Sermon from June 25, 2006
I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone – for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth – 1 Timothy 2:1-4.

This scripture establishes the normal attitude of the Church toward the state, be it a dictatorship or a representative democracy. I want to talk about how the Church in America can make a significant contribution to our national well-being.

Do we want to make such a contribution? I believe we do. If we are to do it with gracious discernment, then we must never forget the priority of Christ over the political realm. But let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. That takes us to the Old Testament and to wise words of the Weeping Prophet, Jeremiah, chapter 29.

Living in Babylon
The stories of our faith tell of Israel's golden age under King David and King Solomon. They tell of a long and terrible decline from that golden age. They tell of a day when the Babylonian armies of King Nebudchadnezzar came against the city of Jerusalem and destroyed it and deported the flower of the Jewish nation into captivity. The kings were gone; the nation was gone; Jerusalem was gone. There began a long and sometimes tragic succession of nations that ruled Israel. Jeremiah lived through the tragedy and survived the tragedy.

The 29th chapter preserves a letter he wrote to Jewish leaders, who sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept when they remembered Zion – Psalm 137:1. What do you say to people who have lost everything?

Jeremiah said some of the most memorable words in any language. For example, in verse eleven: "I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Before we grow sentimental about this verse, we should remember the exiles, who had lost everything, and who first read it in Babylonian captivity.

He wrote another memorable line in verse seven. This one's for us. "Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." It is not your city, but act like it is. Don't whine! Don't sulk! Don't sit on the sidelines! Do all the normal things. This applies to our circumstances with special force.

And what are our circumstances? Without much warning, jump with me into deep waters. Last year, Christopher Kennedy Lawford published a book called Symptoms of Withdrawal. Lawford is one generation removed from the glory years of the Kennedy clan. His mother, Patricia Kennedy was sister to JFK, RFK, and Sen. Ted Kennedy. Patricia married Hollywood actor, Peter Lawford. Christopher is their son. Mrs. Lawford had an apartment in Manhattan, and there Christopher's book recalls a remarkable episode one evening with his famous uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Sen. Kennedy had loosened up and said, "If I hadn't gone into politics I would have been an opera singer. ... Can you imagine going up into those small Italian villages, learning those songs, and having pasta every day for lunch? ... Singing at la Scala in front of three thousand people throwing flowers at you. Then going out for dinner and having more pasta."

Everyone was laughing. Then, writes Mr. Lawford, Senator Kennedy "took a long, slow gulp of his vodka and tonic, thought for a moment, and changed tack. 'I'm glad I'm not going to be around when you guys are my age.'"

Christopher asked him why, and he said, "Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart,'" (Symptoms of Withdrawal, 379).

Lawford said, "The statement hung there, suspended in the realm of 'maybe we shouldn't go there.' No body wanted to touch it. After a few moments of heavy silence, my uncle moved on."

What did the senator mean was going to fall apart: the Kennedy clan? Or did he mean something much bigger? Lawford's conclusion was that he meant the Kennedy legacy. Maybe he did, but Lawford's own words did not persuade me.

Columnist Peggy Noonan's comment on the episode went like this: "I believe there's a general and amorphous sense that things are broken and tough history is coming," (www.opinionjournal.com/archives). It was the dark mood in her comment that caught my eye; that and the unease I sense in people around me, and my own sense of our vulnerability as a nation.

September 11, Hurricane Katrina, and illegal immigration have revealed our vulnerability. And just one day in New York City like any day in Baghdad would precipitate a national crisis. If I can figure that out, al Qaeda must know it as well. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan promises to be long. It remains to be seen if we have the national will to see it through, or if we will be like England and France on the eve of World War II.

I don't know if things are broken, or if our nation just has a long list of difficult issues to deal with. In the face of these issues I know that most of us can only do so much. These difficult issues are not on our daily agendas; they are worries in our heads. I am concerned with the response of the Christian community to these worries.

Jeremiah's words, 600 years before Christ, speak to our circumstances with great power: seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you. If we are to do that, how shall we live in these uncertain times? Because Holy Scripture is the lens through which I make sense of life, I will organize my answer to that question around two statements from Jesus. Turn with me first to Matthew 24.

Hope
In verses 12-13 Jesus said, "Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved." If you read all of chapter 24, Jesus was saying to the people of His generation, "Things are broken, and tough times are coming."

In our generation the temptation grows to think that the ship of state is taking on water, and there is nothing we can do about it. I wonder if that's what Kennedy meant. I wonder if that is what other elites in politics, media, and business think. I wonder if that is what those of us over 55 think. When people start thinking, "There's nothing I can do about it," that's when love for their country begins to grow cold.

It would be asy for people in that frame of mind to say to the rising generation in America, "I got mine, now you get yours, and good luck!" But Jesus said, "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it," (Mark 8:35). He's talking to us, when we say to our children and grandchildren, "They are your problems. You deal with them. I'm going to spend your inheritance." He went on to say: "But whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it." In other words, stand firm to the end. You know what it takes to do that? It takes hope. People who live that way have hope, and you can count on them when times are tough.

