The Blessed Heritage is the Blessing Heritage

Preached on Sunday, July 1, 2018

Scripture readings: Deuteronomy 10:12-22; 1 Peter 2:9-25

Walking near Crab Creek, north of Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
May 2018

A mother came into her kitchen and found that it was being destroyed by her young children. They were definitely up to something. There was a mess of flour, and milk, and eggs everywhere it shouldn’t be. “What on earth are you doing?” she yelled.

The youngest answered first. “It’s almost America’s birthday, and we want to make it a birthday cake!”

It’s a good thing to want to celebrate this birthday. There are a lot of good reasons to do this. Birthday’s celebrate hopes and dreams, and they celebrate the heritage of the life carried in a person, or in a community, or even a nation.

Our nation’s birthday was an important day in my family, growing up. In his later years, my dad lost enough weight to fit into his old Navy uniform again, and he would put it on first thing in the morning and march out of the house, carrying the flag, and setting the flag in it’s bracket on the front of the house and saluting the flag at attention. My mom liked to spend part of the day watching Jimmy Cagney play George M. Cohan in “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, which seemed to be on TV every Fourth of July. By the time I was twelve, I took over setting fire to our fireworks.

The dog and cats celebrated the evening of the fourth by hiding. Some of the neighbors fired guns loaded with blanks, just like they would do on the stroke of the New Year.

The Nez Perce tribe in Idaho celebrate Independence Day in the middle of their summer powwow. The last week in June and the first week in July they celebrate what they call Talmaks. It’s also called “Presbyterian Camp Meeting of the Nez Perce Indians”. They’ve been doing this since 1897.

The Nez Perce were the tribe that sent messengers east to the settled lands of the United States, back in 1831, to ask for “the white man’s Book of Heaven”. Their mission was to ask a wise man to come to their people and teach them the message of the Bible.

A lot of Nez Perce people have long considered themselves to be a Christian tribe. The Nez Perce Wars were fought by the part of the tribe that didn’t want the Book. That part of the tribe is still fighting, to tell you the truth.

As the Presbyterian Camp Meeting would tell you, the most important part of the powwow is worship, study, and prayer.

The next most important part of Talmaks is the Fourth of July. A lot of the Nez Perce men enlist in the armed forces and become veterans. Independence Day is a big day for them: serving their country as warriors along with celebrating their identity as a Christian nation.

Well, they like to call their tribe a Christian nation. The truth is it doesn’t always look that way. As a nation, there's some debate among them, but a lot of them do their best to make it so.

That’s sort of like us, isn’t it? I remember the days when, if you asked someone if they were Christians, their answer could very well be: “Of course I’m Christian, I’m an American!” Although, back in the day, I was learning how to be a Christian in fellowship and not alone, and my most valued fellowship consisted of people who didn't buy that logic. On that point we might not have been any better Christians than they were, or anybody else, for that matter.

By the way, did you know that, legally speaking, Christ is the King of Poland, and the Virgin Mary is the Queen of Poland? It’s in their constitution, but I wonder if they’re doing a very good job following their King and Queen.

We want our nation to be truly Christian, and that means we want our nation to act in the spirit of Jesus doesn’t it? We want our nation, in this world, to have a role like the role Jesus has in this world. Then, as old as I am, I take a look at what I’ve wanted our country to do in the past, and it didn’t always seem very much like Jesus when it was all done. It’s hard to be a Christian nation if that means being a nation where the people see to it that their government behaves like Jesus.

This shouldn’t surprise us, though, if we know even a little about the Book of Heaven. That Book regularly tells us that even when God himself makes a collection of people into His Chosen People, it’s very hard for them, with all of God’s help, to live up to that.

There are certain themes and ideas that run all the way through the many books of the Bible from cover to cover. From cover to cover, the Bible is the love story of God for his broken creation from birth, to failure from the start, to the sacrifice of God, in Jesus, on the Cross. To the wedding and the happily ever after in the Book of Revelation. That’s one theme that runs through it all.

Another theme is God’s proposal of marriage, over and over again, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to Joshua, to David, to the prophets, to the disciples of Jesus (which means us). This is our engagement, as disciples of the Lord, to be his bride, to be his people, to be his nation and kingdom.

Well, the Church could become the heart of a Christian nation. But it’s awfully hard to be that kind of heart of a nation without being heart sick.

