Allen Jackson - One Nation, Under God - Part 1
We have recently celebrated Independence Day, the Fourth of July, and it gives me an opportunity to talk a little bit about God and country. I don't need much of an opportunity. You know, there are some schools of thought, and unfortunately some of them reside in the church, and many of them reside in academia, that if you talk about faith in our nation, that there's something inappropriate, and they start looking for labels. And one of the most favorite labels they would have fixed to you these days is a Christian nationalist. It has many meetings. I'm not gonna spend my time with that. But I'm unapologetically grateful to God for the nation in which I was born.
I believe it's brought to us liberties and freedoms that are unique in the world. We have a history that I don't think can be understood apart from the blessings of God. Not to say we're perfect. We are far from that. But there is no perfect nation. I've studied enough history. I assure you, they don't tell us the whole story about very many places. You know, there are other segments within the church and beyond, that if you're an advocate for the Jewish people living in the land of Israel, you're a Christian Zionist, and that's hateful.
So I'm collecting labels that are apparently not good, so. If you don't pray regularly for our nation and the leaders that have authority over us, you're ignoring a biblical directive. And that's not just when the party you choose is in power, so I hope that is your habit. But I wanna take this session and the next and talk a bit about one nation, under God. That's our goal. Not to have a theocracy. We don't want politicians dictating what should be said in the church or not said in the church. We've tolerated that too long since Johnson was in the White House. We've allowed the federal government to dictate what's said in the churches.
I happen to still think the first amendment should be in play. But I do believe that the blessings of God are better for any people. And so that would be our target. To understand that, I think I'll start with a portion of the Declaration of Independence. You have it. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," obvious, "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. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor".
Wow. What would happen if those of us in the 21st century made a commitment like that? How is it we have come to the point that we think the government exists to serve us? No organization will flourish as long as the people who benefit from that organization imagine it exists to serve them. The church will not survive that imagination. Neither will our nation. It was John Kennedy, whether you like his politics or not, that said, "Let's not ask what our nation can do for us, but what we can do for our nation".
We have come a long way from that seemingly antiquated statement, but it would help us to move back towards it again. Our founding fathers, if you were never taught, were willing to take a stand. Only about 25% of the colonists were in favor of the American revolution. Maybe a third. Another third were standing firmly with Britain. And then there was that fuzzy third in the middle. So those that took the stand knew if it didn't go their way, they would lose everything, many of them, their lives. They were willing to be on record publicly for what they felt was important. And almost 250 years later, I respect their courage and their willingness to risk everything to gain liberty. They were not perfect.
And if you've been around academia at all in the recent decades, you know it's been fashionable for quite some time now to search for the flaws of the founders of our nation, to highlight their weaknesses, and to suggest that they were men with no faith, only tremendous greed. Well, I would remind you, in passing, at least, that all humans are flawed. I don't say that to excuse their behavior. But they do have to be understood against the context in which they lived, you and me included. However, history has spoken clearly on the efforts of those who signed our Declaration of Independence. This nation, dedicated to the proposition that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, has endured now for almost 250 years.
America is the oldest constitutional republic on earth. And we have recently celebrated another birthday. Americans will hoist their flags and march in parades and set off fireworks. I hope we get to do it again next year. It's thrilling to me every time I hear the cannons blast. That rousing finale to the 1812 Overture. If you don't get a lump in your throat when you sing, "America, God shed his grace on thee," I don't think you're paying attention. I'm very appreciative of the men and women who have stepped forward through the decades and made great sacrifices so that our freedom and liberty might be extended. It has not come cheaply or for free.
We live in an age where we're told that faith is a private matter. It's not uncommon at all these days there's someone who lives in the public square say, "I have a personal faith, but I don't want it to influence my public responsibilities". Then get out of the public square. In my opinion. Or perhaps we hear a statement like, "Well, personally, I'm appalled, but I feel I must be supportive publicly". There are many ways that we have been coached to separate our beliefs from our behaviors. I don't believe it's a wise pathway. In fact, to be blunt, I believe it's cowardice. The New Testament refers to our relationship with God in terms of a marriage commitment. Not my imagination.
That's one of the images the New Testament presents to us. Imagine, if you will, just turn on your imagination for a moment, if I told Kathy that privately, I was devoted to our marriage. Do not get ahead of me. That whenever we were alone, I would honor those vows. However, publicly, I didn't think it was prudent to be burdened with the limits of a fanatical commitment to a single person. That we should display a more inclusive worldview. I want to model diversity. I'm afraid some persons might be offended by my refusal to value them as highly as I value Kathy. Therefore, when I'm in public, every woman should be received with an equal expression of appreciation.
Y'all should pray for me, 'cause just saying that in public puts my future in jeopardy. Obviously, the notion is foolish, but no more so than when we abandon our faith and our principles because of fear or threat, and we blame it on the public square. We are standard bearers of this generation. Our choices will determine much of the future for our children and our grandchildren. I believe many of you are men and women of character. You have hearts filled with courage and are committed to such things as honor, duty, and faith in a living God. To borrow Robert Bork's phrase from a few years ago, I will not willingly slouch towards Gomorrah. We've got to have the courage to stand up on the values and principles we believe in, whether they're celebrated or applauded or not.
