What About Homosexuality?

I Corinthians 6: 9-20 / Romans 1

A few weeks ago, a reporter called to tell me that a congregation from Kansas was sending a group to demonstrate in front of our church. He said they would be carrying nasty signs about homosexuals. When he asked me for a statement I said, “They’re nut cases!”

“Can I quote that,” he asked? “Yes”, I said. “I hope you do.”
Then he asked, “So, what exactly is Christ Church’s stance on homosexuality?”

I said, “Well, let’s just say that if a left-wing group comes that same day to protest our church, it will be a perfect!” I got my wish. Two groups from the opposite sides of the spectrum showed up with signs denouncing one another. Then, both of them went away after discovering that the media was busy with a flood.

I had actually felt the need to address the subject for some time. However, it had been difficult for me to find the right words and the right tone. It also never seemed to be the right Sunday to talk about it. Perhaps that is why most Evangelical pastors in America have been avoiding this subject.

The American public has actually been debating homosexuality for most of my life. For a long time, it was easy for most of pastors to escape the discussion. It’s easy to see why: the vast majority of Christians – of every sort, in every culture and in every era of time – have taken it for granted that the Bible prohibits homosexual behavior.

In the first chapter of Romans for example, St. Paul claims that homosexuality is the natural fruit of paganism. Paganism is, in turn, the spirituality of most people who do not follow God’s revealed Word. People become Pagans, he claims, when a culture suppresses the truth about God. The people in those cultures become idolaters, sacramentalizing unholy things. Eventually, they turn sexuality into an idol. They become hedonists -- or worshippers of pleasure. They continually invent novel forms of amusement because they are bored and hungry for the Living God their fathers suppressed. They become disconnected from God’s law that is clearly revealed through nature. Finally, God stops trying to deal with such a culture. He turns away and allows the people to reap the fruit of their waywardness.

That is a quick summery of the first chapter of Romans.

Paul deals with the same subject in 1 Corinthians, chapter six. In that passage, he includes homosexuality within a list of sins from which Christians have been delivered by the power of God. He goes on to say that a Christian’s physical body is not his or her own. A believer’s body is, he says, the “temple of the Holy Spirit.” Therefore, we should not go to places -- such as a brothel -- where immorality is practiced. God has entrusted us with His presence. He is counting on us to not connect His presence with debauchery and unholy actions.

St. Paul is not alone among the Biblical writers in warning us about living immorally. Nor he is the only Bible writer who labels homosexuality as sin. The Old Testament sternly warns us about the consequences of accepting homosexuality as normative. The first place the Old Testament gives this warning is in Genesis nineteen, as it tells the chilling story of Sodom.

Lately, some Protestant theologians have been rewriting the meaning of that story; trying to undo the common conclusions of twenty-five hundred years of biblical scholars. However, lest we miss the point, the Book of Deuteronomy clearly makes homosexual behavior a crime.

This Biblical background is the main reason why Christian leaders have not needed a personal opinion about homosexuality. The Bible, Christian theology in all its varied forms, Christian tradition, and contemporary Christian communities around the world – especially outside Europe and the United States -- have been united in their stance about homosexual practice until very recently. That’s why, if you ever asked a pastor about homosexuality, he probably pointed to the common Christian opinion and then turned his focus toward more “practical” issues – such as an upcoming potluck dinner!

In the last decade however, several trends have been moving American Christianity away from this traditional consensus. As a result, Christian leaders are now divided about homosexuality – or have simply become silent.

This has left local pastors – like me – burdened with the responsibility of forming our own opinion about homosexuality and other moral issues. I have been trying to do that for some time.

I want to share with you the process of thought that has led me to the conclusions I have reached.

Let me begin with a little background.

I don’t have enough time in this message to address all the factors that have led our culture, including many Christians within this culture, to view homosexuality so differently than our ancestors.
I will briefly (and superficially) mention a few of them.

Our View of Scripture

The most important change within the Christian church in our times – and perhaps since the apostolic age -- has been how we view scripture.

Over a hundred years ago, certain methods of interpreting scripture began shaking Protestant’s confidence in the Bible. As a result, the Bible has slowly become only one important influence among many for forming a believer’s views and governing his or her behavior. It makes a great difference, you see, whether one views the Bible as the Word of God or is simply a human work about God.

Most of our great Protestant denominations – especially in Europe and The United States -- now define the Bible as a record of how the ancient Hebrews thought about God, ethics and justice. In this view, one may certainly use these ancient Hebrew stories to shine light on our contemporary issues. However, viewing the Bible as a revelation of God’s law, applicable to all times and all cultures, seems hopelessly antiquated. It even seems like a dangerous misuse of Holy Scripture.