Our readings from Deuteronomy and First Peter tell us a bit of what it’s like to be God’s nation, God’s people. Our Bible readings tell us, in that sense, what our heritage is when we celebrate the Church’s birthday on Pentecost. Our readings tell us, as the heart of our world and as the heart of our nation, what our heritage is. It tells us the heritage of how we go about helping our nation celebrate its life as we beat quietly, deep inside it, as any healthy heart usually does.

The first clue, in our scriptures, to our God-given heritage, if we stand in our nation and in our world as its heart, is that this heritage is a miracle. The miracle, as Moses puts it, is that God chooses us to be his people even though he could have chosen anyone else. How could God have chosen Israel, or us?

Although everything in heaven and earth belongs to the Lord, “Yet the Lord set his affection on your forefathers, and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all nations, as it is today.” (Deuteronomy 10:14-15) What a surprise, that God would settle for us. Earlier in the Book, the Lord and Moses tell Israel that they weren’t chosen because they were great (7:7) or good (9:5) but only as a demonstration of the Lord’s powerful faithfulness (Deuteronomy 7:8-9 and 9:29).

Peter means the same thing when he writes this: “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (2 Peter 2:10) We “are a people of God, that you may declare the praises of him who brought you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (2:9)

There is no light in us, but there is wonderful light pouring into us from Someone who is not us, but who loves us perfectly in spite of who we are.

That is, surely, a wonderful light. Isn’t it?

No nation, and no church, is chosen by the Lord because it is great and good. It is chosen because God is love, and God’s love is absolutely faithful. God has never, ever, left his people. God has never left Israel. God has never left the Church. God has never left his violent, broken world. The history of the Chosen People of Israel as a rebellious nation is told in the Bible. The history of the Chosen People of the Church as a rebellious nation is told to us in history.

It’s the same story, the same history, the same heritage. It’s the same story here with us.

Knowing this is a very great relief. Thank God, we are not in our own hands alone. We are in the hands of the perfectly faithful Lord. It’s a great and perfectly humbling, humiliating miracle. It’s all about being love. Apply this to yourselves. Apply this here and now, in this place. Apply this to our nation. This is a heritage worth celebrating.

We were a small population on the shore of the Atlantic; colonies of the greatest naval power in the world of that day, and God saved us. George Washington and the small, poorly trained and poorly paid colonial armies lost most of their battles. When they won, it always seemed like an accident, like luck, or like the intervention of God.

Our heritage of somehow being brought into being from outside ourselves, to belong on the inside of the center of the history in this world flows from this. Our nation seems to have a purpose from God for changing this world for good, though we were once so small and weak, at the start.

Now we belong. We are insiders, and this should remind us that we were once outsiders. This isn’t as bad as it sounds. It means our heritage is a God who loves outsiders and loves to make them insiders.

The method for getting into our heritage as a nation in God’s hands is described when Moses and the Lord tell his people that part of their obedience is to love God by imitating him. “Walk in his ways.” “Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.” (Deuteronomy 10:16) Our heritage is not an itemized check-list of rules, but a matter of the heart.

Walking in the Lord’s ways is like being a little child following their father in the snow. The child sees their father’s footprints and jumps to make sure that their feet go into those big footprints.

The last thing the child wants is to miss a single step. You might call this a fear, but it’s the fear motivated by love. You bite your lip at every step you take, and every good step is joy.

At every step gone wrong, you don’t stop but you try for the next step. It’s more like a dance than a walk. It’s all a matter of the heart and, with God, your alien heart has become a child’s heart and new every morning.

Our heritage of being the outsider brought in is the heritage of an alien finding a new, safe, free, beloved home. This has the strange power of not making you selfish about coming home and wanting to keep home for just yourself. You love the hospitality of the Lord, and this is part of the path of his footprints that you are jumping into, step by step, in a dance that is bigger than you are.

You and I all live in the hospitality of God, and your own heart becomes a place of welcome. You become the welcomers of outsiders. We know that the church is not only for us but, most of all, for others. We know this.

Those who have a Latin/Spanish culture have a saying: “Mi casa es su casa.” (My home is your home.) When the outsiders come to your house, they are not guests, they are family. If they are family then they aren’t held to the standards of guests. They are better than guests.

When outsiders come to your church, they are not guests. They are family who are welcome to make themselves at home-church with you, and they graciously share their ways with you and it is part of the joy you feel because they have come inside from the outside, and you know what it is like to do the same. With God you are strangers who have found a home.

Peter says the same, only he says to show the same hospitality to outsiders when you are with the outsiders outside your own house, or outside this house. You know you are an alien, so that they don’t feel like aliens to you. You and they are the same and this is a great miracle. But this is not a miracle that you indulge in by living down to it. You stoop down to lift others up.

