REBIRTH OF THE VISION John M. Buchanan

Galatians 5:1, 13-15 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
July 6, 1980 Columbus, Ohio
"When there is no vision, the people perish." Proverbs 29:18 (KFV)

Were you watching television several weeks ago when Omnibus, that spectre from our
Simpler past, returned? Near the end, actress Meryl Streep recited the words to “America
the Beautiful", while a group of persons translated into sign language, in a marvelously
expressive choreography for the hearing impaired. The grace of the sign language and
the simple, clear recitation of the words added up to a powerful and, for me, poignant
experience. IT had not Listened to them carefully for a long time, if ever.

0 beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed his grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the Wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine every flaw,- ~

Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for glorious tale Of liberating strife,

When valiantly for man's avail Men lavished precious life!
America: America! May God thy gold refine,

Till all success be nobleness And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream That sees, beyond the years,
Thine alabaster cities gleam, Undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed his grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

What a vision! Katharine Bates wrote those words in 1903, several decades after
the Civil War, at a time of peace and optimism, when it seemed that the vision was within
reach. America had survived the worst that could occur. "Self-control, liberty in law,
brotherhood, neobleness - from sea to shining sea", It was really going to happen,

Part of the poignancy JI experienced, which we all feel when we hear the words of
that hymn, is born of the nearly universal sense that we have lost something recently.
In two decades we have Lost something as vital to our nation as a heart is to our own
physiology; namely, our vision; our enobling, uplifting, inspiring dream. Somehow, in the
year of our Lord 1980 alabaster cities, fruited plains, and gold refined by God himself
sound hollow, empty, childish, almost silly. In the year of our Lord, 1980, it's em-
barassing to invoke ideas like brotherhood, sisterhood, liberty and justice for all, in
any way but metaphor or memory.

The newspapers remind us that the current malaise is almost overwhelmingly negative,
We are not only unhappy with the choice we must make in November, we seem to believe that
it won't make any difference anyway. We seem to be convinced that things are out of
control in our society and we appear willing to believe the worst anybody can say about us.
Gur Labor Unions are the most corrupt, our corporations totally dishonest, our Government
totally inept, etc., etc., ad nauseum. The Vision...is dead,

Rebert Bellah, University of California Sociologist, identifies the erosion in
these terms; "It takes the form of a decline in belief in all forms of obligation: to
one's occupation, one's family, one's country. A tendency to rank personal gratification
above obligation to others correlates with a deepening cynicism about the established
social, economic and political institutions of society. A sense that the institutions
are unjust and serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many, is used to

-2.-

justify the inapplicability of moral obligations to one's self." (The Broken Covenant,
preface, p.X).

Bellah, I believe, is exactly right. The morality of war is only one part of the
issue in the reinstatement of registration for Selective Service. The fundamental issue
is obligation to one's nation, community, family and, as far as I know, the only group
raising that issue is the Southern Presbyterian Church which urged the President to
conscript everyone for a period of national service ~ not exactly military, but service to
the nation, We're not in the mood for that: we're not in the mood to pay taxes for
better education or to support a welfare system so that a decent level of life is available
to all, or voluntarily te clean up the environment, or restrict the percent of increase
in next year's contract.,."Helil no, we won't go" is only one variation in a new National
theme which says, "I'm obligated to myself, to me.,-period," The cynicism about the in-
stitutions is a product of that, Bellah suggests and, again, I believe he is correct.
Business people know very well that the Unions are corrupt and selfish. Laborers, on the
other hand, know who owns the place and for whom tax loopholes exist. They know it every
time they read about a millionaire paying no taxes. Investors know that the system
favors the poor. The poor know that the rich have the power and make the system work to
their benefit. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility sometimes sounds incapable
of trusting any business more sophisticated than the corner grocer. And Fortune magazine
responds in kind by labeling any church person who raises issues of morality in the area
of sales policy or environmental sensitivity as anti-business. Suddenly, according to
Fortune, to care publicly about the environment is to be a Marxist. The vision is dead -
and so - along with it, is the courage and willingness and the will to trust.

The retiring Moderator of our General Assembly, Howard Rice, in his final sermon
underlined the theological dimension to the dynamic. "Liberals," Rice observed, “have
forgotten the vision of the future and have become mere social critics. Conservatives
have lost the ability to talk prophetically about the present."

Princeton Seminary President James McCord, in an address I heard several years ago,
took the Church to task at the same point. "We have forgotten how to dream," he said.
"We have lost the ability to talk about the future. We have simply abandoned the future
to the kooks."

The best selling religious author and book in the past decade? Hans Kung, On Being
A Christian? Charles Colson, Born Again? Billy Graham? Wrong. The best seller is "The
Late Great Planet Earth" by Hal Lindsey, which contains not one single word of recognizable,
legitimate Biblical scholarship. Its point is, simply, that the Bible predicts what is
now happening in the Near East - a device used by assorted seers for 2,000 years - and
the world is about to come to an end.

It is the hottest religious idea on the market today, Just as rank pessimism
characterizes our political views, so theologically, everybody seems to want to believe
that we're about to run out of time and options on this earth and for some that's good
news but for most, very bad news. From the fringes of the Pentecostal movement, to the
Jesus people, to the Hari Krishnas and the unending parade of mystic Maharajas from the
East, the one consistent motif is that the end is coming.

