America the Beautiful

Where have you been? How many states? How many countries? I have been in 47 states and 13 countries, but I am always glad to be home again. The greatest of all modern adventure stories features a hobbit who leaves the shire and sets out to deliver the ring. The subtitle of that story is “there and back again.” This is a description of much that is in the Bible: people away from home and people returning home. 2 It is hard to explain the attachment of home. John Prine has a wonderful song called “My Home Town.” He sings on another album a splendid rendition of about the place where I am from, written in Pittsburgh by Stephen Foster, “My Old Kentucky Home.” Today, I want to speak to you about our home, these United States. The experience of Nehemiah is helpful to all of us as we think about our lives, our homes, and the way in which the man without a home, Jesus our Lord, inspires us toward deep gratitude for our national home, the United States of America. This is the season of thanksgiving. Three weeks ago, I called us to be grateful for the people who taught us about Jesus Christ and life in the Christian way. Two weeks ago, I confessed my thanksgiving for the Church of Jesus Christ, this church of Jesus. I called that sermon “I love my church.” Today, I was us to be thankful for our country, the United States of America. I want us to think about this using the text of a familiar hymn, edited and expanded, “America the Beautiful. Katherine Bates wrote this hymn in 1893, after visiting one of the national parks. How many of our national parks have you visited? Anybody here set a goal of seeing all the national parks? How many are there?  (63 parks, out of sites in the national park service) It is easy to be enthralled by the parks and also by the beauty of our country. It is not the only beautiful place in the world, but it is OUR place in the world, and it is beautiful. Let’s sing the first stanza of this hymn, in a spirit of thanksgiving. O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, For purple mountains majesties above the fruited plain! America! America! God’s grace for you and me. Secure this good with neighborhood from sea to shining sea. All writers, singers, and speakers pay attention to language: how it is used and what it means. Mostly we want to use contemporary language. I am especially fond of the translation of the Bible called, “Good News Bible” or originally, “Good News for Modern Man.” But there are many such efforts to put an old text into modern language. I edited this verse with this in mind. I eliminated the reference to God as masculine, in line three, and changed the Elizabethan “thee” to “you and me.” And in the next line, out goes the “thy” and “brotherhood” and in comes the phrase “secure this good with neighborhood” from sea to shining sea. Verse two is new. It is the first to address three large groups of Americans omitted from the original hymn text. That text, written in the nineteenth century and edited twice by the writer, focused on the Pilgrims, the white European immigrants, and soldiers, Americans who fought in the military. These are two exemplary groups of Americans, and we salute them all. But the song ignored three groups, and this verse draws attention to one: native Americans, often called Indians, or in the language of this hymn, native tribes. I wrote this verse in the voice of the native tribes, the native inhabitants. It uses the first-person plural, we. Let’s sing it together. The chorus recognizes the grace of God to these native inhabitants long before Europeans arrived. “America, America! God’s grace for you and me.” O beautiful for native tribes! We first this land did roam. With strong resolve and courage clear, we made of it our home. America! America! God’s grace for you and me.” We stand to say, we kneel to pray, we sing in harmony. Verse three is another traditional verse but changed also into the first-person plural, as if the pilgrims among us are singing the song, and we with them. This is a powerful text, written by Katherine Bates. It describes the Pilgrims according to the common persona (stern impassioned demeanor, probably a negative stereotype). But it also raises the call to repentance and concludes with this wonderful line: “Confirm our soul in self-control, our liberty in law.” Let’s sing together. O beautiful, for pilgrim feet! Our stern impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness. America! America, God mend our every flaw. Confirm our soul in self-control, our liberty in law. Now comes another new verse, this one focused on Africans brought to America against their will and kept in slavery against their will. This is one of the great immoral chapters in American history. It deserves all the attention it is getting, from Juneteenth to the Tulsa Slave Riot. We have been awakened to much more of the wickedness of our own ancestors. Let us not be slow to confess the evil and, in accordance with biblical principles, make restitution. Let’s sing it together, noting again the first-person plural. O beautiful for black and brown, for we who suffered long. Our pain endured, our hope secured, with joy we now belong. America, America, God’s grace for you and me. Free every one to sing this song, of faith and liberty.    Verse five is again a traditional verse. It is focused on American soldiers, but we can expand it to include all people, in uniform or not, who put aside normal life to join in the effort to defend America. It must be said, however, that not every war Americans have fought has been in defense of our life and liberty. Too many have been in defense of the American Empire around the world. We have sent soldiers and arms to protect our bases and our businesses around the globe. We have also, in these last 100 plus years, played the international peacekeeper, like the Roman legions in the time of Jesus. And this also is a task worthy of our best. We will sing this verse as it was written by Katherine Bates. O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, We more than self our country loved and mercy more than life! America! America! May God our gold refine, ‘till all success be nobleness and every gain divine. Now comes verse six, about refugees. How many of us here today are descendent from refugees? Some have come here to escape famine, or torture, or poverty, or war. Some have come to embrace opportunity and freedom. All of these motivations connect these migrating people with the history told in the Bible. The great story of the Hebrew Bible is of bondage and the search for a Promised Land. The secondary story is the push into exile in Assyria and Babylon and the longing to return home. This is the story of Nehemiah and his role in going home and helping his people rebuild their city, their communities, and their religion. The Christian testament tells the story of Jesus who as a child had to flee his homeland to avoid death, who confessed as an adult that he had no home and that his family consisted of his disciples and those who traveled in his entourage, who died a wrongly-convicted man and was buried in a borrowed grave. His apostles were itinerant organizers and evangelists, looking for another promised land. We sing today for all people who are looking for a new place, a fresh start, a promised land. Some of you are here today. This church may indeed be your promised land, the place you have been seeking, the place you can call home. Let’s sing together. O beautiful for refugees! We come in search of peace. From danger, death, and hopelessness, we seek a sweet release. America! America! God, open wide the gate! With grateful hearts we play our parts throughout this grand estate. Finally, verse seven in this version of the hymn. The original text also had more than the four printed in our hymn book. This verse is the familiar final verse, slightly changed, as was verse one. We are all patriots, are we not? We love our country, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  We serve our country: as soldiers, as officials and clerks. We are citizens who vote and read and think and envision what we can be as a nation. We are all familiar with our short-comings as a country: too often ignoring the proper care of our beautiful land, too long tolerating extreme division between the very wealthy and the very poor, too frequently allowing the desires of political parties, corporations, special interests including even religion to take precedence for the common good, and too resistant to the change that we need to make to create a more just and fair commonwealth. Nevertheless, we have this testimony. We live in a beautiful country, full of beautiful people (some of whom are here today). We live in a nation of promise, of potential, or possibilities. We live as free people, able to open our bibles, enter our sanctuary, and here at Providence every one of us sit on a back pew! Yes, this is one of the new freedoms of our little congregation. God bless our beautiful country. God bless our beautiful congregation. God bless each one of you. God bless me, as your pastor and preacher. Protect us, O God, and help us love you and love each other. Empower us to fulfill our mission on this planet, in this country, at this time. Fill us with your spirit that we might be the people you want us to be, you need us to be, our country needs us to be. The best thing we can do as Americans is to be sturdy disciples of Jesus: grateful for all our blessings, generous with those in need, courageous to push back against evil and injustice, joyful in every circumstance, including hard times, painful times, even dying times, hopeful for all things, believing in Jesus Christ our Savior, who died for us and for the whole world, whom God raised from the dead as a promise of the renewal of all things. God bless us as we sing this wonderful song. O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years. These alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears! America! America! God’s grace for you and me. Secure this good with neighborhood from sea to shining sea.