A July 4th Sermon
True Colors
This is the message I delivered to our congregation this past Sunday, July 4, 2021:
It’s Independence Day! It’s the season of fireworks and flags. Our country’s favorite patriotic colors are on full display as banners, bunting, bandanas, and everything else we can get a few red, white and blue stars and stripes on are made into symbols of freedom and democracy — at least that’s the case for some. But those same symbols can remind others of something very different.
In declaring our righteousness, boldness, and bravery, we here in the U.S. like to flex our muscles when we can and remind the world that, “these colors don’t run.” But if we’re honest and the whole record is told, our true colors tell a harder story.
The Indigenous Acoma people who live in what is now New Mexico have occupied the Acoma Pueblo for more than 2,000 years. For perspective, when Jesus was alive, they were here; this was their land.
It was around 900 years ago that the Acoma people moved from the low canyons to the top of a 365-foot mesa about 60 miles west of what is now Albuquerque, and they still live there today. Sky City, as it’s called, is considered one of, if not the, longest continuously inhabited community in the United States. It was established in 1144 — almost 350 years before Christopher Columbus arrived.
Acoma is currently one of 574 federally recognized Native American tribes living within the U.S. I mention them today because my husband, Mason, was born just a few miles from Sky City, on the Laguna Reservation. His Indigenous lineage is that of the Laguna, Acoma, and Zuni people. He is a member of the Acoma Pueblo, and he’s taught me a lot about his people.
Indigenous people were here — on this land — long before we were. They’ve been here for at least 15,000 years, possibly much longer. They hunted and gathered here, lived and played, and survived as a people for many generations. Then, in 1492, European colonization began the decimation and decline of the Indigenous people by introducing new diseases to which they had no immunity, and with wars, ethnic cleansing, and slavery.
It was the descendants of those very colonizers carrying out that genocide who would write the immortal words and propose the noble notion, “that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
In August of 1619, twenty or so Angolans arrived in what was then the British Colony of Virginia. They were the first Africans to be sold into slavery in what would eventually become the United States of America when the thirteen colonies that made up the new nation declared independence from Great Britain in 1776.
Before the U.S. could celebrate its first centennial as an independent nation, 13 out of every 100 people in the young country would be enslaved people of color (13%). By the time the Civil War started in 1861, there would be nearly 4 million slaves in the 33 states and 10 territories that made up the U.S. In some states, there were more slaves than free people.
Chattel slavery was big business, especially in the American south. The market value of the slave trade at the beginning of the Civil War was estimated to be between $3.1 and $3.6 billion.
Some of the people who fared very well in the chattel slave business were the same well-regarded people who penned those immortal words we celebrate today, “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.”
I want to pause for a moment and make it clear that I do not hate our country. But I also do not worship it. Its past is ugly, and it’s far from perfect, but it’s a good model in so many ways of compassion, charity, and democracy.
If your background is like mine, you probably grew up in a very patriotic environment. And I think that’s fine. I think we should certainly be grateful that we have the freedom and ability to do just what we’re doing here this morning.
I used to tell my kids, and I still remind myself often, that almost every good thing I’ve known in my life is because of when I was born, where I was born, and who I was born as. But let us never, ever think that makes us more special or better than anyone else.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are over 82 million people around the world who’ve been forced to flee their homes. Over 26 million of them are considered refugees and around 13 million of those are younger than 18 years old. Then there are the millions of stateless people who’ve been denied a nationality and don’t have access to basic rights.
One in every 95 people alive on the earth today have had to flee their homes because of conflict or persecution.
So yes, absolutely, I’m more than grateful that I get to live in this prosperous and free country that affords me an escape from those horrible circumstances. But I don’t believe for one moment that I deserve this fortune any more than those millions upon millions deserve their incredibly, horribly difficult plight.
I’m not righteous because I’m an American, and they’re not unrighteous or less than me because they’re not American. But Christian nationalism tries to tell us something different. Christian nationalism is the belief that Christians have been called by God to create a Christian nation, a mandate to reclaim the land for Jesus — not just to influence it, but to dominate it. It’s dangerous and it’s wrong. And today, for many in our country, calling yourself a Christian is the same as saying you’re an American.
As pastor and professor, Dennis R. Edwards has written, it’s Christian nationalism that influenced the genocide perpetrated against Native Americans; Christian nationalism justified the enslavement of Africans; it imagines fear of anyone who subscribes to anything other than Christian teachings, it encourages the debasement of women, and we’re seeing more and more lately that it feeds discrimination against dark skin, strong accents, foreign features, and ethnic minorities. And we know all too well how it treats the LGBTQ+ community.
This notion that our country is blessed above all others is not only wrong, it’s anti-gospel. It’s the opposite of what Jesus taught us. The arrogance of national exceptionalism is in direct dispute with the scriptures that tell us to, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than (y)ourselves.” We are told to, “look not only to our own interests but also the interests of others.” (Philippians 2: 4). American exceptionalism and Christian nationalism fly in the face of those words.
We are told over and over again in the scriptures that we are to encourage one another and be kind to one another and bear one another in love. Exceptionalism says that we deserve to receive all those things because we are, well, exceptional.
