“When the Foundations are Being Destroyed”
Patuxent Presbyterian Church
California Maryland,
Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor
Sunday 14 June 2020 – FLAG DAY
Job 1:13-22
1 Corinthians 3:10-11
Psalm 11
“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can
the righteous do?” Psalm 11:3
What is your earliest
memory of seeing the flag of this great country of ours and being aware of what
it was, of what it represents?
For me it was in first
grade in the public schools of the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier, when we did
something that in retrospect I know I didn’t understand at that tender age –
none of us did, really – allegiance, United States of America, republic,
nation, God, indivisible, liberty, justice. It was more than our little minds
could comprehend must less memorize, but memorize the pledge we did as we said
it every morning, hand over heart, at the opening of the school day, and in the
second grade, the third grade, the fourth grade, and so on into the homerooms
of junior high and high school.
Two hundred and forty-four
years ago on July 4th, 1776, the birth of this nation was announced
with a Declaration of Independence, a date everyone knows as a holiday marked
by picnics and fireworks and parades. Fourth of July parades are always moving
events with marching bands, groups of aged veterans, first responders and the
firetrucks every little boy loves to see. What always, without exception,
brings an emotional response within me is the sight of current military
personnel, because I am aware that these young men and women in uniform have
donned that uniform out of choice and in so doing have said by wearing it that
they would fight to defend my life even at the risk of losing their own. I look
into their faces, and I cannot speak.
But way in the distance of
our collective national memory is something else that happened, one year after
that historic fourth of July, on June 14, 1777 when the flag we learned to
pledge allegiance to was adopted, consisting of 13 alternating bars of red and
white, and a quarter corner of blue with a circle of 13 stars representing, it
was said at the time, a new constellation in the heavens, the anniversary of
which we mark today, Sunday June 14, 2020, Flag Day.
There was, however, no
pledge of allegiance to the flag or to this country until a Baptist minister,
Francis Bellamy, wrote our present pledge in 1892, with the phrase “under God”
added by President Eisenhower in 1954 in the height of the cold war against
atheistic communism.
Now we are living in a
time where we are experiencing firsthand the eroding of the foundations upon
which this country was founded and for which this flag stands.
The Psalmist David knew
both the reality and value of foundations as well as what it means to have
those foundations threatened or even destroyed, giving us our text for this Flag
Day:
“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can
the righteous do?” Psalm 11:3
Q: What are
these foundations that are being eroded in our country today?
“When the foundations are being destroyed …”
The foundation of
health – the coronavirus. The
politicizing of a non-partisan global health crisis, the worst in a hundred
years, has impeded our response as a nation and cost lives. We are losing the
foundation of an assumption of health and adequate health care.
The foundation of
income through work – 40 million
Americans have lost their jobs and their source of income by which they have provided
for themselves and their families, losing the foundation of income security.
The foundation of trust
and civility – the corrosion of
leadership.
I find myself speechless at
times in the presence of the relentless demonizing of half the nation by the
other half, of pettiness and fabricated attempts to destroy the reputations of
those with whom some disagree, and behavior and rhetoric that instead of
bringing us together as a nation during this time of multiple crises is instead
continuing to drive ever deeper the wedge of division that has been injuring
our national soul now for several years doing severe damage to the foundation
of civility without which no nation or culture can long endure.
We are now engaged in a
new civil war, fought not with weapons but with words, not over north and south
but left and right, not between the blue and the grey but the blue and the red,
increasingly robbing us of our need to engage in respectful dialogue. The demonizing of half of who we
are by the other half of who we are is going to cause us to lose all of who we
are. It is a foundation of civilization that once severely damaged will
take generations to slowly repair.
The foundation of human
equality – the deep running wound of racism erupting again. The unprecedented numbers of marches and persons and
time involved today will hopefully see us turn a corner in a longstanding wound
in our national soul, with the politicizing of racism not allowed this time to
dictate what happens. This is a fragile foundation that has yet to be fully
built.
Ironically, our Old
Testament lesson this morning tells us of a man named Job who thousands of
years ago experienced the loss of all of these foundations in his life: he was
afflicted with a painful illness, he lost his sources of income, and he lost
his position of leadership in his community resulting in his being treated with
prejudice and rejection. In the bottom of his despair he cried out, “I know
that my redeemer lives …”
I believe Job is an
exhibition of a reason why black churches often exhibit a greater intensity in
the expression of their faith than their white counterparts due to the anvil of
racism and prejudice on which that faith is hammered out.
