Bursting the Flags Bursting the Air
A sermon by Rev. Douglas Olds
Point Reyes (CA) Community Presbyterian Church
Sunday, April 14, 2024
"This is a Christian nation!"
Jesus: "My kingdom is not of this world."
"We need to take back this country for Christ!"
Jesus: "My kingdom is not of this world."
"We need to have the government legislate Christian values!"
Jesus: "My kingdom is not of this world."
Our role as followers of Jesus in relationship to our nation is to be a prophetic witness on behalf of the poor, the powerless, and the vulnerable among us.
~BENJAMIN CREMER
Sermon Audio linked here
OT Reading: Second Samuel 7:1-29
Now when the king was settled in his house, and the LORD
had given him rest from all his enemies around him, 2 the king said to the
prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God
stays in a tent.” 3 Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in
mind; for the LORD is with you.”
4 But that same night the word of the LORD came to
Nathan: 5 Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the
one to build me a house to live in? 6 I have not lived in a house since
the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have
been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. 7 Wherever I have moved
about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the
tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel,
saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” 8 Now therefore thus
you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the LORD of hosts: I took you from
the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel;
9 and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your
enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of
the great ones of the earth. 10 And I will appoint a place for my people
Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed
no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11 from
the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you
rest from all your enemies. Moreover the LORD declares to you that the LORD
will make you a house. 12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down
with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come
forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build
a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
14 I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits
iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows
inflicted by human beings. 15 But I will not take my steadfast love from
him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. 16 Your
house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall
be established forever. 17 In accordance with all these words and with all
this vision, Nathan spoke to David.
NT Reading: Romans 3:19-31
Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
27 Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By
what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 For we hold
that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.
29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also?
Yes, of Gentiles also, 30 since God is one; and he will justify the
circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same
faith. 31 Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the
contrary, we uphold the law.
Our OT reading this morning introduces the tragic imperial
reach of nations. David has been promised an eternal house by God and is
determined to mirror that promise by building a house for God that advertises
to his people his relationship with God. Unlike Moses receiving the specific
instructions to build and detail the tabernacle, the first temple emerged from
a dynastic impulse realized by David’s son Solomon.
Goethe wrote: "Are we not here for the very purpose of
making the transitory everlasting? And this can happen, of course, only when we
are able to value both."
Yet the OT is a story of the unfolding history of Israel as
it inverts these relative values, favoring by seeking to construct and secure the
permanent, seeking the institutionalization of state and religion, while
devaluing what is transitory, what is manifold and fractal and dancing and
generative of shalom rather than emplacing stones that can and will be thrown. As
it submits to human priorities for security rather than God’s trustworthy
promises, the political actors of the OT repeatedly and routinely put
subsidiary things first, and the first things of God’s promises and covenants
second. In these inversions, we see the theology of state symbols displacing
obligations to neighbors. We see succeeding generations ever crawling through
the mire of nostalgia, seeking improvement in stone rather than in the
generative living stone, the danced, the fractal individuality of the snowflake
rather than the institutions of snowforts. The bomb bursting in air rather than
planting the flower blooming in the wind, even though it is transitory, may wither and fade in its
season to give rise to another season, another bloom, another dance. In activity
and renewal is permanence, not in guarded towers.
The first things of God are never state theology; it is the
neighbor love walked and extended in Jesus of Nazareth. What Paul in our
reading this morning The Law of righteousness apart from law—apart from human
institutions of criminological inquisitions. The Law of Love manifest on the
Cross that unseparates us from the pragmatic philosophical state that ever
tries to separate us from God and the obligations of the Golden Rule.
But first Israel in the promised land documented other ways.
The house of David, by trying to mirror the initiative of God for dynastic and
power-institutionalizing reasons, comes to advertise, by mirroring, a special
relationship with the divine. At that point, the survival of these institutions
becomes seen in the Biblical witness as contingent on the dynast’s and their
proxies’ performances of intentions to mirror the divine volition; and to the
extent they proclaimed such, they were held to that account. God’s promises are never contingent, but
human responses set themselves up in theologies of merit that becomes their
measure for others. But Jesus says (Matt7: 2): by the measure you give
will be the measure you get.
Once these institutions create false theologies of
contingencies, they themselves are subject to those same contingencies, and
predictably, they are doomed to fail because they are unable to live up to
their own systematic warrants and claims. They become hypocrites. Their temples
are ever doomed by their inverted theologies and false hearts.
