Bill Countryman Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Berkeley

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 3, 2016

Proper 9C: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

GIVING THANKS—AND CHARTING A DIFFERENT COURSE

I want to begin today by giving thanks for the United States of America and for all the good that our history has brought to the world. We in the Western world enjoy a degree of freedom and justice that the world might still be struggling to attain if it had not been for the American Revolution and for all the effort that has gone into maintaining and expanding its goals over the last couple of centuries.

Now, I know this is a bit unconventional in a place like Berkeley. And, to tell the truth, I don’t think I’ve ever started a sermon in quite this way. But it wouldn’t have seemed odd in my childhood. The United States had rescued the world from Fascism, Nazism, and the militarism that ruled Japan, and it seemed natural for a preacher to praise our nation and its contributions to the world. The ongoing challenge of another totalitarian order, communism, gave us still more reason to feel good about ourselves.

And for several decades thereafter, that’s just what we did. We felt good about ourselves—so good that we came to believe that pretty much anything we did in the world must be on the side of goodness and light and freedom and justice.

Then came the Vietnam war and we began to feel less sure. Then came the fall of the Berlin Wall and we felt better again. And then came our deepening and, it seems, increasingly inescapable and destructive involvement in a disintegrating Near East. And it’s been hard lately to feel any great pride in our virtue and wisdom.

And, in fact, it’s not my intention to encourage pride. It can be a good thing, but there always hangs over it the danger of slipping into narcissism and arrogance. I want, rather, to encourage thanksgiving, which is a bit different. Thanksgiving can appreciate the wonder of the blessings we have receive merely by being at this place in this time. It acknowledges that we didn’t make all this by our own perfect wisdom and virtue. At most, we have worked to keep it alive and to share it.

Still, the blessings are real. If you have any doubt of it, there’s one very clear proof: the ongoing flow of people from other parts of the world who want to live here among us and will work hard and take great risks to achieve that. When we talk about them these days, it often gets framed, politically, as a problem—the problem of immigration. And it can be. I doubt that any country in the modern world can absorb the seemingly unbounded numbers of migrants fleeing from famine, oppression, and civil war. But it is also a testimonial to the blessings other people see realized in this place and time. We would be ingrates not to recognize and honor them ourselves.

Now, we’re very conscious these days of our nation’s failings: increased inequality and poverty, continuing racism, extreme partisanship, religiously fueled rancor, the easy availability of guns and the use that some of us make of them. Yet, people still want to come here. Why? Because there is a sense that here people can still work together to make things new, a sense that we enjoy not only the blessings of the past, but the blessing of having some hope for our future.

Our failings are as old as the nation itself. But they’re actually not the most important thing about us. We’re not living in the same US I grew up in. And for all that we may have lost (much of our unreflective sense of innocence for one!), I think we have gained as much or more. We are not, any longer, in the depths of Jim Crow. Those of us who are gay or lesbian have a public existence unimaginable seventy years ago. Women have a greatly enlarged space for choices in their lives. However, narrow or threatening or mercenary or bigoted life in our country can be at times, there are many people from many parts of the world who would be happy to trade their problems for ours.

When I was young, we were so close to the victory over totalitarianism in World War II and to the ongoing fight against it in the Cold War, we could see no evil in ourselves. Now, we are sometimes so close to our troubles that we can see no good. It’s time to stand back and look at the bigger picture and admit that this country has in fact been a blessing to the world in some very fundamental ways. Our principles—and sometimes even our actions—have helped create the freedoms that people enjoy not only here, but in many other nations as well.

I suppose it’s still right to be proud of this—without trying to ignore how poorly we sometimes live up to it. It’s a gift to us and a gift to share. You can call it luck or you can call it the providence of God. I see it as providence—not simply for our good, but for the larger world. Either way, it wasn’t just our own brilliance and energy that brought it into being, and thanksgiving has as much place in our celebrations of Independence Day as pride.

Now, you may be thinking, “Isn’t this supposed to be a sermon? When is he going to get to the scripture part?” Well, the time is now. But after last Sunday, when I talked about all three readings, I should probably tell you up front that I’m not going to try anything that heroic today—heroic either for the speaker or the listeners.

I’m not going to talk about Galatians at all. Not that there is nothing there to talk about. But it would take an hour, I’m afraid, to disentangle it from the tone of anger and frustration Paul has wrapped it in.

And I’m not going to say much about the wonderful story of Naaman and his cleansing from leprosy. What an astonishing tale it is! It crosses ethnic and religious boundaries. It reminds us of the blessings of generosity and humility. It tells us that even the powerful—perhaps especially the powerful need the counsel of people around us, people who can tell us, “You need help,” “You can get it over there,” and “Don’t be too proud to do what you need to do.” One could preach an Independence Day sermon on that one, all right.

But I do want to say a few words about Jesus’ instruction to his disciples in our reading from Luke’s Gospel. Jesus is sending them out to share the gift he’s given them. And he tells them, “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!'” They don’t have a clue yet how they’ll be received, but they give them peace anyway.

He also says, “If they don’t want what you have to give, then move on.” Mind you, Jesus isn’t recommending indifference. You may recall that the disciples last Sunday wanted to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritan village that had refuged to give them a room for the night. Jesus’ directions are that they leave: “go out into {their] streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.'” They had their chance to choose a life of freedom, generosity, and hope, and they refused it. It was a tragedy, but you can’t force people to be free and just and loving. No fire! Just truthful testimony.

We grieve over the troubles of people who suffer under regimes and economies that “bite and devour” them (as Paul put it in last Sunday’s reading). And we should. But we also have to come to terms with the truth that even an immensely powerful nation like ours cannot make everything in the world right by exercising our might. In most cases, what we need to do is focus on the slow process of education and setting an example worth following and nudging people toward it, just as Jesus told the disciples to do.

I invite us all, then, to offer thanks today and tomorrow for a country that has been blessed with principles that have given us and the larger world so much and to pray that we may continue to grow in our understanding of those principles and our commitment to them. As for those who would rather bite and devour—we do not take them lightly. We will defend ourselves against them as necessary, and we will offer the hand of friendship when that is possible. But we understand that, even as we offer them the prospect of conversion and new life, the choice will always lie ultimately in their hands and, we pray, the hands of God.