AN APPROPRIATE PATRIOTISM John M. Buchanan
Mark 12:13-17 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
July 5, 1981 Columbus, Ohio

The conflict has been there from the beginning. The earliest Christian
Creed was the brief statement "Jesus Christ is Lord", The power of the statement
was initially political as well as theological. What it meant was, "The Emperor
is not Lord, Jesus Christ is." The Christian affirmation, therefore, deprived Rome
of that absolutely essential keystone upon which all totalitarianism rests; namely,
the supremacy of the Emperor, King, Fuhrer, Party or State. "Jesus Christ is Lord"
was not theological abstraction, but, more often than not, political agitation.
People who said it were not rebuffed for having bad taste or scolded for bad theol-
ogy, they were thrown into jail as enemies of the state, traitors, The ns never
could understand it. They were not indiscriminate butchers. Pax Romano was built
on strength and law, not terror. Their exercise of political authority did not
include persecution of other religions. In fact, they were rather proud of their
tolerance. What infuriated them about Christians, and before them, the Jews, was
this simple denial of the Emperor's supremacy. When the Legions carried the Eagle
through the streets, R>man subjects were required to bow. The Eagle represented
the Emperor himself and the sovereignty of the State. Christians simply refused to
do it. "Jesus Christ is Lord," they said. ¢-% clyw-=

The conflict has been there from the beginning. The occasions of its
emergence within the human story contain both the best and worst of humanity.
Thomas a Becket, for instance, 12th century Archbishop of Canterbury, whose struggles
between conscience and political expediency, between loyalty to his King and his
Church, led to his "murder in the Cathedral" in 1170 A.D. Sir Thomas More, for
instance, 16th century English statesman, whose loyalty to Christ and church was
tested by loyalty to Crown and cost him his head. Thomas More, you will recall,
simply could not bring himself to endorse Henry VIII's propensity for marriage,
annulment and remarriage. He did not even speak against the King. But while others
were falling all over themselves to rationalize and applaud Henry's antics, More
remained thunderously silent. He loved England, the Crown, his King. He loved
Jesus Christ more.

And, of course, those remarkable young radicals, who gathered in Philadel-
phia in 1776, to decide about the future of the Crown's colonies in the new world...
the conflict was there for many of them. They were British subjects - many of them
born and reared in Great Britain. Before they became American patriots, founders
of a new Republic, they had to decide to commit treason against their country. They
had to struggle with every conviction they ever had about their country and conclude
finally that there was something worth more than that commitment. We forget that,

I fear. We forget that the men who signed the Declaration of Independence did, in
that act, commit treason.

Clergy are particularly interested in the fact that one of the signers was
a. minister, John Witherspoon, President of the College of New Jersey at Princeton,
When a document entitled "A Declaration of Independence" was submitted by Mr.
Jefferson, the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon rose to speak. He said, "That noble instrument
upon your table, which insures immortality to its author, should be subscribed this
very morning by every pen in the house.,.although these grey hairs must soon descend
into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather that they descend thither by the hand
of the executioner than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country,"
(A_Report on the United States Bicentennial, the 187th General Assembly of the
UPCUSA) .

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It is an old and complex issue. Its antiquity - and complexity - are
apparent in the text..."pay to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor, and pay to
God what belongs to God."

The Pharisees, apparently, had scheduled a meeting to devise a foolproof
plan to trap Jesus of Nazareth, What better way to discredit Him and perhaps get Him
arrested in the bargain than to trip Him up in His own rhetoric on a topic of con-
troversy. It was no accident, therefore, that the subject was the conflict between
religious and political loyalties.

"Tg it against the law to pay taxes to the Roman Emperor?" The levy in
question was a head tax which went directly into the Emperor's treasury. It was not
a heavy tax but it was very much a symbol of the fact that Judah was under the heel
of Rome, in much the same way that the Stamp Act became synonymous with infant tax-
ation, oppression and therefore a revolutionary symbol prior to 1776. The Zealots, a
revolutionary political organization, held that the Jews could not pay the tax and
advised civil disobedience - non-payment. Many secretly supported them. One New
Testament scholar writes that the real question is this: "Can a Jew conscientiously
pay the imperial tax in the Holy Land, or must he fight for independence on the
ground that God alone is King of Israel?" (Sherman E Johnson, The Interpreter's
Bible, Vol. 7, p. 518).