Christians who think of themselves as “conservative” or “orthodox” naturally reject the liberal Protestant view of scripture. Nonetheless, Bible studies are not at the top priority for most self-professed conservative believers either. In fact, many conservative churches have replaced their historical Bible-centeredness with mere cultural conservatism. That approach has removed any sense of moral authority from Evangelical preaching. To the culture around us, our opinions now seem to rest merely upon our conservative tastes and cultural habits; not upon the foundation of eternal Truth.

Unbelievers are asking us, “What makes your personal tastes and cultural values more important than ours?”

This question is getting harder for us to answer.

Our loss of the Bible - by liberals because of their deliberate intellectual shift away from orthodoxy, and by conservatives because of intellectual sloth and a worship of numerical and material success– have gradually gutted the American church of its ability to shepherd its flock. This has resulted in making our views about homosexuality look like a pathological overreaction to people whose personal choices just happen to differ from ours.

Our view of the Bible is therefore crucial. Without it we do not have a solid basis for addressing homosexuality or any other contemporary issue.

The Challenge Of Science
Several scientific discoveries in the twentieth century, particularly in physics and biology, shook the faith of many Christians; much as Galileo’s discoveries in astronomy shook the theologians of late Medieval Europe. Few Conservative or orthodox Christians have seemed interested in these discoveries, or, if so, they have often demonstrated serious naiveté about their implications. However, the steady rhythm of the twentieth century’s advancing knowledge -- from Einstein and Planck in the early part of the century to James Watson and Francis Crick in the later half – introduced ideas into the collective consciousness of educated Western people that became an intellectual tsunami, overpowering the belief system of many believers.

Several generations of Christian leaders staggered from the scientific and technological innovations of last century.

The fact is, my grandfather lived in a world that was (in many ways) more like that of St. Paul than like my grandchildren’s world. But although these changes deeply affected Christian world view, we rarely mention them from our pulpit or in our Sunday school classes. That led many Christians to either embrace liberal forms of the faith or to form the self-help therapeutic Jesus-centers that we still call churches.

As a result, to many Americans, Conservative Christianity appears like a frightened retreat into the past. They believe we are simply trying to escape into a time when our faith was largely unchallenged. If we intend for our children to remain faithful to the Lord in this new century, we must find a way to seriously address the issues of culture.

One thing this church is going to do is make it possible for several of our spiritual leaders to become theologically trained.
Daniel Bell and Colleen Hollis have already been accepted at Reformed Theological Seminary. They will begin their studies this fall. I asked them to go there. I told them that our congregation would stand behind them financially. So, I ask you to help us do this. It is an important part of insuring that our church’s future will remain spiritually healthy.

Marty Rader will be also be studying this fall. She will be attending Liberty University for the specific purpose of providing resources and encouragement for those who struggle with homosexual issues. She has a table set up today. She will be glad to talk with anyone who wants to speak with her about her ministry. I hope some of you will feel led to support her as well.

There will soon be a flood of people from our church preparing us to do more than just getting angry at our emerging culture. With the help of informed leaders, we will actually offer our culture a real “change that we can believe in.”

Societal Shifts
The definition of “church” and “pastoral ministry,” has seriously changed, even in my lifetime.

We pastors have made, in effect, an unspoken contract with contemporary America: we get to keep our jobs if we define our work in mostly ceremonial and therapeutic ways. In other words, we can keep our religious traditions alive, comfort those who are frightened by contemporary life, robe up for weddings, and say sweet things at funerals. This will provide our culture with an important stress-relief valve.

To do this work, we are free to create church businesses that comfort and encourage people. We are not expected within the parameters of this unspoken contract with contemporary America to voice our suspicions about its values or to encourage our people to live contrary to what it defines as normal.

This new view of pastoral ministry has seriously weakened our ability (and even our desire) to address significant issues such as homosexuality. Those pastors who do address political and cultural trends usually are usually repeating the words of some secular thinker from the right or the left. It has become rare to hear a pastor address any contemporary topic from a scriptural perspective or from the standpoint of historical Christianity. It has become even rarer to find an audience – even a Christian audience -- who wants to hear him. Therefore most of us just preach encouraging words about how God will bless our careers and comfort us in sorrow.

It may seem as if I am far from the point: that I am saying nothing about homosexuality. However, I have raised these issues about the cultural changes we are facing and about the church’s responsibility to teach the Word of God for a reason. I want you to realize that Christians have no right to address homosexuality unless we really believe that the Bible is God’s Word. We must decide if it really teaches us how to be saved and how to live our lives.

