"God Bless America" and Other July 4th Conundrums

Today's gospel covers the portion of Jesus' trial where he is transferred from Pilate, to Herod, and back again to Pilate. It concludes with this postscript. "That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies." Likely Luke is simply making an allusion to Psalm 2, but I immediately thought of the phrase, "Politics makes strange bedfellows."

That is perhaps even more so when politics gets mixed with religion, which is has as long as both have existed. A perpetual human project is the attempt to manage God for our own purposes. "God bless America" is a fairly innocuous version of this (made less innocuous when in includes the expectation that blessing America means cursing our enemies). Enlisting God in the national cause often seems a good thing for the nation, not always so good a thing for God.

Speaking of alliances between God and country, I'm glad the Old Testament passage I'm preaching on next Sunday didn't arrive on the July 4th weekend. As a preacher, I tend to stay a week or so ahead on sermon preparation, and as I worked on the sermon from Amos 7, I said a little thank you that the text gave me a bit of distance from "God Bless America" sung to accompanying fireworks.

In the passage, Amos, who comes from the southern kingdom of Judah, travels to the northern kingdom of Israel to condemn their king. You can imagine how well that goes over. And so the priest of the sanctuary at Bethel, a sort of northern equivalent of the Jerusalem Temple, tells Amos to get out of town. But as he does so, the strange bedfellows things pops up. He refers to the temple as "the king's sanctuary." Not God's sanctuary but the king's. It's not quite the same as saying the king has commanded God to bless Israel, but the effect is pretty much the same.

When people sing "God Bless America," or when they invoke the phrase in speeches, I don't know what is in their hearts. But sometimes it doesn't sound much like a request or petition. It sound like a demand or an expectation.

I certainly would prefer that God bless America. I also love fireworks and John Philip Sousa marches. But I think it beyond arrogant to imagine that God has to be a loyal member of our team, a notion that worked out rather poorly for the king of Israel and his head priest at Bethel. 

A number of years ago my wife stuck a quote from U2 band member Bono on our refrigerator. Bono said a wise man once told him something that changed his life. "Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Get involved in what God is doing, because it's already blessed."

I'm pretty sure that applies to countries, too.

Click to learn more about the lectionary.