When it comes to the
foundation of human equality our national history has revealed a consistent
pattern of commitment to principles and truths in our secular documents that
echo the principles and truths of Scripture:
The Declaration of
Independence, signed at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 4 July 1776.
This foundational document
contains this phrase: “…all men are created equal.” Yet forty-one
of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence owned slaves including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson and Presbyterian minister John Witherspoon, continuing a commercial
and cultural practice already in place since 1619.
Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address at the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania battlefield 19 November 1863.
It was in Mrs. Thomas’
fifth grade class in the little elementary school in the desert town of Boulder
City, Nevada, that we were all required to memorize Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address. To this day I can still quote the opening lines:
“Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to
the proposition that all men are created equal.”
And yet while freedom from
being someone else’s property became theirs with the signature of President
Lincoln on the Emancipation Proclamation, freedom and equality are two
different things, and the latter has eluded African Americans to this day, with
the unprecedented rallies and marches at this time in our history reminding us
that it is time to redress this grievous wound to the soul of so many.
Baptist minister
Francis Bellamy’s Pledge of Allegiance in 1892. Written at the request of a flag manufacturer wanting
to promote the placement of flags in every public school classroom, Rev. Bellamy concluded his brief pledge with
words indelibly inscribed in the minds of millions of school children from that
day to this: “… with liberty and justice for all.” But the liberty and
justice to which we have pledged ourselves has had an unequal distribution over
the years dependent on income, education, geography and, more than anything
else, skin color.
Martin Luther King’s “I
Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial 23 August 1963.
“When the architects of
our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence, (they were) a promise that all men, yes, black
men as well as
white men, would be
guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.”
It was in that same speech
that Dr. King spoke prophetically of this day in which we now find ourselves
some 57 years later:
“It would be fatal for the
nation to overlook the urgency of the moment… . The whirlwinds of revolt will
continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright light
of justice appears.” A sober warning most appropriate for today.
His speech, drawing
heavily on Biblical language, referenced Amos 5:24 – “Let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream,” inscribed on the MLK monument
in Washington, DC and in numerous other monuments and tributes to Dr. King
across the country. It was for him the defining Biblical text. And for those of
us who claim to be followers of the God who wrote the Bible, it is a text we
cannot, we must not, ignore. None of the Bible is optional.
“All men are
created equal,” says the Declaration of Independence, our foundational national
document, our secular scripture.
“... all men are
created equal, echoed Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address.
“… with liberty and
justice for all,” wrote Rev. Bellamy in his pledge of allegiance, giving
the clear impression that it is a statement of fact rather than a suggestion.
“… all men, yes
black men and white men, would be guaranteed rights of life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness,” thundered Rev. King in front of Lincoln’s statue, as
though in some way it was a new concept he was introducing, and new it was for
most standing in front of him.
All means all means all:
God puts it this way: “For God so loved the world (and there are no parenthetical
exceptions of His loving one group more or one group less based on culture or
skin color), that he gave His only son, that whoever (no
exceptions again) believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” This
alone is the metric for valuing human life. – ALL human beings are created
equal.
This requires more of us
than the emotions of the moment. It requires of us an internal decision to
begin to seek, one step, one day at a time, ways in which we can be part of a
solution rather than through passivity, part of the problem. There is no
allowance for conscientious objectors in this God-given call to justice for
human beings.
History has placed us at a
crossroads where, because of the nature of time, we will not be allowed to
linger long. Time is ticking – how will we use it?
As one of the members of
this church reminds us beneath their name in every email they send, from a
quote of Dr. Martin Luther King: “The time is always right to do what is
right.”
So it’s time to ask the
question that forms the other half of our text for the day: “When the
foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
“… what can the righteous do?”
This is not a rhetorical
question but rather one that asks for a response because it knows there is one.
While all of the
foundations that are under attack at this time are critical to our continued
survival as a great nation, and one in particular is front and center, that of
human equality, we cannot, we must not, look to any social contract to serve as
the ultimate foundation for our existence. Rather we address the foundations of
this world from the vantage point of the foundations given by God, the only
foundations that will last forever.
What we are experiencing
is a call to clear the clutter from our own foundations as followers of Jesus
Christ, affirm them and strengthen them. What are these foundations?
The foundation of Jesus
Christ - 1 Corinthians 3:11
“For no one can lay any
foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
This is fundamental – our
lives grounded on a foundation of a relationship with Jesus Christ, the absence
of which, at the end of day, renders all other societal foundations valueless.