You don’t just go along with everything. Peter says: “Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil.” In other words, don’t use your friendliness as an excuse for going against the Lord’s values: remember that you are still an alien yourself for God’s sake. “Live as servants of God.” (1 Peter 2:16)

When the church has the heritage of hospitality built on the sympathy of your own alien experience, then the church will go outside itself. We will volunteer to be aliens in a world of people who feel perfectly at home without us, and who don’t realize that they are aliens who do not know yet what’s so good about coming inside God’s love.

They might well see something wrong with you, and they will see you as the aliens with themselves as being the ones who belong as insiders. But something will click and they will see something good behind you and come in before they know it. “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:12)

Goodness, in the languages of the Bible, has nothing to do with a daunting list of rules. True goodness doesn’t earn a gold star on a chart.

True goodness is experienced as thriving. True goodness is like serving chocolate gelato (like ice cream but much richer) to someone who has never eaten it before. True goodness is having someone smile at you when they have put a bowl of chocolate gelato in your hands.

That’s what a servant of God wants to do. That’s the heritage of a church that is being a servant. How can we find a way to give chocolate gelato to our neighbors and to the communities around us, so that they glorify God with us on the day of his coming? How can we give them something richer than they have ever tasted before?

You know that if you pass your neighbors some chocolate gelato over the fence, they will likely come to your door. If the Church could pass out that chocolate gelato, we’d have people coming in. But it’s got to be something surprisingly stunning.

Our nation is like a big bowl of chocolate gelato in a painful and desperate world. We should be so glad about this, as a nation, that we would also enjoy those who come knocking on our nation’s door. It’s the real meaning of disciples, the church, and the blessed nation being a city on the hill.

Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.” (Matthew 5:14) Some people think that the city on the hill is simply visible to all: that it is simply an example to others, and not their actual destination for arrival.

Jesus was really saying: “You are the new Jerusalem.” Jerusalem was the city on the hill. You could see it in the distance, for miles and miles. But Jerusalem was much, much more than visible. Jerusalem was a destination. It was the place where people would love to come and stay for the purpose of worship and offering their sacrifices and themselves to the Lord. In message of the Old Testament prophets, the nations of the world were all going to come to Jerusalem. All the old enemies and destroyers would come there to worship. “In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.” (Isaiah 2:2)

When a nation truly has a heritage from the Lord, it will be like a temple where all the nations will want to come. It’s a great blessing. In the story of the whole Bible, from beginning to end, a nation belonging to God will draw all the nations in. That’s the heritage that those who hunger for a Christian America will discover. We will just be too good.

Under God, we are blessed to be a blessing. The Lord said it to Abraham, and it applies to the Church, and to any people of God. “You will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3)

Now, I’m going to quote a politician of yesterday.

In his “Farewell Address” Ronald Reagan took up the theme of the city on the hill, and he got it right. He was a good, smart, decent guy. Here it is.

“I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds, living in harmony and peace - a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

That's how I saw it; and see it still. How stands the City?

And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that: after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm.

And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the Pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.”

Our heritage is not always something you are born with. A heritage may be a gift given in hospitality by those who were there first. But our heritage, as the people of God in the Church, is the heritage of being aliens who have come home. We give to other aliens, as they come to us, the same heritage that the Lord has given us in Jesus. We make people who were not a people into our own people, in the church. This is sacred. This is the gospel; that we are saved by gift, saved by grace, and saved as we come home by faith. In the Church of Jesus, the Bride of Jesus, we welcome the aliens home.

Any nation that would be a Christian nation will have the same heritage as those who belong to Jesus. That nation will do for others what Christ has done for us. Every church that that loves the gospel, the good news of Jesus, will be eager to welcome outsiders. Every nation that loves the good news of what God has given their country will be eager to welcome outsiders. The church that enjoys the blessings of God will bring people in. The nation that enjoys the blessing of God will bring people in.

The church has to be like Jesus: welcoming wandering outsiders home. We have no choice besides this one, or (if we do have a choice) we have a choice of heaven or hell. The Church, or what seems to be the Church, will live or die by this choice. “For you were like sheep, going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” (1 Peter 2:25) How we give grace to those on the outside will be the sign of our belonging (or not belonging) to the Shepherd who welcomed us aliens from outside.

In the day when God visits us, all nations will live or not, according to the heritage they asked for and chose for themselves.

The Bible tells us about the heritage that belongs to those who were outside and welcomed in. That’s the only heritage that God can give us. Let that be our heritage, as a Church and as a Nation. Let’s live by that.