The Pharisees reasoned that no matter how Jesus answered the question,
therefore, He would be in trouble, If He said, "It is illegal, do not pay the tax,"
He would have been seized immediately by the Romans for sedition. On the other hand,
if He said that the tax was legal, many would have discredited Him as a Roman sympa~
thizer or collaborator. Either way, the Pharisees would accomplish their goal.

They did not count on Jesus understanding the ploy, which I think He did,
They had even tried to flatter Him into over-stepping the boundaries..."Teacher,
we know that You tell the truth without worrying about what people think," they
had said. Instead of taking the bait, however, Jesus asked to see a coin, One was
produced with the head of Caesar inscribed, a silver denari, the very coin required
to pay the tax. It was Caesar's money: the coin of the realm was the property of
the Emperor. "Give it to him," Jesus said, "rt's his anyway." "But pay to God what
belongs to God."

The very worst possible interpretation of that text is that Jesus drew a
clear line between the sacred and the profane, between Church and State, religion
and politics. It seems at first that He was teaching the doctrine of two realms, so
popular in western theology..."City of God, City of Man". That, however, would
have been totally foreign to Him. Instead, in the highest prophetic tradition of
Old Testament Judaism, Jesus was ascribing to Israel's oldest Creed; namely, that
God is the only true King of Israel. The sense of the action in this incident is
dripping with sarcasm. Caesar is thrown a mere crumb. "Here - look at his picture -
give him what he owns = about 25¢ worth, But the Lord God, the Sovereign and only
King of Creation, owns everything. You owe everything you have...everything you
are to Him."

The Pharisees were amazed and well they might be. Their foolproof trap was
smashed. Their trick question had been turned into an opportunity for an answer
they didn't want; namely, that God is Lord of all. Lord of individuals. Lord of
religious institutions, Lord of Emperors and Empires.

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Sometimes we are inclined to forget that. In fact, sometimes patriotism,
noble love of one's country, gives to nation the sovereignty that belongs to God
alone. Sometimes the God/Caesar issue is very contemporary. Patriotism, as is the
case with all powerful emotion, has a dark side as well as its more admirable effects.
The psychologists tell us that love is not terribly far from hate. Self-esteem, we
all know, is not terribly distant from self-centeredness. And patriotism is always
just several steps from bigotry and intolerance. What is transpiring in Northern
Ireland, in both the bigoted pageantry of the Protestant Orange Orders and the mis-
guided romanticism of the IRA is patriotism gone awry. Adherents of both causes
would maintain strenuously that their violent behavior is simply intense love of
country. Ian Paisley would defend his neo-fascism as unbending loyalty to Crown.
And IRA hit squads and hunger strikers respond with their violence - for the sake of
Irish integrity.

Patriotism can be a version of "mine is better than yours" played on a
grand scale, ordinarily modestly as when one pulls for Mareetse instead ofBorg~-
It took Nazi Germany in our own era with its intensely nationalistic symbols and
fiercely patriotic celebrations to teach us the raw danger of patriotism gone crazy.

Somehow, patriotism on its way to becoming bigotry always seems stop and
team up with religlon, Every tyrant has understood the potential of that tragic
combination. Some of the saddest chapters in human history are the result, In the
name of religious and political orthodoxy, the Bay Puritans banished dissenters and
hanged Quakers, Nathaniel Ward proclaimed, "All Antinomians, Archbaptists and other
enthusiasts shall have free liberty to keep away from us...the sooner the better."
Several centuries later Evangelist Billy Sunday said of some immigrants, "Tf they
don't like it here, let 'em go back to the land where they were kenneled." (The
Lively Experiment, Sydney Meade, p.14).