Mere cultural conservatism will only anger (or amuse) that man or woman who believes that his or her homosexuality is biologically determined. Why should anyone turn away from intimacy, love and sensual pleasure simply because our grandparents were not comfortable with same-sex relationships? If, as some studies suggest, there is a genetic, neurological or bio-chemical basis for same sex attraction, then a culturally conservative stance against homosexuality comes across as nothing more than one person’s opinion versus that of another. It even seems cruel. We need something more than personal opinion.

Our credibility not only requires a rootedness in scripture though: It requires compassion.

Most people don’t just decide one day to be homosexual. Although homosexual practice is indeed a choice, it is not a simple choice or one that anyone quickly makes. It is a fruit of many factors, not all of which are personal or conscious.

For example, the steady dissolution of traditional family has been a huge factor in the increased viability of homosexual behavior in our culture. The battering of the family, sometimes by deliberate and intentional forces (but more often by forces that meant the family no harm) has seriously altered our view of human relationships.

It was economic factors that uprooted the majority of American families from their ancestral home places. In the decades following the Second World War, millions of Americans left behind their uncles, cousins and grandparents. Economic opportunity became a higher value than intergenerational community. We moved across the continent in search of our personal star.

We moved again.
And again.

And yet again.

The family – now ripped from its traditional context – degenerated further. It became increasingly easy for parents to leave their spouse and their children in pursuit of their own personal fulfillment. It no longer felt reasonable that men and women should view their offspring as their most important responsibility or their central focus of life. American parents replaced their children with themselves; often giving little thought about the affects of their choices upon generations to come. We gave our children nice toys. We thought they would be okay.

Unfortunately, children who raise themselves tend not to turn out well.

This witches’ brew of family dysfunction, acute and purposeful alienation from the past; a descent into ignorance of geography, history, literature and of civilization itself; the adoption of a me-centered method of judging what is and what is not reasonable behavior; and, the equation of financial wealth with personal value; has profoundly destabilized American culture, including, American Christianity. As a result, we have become ill prepared to answer any challenge to our faith, especially the one forced upon us by homosexuality.

In many cases, a young person becomes homosexual in order to find intimacy and comfort in the midst of this continual moral and economic stress we have come to tolerate and even accept as “the real world.”

Our response to homosexuality then cannot be about personal disgust or rage. We must approach this sin as we do other sins –as indeed St. Paul approaches it – as one more manifestation of that sinful nature from which Christ came to deliver us.

While repentance and becoming accountable to a godly community may not “cure” a person’s sexual orientation, it will make the struggle for sexual purity bearable (and even joyful) as the sanctifying presence of the Holy Spirit transforms us into His likeness.

Homosexual Culture
By now, you should clearly understand that I sincerely believe that the Bible teaches against homosexual behavior.

I am even more certain however that the Bible teaches against the dangers of homosexual culture. It is homosexuality as a culture –as a philosophy – that has seduced American culture in general (and is in the process of seducing American Christianity) away from the gospel of Christ. Those churches and denominations that embrace homosexuality will soon discover that they have ceased being Christian altogether. In their attempt to be spiritual entities without regard for the authority of scripture, what they have actually embraced is that very form of paganism – the worship of sensual experience as the ultimate source of meaning and purpose – that St. Paul warns us against in Romans, chapter one.

As St. Paul insists, and as the rest of the Bible affirms, a certain type of culture tends to develops around homosexuality. History has left us a record about what the culture looks like: in Ancient Greece, in late imperial Rome and, of course, in the Biblical city of Sodom.

Stereotypically, we think of homosexual culture as celebrating aesthetic excellence and sensual pleasure. That is the perception we are continually fed by media. However, any civilized man or woman celebrates aesthetic life.

It is better to eat a finely prepared meal in a beautiful setting than to eat spam out of a can.

And, art is indeed important to human life -- as important as science and math. We are, after all, much more than economically productive units. We are creatures made in the image and likeness of God. Because God is True, Good and Beautiful; those who love God ought to value knowledge, goodness and beauty.

Some people value barbarism over culture because they view civilized culture as effeminate. I reject that attitude about culture as simply a form of social anarchy and cultural sloth. I’m uninterested in any form of Christianity or political life that sneers at civilized behavior.
So I do not fault homosexual culture for valuing aesthetics.

However, there is a difference between valuing beauty and in worshipping beauty.

Worshipping beauty is idolatry. It places the reflection of God in the place of God.

This is a serious point and it is the one St. Paul makes in Romans. This is what separates homosexual culture from Christian faith. Indeed, it constitutes a more fundamental challenge to the faith than all the various sexual acts we usually think of as defining a person as “homosexual.” A person who commits a homosexual act can repent – indeed, the Lord invites them to repent. However, a person who embraces homosexual culture gradually hardens his heart against the teachings of scripture. This is what St. Paul warns us about in Romans, chapter one.