This institutionalizing of religion
in service of the state is ever behind these initiatives of rulers. This is
behind the placement of flags: to confirm for ourselves of our performances
that give us a sense of security for the covenant promises of god. But these grand
initiatives are not only not necessary, for God’s covenants are true, but
actually can mislead us as to how we are living secure—in a flag territory
because we’ve linked that flag to our given places we hope permanent. And once
we do that, our injustices get tied to that flag by the righteousness of God.
Political symbols neither warrant god’s covenantal care nor advertise to others
a special relationship. Instead,
We seek permanence of place and preferred order by tying
church and state together, but in so doing we are held to prophetic standards
of being just and provisional to all, no matter how impermanent inside the
state structures we create. If we set ourselves up by institutions as
representatives of God’s justice and God’s plan, we are held to the highest
standard of that justice. This is the repeated prophetic critique of Israel’s
monarchs.
But there is a preceding error in this construction of state
theology. It misconstrues what it means to be a nation. A nation is not a state
apparatus. It is not a Napoleonic reflection of the excellence and will of its
leader. A nation in the OT and into the era of the church is not a kinship
structure, nor in the last 300 years of tragic applications of biological
science, a nation is not a race or genetic order.
The Day of Pentecost confirms that the nation was an
historical language group that shared an historical archive and values embedded
and derived therein. The Exodus from slavery led by Moses and Aaron expose too
that the Israelites were liberated slaves from the Pharaonic world system. Some
were descendents of the 12 tribes of Jacob, but the Bible speaks of fellow
travelers in the Exodus who weren’t: the gerim. These were accorded rights of
religious and political participation by virtue of neighborhood and shared,
linguistically mediated values and commitment to the liberating God. Nationhood
is ever deliberated linguistically, adhered to shared will and not coerced.
Biblical nationhood is a spiritual project on the way to developing
civilizations of care, not punitive, exclusionary, and purified social orders
according to some hegemon’s nostalgia seeking eternal return.
Into this fitful but progressive sequence of nation building
in the church has repeated various redefinitions of nationhood to justify
claims of controlling their narratives and their orders. First going by the
name of “dominionism,” where religious authorities claimed rights over the non-religious.
The medieval church formulated the doctrine of discovery that transferred land
tenure from indigenous natives in the New World to Old World Christian masters
on the basis that the natives were not exercising western methods of efficient
exploitation-- that the European masters would improve husbandry and evangelize
the pagans.
We see from this power-extension an
inverted—perverted--sequence of hegemonic hierarchies and authoritarian
tragedies that don’t always originate in the church, but come to recruit the
church’s symbols and speak its language because of the prestige of Jesus Christ
and the claim of a special relationship with the absolute:
Behind the Doctrine of Discovery of the medieval church:
“God designed the Europeans to rule over the indigenous.”
Behind the Dred Scott decision and the Confederacy: “God
designed the white man to rule over black men and women.”
Behind patriarchal dominionism: “God designed men to rule
over women.”
Behind Christian Nationalism: God designed Christians to
rule America.
God designed OT corporal punishments to structure the
American Social order and soul.
And Behind Religious flag realism: God designed America to
subjugate the world orders by force of arms.
Christian nationalists are perverting religious language,
which, as the foundation of an ethnos,[1]
a biblical nation as language collective, is actually ethnic treason. Political
lies, propaganda, and conspiratorial shams are linguistic treason:
what Pinker [ Enlightenment Now, 358–59 emph. orig.] calls
the Tragedy of the Belief Commons which rejects, misquotes, and misapplies
“expertise, brainpower, and conscious reasoning,” instead to ingeniously and
ruthlessly manipulate these for the purposes of generating in-group boundaries
and demonizing opponents. This process
of bludgeoning the truth crawls and may be recognized in
"blue lies and [sham] beliefs are expressed for the purpose
of performance rather than truth: they are trying to antagonize liberals and
display solidarity with their blood brothers. The anthropologist John Tooby
adds that preposterous beliefs are more effective signals of coalitional
loyalty than reasonable ones." We call
this propaganda, but I’m calling it ethnic treason. The purposeful degradation
of language for sucking others into the void of violence and fascism and lies,
and the eternal regret that follows because this ethnic treason to the language
group disestablishes love and neighborliness. Melancholic nostalgia and its
distortion in catastrophic apocalyptic expectations is the mother of all
treachery and noxious theology underlying it.
