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Illusions of Righteousness?

Rev. Muriel Burrows.

“Jesus said: Have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known” (Matthew 10:26).

Jesus instructs his disciples not to be afraid to speak boldly the message that they have received, and not to be afraid of the truth. You see, truth is something active. It does something. Truth liberates us. Truth, says Yvonne Delk, (a former contributing editor for Sojourners Magazine), is the grasp that we have on the world around us; it is the understanding of who we are and who others are. If we are to boldly proclaim the good news, we must be armed with the authority of truth. She goes on to say that this requires a clear analysis of our political, economic, and social situations and our personal conditions.

If we do not make clear analyses - if the diagnosis is not deep enough - if we just look at the surface and accept lies for truth because it makes life so much simpler - then the political, economic and social wounds will heal lightly while festering underneath. We will cry “peace, peace” when there is no peace. Truth-telling and truth-facing means that we have an honest appraisal of human sin. None of us likes to face the truth of our sins. But if we have to live truthful lives we have to stop hiding our sins behind fancy terminology and deceptive euphemisms.

William Sloane Coffin,¹ in a message titled “Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword,“ based on our lectionary reading for today said that we must recognize up front that there is a fundamental, unacceptability about unpleasant truth. We all shield ourselves against its wounding accuracy - we do this as individuals - as a people - and as a nation.

Two thousand seven hundred years ago the Old Testament priest, Amaziah said of the prophet Amos, “. . .the land is not able to bear all his words.” Why? Because Amos spoke truth to power. He was not afraid to stand before the highest authorities of the land and tell them when they spoke lies as truth to the nations. Every prophet, says Coffin, has learned and is still learning that “nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace,’ and why Jesus said, ‘Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword’” (Matthew 10:34).

June 14th is “Flag Day” in the United States. Now, I don’t know if this day has much significance for most Americans but it is important because it forms part of the environment, the milieu, that has contributed to this country’s illusions of righteousness.

America survived for 116 years without a pledge of allegiance but in 1892, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist preacher, and a socialist, wrote the original Pledge. The original Pledge went like this - “I pledge allegiance to MY flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. “My flag,” was later changed to “the flag of the United States of America,” and in 1954 two more words were added: the words were “under God.” They were added during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower who famously said that it doesn’t matter what faith you have, as long as you have faith. These are dangerous words for a country to claim for itself because the Bible is one long record of a nation that had a unique covenant with God and that nation’s failings - their illusions of righteousness - which led to the wrath of God.

Rev. Bob Olmstead reminds us that a nation under God stands under the judgment of God. That a nation under God will not go around bullying smaller nations to make the world safe for oil companies. That a nation under God will radically redistribute wealth, because wealth accumulated in the hands of a few is condemned again and again and again throughout the Bible. That a nation under God pays little attention to how many times “God” and “Jesus” get mentioned and talked about, and pays far more attention to how often Jesus’ very practical teachings on human rights in the Sermon on the Mount are put into practice as national policy. That the fact that we are “under God” - along with every other nation in the world - should scare the living daylights out of us more than any other threat we may face - including the threat of terrorism.²

There is something in the American psyche that says that we are not only the most powerful nation in the world but that we are also the most virtuous and it seems to me that this pride will be our curse and it will require the very sharp sword of Christ’s truth to remove it from us.

William Sloane Coffin reminds us of how we have been indoctrinated into our illusions of righteousness in our history.

Herman Melville, he of “Moby Dick” fame - wrote a book called “White-Jacket” in which he says, “Long enough have we Americans been skeptics as regards ourselves, doubting whether or not the political messiah had come - but he has come in us if we would but give utterance to his promptings.” At the turn of last century Senator Albert J. Beveridge said in Washington, “God has marked the American people to lead in the redemption of the world. That is the divine mission of America.” Bobby Kennedy, in announcing his decision to run for the presidency in the middle of the war in Viet Nam said, “At stake is not only the leadership of a party and a country, at stake is our claim to the moral leadership of the world.” And he refused to remove these words from his speech even as his advisors reminded him that it was that kind of rhetoric that got America into Viet Nam. President Reagan, in his second inaugural address in 1984 said, “Peace is our highest aspiration. The record is clear, Americans resort to force only when they must. We have never been aggressors.” Can you hear Native Americans, Africans, Filipinos, Cubans, Nicaraguans, the people of Afghanistan and Iraq all saying, “Huh?”

Alexis de Tocqueville - a French scholar toured America in the early 19th century and one of the insightful things he said of this great country is this: “America is great because America is good. But if America ceases to be good, it will cease to be great.”

Have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known” (Matthew 10:26).

As I said earlier, truth is the grasp that we have on the world around us; it is the understanding of who we are and who others are. If we are to boldly proclaim the good news, we must be armed with the authority of truth - this requires a clear analysis of our political, economic, and social situations and our personal conditions.

As I was struggling with the text this week and thinking about how easy it would be to preach a sugar-coated sermon about how Jesus’ eye is on the sparrow and how he cares for each one of us (which he does) and how he knows all about our cares and fears and joys (which he does) and send you on your way feeling good for the rest of the week. But I would be doing you a disservice - I would be cheating you - because you, like me, have to go out and live in this world - you have to go out there and make some major decisions about your life, the life of your family, your job, your relationships, your community and your country. My calling is to articulate God’s word - not to make you feel comfortable - to remind you that when we claim to be a nation under God we have to accept God’s judgment upon us. And so, as I wrestled with the scripture text for this week I kept hearing out of Washington, D.C. about something called the “Downing Street Memo.”

