, everyone, from royalty to those living in poverty, would live equally in the presence of divinity. These thinkers were the early Universalists, whose legacy we carry on today. They were mocked by many, including the early Unitarians, but they stayed true to their beliefs of a Love greater than most had ever imagined, a Love that ultimately is received by all, regardless of their station in life.

And on this fourth of July weekend, this holiday celebrating the birth of a country dedicated to ideals and pursuits so lofty that we are still trying to figure out how to live up to them, perhaps our prayer can be that America turn further toward liberation for all, instead of backwards toward prosperity for some. That America will turn toward universal concern for all people in whatever states of prosperity or productivity they live in. That American will turn toward an understanding of prosperity that moves beyond fiscal power and includes the numerous other nonmaterial values that make life worth living. Values like family and community, culture and liberty, vocation and freedom.

Our prayer can be that the America that we sing of is an America that seeks to liberate her people from poverty, rather than to further enable people with great means. Of thee we sing and pray, America, for the day when our children are the top priority of governance, for the day when no child goes to bed hungry, no child yearns for an education that she can’t afford, for the day when no child goes without medical treatment because he has no insurance. Of thee we sing and pray, America, for the day that peace is the status quo, and states of war and conflict are seen as evidence of human failures, not of divine providence. Of thee we sing and pray, America, for the continued march toward equality for all of your people, for the fortitude and strength to know that oppression anywhere demands action everywhere. Of thee we sing and pray, people of this country, for passion and promise to fill our hearts and minds so that even as we sometimes lament the America that is not yet, we may still work to create the America that yet can be.

For ultimately, it is in our hands. We the people hold the dawning of America’s future in the palm of our hands, giving pieces of it away for others to shape, receiving pieces back upon which to make our mark. We are the ones who, through affirmation and transformation, are creating the America that we honor each year. We are the ones who, in our families, our communities, our schools, our jobs, and our churches, in ways small and large, envision and create the values by which we want to be governed. In efforts mundane and remarkable, we envision and create the type of society we wish to live in. To shape it in accordance with our beliefs will take vigilant engagement in the process of discovery by which America will be defined by future generations. It requires vigilant engagement centered in the same values that we wish for America to embody. Detachment and cynicism may be unavoidable sometimes, I know they are for me, but our overall responsibilities lie in constructive engagement with that which we wish to change.

Because we are accountable. Not to a God of prosperity, not to our own self-interests, not to the communities of our choosing, but to a greater good that we may not even be able to fully imagine. We are accountable to the spirit of what those early Universalists imagined: a source of radical love that showered each soul with acceptance. We are accountable to the future, to helping shift and change our world in ways that reflect our values. For shifting and changing is inevitable, and people with whom we disagree will continue working tirelessly and effectively to shape America in accordance with beliefs that we do not hold. Our only choices are if and how we make our voices heard.

I'll close with this story by the famous and tireless civil rights worker Fannie Lou Hamer. In 1971, she wrote,

I would like to tell you (in closing) a story of an old man. This old man was
very wise, and he could answer questions that was almost impossible for
people to answer. So some people went to him one day, two young people,
and said" We're going to trick this guy today. We're going to catch a bird and
we're going to carry it to this old man. And we're going to ask him, 'This that
we hold in our hands today, is it alive or is it dead?' If he says, 'Dead,' we're
gonna turn it loose and let it fly. But if he says "Alive," we're going to crush
it." So they walked up to this old man, and they said, "This that we hold in
our hands today, is it alive or is it dead?" He looked at the young people and
smiled. And he said, "It's in your hands."

Blessed be, and Amen.