For demonizers of enemies like Gen. Mike Flynn, interogating
Beliefing, always beliefing attempts to make secure by exclusion, never by ethics that gentle and create civilizations
of care. Christian nationalist belief is performance of malice at outsiders,
criminalizing them, not belief aligning with empathy and GR care and repair. These
christian nationalist authoritarians who collect around symbols of “heritage:”
the Confederacy’s flag, the Pine Tree “Appeal to Heaven” flag of the Am.
Revolution that is residing outside Mike Johnson’s speaker’s office. That
“protestant’ flag in the back that mistakes territorial institutionalism and
offices with the deinstitutionalization of the reformers.
Increasingly the far-right is adopting Christian charismatic
language because the characterization of political enemies as “demon possessed”
serves murderous sets of applications, desensitizing ourselves to think of
others as nonhuman and deserving of scorn or elimination. Vladimir Putin compares himself to Jesus as
he faces off against 'satanic' West. See the pattern of misusing Christianity
by the power hungry, who use threats to make an impression that they claim is
orthodox? They use codewords that give them plausible deniability as to their
intent, but in reality play games with language which they try to cover with
flags and false sentiments and bastard anthems and thank you for your service
for dropping bombs and threats of conformity and call these traditional values
but are far from the Law of Love, the Golden Rule.
This outreach of Christian nationalists to the young, like
hill staffers, some of whom are confused about Christian life, others who want
to join the power base forming Christian nationalism that uses political and
religious language to demonize and dehumanize. And win no matter what the cost
to the Logos of our language and the Christian values embedded in it to be
shared with newcomers and new borns.
It is a surprise that mainline
Protestants align in some way with the goals and methods of Christian
nationalism, and this warrants analysis and understanding. When we think of
PCUSA mainline, we don’t think of Davidic monarchic politics and building of
temples. Often considered more liberal or progressive than rightwing
evangelicals drawn to the inquisitions of “belief”, mainliners have a different
approach to scripture—not holding to inerrancy and simple and static meanings
that literally endure through historical epochs and ground nostalgia. They have
a different approach to ethics, which I wrote a book about—that bottom-up
virtues calm neighborhoods in contrast with strategizing top-down authorities.
Mainline churches take care of framing
social justice In their approach faith and raise it beyond simple affirmation of “beliefs.” They
believe in historical progress, not a recurrence of historical forms leading to
apocalyptic catastrophe. When we think of Christian nationalism, we think of
conservative evangelicals,
When, in the mid-20th C, mainline protestants
drove civil, religious policy in this country, it was more demographically
homogeneous. The right wing performance of malice hates this social change and
wants to restore the US to some 1965, pre-MLK, and in some cases pre-civil war
vision of social order. Their claim is that God is found in the past and that
sin has taken over. Let me be very clear: this is wrong and theologically
toxic. God is driving social change, which includes demographic change and
deinstitutionalization of authorities of preferred social orders. The church is
not living for a time of social restoration and nostalgiaic return, but is
being led to individualize responsibility for neighbors and create the
civilization of healing that has always been the waystation in the Kingdom of
God. We are advanced on the path that tolerates and incorporates others with
different commitments. We are not meant to “heal a social order” by exclusion
and criminal investigation of beliefs, but by reaching out to every neighbor
encountered in our daily walk.
By the 20th century the mainlines exercised tremendous
cultural and social influence. Whether naively or cynically they believed that
what was good for the mai line WAS good for society and vice versa. This was
termed in the 1950s the civil religion discourse that said to adVance the cause
of Christ from our tradition is going to be good not just for the church BUT
for wider society under challenge of communism. Civil Religion was founded on a
more homogeneous society coalescing around what was becoming termed the
american way of life. When Eisenhower attended a mainline church while
president, the alerted preacher made his sermon about putting the phrase “under
God” into the pledge of Allegiance where it had not been before. And this
sermon framed atheists as social parasites.
Into this muscular moment for mainline Protestantism, some
darker Presbyterian elements came in: RJ Rushdoony and his reconstructionism proposed
to define the American way of life on OT terms. He proposed a certain way of
reading the OT that called for death for heresy, for false teachings (as he defined
them), for Adultery, and other behavioral challenges to authority. Corporal
punishment for children. This Reconstructionist/OT “dominionism” claimed it was
the only way to understand Christianity and interrogate Christian claimants,
and it was legalistic and criminological in nation-state terms. It entirely
missed the message of Pentecost that a nation was a voluntary assemblage of
language groups. Reconstructionists proposed to put under capital discipline those
who opposed their one, inerrant way of ‘belief.’ The evangelist John (16: 2b-3) warns of them:
According to recent polling 1/3 of mainline protestants are
sympathetic to Christian nationalism. To the relationship of Cross and
Flag. I’m not your pastor, but your
moderator which in our denomination is tasked with knowing the big picture, to consider
the times we are leaving in, to lead its
councils to address challenges, dangers, and opportunities for the church as
social conditions change. We are in one such moment, which reformers call
“Kairos,” to address the two paths open to social change: to find a home in
nostalgia of the 1950s-70 when “civil religion” was defined by bombs bursting
in air and “one nation under God,” the Christian God. My friends, in the PCUSA
a moderator is a prophet: those times are not coming back. Nostalgia is always
a dead and death-dealing end, at best in melancholy and disappointment.