What I'm learning both by observation and experience is that the Bible is, as usual,
correct, "Where there is no vision, the people perish” one way or another, When you
throw your dream on the scrap heap, you're through, sooner or later. You either retreat
inte the infinite reaches of your own selfishness or you sit around pining for the end of
the world, or both,

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"Where there is no vision, the people perish."' May I suggest that the ancient
observation is relevant and timely? May I suggest that the only antidote to the despair
and frustration you and I are experiencing at the moment is to reclaim the vision and

recommit to it?

Some suggest that the vision is corrupt - that we aren't what we say we are. But
there has always been a gap between the vision and the reality of America, Bellah notes
that as soon as we made the covenant we broke it. We took the land from the people who
owned it, fought them, killed them, drove them into pathetic exile and systematically
addicted them to a debilitating, deadly dependence, We proclaimed the unalienability of
human rights and built one half of our economy on slavery. There has always been a gap
between the vision and the reality. The difference between this nation and totalitarian
systems is that we acknowledge the gap. Neither Fascism nor Communism is capable of that,
We acknowledge and feel guilt - if not enough, sufficient enough to push us along paths
of remedy. We did pass a Civil Rights Act under the power of our vision and we did
marshal the resources of the nation and we are willing to keep trying to reconcile that
ancient and awful wrong. And we did, last week, award the heirs of those native persons
from whom we took this country, a settlement which doesn't érase the evil but demonstrates
our awareness of the gap.

There has always been a gap between the vision of our strength and power and the
reality of its appropriate exercise in the world. That's our problem today. We simply
have enough conscience left, thank God, to find the thought of nuclear war repugnant.
That is not weakness, unless the Hitlers of this world really are its moral arhiters.

A Time Magazine essay observed: ''The real calculus of American strength is not expressed
primarily in terms of a willingness to fight or in numbers of missiles and warheads, It

is not expressed in how tough Americans can be with the Soviets, or anybody else abroad.
It is expressed precisely in how tough Americans are willing to be on themselves."

(Time, June 4, 1979),

May I suggest, modestly and respéctfully, that instead of the wastefulness of
despair it is time now for us to rebirth the vision? And may I suggest that while the
greatest atrocities in history have occurred when people were convinced that God's will
was simply the national will carried out, Christian people have a major stake in the
future of this particular Republic? It is the grossest form of blasphemy to suggest that
God likes Americans better than other people, or Republicans better than Democrats. But
it is irresponsible and unbiblical to suggest that God does not care about the way His
privileged children order and live their common life.

It is time to reclaim the vision, beneath these several, essential Christian
assertions...

1. .,.There is only one King, one Sovereign, one Lord. Human allegiance
is given ultimately only once, to the Creator God himself. If it is
given without reservation, without question, to any ruler, any state,
any ideolcgy, and political system, it becomes idolatry which is, in
the Bible, the fundamental sin. The vision of America is most precious
precisely because it does not expect an Obeisance reserved for God alone.
Christian people embrace and rejoice in a vision of religious liberty which
is never separate from political liberty.

2, ...,All nations exist by God's grace. Even the ones we don't like. Even
the ones we have a hard time imagining God liking. He really is sovereign,

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that is to say. Without judging others, we conclude that He really
has shed His grace on this nation. We may not be His newly elected
Israel, but we are a very privileged part of His family - and that
privilege and inherited greatness carry a long list of responsibilities
with them. We are, in fact, our brothers'and sisters’ keepers.

3. ...We, and all people, were created to be free. St. Paul understood the
Gospel of Jesus Christ to be a Magna Charta of human freedom. That got
him in a lot of trouble and it has been embroiling Christians in controversy
and worse ever since. There is an impetus in human affairs, religicus,
political, economic, to take authority away from people and lodge it in
their institutions. The result is less freedom. Christian people are
opposed to that impetus, wherever they find it - in Rome, in Germany in
the 30's - today in Taiwan, Korea, Russia, Iran.

4. ...Because of what we believe about the Creator God, through his self
disclosure in Jesus Christ, we conclude that the highest morality and
therefore the Life to which our Creator calls us, is love; and that love
is not at all avoiding evil so much as it is a voluntary sense of obligation
to others. Our Lord loved by dying. His cross is our banner and at our
best we act as if we really believed what He said about laying down our
lives - and finding Life by losing it - and taking up a cross and
following Him, ;

5. ...Finally, and most incredibly of all, we believe God loves the world
enough to ask a son to die on its behalf. God does not despise this
world. He doesn't want us to despise it. He isn't neutral at ali about
the world and He doesn't want us withdrawing from it into some private
spirituality that concentrates on the hereafter at the expense of life
here and now. God, the Creator, is optimistic about the world and its
future. He wants people who know about Him and His love and His will to
be Living thoroughly, joyfully and hopefully in that same world.

It was the terrible trauma of the Civil War that inspired Walt Whitman to write
about America in a way that is haunting and yet hopeful. Listen to his words.....

“America is really the great test or trial for all the problems and promises
and speculations of humanity and of the past and present...We sail a
dangerous sea of seething currents...It seems as if the Almighty had spread
before this nation charts of imperial destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet
with many a deep difficulty...If you would have greatness, know that you
must conquer it through ages, centuries - must pay for it with proportionate
price,"

"Where there is no vision, the people perish," an ancient philosopher observed,
Where there is vision, the people live. And where a vision is reborn, people are doing
that which is necessary to preserve and protect and hand to their children this
remarkable experiment, this “alabaster city, beyond the years, undimmed by tears...

God shed His grace on thee."
Amen,