"America,Leve it or Leave It" the bumper sticker advises, too frequently
adjacent to another sticker announcing the imminent end of the age and return of
the Lord. Somehow, those who would be a "Moral Majority" never learned that what is
unique and great about this country is that the morality of the majority here does
not exclude or coerce or push around the minority.

Somehow the so-called Moral Majority never quite understands the conflict
between the gracious, accepting love of God it espouses, and the heavy-handed effort
to force its standards, aesthetics, literary and television preferences and
theology on everybody else.

What this experiment is all about is that people are free here to disagree
with their government and the majority of their citizens, free even not to like it.
True patriotism, it seems to me, is a knowing how unique that liberty is, appreciat-
ing it, defending and celebrating it, particularly at a time when the government
itself seems to be saying to other nations that we don't care as much about that as
we used to, that we are willing to overlook the abridgment of the human rights upon
which our Republic was founded, if it is expedient to do so. An appropriate
patriotism is never uncritical, If it is, I would submit, it has ceased being
patriotism and has become nothing more significant than corporate egotism. Patriotis ovp
loves country enough to be critical, to expect it to be more, to demand that the
nation be good and just and compassionate. temo

True and appropriate patriotism loves the nation at its essence; that
special core philosophy of liberty; that place where we step away from others and

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affirm that what is really important here, what we will defend and celebrate is the
authority of the individual and the personal liberty that adheres.to it. That's
theological, That means that at its highest and best the nation itself protects the
place where the individual relates to God, the conscience, the soul. That's the
essence of the American Experiment. What totalitarianism of Right or Left needs and
demands for its own is here allowed to be free.

The roots of that unique and self-limiting patriotism are in the Old Testa-
ment doctrine of God as the only Sovereign. They are also in the story ot the man
who perplexed His tormentors one day simply by suggesting that they pay the Emporer
his due and return to God what He was due as well.

Having recently returned from a brief but intense visit overseas, I know
again how much there is to love about this country. I know, perhaps a little more
clearly than before how a warped and bigoted patriotism can become intolerance and —
then, before your very eyes, murderous violence. I know, too, that above all which
is worth loving and celebrating here, is the fragile phenomenon of personal liberty.

On the plane home I bumped into a timely essay by an American theologian,
It made me glad for what I had seen, glad for coming home, glad for what I could
celebrate on July 4. Joseph Sittler, University of Chicago, retired, wrote it:

"Before the word AMERICA can set one thinking or planning or resolving or defending,
it ought to set one dreaming and remembering. And out of this dreamed procession of
America as a concrete place will be poured the ingot of a tough and true patriotism,
Have you never gone inwardly wandering among the myriad impacts of this magnificent
land? - the sprawling, opulent South of the stark red earth and the blithe and lazy
skies; the tragic, lonely beauty of New England, its neat white houses and stone
fences, so proper to its prim certainty;the sweep of the Middle West with its little
towns set astride ten thousand Main Streets that become white concrete ribbons
stretching across a countryside of incredible fertility and scope; the terrifying
distances of the western states where farmers' families of a Saturday night will
‘run into town' - eighty miles - with ease; and the fabulous West Coast, majestic at
the top where Rainier sparkles, rich and worldly-wise at the center where the land
enfolds in long arms the lovely bay, and the fantastic glitter and brashness at the
bottom where sprawls and brawls the City of the Angels.

"Qur American lives are impoverished if they lack a sense of identity with the
country around them and are ignorant of its written and anecdotal history...

"Loving, personal identification with one's own land has never been a breeder of
arrogant nationalism. Indeed, a person's love for his or her own land can be the
basis of respect for other people's love of their land. Just as only those who
have convictions know the meaning of tolerance, so none can assess at right value
the land-loves of other people except those who know and deeply love their own."
(Grace Notes,p.101).

That, it seems to me, is appropriate patriotism: a leve that creates
tolerance, understanding, openness to others; a love tough enough to be demanding,
self-critical, full of hope, therefore, for the future; a love that directs us
inevitably to the Lord and Sovereign King of all.

Amen.