National Holiday
Texts: Mark 10:35-45;
Gal 5:1, 13-26; Gen 12:1-3
Recommended: Read here the above Readings specially chosen for this day.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/bchqrWRte9E
THE BIG LIE OF NATIONALISM —
AND WHY “CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM” IS AN OXYMORON
It’s more than a year ago, before too many people were talking about it, that I went to a church near downtown Milwaukee, to hear a presentation on . . . you guessed it, Christian Nationalism. It was put on by a group of traveling church leaders — some Christian authors and teachers and pastors. (See votecommongood.com.) They were journeying around the country in a bus to warn fellow Christians about the dangers of Christian Nationalism. They had some funding to do so, but mostly they were fueled by the importance of what they are doing — like the disciples of Jesus being sent out with a minimum of provisions, relying on the support of others, as they proclaimed the Good News. They did have some ways to supplement their income, though. They were selling some ‘swag,’ like this T-shirt. It may be hard to read what’s on the front. It simply says, “Vote Common Good.”
Voting for the Common Good is actually the cure, as it turns out, for the disease of nationalisms of all kinds, including the Christian variety. But I need to back up a bit and show how to get there. How do we get to this moment in history, this November, when our learning to vote for the Common Good can be the cure for what ails not only us but I dare say all of humankind?
I propose that our First Reading from Genesis 12 provides the understanding in these three verses that is the key to everything. It’s the beginning of God’s salvation history. The first eleven chapters of the Bible give us the pre-history: first of all, that God created the world good — “very good” (Gen 1:31), even. The creation gives us everything we need to survive together — with each other, with our fellow creatures, and with our earth home. It’s a Paradise, really! But then we also see in the first eleven chapters how human beings kept screwing things up. We came to believe the Original Big Lie that God is somehow holding out on us because there isn’t enough for everyone. It’s not a Paradise. And so we fall into Us-vs-Them thinking, that it’s a dog-eat-dog world of everyone for themselves. Instead of a Paradise where there is an abundance of good things, we human beings end up believing in a world of our own making — a world where there isn’t enough. We constantly fall into the spell of scarcity thinking where it’s each person for themselves. What’s the result of that thinking? The world becomes so filled with violence that even God is tempted to Flood it and start over. But that’s only trying to solve the problem of our violence with more violence.
I was reminded of that at First Friday in downtown Racine the other night, when there was one dark cloud that briefly sprinkled a few raindrops on us. But then in the otherwise bright sky there came the rainbow — the promise in Genesis 9, after the Flood, that God’s way of solving the problem of human violence would never be through using violence. So several chapters later in Genesis 12, the real salvation begins. God launches God’s real solution: calling Abraham and Sarah out of their own country to begin to wander as the blessing that would someday be for all the families of the world. God makes a covenant with them and their descendants to teach them God’s way of peace for the sake of all the families of the world. They weren’t blessed because they were somehow special, because they somehow were better than the other families of the world and so deserved God’s blessing. No, they were blessed to be a blessing to all those other families. They were blessed with the responsibility to learn God’s way of peace to unite all those families together, in order to bring them together to enjoy the abundance of God’s good creation — instead of fighting over it as if there isn’t enough.
The problem, of course, is humankind’s sin of continuing to fall into the Big Lie that there isn’t enough, thinking that life is simply this high-stakes game of Us-vs-Them, of fighting over scarce resources. When families, including the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, get together to form a nation, the Big Lie turns into . . . [ominously] dunt dah dah, nationalism. Thinking that our nation is better than the others and so we deserve God’s blessing of taking creation’s resources for ourselves. Thinking that we can even ‘steal’ other people’s labor, enslaving them. Which we did for centuries.
Always accompanying the Big Lie of Scarcity is the Big Lie of Us-vs-Them, that We are better than Them and so deserving of God’s blessing. It warps God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah such that being blessed is somehow a sign of being better than others and so more deserving of being in charge over others. No, no, no! Blessing is not a reward, it’s a responsibility. It’s a calling to unlearn the Big Lie and relearn the story of God’s good creation where there is enough for everyone. We don’t need to be afraid. Instead, we need to learn to simply work together. We need to learn to cooperate and serve each other — rather than fighting to dominate and control each other, which is the Big Lie of Nationalism. Finally, it’s also the Big Lie of Supremacy. It’s a supremacist way of thinking — that We are better and so more deserving. God is trying to teach us from the beginning, with Abraham and Sarah, that blessing comes with a “so that”: so that you may be a blessing to others. True blessing works to undo the nationalistic way of thinking, the supremacist way of thinking, in order to work for the Common Good (holding up the T-shirt again). It’s about mutually serving one another, not vying to place each other into servitude.