The Episcopal Church USA has already fallen into this very apostasy. The Presbyterian Church USA is wobbling toward it. The Evangelical Lutherans have nearly fallen into it as well.

These churches are still filled with millions of believers. But the denominations are no longer legitimate expressions of orthodox Christianity. They have been seduced away from the gospel by homosexual culture – hedonistic paganism – refined narcissism – whatever one wants to call this perversion of Christian belief that they have embraced. Whatever you call it, the apostasy is deeply at odds with “the faith once and for all delivered to the saints.”

We cannot follow these churches. We cannot redefine Holy Matrimony to include homosexual unions. We must repent. We must abandon those ideas and behaviors that the Bible says leads to death. Either that or we must admit that we are no longer Christian.

The first commandment tells us that we must not place any object in the place of God. It forbids us to worship nature or the objects of nature – including our sexuality. We cannot worship human artifacts or human experience and remain Christians. This is the summery of St. Paul’s teaching about homosexuality in Romans and 1 Corinthians. Nothing in contemporary life leads me to think he was wrong.

Jesus said that we cannot worship two masters. We cannot worship both God and money. We cannot worship both God and sexuality. We cannot worship both God and country. We cannot worship both God and art. We cannot worship both God and career. To worship God means making Him first. When we do that, all other things in our lives – even the things we deeply love and cherish – must take a second, third, and fourth place in our lives.

So what are those who feel attracted to people of the same sex to do? That is the real question, and I hope to answer it as tenderly as I can. The important thing is that we not wrap our thoughts about homosexuality in the spirit or rhetoric of our current culture war. Our position on homosexuality is not related to us being “on the left,” or “on the right;” it’s about us being “holy.” “Holy” is a Bible word; it means “other,” or “set apart.” Like God’s commandment in Eden not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He commands us to govern our sexual lives. That does not make sense to our contemporary culture but to those who are called to be saints, it is the way of life.

Are Homosexuals Really Born That Way?

I do not think it is productive to keep arguing about whether or not people are born with a predisposition to homosexuality. I predict that twenty years from now, we will still be arguing about whether it is “nature” or “nurture” that determines a person’s sexual orientation. This is an hot argument right now between the different sides of our culture war. However, from a Christian point of view, “orientation” is not that important. In fact, from a biblical perspective, one’s natural inclination toward any behavior is not very important. The important thing in biblical spirituality is whether we intend to govern and manage our natural inclinations by the light of God’s Word instead of by animal instinct.

This not only affects a person with a homosexual orientation. I am a heterosexual but have been painfully aware throughout my life that my natural inclination is not always toward monogamy. I wish that were not true. Unfortunately though, a large part of my spiritual struggle has been about learning to contain my natural inclinations within the boundaries of holy matrimony.

This perspective – that instinct and orientation does not have the final word in human behavior -- sends chills up the spines of secular thinkers. It is however, a Biblical one and is therefore the way believers learn to think and behave.

In his book, The Beginning of Wisdom, Leon Kass claims that a core theme of the stories in Genesis is how men learn how to govern their sexual lives. He says that the Book of Genesis is mostly about how to form a special kind of family; one that delights in learning and living the ways of God. To create this sort of family, men had to learn how to be faithful to a wife and a family. That was the way to become a real father. Women had to learn how to become matriarchs. Learning to manage the power of Eros, he says, is one of the main components for forming covenant families. Indeed, covenantal life was not possible without sexual restraint.

For all these reasons, I am willing to conclude that a person’s private temptation – or “orientation,” to use the contemporary word – is quite beside the point. We each have a sinful “orientation” that affects some part of our lives. “All have sinned and come short of God’s glory.” It’s what we do with our orientation that matters to God.

In Conclusion

Finally, my friends, as much as we might like to, pastors cannot ignore homosexuality. We can’t just “love people” and “live and let live” as people often urge us to do. Covenantal life is a moral obligation; not a mere “personal” choice. To reject this principle is to reject Christ and all His teaching. For it was Christ who said, “If any man would be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” That covers a lot more than sexual sin!

Those who struggle with same-sex attraction and who keep coming to our church, do so because they want to follow the Lord. They realize that some churches have changed their teaching about homosexual practices and have chosen not to attend such churches. Therefore, I must conclude, they want to worship and have community with a people who are trying their best to teach and practice the “faith once and for all delivered to the saints.”

This brings this message full circle. That Sunday, when those two groups came to our church to protest, it offered us a great picture of the challenges we face. We are beset on both sides by two equally grievous errors – just as the Lord was beset by the ancient Sadducees and Pharisees. On one hand we are offered a loss of truth; a rewriting of the law of God. On the other we are offered a loss of charity and grace; a plunge into hatred and rage covered with god-words. We must stay the course and not move toward either of these false paths because Christ is absent in both.