In these last few days when the specter of “Watergate” resurfaced with the identity of “Deep throat” finally being made known, we have the possibility of another political shame on our doorstep. . . . for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known” Several weeks before The United States went to war against Iraq, Mr. Richard Dearlove, the head of the British intelligence agency, MI6, met with top-ranking members of the administration. In a meeting with his Prime Minister, Tony Blair, Mr. Dearlove reported that, and I quote from his memo, “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD (Weapons of Mass Distruction). But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.” (End quote).

The implications of this memo are horrendous for this country. The memo implies that our leaders took us into war by lying to us. We were told that there were unmanned Iraqi aircraft that could drop bombs over our cities even as US intelligence agencies said that this was inaccurate. There was never any, and still isn’t any evidence to link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. We were told that Iraq was able to launch a strike on the United States in 45 minutes - there was no evidence for this. We were told about the potential of a mushroom cloud over the United States - remember that? Every news station latched onto that phrase like a mantra - mushroom cloud, mushroom cloud, mushroom cloud. The truth is that Hussein was a bad dictator, like so many others in the world, but was no threat to the United States. The truth is that daily surveillance was being done, by the United States over Iraq before the war - Iraq was weakened by economic sanctions - UN inspectors were given carte blanche to search the country - even the presidential palaces.

Fear tactics were used to scare the country into supporting an unnecessary war - month after month - the rhetoric was so strong that so many were led to accept lies for truth - and the result is that more than 1700 American soldiers have died and more are dying almost every day - and thousands have been injured and traumatized - and that is just on our side. More than 100,000 thousand Iraqi men, women and children have been killed and face, daily, the devastation of their country.

This nation, indeed, any nation, is not served well by those who have illusions of righteousness. No nation, particularly this nation, that regards itself as the arbiter of godliness, has the right to make decisions based on self-interest and then defend them in the name of morality. It was St. Augustine who said that we should never fight evil as though it were something that arose totally outside of ourselves. And St. Paul reminds us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Today’s reading from Matthew challenges us to see that specific moments of decision and dedication lie at the center of what it means to be Jesus’ disciple. To be a disciple is to make a deliberate break with the world we know in order to live according to the new world that Jesus is bringing into being. This break with the old world inevitably involves conflict with the powers of the world - therefore the decision to be a disciple is not something that happens naturally or in the normal course of events - it is a moment in which we decide to stand with Jesus and for Jesus regardless of the outcome.

Martin Niemoeller was a Lutheran minister in Berlin when Hitler came to power. Niemoeller protested Nazi interference in church affairs and Nazi persecution of Jews. He started the movement that grew to become the Confessing Church - a church that opposed Hitler and his policies. Hitler would not tolerate anyone speaking against his policies and in 1938 had Niemoeller arrested. Neimoeller was brave but feared what lay ahead for him. As he was being led to the courtroom where he would be tried he heard a voice quietly quoting in Latin, a verse from the Book of Proverbs: “Nomen Domini turris fortissimo.” “The name of the Lord is a strong tower.” The Latin was from the Catholic liturgy which is where the guard probably learned it. But Neimoeller knew them too: “Nomen Domini turris fortissimo.” “The name of the Lord is a strong tower.” It was a call for Niemoeller to have courage even as he entered the lions den.³

These words gave him strength to face what lay ahead. It wasn’t just he who faced danger that day - if anyone else had understood his words, the guard who uttered them would have shared Neimeoller’s fate. We’ll never know the name of that guard who spoke the words of courage to Neimoeller that day - but we do know that Neimoeller was imprisoned at Dachau where he survived seven years in that prison camp and then helped rebuild the church in Germany and helped his people to face their guilt. He is famous for these words:

First they came for the communists
And I did not speak out because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Finally, they came for me
And there was no one left to speak out.

We cannot claim innocence of our participation in what is happening “over there.” Children are innocent and their innocence is beautiful, but adults should not be innocent, says Coffin. In the stream of human life it is not innocence but holiness that is our only option. We are called to be a holy people even as Christ is holy. The world would be a safer and saner place if somehow, we in this country, got over our illusions of righteousness and confessed our national sin. America is great because America is good. But when America ceases to be good, it will cease to be great. Truth is the grasp that we have on the world around us; it is the understanding of who we are and who others are. If we are to boldly proclaim the good news, we must be armed with the authority of truth. We have the authority by our Lord Jesus Christ to not only seek the truth but to speak the truth - boldly and clearly and with authority.

So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known” (Matthew 10:26).

May God give us the gift to discern the difference between the ideals of our nation and the policies of our nation - may God give us the boldness to speak truth to power - may God give us the vision to clearly see our national sin and the courage to make confession - may God make us hungry for the freedom and the joy of being his disciple. Blessed be the name of the Lord, day by day. Amen.

1. William Sloane Coffin, “Message: “Not to Bring Peace but a Sword,” www.csec.org , first broadcast in 1992.

2. Rev. Bob Olmstead, “America in the New World Dis-order: What’s a Superpower to Do?“ First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto, CA.

3. From a sermon by Kark Eckhoff titled, “Do Not Be Afraid,” www.sermoncentral.com

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