As go the lyrics, the songs we love to sing have freedom’s theme.
Hence we red-blooded, God-blessed Americans love to croon of freedom and liberty, with words both sacred and secular, when national holidays afford opportunities to “let music swell the breeze and ring from all the trees.”
But candidly I’m having a harder and harder time singing some of our most precious and treasured national music. It’s not that the tunes themselves are harder and harder to sing (though the notes of the “Star-Spangled Banner” will be forever brutal on the throat). For me our varied American hymns and anthems are becoming harder and harder to sing, because their lyrics are ringing ever-more hollow in my heart and mind, resting ever-more heavily upon my soul and spirit.
In this our collective moment, the United States in no way feels crowned with brotherhood from sea to shining sea. I’m an excellent navigator with or without GPS, but I must have driven right past the freeway exit for those gleaming, alabaster cities “undimmed by human tears!”
Your retort to my screed makes a fair point: But pastor, those lyrics reverberate our ideals not our realities. True enough!
So why, then, aren’t we more passionate about turning our ideals into realities?
Why, then, aren’t we making the full force of this nation’s vast human and financial resources the tools with which to turn the stanzas of our national songs into the lived experience of every person dwelling in this nominal land of the free?
Why, then, do we plead “God mend thine every flaw” when we so casually and flippantly ignore the inconvenient truth of the Lord’s response: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love neighbor and stranger as you yourself want to be love.
In this country, as another suggests, we have come to define patriotism as a positive account of our nation’s history that treads lightly upon our nation’s sins. The Fourth of July in particular is a time to wrap ourselves in the flag, grill some meat, and pop off some fireworks. A playlist of songs God-blessing the USA accompanies the holiday revelry and summer fun.
But reflecting on deadly European engagement with indigenous peoples throws a wet blank on the party. Same goes for near-taboo topics like the U.S. internment camps of World War II. And good grief, don’t light a fuse under the women folk and get them all riled up about rights and equality!
Easily ruining the fun-loving vibe of your campsite, river time, or backyard barbeque is any talk of slavery or Jim Crow. Mere mentions of lynchings, economic exploitations, or the sometimes-fatal consequences of “driving while Black” are real buzz kills. (When your white daughter’s boyfriend is Black, dads like me start paying more attention to the perils of race.)
In the end, you pay no personal cost to sing along with Kate Smith to “God Bless America,” or to Yankee-Doodle-Dandy-it-up with Jimmy Cagney, or to hop up on Lee Greenwood’s vintage Oliver farm tractor to express your pride in being an American.
But it requires so very much more to believe in and cling to a place whose promises feel made for some but not all. Lyrics about a land that has failed you stick in your throat like gooey peanut butter. Which, for many, is reason enough to take a pass on singing songs that mask our failures in the star-spangled glitter of fireworks and the gross overindulgence of hot-dog-eating contests.
“If you hate America so much, then get out!”
That’s usually the cliché of choice to push back on such so-called “woke” thought. Frankly, “getting out” really is my list of possible escape options if and when life in the public square takes even sharper turns for the worse.
But for the next wave of refugees, a flight to safety just might boil down to “you can run but you cannot hide.” Elections worldwide keep adding names to the already-long list of authoritarian dictators, and a few of them seem ready at the drop of a hat to put their nuclear launch codes into apocalyptic action.
I really do care about this land we love, so my prayer for the United States lifts fervent hope of acknowledging our individual and national brokenness, and taking responsibility for our collective failures and foibles. Because explaining them away only stifles and suffocates even the most meager dreams of rising above the fray – taking the higher road not taken – to become a better, more faithful, more spiritually fruitful nation.
The blessing of such brutal honesty provides the catalyst of forgiveness by grace. Heartful confession always opens wide the door of fresh possibilities. Fessing-up in all humility always rolls away the stone that separates you from enjoying the fullness of resurrection.
Telling the truth is the most hopeful and helpful form of patriotism if ours or any nation has any chance of becoming great again. Thus writes the apostle John:
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
“If we confess our sins, the One who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8-10)
That’s a bracing message for any nation that considers itself “Christian.”
Too often we worry that, if we tell our children about our complex and sometimes dark history, they’ll emotionally swoon and collapse under the heavy weight of debilitating shame.
But instead of lying to our children and grandchildren (and to ourselves), instead of writing-off millions of lived experiences of trauma and terror, let’s invite our kids to accept an assignment that demands the best of them – and the best of their parents and grandparents, their siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles; the best of all sinners and saints of certain ages. Together, let us seize the power of the Holy Spirit and close the gaping breach separating our ideals and practices.
This is the gift that the past offers us: A chance to flee old evils and pursue new goods.
Posting the Ten Commandments on classroom walls, or requiring teachers to lead their students in daily prayer, ain’t gonna get us there – so long as we tolerate blatant, ongoing abuse of those Commandments, so long as we close our hearts on the scriptural responses to our ardent prayers, so long as we try in vain to quench the Holy Spirit.
Patriotism is not enough if all it imagines is galloping down the road with Paul Revere shouting warnings about Redcoats, or hunkering in boats as the beaches of Normandy come ever-closer into hellish view.
By the definition of my two-time, Richard-Nixon-voting parents, patriotism means reading the next paragraph that explains how the liberty for which Revere and others fought so bravely was freedom for some, not all. In the day every “Negro” man counted as three-fifths of a person. Women remained as chattel.
Patriotism – as I was taught in school – is turning to the next page of the story and discovering those proud, fresh-faced African-Americans who risked their lives on those beaches of Europe returned home to a racially segregated country in which they became targets of firehouses and police dogs.
Patriots mourn with Asian-Americans returning from World War II-combat on ancestral land only to discover that their government had interned their loved ones behind barbed wire for the duration. Some German-Americans and Italian-Americans suffered similar wartime fates.
Patriots condemn protesters who spit on soldiers, airman, sailors, and marines returning home from brutal, vicious jungle fights. And with equally passionate voices, patriots condemn a government that shirks its responsibilities to care for the lasting injuries of war it inflicted on an entire generation for reasons not entirely clear.
Patriots do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
For Christ’s sake, and for the sake of the Good News of the Gospel:
Could we please just lower the flags, take down all the bunting, and with full hope and confidence in the Lord’s promises of forgiveness and resurrection – could we please just give sacred voice to the reality that our national story contains its conflicted mix of triumph and tragedy?
Could we please just realize that the emotions of love, pride, and regret can and do reside in the same heart, can and do stir the same soul, can and do influence the same human spirit?
Could we please just make space for the real-very possibility that, in the eyes of heaven, the truest form of patriotism rises to place a hand over a heart filled with love that is not complacent, love that demands more than crumbs from the table of justice, love that demands more than scraps from the feast of grace?
If that’s your brand of patriotism, thank you for your service.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in the judgment of the Lord God Almighty.
Amen, and amen!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, July, 3, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. Reflection by Brian Lyman and Esau McCaulley inform the message.