I'd like to go on record as saying, "I refuse to retreat from the action. I refuse to tell my children and grandchildren to deal with the problems I helped to create. I am more edgy about life than I was at 30. As long as I can think and act, I want to engage the issues of our time. If tough times come, then I want to be there contributing, taking risks, and bringing an eternal perspective to the tough times. I want you to be there with me."

If we are going to seek the peace and prosperity of our nation, we need to live that way. To those of us over 55 I say, "Don't sit on the sidelines! Just because today's business environment says you are too expensive to keep doesn't mean you have nothing to offer. Don't take the golden parachute and jump into selfishness. You have many fruitful years of life left. Bring along all your accumulated experience and wisdom, and use it for Christ."

Priorities, Priorities
Now, you may say to me, "What do you mean, 'Use it for Christ?' I thought we were talking about the peace and prosperity of our nation." So we were, and the tension you feel brings me to the second statement of Jesus through which I try to make sense of life. Matthew 6:33: "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness."

Many of you are deeply involved in political thought and action. I thank God for you. You are doing critical work for the peace and prosperity of our country. Keep up the good work! Many of you are deeply involved in business and industry. You are helping to create wealth that raises people out of poverty. You are doing critical work for the peace and prosperity of our country. Keep up the good work!

So, I say with deep respect: there is something greater than what you do. In Jesus' language it is seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Last year, I read a small book called The Cube and the Cathedral by a Catholic writer, George Weigel. He made this observation: "The deepest currents of history are cultural, rather than political or economic." So, what did he mean by culture?

Culture, he said, is "what people honor, cherish, and worship ... what they are willing to stake their lives on," (George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral, 30). As soon as you hear the word worship, that's where religion and spirituality come in. The spiritual, specifically the religious, roots culture in something transcendent.

I propose for your prayerful consideration that we never seek the peace and prosperity of our nation more than when we seek something greater than the peace and prosperity of our nation. C.S. Lewis caught the idea when he wrote in Mere Christianity, "We shall never save civilization as long as civilization is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more," (113).

That something else is Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God, the Church. The Christian faith has deeply informed American culture. Forty years 0of public secularism have not dislodged that influence. But the conflict between secularism and Christian faith has deeply divided American culture. If the Church is going to seek the peace and prosperity of our nation, it now has to do it in the face of our badly divided culture. I'd like to propose several ways BVBC can do that.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Anything we try to do increasingly rests on a guiding assumption: the credibility of our message depends on the authenticity of our love. Let me give substance to that.

First, you don't grow orchids in Fairbanks. You grow them in Hawaii. We have to provide the spiritual environment that nurtures authentic Christian love. That means that we engage in heartfelt worship that focuses on God, regardless of worship style, and offers a respite from the relentless pressures of our workaday world.

It also means that we preach and teach so as to bring Scripture and 2000 years of accumulated, Christian wisdom about Scripture to bear on our lives. We believe that God has seen to it that the Bible infallibly contains what we need for our salvation. Good pastoral care and the exposition of key biblical books and themes will help us to assess and meet major challenges to our faith and life.

The spiritual environment that nurtures authentic Christian love will be made up of hundreds of stakeholders, who are passionate to achieve BVBC's mission and vision. It is a powerful experience to be around a lot of people who are going in the same direction and are passionate to go there.

There is a second goal that gives substance to the authenticity of our love. Embodying authentic love requires a variety of disciples: relational, emotional, spiritual, or manual. We have to learn those disciples. How do we do that?

We need to see other people do them. That's why we keep certain events before your eyes. They model specfic ways to do compassionate deeds. So, we parade before the congregation people, who offer help to victims of Hurricane Katrina, who build homes that low-income families can own through Habitat for Humanity, and who go to Maine and Argentina and Hungary and Morocco and Senegal and Botswana and Guatemala to share the love of Christ.

Another effort we make is to identify moral issues in American culture that pose challenges to our Christian faith and to the common good, and then to engage them with gracious discernment. We did that earlier this year with our participation in A Rose and a Prayer. That had favorable, political consequences, but at its heart were moral issues, raised embryonic stem cell research.

I will never tell you how to vote. I want a congregation that tries to understand and articulate issues like that and its convictions about them. I want our voice to be heard in the public square and heard in a way that makes people want to hear more. We're not hate-mongers, and we don't want to sound like hate-mongers.

Fundamentally, human problems have become so massive that words alone just don't cut it with people. Don't preach to me; feed me. Don't make promises; help me, heal me, give me hope, don't leave me, don't give up on me.

I don't believe for a minute that the Christian message is irrelevant; but more than ever it needs to be embodied in compassionate people, who care about moral issues, but don't make a person's moral conduct the condition of loving that person, and who don't run when the going gets tough.

Would communities of people that embody such love contribute to the peace and prosperity of our terribly divided nation? I believe they would. I believe it so strongly that I am willing to spend and be spent to help BVBC be such a community. To paraphrase Jesus: seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and things that make for the peace and prosperity of the nation will be added to you as well.