Hebrews 11, chapter 32. If you don't remember, Hebrews 11 is this Hall of Fame of men and women of faith. And at the conclusion, they run out of time. The author says that. He said, "I've got more stories. We gotta hurry through the museum". He said, "I could go on and on, but I've run out of time. There are so many more, Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah and David and Samuel and the prophets, through acts of faith, they've toppled kingdoms, they've made justice work, they took the promises for themselves". That's an assertive response. "They took the promises for themselves".
We celebrate our freedom. We celebrate those people who spilled their blood to break the bondage of slavery in our nation. We celebrate those who waded the shores on the beaches of France so that we didn't live under tyranny. Are we gonna take the promises of God, or are we gonna take the blessings and act like we didn't know we were capitulating our values for the momentary profit? In Ephesians 3, in verse 20, it's the Message, but I like the translation. It says, "God can do anything, far more than you could ever imagine or guess a request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his spirit deeply and gently within us".
The message I've been offering for some season now is that I believe God would bring change to us. That we could have a more powerful faith, a more transformative faith, a more personal faith, a more Spirit-directed faith. We know how to play church. We know when to sit and stand. We know the vocabularies words to use and the beverages that are appropriated in public, but are we willing to be a people transformed by the power of God? I have no interest in playing church. None. But I have a tremendous enthusiasm to be in the midst of a group of people who are yielded daily to the authority of Jesus of Nazareth.
You know, heroes in general are just no longer fashionable. In fact, words like "honor" seem a bit out of style. That's tragic. Truth, we are told consistently, is subjective. That, "No one should be able to define my truth". That is a very childish notion. Fair play seems naive and old-fashioned. Personal integrity is no longer as important as personal expression or satisfaction. Holiness, sanctification, or purity. Those are terms reserved for the radical fundamentalist type of Christians. Count me in. I read something recently I wanted to share with you. It's a little snippet of our past, but maybe if we know more about our past, we will be more appreciative of the present we hold and have greater imaginations of the future.
See, there is no American dream. There's American character that brings the blessings of God to our future. That is the dream. And if we trade our character for a bowl of porridge, there is no dream. I agree. It's a remarkable story. It's titled "Uncommon Valor and Common Virtue". The chances are that the names Jack Bradley, Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon, and Mike Strength don't ring a bell. But I bet you've all seen them. They're the five Marines and the Navy Corpsman who, on February the 23, 1945, were photographed raising the American flag on Iwo Jima. The photograph many argue is the most famous in the 20th century. It inspired a nation and served as the model for the largest bronze sculpture in the world.
It's the Marine Corps Memorial, or, as I'm told, it's known in Washington: the Iwo Jima. The sextet's names don't appear on the memorial. Instead, visitors read, I quote, "Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue," end quote, on Iwo Jima. Truer words have seldom been spoken. There's a book. You can read more of the story. It's called "Flags of our Fathers". It tells the story of the men, actually, they were boys who raised that flag. It was written by John Bradley's son, James, with Ron Powers. Growing up in Appleton, Wisconsin, as his father did, Bradley knew that his dad was one of the men in the photo, but he knew little more. His father, like many of those who fought in World War II, didn't say much about their experiences.
He told his family that the real story of Iwo Jima was the men who didn't come back. But Bradley was more than normally reticent. How reticent? Well, it was at his funeral in January of '94 that his wife and children first learned that he'd been awarded the Navy Cross for what happened after the flag raising at Iwo Jima. Corpsman Bradley rescued a wounded marine who was pinned down by machine gun fire. He first dodged what could literally be called a murderous fusillade, then he shielded the wounded man with his own body and pulled him to safety through another brutal attack. And for those actions, he was awarded the nation's second-highest decoration for valor that he never told his family.
The contrast between the man he knew growing up and the war hero led Bradley to find out everything he could, not only about the six men who raised the flag, but also about the men who took Iwo Jima. Bradley was intrigued by the idea that uncommon valor was a common virtue among a group of American boys. Boys, not by their accomplishments or their courage, but boys by account of their years. Why these young men? What produced that valor? Well, after speaking to survivors and examining the archives, he came to the conclusion that he'd been looking at the question the wrong way. He had focused on the uncommon valor. But he said he realized that the answer to his question lay on the common virtue side of the equation. These men weren't intrinsically braver than the previous or subsequent generations.
What produced their actions was their common decency. As the book puts it, "Football, religious faith, and strong mothers ran through all six of their lives". Nearly all of them had helped raise their younger siblings with the attendant sense of responsibility that produces. In other words, they were already, at the age of 18, men of character with the devotion to duty and loyalty to their friends. It's as simple to that. That leaves an obvious, albeit somewhat uncomfortable question: can today's America produce the kind of uncommon valor on display at Iwo Jima? Reality is you don't know until it's called for. But it's a question worth considering. It's a question worth asking ourselves.