The ultimate fruit of the covenant with Abraham and Sarah is that one of their descendants became the Messiah from God, the one who finally shows us clearly the Big Lies of our nationalisms, by showing us that the reign of God is something very different. The reign of God in its true form is about mutual service and working for the Common Good.
Our Second Reading today from Galatians 5 is one of the best summaries of what I’ve been talking about. First, some quick background on this letter. Paul is trying to argue against other Christian teachers who are already falling into a form of Christian Nationalism, by saying, ‘You know, Jesus was a Jew, which is the right way to do things. So when we convert Gentiles — non-Jews, non-Christians — they must learn the Jewish Torah.’ And Paul is saying, ‘No, no, no! That’s not what following Jesus is all about.’ Paul names the way of being human which continually falls into the Big Lie as “the Flesh.” It is the way of trying to enslave each other and so is the way of always becoming a slave to things like envy, competition, and violence. The fruit of the Flesh, of the Big Lie of Nationalism, is actually things like idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy. We see plenty of that around us today. And the true way of being human Paul calls the Spirit. The Spirit brings the true way of freedom from lives in constant conflict and strife — lives which are paradoxically marked by becoming slaves to one another. A freedom for lives of mutually serving one another, such that the fruits of the Spirit are markedly different: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
In our Gospel Reading today, we see the same message. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, show themselves to be thinking in terms of the Big Lie of Nationalism. They approach Jesus thinking that his coming into power will be about his ascending to control and domination over others — the usual Us-vs-Them thinking in which they will benefit by being at his side. Jesus asks in terms of the Sacraments — baptism and the cup — whether they are ready to be baptized into his way of being human, to drink the cup of self-sacrifice that he is about to drink. Then he tries to teach them again the difference between typical human reigns and God’s reign. Human reigns are about lording it over others, the various forms of nationalism. God’s reign is about mutually serving one another. It is about the Common Good. It is about being blessed to be a blessing to others. Jesus lets himself become the despised Other, the rejected one, so that we can finally learn that there is no longer Us-vs-Them; there is only Us. Jesus lets himself becoming the victim of our deadly nationalistic violence in order to reveal the true freedom of laying down our lives for one another — never in inflicting violence but in absorbing the violence because we trust in God’s abundant power of life. We trust in the abundance that leads to life, not the scarcity that leads to death.
So what does that mean for our huge decision in November? The Big Lie of Nationalism is strong once again. This time coming under the disguise of the name “Christian.” I hope it’s clear to you by now that the term “Christian Nationalism” is an oxymoron, two words that don’t belong together. To follow the way of Christ is to follow the new way of being human in which we put behind us all those ways of Us-vs-Them thinking — all those supremacist ways of thinking: that our ways our better, so we need to be in charge, we need to be in control — whatever it takes to do so. To follow Christ, on the other hand, paradoxically means that even the lines between “Christian” and “non-Christian” dissolve when it comes to being one new humanity.
[The following was in the original text of the sermon but was skipped over in the delivery: In this year of reading through Mark’s Gospel, we will arrive at the story of the sons Zebedee again shortly before Election Day. In the meantime, we will encounter stories of Jesus constantly crossing back and forth between Jewish and Gentile regions, working the same miracles of healing on both sides. His politics of healing were not only for all people but they ultimately aim to end at the healing of the conflicts between peoples. His goal is to heal our way of being human so that we find true freedom in crossing the usual boundaries to serve one another as equals. If we aren’t serving each other as equals, then we generally find a way to turn the serving into servitude, where one group of people must serve the other group because the notion of blessing has been twisted into reward instead of responsibility. Christian Nationalists see themselves as blessed in the twisted sense of deserving the reward of being able to lord it over others. As we’ve hopefully learned this morning, that couldn’t be further from what it means to be Christian in the sense of following Christ into the way of mutually serving.]
What does this mean more specifically in terms of voting on November 5? It means, “Vote Common Good” (holding up T-shirt once again). For example, it’s easy to fall into the thinking of voting what’s best for me and my family, usually in terms of what’s best in day-to-day economics. But can you see how that might be falling into the scarcity thinking of the Big Lie. What if we learned to think more naturally in terms of abundance? That there is enough for everyone, so what kind of economics or politics does it take to make sure everyone gets enough? Gets at least the basics of things like healthcare, good jobs, and so many other basics of the pursuit of happiness? What if we could imagine a politics not in terms of fighting one another for such things, but instead actually trusting that there’s more than enough so that we can mutually serve one another in achieving them? In other words, vote for the Common Good.
One last, brief but important question. As our churches continue to shrink, what if we revitalized the Gospel precisely in terms of unlearning the Big Lie of Nationalism in order to offer our fellow citizens the alternative? The Good News of God’s way to seek the Common Good? Do you think our fellow citizens might find that helpful and relevant to their lives, too? Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, July 7, 2024
YouTube: https://youtu.be/bchqrWRte9E
