This weekend I watched Hamilton. While telling the story of some of the founders of the United States, it brings up questions, often in short and unexplored snippets of dialog about the perpetuation of slavery in the United States, the place of Immigrants, and other inequalities that are glaring to modern people and might have been more hidden to people of the time. Last night I read for the first time in its entirety Frederick Douglass's speech "What to the American Slave is the Fourth of July?" Read it here You will not be disappointed by this speech. What an orator! What a writer! In fact, if you only have time for one, read his speech instead of this blog. (Spoiler alert: This blog is much shorter).
As I processed these two pieces of art in the midst of the current world situation, I began with the context I am most familiar with, the church.
One of the things that church leaders are fond of saying, a rightly so, is that the church is not a building; it is not an institution. The church is the people who make up that church. Our love for the church is for the people of the church. I may admire and take pride in the history of my denomination or my individual church. I may be awed by the beauty in the building where we meet and the wonderful display of the stories of the bible in our stained glass windows. Sometimes we may even say we love those things. But what I really love is the people that make up the church.
The church is made up partially by its members. The members of the church are the heart and life of the church. They have made a commitment to one another to care for one another, to support one another, to rescue one another from difficult circumstances. They are bound to one another in a fellowship that is heart-wrenching when it is broken. I say this from personal experience, and every pastor I know has shared in that experience. When those who are part of the church leave, it is an enormous grieving process for the pastors and leadership of that church, and just like any grieving process, some handle this with sadness, some withdraw, some become angry. There is always pain.
The membership is not all that makes up the church. There are lots of people who are part of the church who never become members. Maybe they are part of a feeding program. Maybe they make a one time financial contribution. Maybe they clean the church or keep the grounds. Maybe they come to Sunday School once every now and then and stir things up. These and many more are part of the church, too. And they, as part of the church, are to be loved fully.
That is true love for the church, love for all its people, whether they are members or first time visitors or come as part of a blessing of the animals service or mow the grass. We are called to have love for the entire community, those at the core and those who have been overlooked.
That led me to think about what it means to be a patriot. What does it mean to have love of country? Is it a love of the land where we live? I imagine we love this land, although I cannot overlook, even though I cannot fully discuss, the land where we live in the United States is land taken from a people who already lived here.
Land is wonderful. It is a gift from God to be cared for, but is it to be loved?
Do we love the institutions of the country? Its laws, its separation of powers, its guarantees of rights? Is that what it means to love country?
Surely these are lofty ideals, some of which we have lived up to and others of which we continue to strive toward. But is it laws or ideals or tradition that we should love? If those things become the objects of our love, is that not a form of idolatry?
When we say we love our country, does that not mean that we love the people of our country? I believe this is the greatest expression of love for our country, because I believe besides God our greatest love should be to others, not to institutions or land or doctrine.
And just like the church, I believe that love is to be extended to all the people who make up the country, not just its rich white land-owners, not just its citizens, not just the people who are on TV or who we see on a daily basis. We are to love all the people who make up this country, the refugee, the immigrant, the people from the other side of the political fence, the farm worker, the farm owner, the person of every religion and those of no religion, the LGBTQ+, everyone who lives and makes up part of this country. In my mind that is true patriotism--loving the people that make up the country, not ideals or plot of ground, but people.
That's why it is so easy to advocate for change for the oppressed. That's why it is so easy to say that we should have health care for all people here in the US. That's why it's easy to say that Black Lives Matter. No one is suggesting other lives don't matter, but when persons of color are being treated differently than those like me, we have to stand up and say that those lives are loved, precious, and must be valued as highly as whomever you want to value most highly. That's why it's easy to say we need better protections for farm workers, whether they are here legally or not, because without them our country doesn't have food. And these are human beings. That's why it's easy to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, because these are human beings who live and love and are part of our country just like anyone else, and they deserve the rights we all have.
It's easy to do these things when love of country means love of people instead of love of something else.
That's my view today.
