American Christians have always understood the revolutionary era as our unique “Exodus” story, the unfolding of our own Passover. When we tell the story of the revolution, we, whose ancestors embody those who fled England in search of a new world, see ourselves as a biblical people. As we crossed the Atlantic as Pilgrim, Puritan, Quaker, Dissenter and even traditional Anglican, we understood ourselves as crossing the Red Sea as Israel did, fleeing the persecution of a Pharaoh. For our ancestors, that Pharaoh was King George the III. This story became so much our identity we understood the Revolutionary War as a completion of the new Exodus. No wonder then when it came time to design the new seal of the United States, Thomas Jefferson proposed it depict Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea. George Washington, whose very pew is before us, and who sat in this church as much of this theology was developed and preached (eerie, isn’t it?), became the new Moses, the new deliverer, the new law-giver. The Exodus was complete in the ratification of the new Constitution, which colonial preachers acclaimed as the “new covenant” prophesied in scripture. Just as the twelve tribes had received the covenant on Sinai as a model of civil government, and a beacon for subsequent history, so now the thirteen states were forming a new covenantal model of civil government as a model of other societies.” (Richard Horsley).
It is important to remember the ironies of this time. This sense of “Exodus,” this belief that God was delivering a new Israel out from under a corrupt pharaoh, was entirely difficult for Anglican clergy to accept, including the clergy of this congregation. It is somewhat delicious that this church became the most influential church of any in the Revolutionary era (according to David McCullough), when you consider such revolutionary activity must have been sheer agony for the clergy here. Bred in the bones of the clergy in that era was the belief that to pray to Almighty God meant also to pray for the King of England. In being ordained a priest, the clergy pledged that in each service the King would be prayed for.
So that brings us to Jacob Duché, who became Rector here in 1775. On July 4th 1776, he called together the Vestry, the trustees, and proposed to them to no longer pray for the king in the Divine service. I can feel his agony.
Now, I submit that this was one of the most important “religious events” of the Revolution. Let’s be honest, the revolution itself had little religious content or fervor. The Declaration of Independence, though it had some religious imagery, was a highly secular document. Of all of its many grievances, King George’s treatment of the churches was not among them. In fact, the Church had done well in all the colonies, and had been unmolested, generally, by the tyrannical king. Just because the Declaration appropriated religious myth and a sense of Divine providence did not make it a religious document. In fact, the Declaration and the Constitution were highly intentional efforts to disconnect the affairs of government from the religious notion that the King, or ruler, was acting on behalf of God. The founders were not trying to dislodge one theological system and replace it with another. They were trying, and succeeded, in removing theology from the notion of government all together. Right there, blazoned on the wall of the new Constitution Center is one of the most un-theological statements imaginable: “We the People.” And I thank God for it.
So when Duché crossed the King’s name from the prayer book, he was removing the theological corruption that the church must always be supportive of the state. He allowed, even endorsed the sense of dissent, which considering how establishment he was, was miraculous.
So, 227 years later, as we gather on this day of thanksgiving for the inestimable blessings of religious and civil liberty vouchsafed to the United States of America, we also remember that our role as Christians is not to be the simple endorsers of all that government does. We are to be the moral vision that salts the nation, but does not endorse its actions whole-heartedly simply because the government gives the freedom to do so. While we give our hosannas to the founding of our nation, let us not forget our role as dissenters, too.
One of the great errors the American Christian can make, at least one who is the genetic and cultural line of those who crossed the Atlantic and inhabited a new world (let us never forget that there are other American Christians who have a different story to tell than the Pilgrims, Puritans and Anglicans) is the error of believing that we have received an Exodus and America is our Promised Land. In fact, I think it better if we still believe we are in “exile” rather than in the land of milk and honey.
Consider the words of the Gospel lesson this morning. Jesus tells his disciples, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Why such an impossible request? Because they are not home yet. They are still wandering, hoping for a kingdom to come that is near but still far off, a kingdom of perfect justice, freedom and peace. America is the greatest step forward toward that kingdom, but we have not arrived. To think we have arrived is to delay the kingdom. So we live today as we will live in that near but far off kingdom tomorrow—Perfectly. This means that we do not think of ourselves as the recipients of the Exodus, that we have been delivered, that we have arrived in the promised land. No, we are still in exile. We are to be perfect because we have not yet been delivered. The kingdom has not come.
Jesus then tells us to love our enemies, for that is the only way to bring them in to the hope of the kingdom that we believe is coming. We are not to divide ourselves into the just, or unjust, but we are to be absolutely moral in all situations, never triumphalist.
We who understand ourselves as still in Exile are the ones who keep faith and the possibility of a new future alive for the world around us. In this our time of dislocation, even as we enjoy the stunning riches and excesses of American culture, we as the church in Exile can offer ways of speaking and acting that the dominant society regards as subversive, but without which we cannot for long stay human. We can express sadness, rage and loss as an alternative to the denial that inevitably breeds brutality. We can be a voice of holiness that counters the trivial commodity-centered world by the practice of disciplines that make communion possible. We can be a voice of imaginative, neighborly transformation, focused on those in need. And we can express new social possibilities, rooted in the truth of God’s good news. Before us is the choice between succumbing to a fearful self preoccupation that shrivels the spirit or heeding God’s call to re-enter the pain of the world and the possibility of renewal and salvation. (This paragraph adapted from W. Brueggeman).
Remember that I said T Jefferson wanted the seal of the United States to be the people of Israel crossing the Red Sea? Well, of course, he was denied, and instead the seal adopted is still on the back of the one dollar bill. A pyramid yet unfinished, with the eye of God hovering over it, and a motto that might fairly be translated: God favors our undertakings.
Certainly, God has favored the undertakings of the United States. Where we, as a nation, have been wrong, we pray for God to correct us, and correct us still. But our work, as Christians in this great secular nation, is unfinished; the pyramid is incomplete (just ignore all that mumbo about Masonic conspiracy theories—that’s not what I’m talking about). The work of justice and peace is undone. We have work to do, so we shouldn’t be thinking it’s done. Let’s get about it, striving to be perfect, loving of enemy, and worthy of God’s grace unto us. Amen.