Civil Servants -- FPC sermon excerpt

Shots were fired.

The date was January 9, 1861. Exactly 150 years ago. A Union ship called “Star of the West” was attempting to deliver troops and supplies to Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Cadets from The Citadel fired on the ship, and forced it to return to New York. This was the first time that gunfire erupted between Southern and Northern forces.

Today is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.

Now some of you who are historical purists might argue with this date, saying that the war actually started in April 1861. That was when Fort Sumter was attacked by Confederate forces.

But tension was running high in January of that year; South Carolina had removed itself from the Union, quickly followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The attack on Fort Sumter prompted four more states to secede, leading to an 11-state Confederate States of America.

Just as Rome was not built in a day, the Union was not split with a single shot.

As we look back on the start of the Civil War, let’s consider what this conflict can teach us as we face the wars going on in our congregations, communities, and country today. Shots were fired again yesterday in Tucson — a judge was killed and a congresswoman wounded by a young man with extreme anti-government views. We need to continue to look to the past, to understand the present.

One remarkable thing about the Civil War was that both the North and the South assumed that God was on their side. Both felt that the Lord was speaking of them when they heard the words of Isaiah, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him” (42:1).

The South, in particular, had some powerful and persuasive preachers, and they used the Bible to defend the institution of slavery. Taking the Bible literally, they preached that humans had no business questioning the Word of God when it said, “slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling” (Ephesians 6:5) … “let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor” (1 Timothy 6:1) … “tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect” (Titus 2:9), and “slaves, accept the authority of your masters … not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh” (1 Peter 2:18).

Christians who wanted to preserve slavery had the words of the Bible to back them up. No wonder the people of the South believed that God was on their side.

The preachers of the North had to be more creative in their biblical interpretation, but they too found a way to defend their cause. Some emphasized that the Union had to be preserved, because without it the advance of liberty around the world would be slowed or even stopped. Said one preacher in a Thanksgiving sermon, “If America is lost, the world is lost.”

Historian James Howell Moorhead points out that other ministers drew on the Book of Revelation, and suggested that a Northern victory might prepare the way for the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. Still others preached that God would not allow the North to win until it took decisive steps to end slavery. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” sung so powerfully by our choir this morning, summed up the beliefs of the Union well:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Theological shots were being fired, from both the South and the North. And both sides were convinced that they were acting as the Lord’s servant, with God right beside them. They were bringing the words of George Washington to life, a warning that had been written 70 years earlier — Washington had said, “Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.”

Religious controversies. Acrimony. Irreconcilable hatreds.

True then. True today.

But then another president, Abraham Lincoln, offered the most constructive of perspectives on religious warfare. “My concern is not whether God is on our side,” he said; “my greatest concern is to be on God’s side.”

That’s the question that we are left with today, in the middle of our contemporary civil wars: Are we on God’s side?

We feel this question very acutely here in Fairfax, so close to Washington at a time of political transition in Congress. This question also has deep roots in our particular location, steeped in Civil War history. According to the historical marker on Main Street, right across from our church entrance, we are on the site of the birthplace of the Confederate Battle Flag. This flag was created in September 1861, to lessen confusion between Union and Confederate forces in the smoke of combat. Civil wars are very real to us, both past and present.

So the question remains: Are we on God’s side?

A Structure for Sharing -- FPC sermon excerpt

The New Year is here, and many of us have made resolutions. We want to eat better … drink less alcohol … get out of debt … find a better job.

Some people set ambitious goals, such as learning a foreign language. Some people go easy on themselves, resolving simply to grow their hair. Or take fewer showers — to conserve water.

As for me, I hope to lose a few pounds. One of my hobbies is running, but I find that the heavier I am, the harder it is.

New Year’s resolutions are easy to make, but hard to keep. The problem is that we often fail to change the structure of our lives. We say we want to eat better, but continue to go to fast food restaurants. We intend to get out of debt, but don’t live on a budget. We resolve to lose weight, but don’t come up with a plan to eat less and exercise more.

The same is true in the church, where we say we want to help the poor and the homeless, but have not developed a concrete plan for giving people access to decent, safe, affordable housing. Sure, we participate in the hypothermia shelter program here at FPC, opening our doors to our homeless neighbors, as we did last month. I’m glad we do this, and I believe that it saves lives on cold winter nights. But when the weather warms up, the homeless go right back to sleeping in the woods.

To be truly helpful to the poor and the homeless, we need to develop some shared understandings of what should be done about housing in our region, and then take action in our congregation, community, and local government. Without a shared understanding of how we can and should help the homeless and the poor, we will forever be pulling people out of the woods in the winter, and sending them back in the spring.

Fortunately, the Bible gives us a structure for helping the needy, one that can be adopted by us today, and adapted to our current situation. It is a structure for sharing.

I was reminded of this last fall, when I was participating in one of our small groups on being a hospitable congregation. A church member was talking about her community garden, and how she had been surprised that some of the vegetables were disappearing. There was a path running by the garden into the woods, and her husband told her that a homeless man was living in the woods. The woman said that she hoped that the homeless man was taking the vegetables and eating them, rather than someone else.

At that point, I mentioned that the ancient Israelites had a well-established structure for sharing with the poor. The 19th chapter of Leviticus says, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God” (vv. 9-10). Based on this passage, I encouraged the woman working the community garden to leave a little produce in the garden for the poor and resident aliens who might need it.

The ancient Israelites did not simply put band-aids on their problems, but built care for the poor and the alien into their farming practices. This was not charity; it was the way they structured their common life. I would argue that we face the same challenge today: We need to build structures of sharing into our community, and to use these structures to change public policy and perception around the homelessness issue.