“For God sent not His son into the world to condemn the world but that through Him all might be saved.”

In the same passages where Paul warns against the dangers of homosexuality, he reminds us that “such were some of you. But now you are cleansed. Now you are children of God.” “Now,” he says, “act like it!”

By God’s grace, we want to help one another do just that; whatever private struggle we may have.

In the end, the homosexual struggle is not really different from any other type of moral struggle. In every moral struggle, one must die to self. The spiritual journey contains a cross. It is that cross that crucifies self so we become like Christ. Transformation therefore requires our attention. It requires our submission to the Lord of glory. It requires our faith that He will gradually transform our cross into a crown. We must take time to be holy – not self-righteous or judgmental, surely, but holy. We must become God-reflecting believers whose words and actions – whose very being, manifests the love and power of God within this broken world.

As we walk this path, we are able to shout our gratitude with all the saints the powerful lyrics that Geron Davis was once inspired to pin: “If anybody knows about the power of Jesus, I do!”

In the end, whatever is our personal besting sin, we can only be victorious through repentance, humility and gratitude. There is no room for any of us to boast. We are all saved by faith; bought with a price by the precious blood of Jesus.

To Him be glory forever and ever!

A Pastoral Reflection on the Fourth of July

Because many of you may be out of town this week, I thought I would send out my sermon notes for next week’s message early.

As you know, it will be the Fourth of July. I felt that I should deliver a message that celebrates what is good and noble about our nation while remaining true to the gospel we are responsible to proclaim in our Sunday worship.

I ask for your prayer and any feedback you wish to give.

Worshipping God; Loving Country
Romans 12: 18 – 21; 13: 1- 8

Julia Ward Howe (1819 – 1910) could read and write in seven languages. She was an accomplished poet. She was also a fiery preacher at a time when few people believed it was possible for a woman to preach. She carried these gifts under the oppressive authority of an arrogant husband. He rarely allowed her to speak in public or to publish her work. However, a few years before her husband’s death, she published a series of poems. These poems expressed the depth of her anguish and loneliness. They shocked Boston and humiliated her husband but they also made a place for her at the highest levels of American intellectual life. She soon became a friend of Mark Twain and other great American thinkers. In so many ways, Julia Ward Howe expressed the spirit of her times and gave the issues of those times a voice. From slavery to female suffrage, Julia Ward Howe spent her life exploring the meaning of the phrase “liberty and justice for all.”

Few Americans now know the name of Julia Ward Howe. But she wrote one thing that everyone in this room, indeed that most Americans, learn before they can read and write.

She wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

She published the lyrics in the February edition of the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. Abolitionists immediately began to use her song in their meetings. It was then adopted by soldiers. Soon, every American, North and South had made it one of our nation’s most beloved patriotic songs. Since then, it has been used more often than any other music for presidential inaugurations and burials. It is arguably more familiar to our citizens than the National Anthem. Although it is often satirized and abused, just hum a few lines of it. Soon, every American within earshot will be humming along!

Today is the Fourth of July. It is a good day to express my own feelings about faith and patriotism. I thought that the lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic would be the best way to do that.

I’ll confess that I am a little nervous, preaching a sermon about patriotism. Our age has become so polarized by political pundits that one learns to keep quiet about politics. You never know who may become deeply offended if your opinion differs in some small way from his.

Most Americans now tend to believe that there are only two possible political positions: the Right and the Left.

If you do not hold to every point embraced by the contemporary Left, people on the left may identify you as fundamentalist, racist, fascist, environmentally irresponsible and hopelessly ignorant.

On the other hand, if you do not agree with every point embraced by the contemporary Right, then people on the right may identify you as free-loving, anti-democratic, socialistic, tree-hugging and secularist. You might even be French!

Too many Americans have become angry. We are continually whipped up into rage by entertainers who financially profit from our current polarized situation. Many of us have just decided keep quiet, waiting for opportunities to speak words of kindness and comfort into the life of our troubled nation.

Perhaps the fourth of July is still enough of a common celebration to allow me to do that.

Many people have urged me to clarify my political views. I have resisted doing that for several reasons. The central reason is this: I don’t believe that the pulpit is any place to grind a political ax. There are, to be sure, social issues that a pastor must address if he intends to remain faithful to the gospel. To be honest though, were we to do that consistently, everyone one here would probably be offended. The gospel is deeply at odds with many of the ways of our world, whether we label those ways “Liberal” or “Conservative.” The best thing to do is to just teach the Word, worship the Lord, serve the people, and love God in such a way that believers sooner or later grow into a real relationship with Him. A relationship with God always causes a person to reevaluate their options about everything – including their opinions about culture and political life.

