One Nation, Under God
(Rutgers, July 5, 1998; 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C;
Independence Day Weekend)
I Kings 21:1-21a (OT, pp. 364-365) [from 11th Ordinary];
Amos 8:4-8 (OT, pp. 954-955) [from 16th Ordinary]
The United States of America-"Superpower of the World!"
The extraordinary welcome accorded to President Clinton
by the leaders and people of China
has amply demonstrated that today our nation is widely seen
as the one true superpower on the face of the earth.
Now, "Superpower of the World" seems to be a title
that fills most Americans with feelings of pride and jubilation.
But I don't share such feelings.
No, "Superpower of the World" strikes me as the kind of title
that ought to fill us not with pride and jubilation
but with fear and trembling for our immortal souls.
Over a century ago, the British historian Lord Acton warned that:
"Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
I've always taken Lord Acton's warning with utmost seriousness, for
he was a scholar who knew not only his history, but also his Bible.
In the New Testament, we encounter a truly corrupt superpower ,
the Roman Empire,
over against which the people of God are politically powerless.
In that situation, Christians could justifiably be counseled
to be "in the world but not of it,"
because, as disenfranchised persons,
they could not be held accountable by God
for the political and economic systems of their day.
Those systems were far beyond Christians' influence,
let alone their control.
But the same counsel-to be "lin the world but not of it"-
cannot be given in good conscience to modern American Christians.
For we do not live in New-Testament-like circumstances.
Within the ancient superpower-the Roman Empire-
Christians were politically and economically powerless.
But within the modern superpower-America-
Christians are politically and economically powerful.
Perhaps those powerless early Christians were not held accountable
by God for the political and economic systems of their time.
But such is not the case for modern American Christians.
We who have political and economic power
are held accountable by God
for the political and economic systems of our time,
for they are beyond neither our influence, nor our control.
Unlike those early Christians, we modern American Christians
have the burden of struggling to exercise
our political and economic power in a morally responsible way.
Now , the Bible does contain an extended story of just such a struggle
as ours,
a centuries-long story of a people of God attempting to exercise
political and economic power in a morally responsible way,
a story of a people wrestling with the question of
what it means to live as "one nation under God."
To find that story, we need to turn, however,
not to the New Testament and its account of early Christians,
but to the Old Testament and its account of ancient Israel.
To hear that story, we need to turn to lessons
like the ones we have heard this morning.
Our First Lesson, from the Book of First Kings, describes for us
a textbook example of power's corrupting influence.
The lesson takes us back to the 9th Century Before Christ.
Ahab and Jezebel are the king and queen of the nation of Israel,
a nation striving to exist under the law of God,
a nation for whom God has established
the moral authority of the prophet as a check and balance
to the political and economic power of the king,
so that whenever power becomes corrupt
the prophet can call upon the king and the nation
to return to ways of justice and righteousness.
Within our lesson, in the space of just 15 verses,
Ahab and Jezebel break not just 1 or 2 of the 10 Commandments,
but 5 of them:
They covet their neighbor Naboth's field
and then suborn perjury (that is, false witness) against him,
inducing a wrongful use of the name of the Lord
in order to accomplish the judicial murder of Naboth,
after which they expropriate (which is to say, steal)
the property they have been coveting.
To counter the monarchy's blatantly corrupt use of power ,
God commands the prophet Elijah
to confront, accuse, and pronounce judgment upon the king,
all of which Elijah proceeds emphatically to do.
Our Second Lesson, from the Book of Amos, takes us to the Israel
of one century later, to the Israel of the 8th Century Before Christ.
In this lesson, the prophetic indictment is focused
not so much on the corrupt political power of Israel's monarchy
as on the corrupt economic power
of Israel's upper and middle classes.
These people have been trampling on the needy
and bringing to ruin the poor of the land
through corrupt business practices.
Indeed the well-to-do have been so anxious for the gain of their greed
that they spend their holy days of sabbath rest dreaming only of
the profit to be gained from the next day's extortions.
W ell, a prophet has indeed come,
but the kind of prophet spelled with a "ph" rather than with an "f."
For God has pronounced judgment on these people of corrupt power,
and the prophet Amos has come to announce that the land
will tremble in mourning for the people who dwell thereon.