While mainliners have done much good work in redressing
their responsibility for slavery and its legacy in this country, there are
calls to which I join that the PCUSA needs to study and acknowledge its
participation in Christian nationalism that continues to call for the
criminalization and corporal disciplining of otherness, esp. beliefs not
endorsed by a religious institutionalism and authoritarianism. The price of
this acknowledgement is eternal vigilance. Rushdoony like others have written
favorably about slavery and hypothesize its return.
Paul in Romans says to avoid these guys, because they are
ADJACENT to the woe they wish on others but destined as their mirror. They
thrive on rejecting and judging anyone whose beliefs don't completely align
with THEIRS, BUT LIKE The rest of us, THEY ARE BLIND TO THEIR flaws, but these
are MAGNIFIED BY an identifying INTOLERANCE AND bitter rejoicing in nostalgia
they hope to institutionalize.
“Rom 2.13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are
righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14
When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law
requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. 15 They
show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own
conscience also bears witness…They have the appearance of godliness [in their
talk about belief], but they deny the power” of love by withdrawing into the
Christian national security state and the nostalgia and false consciousness of
fixed social orders based on tribal (not spiritual) kinship.
Paul goes on in the next chapter to say that
Christians are to uphold the Law, the Law of Love. This is
righteousness apart from (anarthrous) generic human legalism and
disciplining. Do you see that
transcendent law in the flag? I don’t. Maybe love for our families, for our
lineages, for our “heritage.” For our modern plantations and gated communities.
But love for our neighbors, each and every one, in that flag which has a
history of a social order founded on the enslavement of people defined as 3/5 a
voting being? In a shrinking world where more and more come into our view, a
crowding world ever challenging us to love strangers and enemies. Is the flag
part of this? Christian Nationalists talk like only a government run by
Christians could possibly be run in a just and moral way. But Paul the Apostle
talks as though sometimes “parasites” and atheists have a better sense of
justice and morality than Christians do. This is behind the USA political
experiment that puts deliberation into the primacy of ethnicity and excludes
criminal inquistitions of beliefing.
CONCLUSION:
God’s righteousness is not criminological. That is the tired
realism of misdefined ‘nationalists’ always seeking to drum up scares of the
enemies within.
If you preach with flags behind you, I’m going to assume
you’re a puppet of those who control, interpret, and plant those flags in the
backs of the fallen. Having any level of certainty that God wants you to use
violence and hegemony for God’s purposes is the mark of false prophets.
Brothers and Sisters, the bureaucratic state is never
primary in the Kingdom of God. Virtues, shalom, and the Golden Rule are. Where
are these in flags, their false flower? Where are these in institutions of
authority? Paul says that apart from human administrative legalism we are
righteous when we uphold the Law of Love. Let us Give Paul’s message prolonged
consideration as we move, generationally into the civilization of care and
leave the stone throwing temples of nationalism behind. Leave the bombs, make space
always for new flowers to plant and bloom. In this we come to recognize and
embody hope. Praise the Lord, the Lord alone. May it be so for you and me, AMEN.
[1] Nation and language are linked in God’s estimation per the Scriptures. Not only at Pentecost:
“I will record Rahab and Babylon
among those who acknowledge me—
Philistia too, and Tyre, along with Cush—
and will say, ‘This one was born in Zion.’ ”
Indeed, of Zion it will be said,
“This one and that one were born in her,
and the Most High himself will establish her.”
The LORD will write in the register of the peoples:
“This one was born in Zion.” (Ps. 87:2–6; cf. Ps. 49:1-4, 11)
[2] Note, in distinction with later Pauline notes of "the" law, that this is anarthrous law. It lacks the article, so it is distinguished from the Torah of love that concludes this section. That Paul's followers "uphold." The generic law, distinguished by this lack of an article, is human legalism based on categorical and contingent constructions of criminology and interrogation.