Another reason I do not deal much with national issues though, is my belief that piety and patriotism should not be mixed.

I am deeply patriotic. As a young boy, I memorized several great American speeches, the preamble of the Constitution and the opening words of the Declaration of Independence. I love American history. The principles our nation officially proclaims are some of the most enlightened concepts ever developed by human beings and I fervently believe in them.

Every branch of my family tree goes back to an ancestor already living on this continent long before the American Revolution. My family has given its sons to nearly every war this country has fought. I can take you to the graves of my ancestors stretching back two hundred years. I am undeniably an American.

However, I also know that history is full of examples of what occurs when a people confuse piety with patriotism. The outcome has never been good for: Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia or any other country. As Jesus taught us, God and Caesar require different kinds of loyalty and respect from their subjects. What we owe God and what we owe our nation are different things and touch us at different levels.
President Lincoln addressed this very issue in his second inaugural address. In the closing days of the civil war, he refused to claim that God was on his side. Instead, he asked the nation whether we could find a way to get on God’s side.

In today’s reading, St. Paul tells Christians living under the government of Emperor Nero (who was actively persecuting the church at the time) to respect the government. Indeed, he teaches that God has delegated to the government certain kinds of authority in order to maintain a well-ordered society and to provide for the common good of its citizens. Believers do not rail against their government, even when they are opposed to it. We are taught to “bless and curse not.” Sometimes, that is difficult; especially when the will of the state and the principles of faith seem to be at odds.

As we have been reading about the life of David, we have watched as he struggled over defending himself against a king who had turned evil. But he did not strike back and he did not lift his hands against the anointed of the Lord. Many of his Psalms are prayers for God’s vindication and defense because he refuses to disrespect the ruler of the nation. This is the way believers act.

This is always a dilemma for a Christian, especially when holding high office. How does he or she determine how to should carry out his or her patriotic responsibilities in the light of a gospel that recognizes no national boundaries and privileges no group of people? The Kingdom of God is eternal; nations are temporal. The Kingdom of God recognizes no ethnicity, language or borders; nations are defined by such things. How does one remain loyal to both God and country?

Today’s passage gives us some guidance about how to develop an attitude like that of Sir Thomas Moore who said to King Henry VIII, “I am the King’s good servant; but God’s servant first.”

On this Fourth of July, I want to help us understand how to be both good citizens and faithful believers.
Pastors, as private citizens, may have political opinions. We can even belong to a political party, like anyone else. However, pastors in their role as pastors must represent the Kingdom of God; and the Kingdom of God is barely concerned with such things.

Presidents, generals, governors, and other political leaders on the other hand, are called to deal with such issues. If they are believers, they must be loyal to the kingdom of God. However, as political leaders, they must make difficult decisions on behalf of the nation that may displease some of God’s people. How does one balance such things?

American leaders on both sides during the civil war pondered this very question. It was agonizing for them to realize that both sides were calling on the name of the same God. It was not unheard of for officers to allow preachers to pass through the lines from one side to the other to minister to enemy soldiers. Near the front lines, each side could hear the sounds of prayer and singing coming from the ranks of the enemy.

Intelligent people were shaken by this perplexing conflict between faith and national interest. President Lincoln and President Davis, the various generals and officers of both North and South often wrote about this in words that can still bring tears to the eyes of an American man or woman.

This was the climate in which Julia Ward Howe wrote Battle Hymn of the Republic. Although it was written in the North by a Northerner; and although it promoted the abolitionist cause, it drew from the deepest cords of Holy Scripture to express the agony of a nation seemingly trapped by a conflict neither side could avoid or end.

The first stanza observes all the carnage of war and labels it as the judgment of a righteous God. Like Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, the Battle Hymn does not attempt to frame the war as the cause of a righteous North against an unrighteous South. The composer claims that the war is the manifestation of God’s wrath against the entire nation.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

This image of “grapes of wrath” comes from the Book of Jeremiah where God descends among His people in judgment. God afflicts the nation until blood is flowing like wine. God does this because His people have been tolerating great wickedness even though they profess to be His followers. We don’t like this picture of Divine vengeance. However, the Bible warns that God is capable of wrath and that occasionally judges a man, a city or a nation. Many of the leaders of both North and South came to believe that the war was an expression of God’s wrath. This song certainly makes that claim.

The writer continues in the second stanza to develop this view that the nation is under Divine judgment.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.


The composer depicts soldiers building an altar to God in the humid hours at the close of day. Then as the soldiers prepare for sleep, the words of scripture leap out from the dim light of their candles and flares to announce the truth: God has pronounced a righteous sentence against this the nation that cannot be resisted. Although God will accept their words of piety and devotion, He will not remove His hand of judgment until there is repentance. The Day of the Lord will keep marching until God’s sentence is fully carried out and the land has fully submitted to God’s Will.