Jesus Christ came into my
life the summer before my senior year of high school and he has never left,
building in the core of my being a foundation that has stood the test of time.
The foundation of God’s
Word – Ephesians 2:19-20
“Consequently, you are
no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and
members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, with Jesus Christ himself as the chief cornerstone.”
Either this book “of
the apostles and prophets” is trustworthy or it is not. There can be no
equivocation regarding its role in our lives. Here’s how I have put it over the
years: The mystery of inspiration and the complexities of transmission
notwithstanding, I have leaned into the Bible with the weight of my existence and
found it to be trustworthy in all its parts. It’s a relational thing, an
experiential thing.
The foundation of the
ownership of our lives, our existence – 2 Timothy 2:19
“…God’s solid foundation
stands firm, sealed with this inscription, ‘the Lord knows those who are
his.’”
Bob Dylan reminds us of
this principle in the refrain of his song, “Gotta Serve Somebody”
“But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes,
Indeed you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
We’re all ‘gonna serve
somebody.’ There is a solid foundation on which are inscribed these words, “The
Lord knows those who are his,” those who are ‘gonna serve the Lord. Does He
know you are His? Do you?
The foundation of good
works that are the evidence of our faith – 1 Timothy 6:18-19
“Command them to do
good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.
In this way they will
be laying up treasure for themselves, as a firm foundation for the
coming age, so that they may take hold of life which is truly life.”
We build a good foundation
within ourselves in our character when we focus on doing good for others in the
midst of a culture marked for the past few years with an ‘us first’ worldview.
We are called not to follow a ‘me first’ model of leadership but rather a
leadership that says, in His own words, “the Son of man came not to be
served, but to serve, and give …” The
Gospel of Jesus Christ is radical and at times offensive because it strikes at
the heart of the self-centered and self-serving interests of fallen humanity.
We were reminded of this
critical posture in our affirmation of faith this morning from the Barmen
Declaration written in the face of a growing ‘me first’ nationalism in Nazi
Germany in 1934, that included this sober warning from the lips of Jesus in
God’s Word: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and
their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you: but
whoever would be great among you must be your servant.”
As we seek to be servants
of others, we build on this solid foundation of good works.
So here’s the bottom line:
The foundation we choose now will determine what will happen at the end of our
lives.
Jesus illustrates this in
a picture story we can all ‘see’ and understand in Matthew 7:24-27:
“Therefore everyone who
hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who
built his house on a rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds
blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall because it had its
foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not
put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The
rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that
house, and it fell with a great crash.” (“… great was the fall of it.” KJV.)
Again – the foundation we
choose now will determine what happens to us at the end of our lives. And at
the end of it all, at the end of human history, all governments and kingdoms
including our own will cease to exist, and it will become so that “The
kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ
and He shall reign for ever and ever.” Revelation 11:15. In the meantime – “What
shall the righteous do?
MONDAY MORNING
Every week I give you
‘Monday morning’ homework, so here’s your homework for this coming week, two questions
which, having once read, you cannot escape responding to in some way:
(1) Which of these foundations under attack is God
calling you to get involved in in some way?
(2) Which of these foundations in God’s Word is God
calling you to pursue and cultivate in your own life?
Let’s Pray: Heavenly
Father, Lord Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit: We confess that during this time in our
individual and national history we are feeling overwhelmed and helpless. We
seek to decipher foundations being eroded, and at the same time to discern
foundations that are trustworthy for our lives.
On this Flag Day we pray
for all those in positions of political power: for those who know you as Lord
and Savior on both sides of the aisle, and in whom therefore the Holy Spirit
dwells: convict them deeply in the best sense of the word of their political
partisanship at any time their positions are not what is best for the people of
this country. Fill them with a passion for the call of your Word to justice and
righteousness. And for those who don’t
know you work in their God-given consciences and give them genuinely guilty
consciences when they do things out of partisan politics instead out of a sincere
desire to do what is best for the people of this country.
And for us – work in our
consciences as well, and open to us insight into how we can be part of the
solutions needed to address the foundations under threat in our communities,
our county, our state, and our country. Fill us with an equal passion for the
building of your strong foundations deep within us that will last forever. We
ask these things in the strong name of Jesus Christ, the solid rock, our only
Savior. Amen.
And now let us sing the
closing hymn, affirming what we have talked about this morning:
My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and
righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean
on Jesus’ name.
On Christ the solid rock I stand all other ground is
sinking sand,
all other ground is sinking sand.
Sermon © 2020 Robert Bayley
+
