Second meditation on the summer theme,
Holy Headlines: news and Good News
Col. 3: 15-17
On Thursday, we marked Canada Day. Many of us probably enjoyed fireworks or some other red white and summery celebration, and perhaps we reflected a little on what we cherish about living in our part of the world. Today, our friends in the United States will celebrate their national day with even greater hoopla.
I remember vividly the first time I felt the stirrings of something like what I would now call patriotism. I’m going to date myself here by telling you that I was a child when Canada marked its 100th birthday, a centennial year full of optimism and excitement, when our little school choir got the chance to join Canada’s pied piper, Bobby Gimby at a lunch time meeting of the St.Catharines Rotary Club where we skipped through the tables with flags and balloons singing : Ca-na-da, we love thee! Canada, proud and free! North, south, east, west, there’ll be happy times, church bells will ring, ring, ring. It’s the 100th anniversary of confederation, everybody sing together …. That was the year, 1967.
So … it’s the eve of July 1, and I’m excited to be standing on the lawn of Parliament Hill in Ottawa. I have to sit on my dad’s shoulders to catch a glimpse of the Queen or the prime minister as they speak, but as midnight approaches, anticipation grows. At last the great bell in the Peace Tower rings out 12 times, and fireworks explode and the throng sings O Canada. Suddenly, I feel proud of my country, why I’m not sure. But I do feel a profound sense of being part of something bigger. I am part of a tribe, a tribe that was perhaps just discovering itself that year.
Flash forward more than 20 years. Jeff and I and our little son Chris have moved to California, and we’re looking for a church home. We think we’ve found it, a friendly Disciples of Christ congregation in our neighbourhood with many young families and a warm welcome. But today is Nov. 11, Veteran’s Day in the United States, and we are feeling increasingly uneasy. There are flags up front, and a lay minister has just offered a long prayer in which he described America as a land specially blessed and anointed by God to carry out his purposes, often by brave men and women in uniform. And now its the offertory and the pianist is playing patriotic tunes, America the Beautiful – I sorta like that one – and God Bless America – not so sure about that – and, oh no, the Star Spangled Banner. By the time bombs are bursting in air, the congregation has risen to its feet, and we are frozen in our seats, mortified. At a ball game, I would stand for an anthem out of simple respect for the feelings of people around us. But in church, to sing about rockets red glare in praise of the state? We can’t do it. I remember Daniel in Babylon and his courage to stand up to state idolatry. I remember the other allegiance I proclaimed at my baptism. I feel excluded, violated, a stranger. I am not part of this tribe.
In the years since, and now with a binational daughter, we’ve had many reasons to reflect uneasily on our relationship as Christians to the state and to this impulse of nationalism. After all, as our theme passage from Colossians today relates, we are called to be “one body” in Christ – a body that in many aspects is invisible, global, catholic, as the old creed says, a body that does not recognize borders or tribes. And we are to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, since as members of that one body, we are called to break down walls — while nationalism, or tribalism as I think it’s better described, is founded on division – us vs. them – and all too often, on violence as a means of asserting our tribe’s dominance over yours.
Each year in the U.S., we wrote notes to our children’s teachers explaining why they would not be saying the pledge of allegiance. Jeff, while three times taking on teaching jobs in the U.S., was asked each time to sign a routine oath promising to defend the state against all enemies foreign and domestic. What that meant precisely and why it was needed to teach 15 year olds how to sing alto was not explained, but it was supposedly required of all state employees, and his refusal to sign it on principle led to some awkward moments.
The issue of tribalism and how it conflicts with our faith perhaps feels a little more clear cut when it’s bound up with glorifying military power. That conflation of militant patriotism and faith is something we smug Canadians and especially Mennonites are prone to pointing out when it comes to our neighbours. We’re peacekeepers, right? And we Canadians, with our famous inferiority complex, we don’t have a problem with tribalism, do we?
Hmm. Remember the Olympics? The thrill of hearing OUR anthem being played night after night? Hey, anything that can turn me into a hockey fan for two weeks is pretty powerful stuff.
Oh, but that’s just sports, right? Then there’s Afghanistan and the growing militarism at home, our wasteful western lifestyle that’s heedlessly destroying a planet meant for all, and a foreign policy that thinks first about the good of our tribe, whether it’s on the issue of climate change or sharing our resources with the developing world. When it comes to tribalism, in all the ways that really count, we have no reason to be smug.
What does it mean to truly think of ourselves, and all the Christians around the world, as members of one body? How does that change the way we think of the nation in which we live?
Paul’s letter to the Colossians advises us to be thankful, to sing songs of gratitude. And I am thankful to God for Canada, for its natural beauty, its decency, for its welcome of many cultures, for the law when it is righteous and justly applied, for the freedoms we enjoy, however imperfectly realized. We know in our bones and in our family histories that there are places far worse. My grandparents, who survived a perilous flight from Russia, kept a photograph of the king and queen in their living room, not as a patriotic icon, but as a symbol of heartfelt gratitude to a land that had become to them a gift from God.
I feel privileged to have been born here, privileged to welcome new Canadians, as we have often in this congregation. I also feel privileged to be able to critique the state when it fails and reject its national idols, as Daniel did in the regime of Nebuchadnezzar, and at far less personal peril. Even as a journalist, part of a profession that at its best moments speaks up for justice and truth when our systems fail us — as they did so crushingly this past weekend — even then, I know I can raise my voice without having to wonder where the lions are. And I am grateful.
But I want to remember that my allegiance must be to a different monarch than Elizabeth, that my tribe is not this nation, that my true homeland is not Canada, but the kingdom of God, and that whatever I do, in word or deed, it should not be for the sake of my tribe – whether the tribe be one of family, race, denomination or country – but should be done in the name of the Lord to whom we sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, with gratitude in our hearts.