The next stanza is never used in our times. It’s much too Christian; much too prophetic.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman; crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."

This strange and rarely used word “contemner,” makes it difficult to understand. However, the word means “those who resist the law.” In other words, God will deal with people according to how they submit to the sentence he has proclaimed against the nation. “The fiery gospel in burnished rows of steel” is God’s judgment against a people who have so far refused to repent for their grievous national sin.

It seems utterly remarkable to me that a people just a few generations ago could sing such a song. You wonder why they didn’t stone the woman who wrote it! Then we remember that the president himself would say the very same thing in a public speech; “as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’ After saying these words, the president asked his nation, whether in the light of its renewed submission to God could it now hope that God’s wrath against the county would cease?

Julia Ward Howe outs it this way: if the people reading the sentence of God by their dim and flaring lamps would simply submit to God, then “that Hero born of woman would crush the serpent’s head.” It’s not the human enemy that must be crushed but the enemy of human souls that deceives both us and our foes.
One wonders if ten percent of our country now would even understand these words! They are quoted from the first chapters of the Bible where God promises a sinful people that He would send a Savior born of woman that would crush our ancient foe under his heel. Mel Gibson begins his film, The Passion of the Christ, by depicting Jesus in the Garden praying. The serpent craws near to gloat over our Master’s misery and suddenly finds himself ground under the Lord’s vengeful heel.

Believers know what that scene means!

In the next stanza, Julia Ward Howe asks us to wake up. We must realize that God offers us an opportunity for salvation from His wrath, both as individuals and as a nation.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.


God will not turn back. Either that nation will submit or it will be annihilated. The evil must be purged but the Lord is not willing that any should perish. There is a way to escape God’s wrath.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Here finally is the balance and contrast we need to understand between piety and patriotism.

Jesus belongs to everyone, everywhere. We acknowledge in the song that he was “born across the sea;” not across town. We also confess that it is God’s glory in the bosom of Christ that transfigures people; not a national vision or a political agenda. Human beings cannot create utopias – only God can do that. Nonetheless, we have a social responsibility. This song claims that sometimes it requires our blood to set people free. Although we cannot make people eternally free, we can – and we must – be willing to lay down our lives to make people as free as it is possible for them to be on this earth. Justice requires human attention as well as Divine grace. A society’s common good requires the sacrifice of its citizens on behalf of one another.

Americans have been willing to lay down their lives to save others in many conflicts. I understand that not all American soldiers are believers. As in every nation, some of our soldiers in some of our wars have done very bad things. However, American soldiers also marched into Dachau and Auschwitz, taking cans of food to feed the living corpses that filled those camps. They carried in blankets to cover those prisoners’ nakedness. I mention this because my wife’s uncle lost his life on his way to those very camps. I held his rifle the other day. I thought about how short his life was. He died to make men free, just like the song says. I honor that, especially on this Fourth of July. I know you do too. That is the best of our country and we ought always to urge ourselves to be that sort of people.

Finally though, Julia Ward Howe asks us to look at the war they were facing in the light of a coming eternal victory for all people everywhere.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty; He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.


Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.

Just as the sunlight creeps over the mountains just before revealing its full power, God is coming into our world. For those who have eyes to see, God’s glory is already rolling like a mighty wave into our world. This glory is wisdom for the mighty and “succour” – that is to say “help,’ “power,” or “ability” for those courageous souls who proclaim Him.

Whatever our circumstance now, Julia Ward Howe says in this stanza that we must look to the coming Day of the Lord, when the world will be His footstool and the soul of Time His slave. Until then, those who serve the Lord within their various nations and eras of time must live lives (and sometimes even give their lives) in ways that reflect the “glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.”

On July 4, 1776, a group of people signed a document that everyone here should go home and read. It is short and powerful. It affirmed that Nature’s God had called into being a new nation, dedicated to the proposition, “that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – that is to say, “a God-given vocation.”

The document goes on to state the reasons why the signers of the Declaration of Independence did not believe that their vision of human life could be pursued while remaining a part of the British Empire.
The signing of that document is, of course, the reason for our national celebration today. Most Americans know the first words of the document by heart. However, it is important to notice the ending of the Declaration:

“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.”

As Julia Ward Howe wrote so powerfully in her Battle Hymn of the Republic, a Christian people serve this nation best not by making the nation into an idol but by living lives submitted to God and then offered to the nation we love. We worship God. We give Him our highest loyalty. However, because we are God’s faithful servants first, we are able to serve our country in ways that bring to that country the blessings of God; most especially our unique understanding of freedom that comes to a people who know they are made in His image and His likeness.

