Monday Morning Music Ministry

10-3-11

It is a good thing to remember things we celebrate, especially the words and phrases surrounding them, at times of the year not associated with them. And I don’t mean “Christmas in July” used-car sales. Every day of the year we should be astonished anew by the Easter story, the miracle of the Resurrection. Or by the powerful mystery of God’s intervention in the course of the history and in the lives of His children, to become flesh and dwell among us, which deserves better than to be categorized as a theme of Christmas time. The “fact” of it, and the “why” of it, should be cause for daily, not yearly, celebration.

In the secular world, our civic life, the same threat of lassitude exists. We relegate so many observances and speeches about the American Revolution (if noted at all) to the Fourth of July, that we tend to consider the topic covered for the rest of the year. This penchant unplugs the healthy recollection of our heritage’s great audacity, however, and can suck the life out of patriotism.

The Founders did not merely want to be independent of England. It was about more than import duties and having a voice in the British parliament. Christian Patriots caught fire. They realized that America, a land set apart, could be a society set apart too: the world’s first experiment in self-government, a Republic (not a democracy, which is a subject for a thousand posts), and, when we read the documents of the time, a civil society built along biblical principles. Even “deists” – fewer in number than modern textbooks claim – looked to the Bible for blueprints.

Revolution? Jefferson wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Significantly, he wrote this after the Constitution had been adopted.

These concepts have spiritual connotations and implications. For instance, the Roman lawyer Tertullian, after his conversion, defended persecuted Christians in Nero’s time, defiantly saying, “We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.”

That the American Revolutionaries were largely of the comfortable classes – merchants, traders, lawyers, landowners – is instructive. They had grown prosperous during British rule. They easily could have remained comfortable without rocking the boat. The lower classes, no less freedom-loving, might be seen as having “nothing to lose” by rebellion. Yet patriots of all stripes knew what was at stake. They were willing to lose their comfort, their relative freedoms, indeed their heads, if they lost… or even during the precarious process of winning.

This stark choice was not a hazy implication of their actions. They boldly closed the Declaration of Independence with the famously defiant pledge: “With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

What Tertullian said of early martyrs, and Jefferson said of citizen patriots, must be the standard of today’s Christians. We must be willing to give all and lose all for the sake of the gospel; to spend and be spent, and to realize that persecution in some degree and at some time will visit us.

Some colonial patriots did lose their homes, businesses, and lives. What did it gain them? The answer is, knowledge of worthy sacrifice for a noble ideal, and liberty for their fellow citizens and descendants. What do Christians gain by “losing all”? That answer is, gaining Heaven.

But then, in one of the Bible’s puzzling points, we occasionally read that the saints who “go before” can gain treasures in Heaven; some will have “crowns.” Do we serve Christ in order to win gifts and prizes in the afterlife? No! This is one of the great truths of the end times – In Revelation 4, verses 4, 10 and 11, we read, “And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold. The four and twenty elders fall down before Him that sat on the throne, and worship Him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.”

In other words, we gain all – eternity with Christ – by losing all. And if God graces some souls with “crowns” for having served Him in special ways, we will want immediately to lay them back at His feet!

Truly it takes losing it all, and being willing to lose all, in order to gain everything. That is true in a nation, and it is true in a kingdom – God’s kingdom. Let us appreciate that truth on more days than patriotic holidays, and at more times than in occasional sermons. It is how we should conduct our lives, daily.

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This video features the great Jessy Dixon, gospel singer, songwriter, and preacher, who died this week. The song is “I Have Everything,” precisely to our theme today. His amazing performances will be missed – what a talent he had.

Click: I Have Everything

7-4-11

Happy birthday, America. Let us commemorate July 4, the date joined in our collective consciousness with the names boldly affixed to that glorious document, the Declaration; July 4, the phrase that is synonymous with “independence” by asking “WWJD”?

And by this we mean, just for today… What Would Jefferson Do?

Would he recognize the America that he helped birth? Do you think any of the Framers might think twice about having pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor? Would Founding Fathers endorse, or despise, the changes wrought in the Federal system over the years since they dared to dream, risked the safety of their homes and families, and sacrificed in countless ways for the sake of generations yet unborn?

Benjamin Franklin told an inquirer outside Independence Hall that he and his colleagues had fashioned “a Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” Have we kept it?

Is the traditional American Fourth of July frozen in time… frozen in amber? Is it a fossil?

Many portions of the American colonies were settled to spread the Gospel; were dedicated by prayer after prayer and flag after planted flag to the cause of Christ; and were modeled on Biblical principles top to bottom. Despite many religious differences, and, of course, many secular points of view, these outposts and colonies became the American Nation.

A “nation” is different than a “country.” Like the German word “volk,” it includes the inchoate concepts of shared precepts, common goals, and assumed rights… and responsibilities. People can move to China, and they will thereafter be Americans living in China. You can obtain a visa in, say, Nigeria, and will be known as an American with Nigerian papers. Choose to live in Finland, and you will be called a Finnish citizen from America, but not a Finn. However, anyone, from anywhere in the world, comes to the United States… and that person becomes an American.

Once that title meant more than now. Even those who defend the invasion by illegal immigrants often justify it by “people want a better life” – that is, material terms. If the British, back in 1776, had proposed onerous travel restrictions; monitored what was taught in schoolrooms, churches, and town meetings; arbitrarily imposed heavy taxes… the Colonists would have rebelled.

Oh, wait. Those things did happen, and there was rebellion. And, come to think of it, those things are happening today. And there is no rebellion.

One of the forgotten inspirations of Jefferson and his compatriots was Algernon Sidney, an Englishman of the 1600s. Neither John Locke (whose Treatises on Civil Government enjoyed greater repute through the years) nor Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government, would have been written if not for the furor surrounding Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha (1679), which argued for the Divine Right of Kings. Locke and Sidney wrote persuasive and passionate defenses of individual, God-given liberty… for which they were persecuted. Locke fled to Holland, perhaps insuring his ultimate influence. Sidney was arrested and beheaded, perhaps insuring a claim on our attentions as a man willing to die for ideas.

Sidney wrote in Discourses Concerning Government (Sect. II, Par 13), “All human constitutions are subject to corruption and must perish unless they are timely renewed and reduced to their first principles.” What a concept. WWJD? Thomas Jefferson agreed: he copied this sentence prominently into his Commonplace Book.

Jefferson was the author of the cornerstone phrase, “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” In his day the radical aspect to this was not that he acknowledged a Creator God, but that rights were the basic birthright of Americans. Today, Jefferson’s descendents prattle about “rights” and “fairness” and entitlements but consider a mere mention of a Creator to be radical… or — just wait, you see it coming already — a criminal act. Happy birthday, America.

Here’s another quotation of Thomas Jefferson, inheritor of the ideals of Christian Patriots like Locke and Sidney, and prime author of the precious documents we commemorate (or should) this weekend:

“God forbid we should ever be 20 years without… rebellion…. What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that [Americans] preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural [fertilizer]” (Letter to William S. Smith, Nov. 13, 1787. See Jefferson On Democracy, Saul Padover, ed., 1939, 20).

Therefore, please, note that it is not we who rain on the birthday party. The shades of Locke and Sidney; of Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington; of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt; and of — perhaps more important than any of these supernal names — the countless and nameless Christian Patriots and pioneers and mothers and fathers and soldiers and sailors who insured the safety and prosperity we enjoy for at least the moment. Would THEY attend America’s birthday party?

Or would they send their regrets?

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Here is a song, on this theme, by the greatest American folk poet of our generation, Merle Haggard. “Are the good times really over for good?”

Click: Are the Good Times Really Over for Good?