Less than 30 years after Amos spoke these words,
the nation of Israel was destroyed by an invading army.
Israel had tried to live as "one nation under God,"
and the temptations that had confronted Israel were not those of a
superpower-it occupied no such position in the world-
yet still its elite had been corrupted
by what relatively little power they had.
"Superpower of the world"-
now, that's a title that strikes fear and trembling
into my American heart.
For if "power tends to corrupt, "
won't "superpower" have an even more corrupting effect?
How can American Christians possibly avoid
the corrupting influence of political and economic power
or at least keep that corrupting influence to a minimum,
so that at the end of our lifetime on earth
each of us may present to God the offering of an increase
in the measure of justice and righteousness
entrusted to our stewardship?
How can we avoid or minimize corruption by our power?
There is, I conclude, no simple answer to this all-important question.
Part of the answer is certainly for us to trust in the grace of God.
And a second part of the answer is for us actively to draw on
the only power that is beyond all corruption-
the power of the Holy Spirit.11
And a third part of the answer is for us to live
by the moral principle of equal justice for all."
It was the great American Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr
who reminded us of this third part of the answer.
Niebuhr taught right here in New York City,
at Union Theological Seminary.
In his book Moral Man and Immoral Society, published in 1932,
Niebuhr argued that there's one moral principle above all that needs
to be kept at the heart of American politics and economics,
one principle above all that needs to be kept
as both the point of orientation and the firmly fixed goal
of American politics and economics.
And that's the principle of
equal justice for all of God IS children.
That principle was in truth enunciated at the very beginning of
our nation's existence in the Declaration of Independence, whose
passage by the Continental Congress we celebrated yesterday.
That Declaration of July 4th, 1776, states:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men. . . "
But here we are some 222 years later ,
and our nation is still not close to success in institutionalizing
the self-evident truths stated in the Declaration,
still not close to institutionalizing the fundamental moral
principle for American politics and economics
lifted up for us by Reinhold Niebuhr ,
still not close to institutionalizing
the principle of equal justice for all of God's children.
Clearly, if we are ever to achieve the goal of equal justice for all,
then, at the very minimum, we must be constantly engaged
first, in identifying those things that perpetuate
the privileges of powerful persons like ourselves,
and, then, in identifying those ways by which we ourselves
can eliminate our own privileges
so as to advance our nation toward
political and economic justice for all.
To prompt us to the elimination of our own privileges,
we must, among other things, encourage prophetic voices
in the church to speak critically and persuasively to our power,
challenging our status quo, naming our sins,
calling on us to take a stand against evil,
and calling on us to turn that which is moral
into that which actually happens.
To prompt us to the elimination of our own privileges,
what are some of the things that a modern Elijah or Amos
would say to us today?
Well, I believe some or all of the following
would be on the prophet's list:
Woe to you who allow the income gap between rich and poor
to increase.
Woe to you stockholders of Disney
who allow the company president to earn $900,000 a day
while company workers in Haiti earn $1 to $3 a day.
Woe to you who turn a blind eye to the "white privilege"
that perpetuates systemic racism.
Woe to you who support the underfunding of public education
and call for the elimination of remedial classes.
Woe to you who tolerate the purchase of political influence
by the wealthy
and remain lukewarm about campaign reform.
Woe to you who refuse to plug the tax loopholes for the rich
but busily tear down the safety net for the poor.
Woe to you who profit from the exporting of jobs
and then seek to reduce taxes for welfare assistance.
Woe to you who are too busy being a world superpower
to tend to the poverty and deprivation in your midst.
Woe to you who call yourselves "one nation under God"
but heed not the needs of your neighbors.
But blessed are you who call yourselves "one nation under God"
and diligently pursue equal justice for all.
May God grant us the grace
to heed the voices of the prophets sent to us;
and may God grant us the wisdom to reform our lives and
our society toward equal justice for all
by drawing on the one power that is beyond all corruption-
the power of the Holy Spirit.
Let us pray.
O God, we do hold the truth of equal justice for all to be self-
evident.
And we do seek to be a nation that lives by Your law.
Grant us Your grace and the power of Your Holy Spirit for the
living of these days. Amen.
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