As the people of God, we are a blessing to our country; not because we demand or coerce, but because we have the courage to continually call this nation that we love to justice – peacefully, lovingly and respectfully.

Wikipedia is Not A Sacrament

Wikipedia claims that John Wesley was born on today’s date in 1703. That’s incorrect. He was actually born on June 17th. So there: Wikipedia is not always right.

I was all excited, thinking I could write a blog about John Wesley because it was his birthday and then discovered the truth.

Life is cruel. Now what do I write about?

I could write about the incident in today’s One Year Bible reading. King Jehoash visits Elisha because the prophet is old and sick. Elisha tells the king to beat the ground with arrows. The king does so but only half-heartedly.

“YOU MISERABLE WHIM OF A KING!” the prophet shouted. “Now you won’t have victory over all your enemies.”

But what can I possibly do with that story?

Of course, there is the New Testament reading, about Paul’s visit to Ephesus. He finds believers in that city who have not yet received the Holy Spirit. So he lays his hands on them. Then they receive the Spirit and speak in tongues.

I have been writing lately about the importance of sacramental life, so that New Testament story seems the way to go. Something spiritual occurs when St. Paul lays his hands on people. It’s not mere ceremony; they know immediately that something has happened.

It is called sacrament: when a material thing or human action becomes a conduit for spiritual life.

I know: people get nervous when I teach about the sacraments. Some get worried. They fear that we will somehow undo the Reformation – if they know anything about the Reformation. Others get bored. Why should I spend valuable time talking about something that is “merely symbolic?” (As if it is possible for anything to ever be “merely symbolic.”) Few people seem convinced that sacraments are something vital to their spiritual life.

What gets me is the question that I sometimes get about sacraments: “Do we have to receive sacraments to be saved?”

Sigh …

Can a man and wife love each other without “making love?”

Well, yes. In some cases, usually involving illness or injury, a couple must learn to be intimate in ways other than what is usually expected. Many people in such a marriage love one another truly and fiercely. In the same way, it is possible for a believer to love his Lord devoutly and faithfully without experiencing sacramental life.

An exception is not a norm, however.

Normal love between husband and wife involves the union of body, mind, soul and spirit. In the Service of Holy Matrimony (can we still call it that?) we remind everyone present that marriage is “a figure of the union between Christ and His church.”

The words remind us that a covenant between a husband and wife involves the whole person: body, mind, soul and spirit.

So does a covenant between Christ and His Church.

Early believers experienced signs and wonders. They also broke bread. They prayed. They also sat under the apostles’ teaching. They saw visions. They also pooled their resources to take care of poor people.

The early Church did not divorce matter and spirit.

Neither should we.

Christian life and spirituality is unavoidably sacramental; it pulls together material and spiritual life. That is what healthy spirituality looks like.

Elisha discerned something about Jehoash’s character by observing the king’s behavior. The way he went about things revealed his inner life. His half-hearted way of hitting arrows on the ground revealed a half-hearted approach to life, governance and battle. He would not succeed. The fruit of his reign would be somehow connected to the manner in which he carried out spiritual instructions.

St. Paul laid hands on the believers in Ephesus because they had not received the Holy Spirit. I know that modern Evangelicals don’t believe that is possible. Maybe not. Probably St. Luke had not been to seminary before he wrote the Book of Acts, but I’ll leave that one alone. The issue here is that the believers did not have an experience with the Holy Spirit that Paul thought they ought to have. So, he laid his hands on them and then they did.

So what are we to think? Doesn’t it seem in this passage as though perhaps the act of laying on of hands in the Lord’s name actually accomplishes something spiritual?

That’s what we mean when we speak of sacramental action: that we do something natural and God responds by doing something supernatural.

The thing that seems to tie all this together is that the Bible doesn’t recognize this extreme split between nature and spirituality. Human actions reveal inner life and may become a conduit for spiritual force.

John Wesley discovered this. He was an Oxford educated catechist, out-of-touch with himself and others; unemotional, harsh, perfectionist and boring. Then one evening “his heart was strangely warmed.”

Hardly a holy-roller moment! But he began to preach all over England. As he did, people fell out of trees, collapsed on the ground weeping and wailing, and reacted in all sorts of strange ways.

He didn’t like it.

So he made the people stop. But the fire went out. So he stopped trying to control the Spirit.

Spirit is connected to physical emotion and movement. Life is like that.

Sacramental reality is simply the human acknowledgment that spirituality manifests in physical ways.

Sometimes we know what that will look like. Sometimes we don’t.

Wesley didn’t like the way the Holy Spirit showed up. Too his credit though, he hungered for God too much to stop it. Like Elisha and St. Paul, he learned that Biblical spirituality is irrepressibly sacramental.

You can’t learn that on Wikipedia!