Are we doing our part to help see that that kind of a generation is emerging? I can tell you from recent experience. I sat at a table with some dear friends in Israel. They're going through a national trial right now that really hasn't been equaled since the Holocaust. And they looked at me with tears in their eyes and great enthusiasm, and they said to me, "Israel's found a new generation of heroes". Something I never thought I would heard. Those my age are the children of the Holocaust survivors. They're the ones that took the nation of Israel from a third-world start-up to an international influence, technically, militarily, agriculturally, in every way. And they looked at us, and they said, "They're better than we were".
It's a remarkable statement. I pray that generation is present in America as well. I want to take the balance of our time and talk a little about this notion of heroes. I've had a lot of time on airplanes lately. You can't get away. And if you can't sleep, they got these screens in front of you, and I spend more time trying to find something to watch than watching. But my observation is that a disproportionate majority of the movies are about heroes. And most of those seem to be about various expressions of Marvel characters. So I think we should start by our imagination of what a hero is, so I labeled them from your notes with a made-up word. 'Cause I was making up the notes.
Now, I wanna talk about heroisms. Those things we attribute to individuals that we wanna call heroes. And these are the ones that are shaped for us and handed to us. The first is that heroes have unique abilities that separate them from the rest of us. You know this to be true. They can fly. They have superhuman strength. They have X-ray vision. They heal more quickly than we do. Something. They're not like us. Well, they may have some of our baser character traits, but they have some set of gifts or skills or abilities that makes them heroic. Not like us.
And the second heroism is heroes are never weighed down by the mundane problems of life. I'm pretty certain Wonder Woman never had to clean the oven or scrub a toilet or change a diaper or go grocery shopping. I'm almost positive Batman never had the tires rotated on the Batmobile. Because heroes, they're not weighed down by those common things that crowd our lives out. 'Cause they don't make me feel very heroic. They make me feel frustrated or tired or occupied with busywork. And third, heroes always have a clear sense of good and evil. You can tell the Joker is the bad guy even if you don't know the plot. Huh? When someone tries to put Gotham City in the deep freeze, even the most morally asleep amongst us know you have a mandate.
If you're in a fistfight with John Wayne, we pretty much assume you're gonna get what you deserve. Heroes just have a better sense of good and evil than us normal people do. Fourth, heroes always wanna do the right thing. They just do. Superman. Can you imagine Superman refusing to break away from TV 'cause the game's almost over? No, they wanna run to trouble. They wanna do the right thing. That's how they get their jollies. And finally, heroes have heroic lives. Their children are little super kids. They get their own comic books. Their bodies are perfect. Their marriages are outstanding. Their homes are incredible. They're heroes! Everything about 'em is heroic. They vacation in heroic places. They don't have to deal with the mundane.
Well, just for the record, no matter how many of those movies you may have watched, I believe the heroisms are false. They're just simply not an accurate picture. Real heroes, true heroes, they had pimples, cellulite, mortgages, rebellious kids. They fight with their husbands and their wives. They have halitosis. They got a long list. They would be a whole lot like us. In fact, you oughta look at the person beside you, say, "You look a lot like a hero".
Now look the other way and say, "You've got halitosis". In fact, when I think of that list of heroisms and how it's drummed into us, you know, modern film cinema tends to include more of the baser aspects of our character. They become more like gods from Roman and Greek mythology. They have abilities we don't have, but they have our basest character flaws. But it lends us to believe that we lack their stellar abilities; therefore, we should just feed our more base instincts. Well, the best answer I know to that is a jingle I learned as a kid.
Now, I don't sing, but you'll know the tune, and I bet most of you will know the jingle. My bologna has a first name. It's O-S-C-A-R. And my bologna has a second name. It's M-A-Y-E-R. And the third line's the tricky one. Oh, I love to eat it every day, and if you ask me why, I'll say, "Because Oscar Mayer has a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A". And for those of you that are newer to the ministry, bologna is a Greek word that means "I disagree".
Someone had a T-shirt made and sent that to me. But if you wear it, you spend all day long explaining, so it's. There is hope for the antihero. That would be the category where we live. You see, it's not that we're heroic. It's the one we worship who is. It's the Spirit of the living God in us that's the difference maker that helps us overcome, to be forgiven, and to forgive. To defeat the cycles of addiction. To overcome the places where evil touches our lives. To be a voice that can pray for our enemies. To pray for those who despitefully use us. Who say all manner of evil against us. Folks, that's not because we're heroic. That's because we've chosen to yield our lives to a Jewish Rabbi by the name of Jesus. He came from Nazareth. And he's given us a different path to walk, with an outcome that is vastly different at the end of our journey. Let's pray:
Father, we choose you over every difficulty, over every obstacle, over every challenge. Give us the strength to finish the course. In Jesus's name, amen.