Exceptionalism says that we are God’s favorite, that we enjoy the things we do in our country because God prefers us to all the others. There is nothing in the scriptures that even hints at the notion that we are exceptional.
A friend of mine, Josh Scott, pastors an exciting, vibrant, forward-thinking church in Nashville. He wrote a piece this week called, “Resisting the Temptation of Empire” where he recalls his upbringing, going to vacation bible school where pledges were made to the American and Christian flags and to the bible. I did the same thing dozens of times as a kid. I remember being part of the processional ceremony that paraded the flags up the middle aisle of the church. Then we’d pledge our allegiance and post them front and center, often between the congregation and the cross on the front of the pulpit. You couldn’t see the cross for the flags.
Whether it was intentional or not, those early moments made it hard for us to separate our allegiance to America from our allegiance to God. As Josh said in his piece, it seemed as though “America became the fourth member of the Trinity, and the one people seemed most eager to appease.” That certainly seems to be the case more and more these days.
Josh and I were talking earlier this week about our worries with the conflation of God and country and how so many seem to relate their patriotism with their spiritual condition. I told him about the time someone I deeply respect told me they didn’t think it was possible to be a good Christian and not be a devoted American. I was too taken aback to ask them how Christians in other countries should feel about that.
Josh mentions in his writing that this amalgamation of spirit and state was unthinkable to the early Christians if for no other reason than it was the state that put Jesus to death. And they didn’t do it because he lived and preached love and compassion and caring for the margins of society, they did it because he declared another kingdom, a better country. The powers that be were threatened by the notion of a competing reign, so they had him silenced by death. Or they thought.
The notion that the state or the government was an arm of faith was not at all what the early believers would have been able to embrace.
Several years ago, I was working in the mayor’s office here in Lexington when Mayor Gray made the decision to move two statues that honor Confederate “heroes” from the center of our downtown. Other cities across the country were doing something similar, but that wasn’t our motivation. We were moved by the stories we’d heard from Black men and women, boys and girls here in Lexington who felt the pain and anguish of their ancestors each time they walked under those pedestals lifting the white men who literally killed their fellow countrymen so they could buy and sell Black human beings the same way they did horses and cattle.
They told us how they felt seeing those men who’d beat their grandfathers, raped their grandmothers, and ripped crying children from their screaming, pleading mother’s arms placed on high pedestals and treated as heroes. They asked if we’d hold any resentment or feel any obligation to our own ancestors if the cruel men who abused and tormented them did such things to our flesh and blood.
It’s hard to imagine that a compassionate heart wouldn’t want to at the very least move a statue to a more appropriate place if it brings some measure of comfort to a whole injured and aggrieved community.
But I can tell you, there were plenty of voices that felt otherwise, voices that didn’t want us to touch those statues, and as the person whose job it was to listen to them, I can tell you that it was more disheartening, discouraging and traumatizing than I can describe. And I wonder if you’d be surprised at how many times we were called un-American and unpatriotic, had manipulated and lost cause history thrown at us, and literally threatened with bible verses, Christian rage, and even death threats in the name of Jesus.
Some of the most violent social media comments were left by people with patriotic symbols in their profile pictures and bible verses in their bios.
We know that some people feel threatened by progress, but what kind of people would we be, what kind of nation would we be if we did nothing with all of the knowledge and information that we’ve gathered over time? What is the point of being a smarter, more informed society if we refuse to adapt to what we now know? Of course, it’s easier and more comfortable to rest in our traditions. It’s a breeze to set the cruise control and kick back and settle into the flow of traffic. But what if all those other cars are headed toward danger?
I imagine the thoughts of the Indigenous elder who has been told by his oppressors that it is God who demands they be removed from the lands they’ve known for generations. Manifest Destiny they called it — and it was used in 19th-century America to justify and even bless the slaughter and removal of entire Indigenous populations. Their land was stolen, their people were pillaged, and their children were taken away, forbidden to speak their native languages or practice ancestral customs.
I wonder about the hopeful Black child, the exhausted Black father or worried Black mother, the old and bent Black man who has held onto the dream of freedom for decades, the weary Black woman who refuses to give in to hopelessness — I imagine what it must have been like for them to hear those magnificent words about unalienable rights for all people coming from the lips of men who could do something about their plight, but knowing deep down that their own black faces don’t get those rights.
I have to wonder if the men who wrote about the American idea of freedom in Philadelphia gave the first thought to their chattel slave property back home.
I don’t have issues with the colors that represent our nation, but I want us to know that they are not entirely pure. I also want us to know that they do not represent who Jesus is, who God is, or who we are as a church.
Friends, our nation is still reckoning with itself, and we must not allow ourselves to forget, and we must not allow those who wish to whitewash away the ugly parts of our past to do so. And we certainly cannot allow ourselves to rewrite or misremember it.
I like the way my friend Josh frames it. He says, “We are capable of acknowledging that we are grateful to live in America, while also acknowledging the truth about our founding and history, and all of our cultural and systemic injustices.”
I agree. I am grateful for the nation we live in. And I am grateful that we are allowed to acknowledge its magnificent goodness and its tragic darkness.
Maybe one day it will be true, “that all people are equal, endowed with the undeniable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
