The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
Luke 4:18
INTRODUCTION
Ten years ago, I stood in this pulpit and preached a sermon with the same title as today’s theme: “The Kingdom Of God And The American Dream.” You may not recall a single word of what was said back then, so to refresh your memory, this is how that sermon began: “How would you describe the American Dream?” Some would say it’s found in the spirit of rugged individualism which helped our forbearers settle this land against all odds. Others might focus on our prosperity, and point to the Horatio Algers, the so-called self-made men and women across our nation’s history who have achieved great success and prominence through the free enterprise system.
And there are those who would propose that the American Dream has been shaped by imaginative people who developed ideas and created unique inventions. A second grade school boy up in New England wrote a brief essay about the inventor and statesman, Ben Franklin, whom that boy believed embodied the American Dream. This is what the boy said:
“Ben Franklin was born in Boston, but he soon got tired of that and moved to Philadelphia. When he got to Philadelphia, he was hungry, so he bought a loaf of bread and put the bread under his arm and walked up the street. He passed a woman, who smiled at him so he married her and discovered electricity.”
Is that it? Rugged individualism, prosperity, the free enterprise system, great ideas and unique inventions? Some would say so. But I suggest to you that the dream flowing through the veins and bloodstream of this nation is much deeper than individual achievement and far greater than personal success.
The American dream was instilled in the souls of those faithful women and men who laid the foundations of the freedoms we enjoy today. The American Dream is still found
in the heart, mind and soul of all those citizens who believe that we are a community of people representing every race, color and creed, and that we have the resources and hopefully the resolve to address the needs of anyone who chooses to live in this land.
The American Dream does not espouse a “me first” kind of attitude, but rather encourages and endorses a “we are all in this together” kind of vision, born out of gratitude for all that God has given to us. And that vision has been alive and at work in this nation for a long time now.
Now to tell you the truth, I’ve never preached a sermon exactly the same way twice, and I don’t intend to today. But the thought occurred to me last summer, as I planned our worship calendar, that this country has gone through some major changes over the past decade, and it might be time to update that old sermon.
So this morning, I want to ask you the question which picks up from where we left off ten years ago: “Are we making any progress? Are we any closer today to fulfilling that vision of God’s Kingdom on Earth and the American Dream then we were back in 1992?”
Dr. John Bright, who was one of the great theologians and Biblical scholars in the last generation, wrote a classic book entitled “The Kingdom Of God” which I read in seminary. This is how that book began:
“The Kingdom of God involves…the total message of the Bible. Not only does it loom large in the teachings of Jesus; it is to be found…throughout the length of the scriptures…from Genesis 12 where Abraham set out to seek “The City, whose builder and maker is God”…on through Revelation 21 where “The Holy city…comes down out of Heaven from God.” To grasp what is meant by the Kingdom of God is to come close to the heart of the Gospel of Salvation” (“The Kingdom Of God” by Dr. John Bright, Abingdon Press, Nashville, Tennessee, 1953, Page 7).
That is what Jesus believed as He began His ministry on earth, saying “The Kingdom Of God is at hand - repent and believe in the Gospel.” In the Sermon Of The Mount, Jesus described that kingdom with these words: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden…Let your light so shine that others will see your good works and give glory to your Father in Heaven” (Matthew 5:14,16).
And when He preached His first sermon in His hometown of Nazareth, Jesus said “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19).
That was how Jesus saw The Kingdom Of God. And it was that same vision which our Pilgrim and Puritan forbearers brought to these shore seventeen centuries later. Like Abraham and Sarah, they believed that God has chosen them to make a journey to the Promised Land.
William Bradford, who wrote their story and later became Governor of the new colony, declared that “they committed themselves to the will of God and resolved to proceed.” (The National Observer, November 29, 1965). And another among them, John Winthrop, reminded those early settlers that their role, just as Jesus had described it, was to be “a city set on a hill” to demonstrate before “the eyes of the world” that their covenant had been made with God. ("Religion In America” by Winthrop S. Hudson, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1965, Page 20).
So it was that those who followed after them embraced the vision of God’s Kingdom in the eighteenth century as they framed our call and commitment to freedom in the Declaration Of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self evident , that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
And it was the poet Emma Lazarus in 1903 who put the vision of God’s Kingdom into symbolic perspective when she wrote the words that were inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Yearning to breathe free the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
So you see, over the course of four centuries, the biblical concept of the Kingdom of God helped to form and to forge the American Dream in the crucible of our country’s history. As the good times flourished, we rejoiced with the Psalmist of old who proclaimed “Blessed is the nation whose God in the Lord, the people whom He has chosen as His heritage” (Psalm 33:12. And when the hard times came, as they always do, we trusted God to guide us and provide us with all that we needed to see the storms through. So what about the last decade?
During the past ten years, we in the United States have witnessed both the “best of times and the worst of times,” almost as if we were riding a roller coaster. A wide majority of America’s citizens rallied behind President George Herbert Bush in the Persian Gulf War, and then voted him out of office. Bill Clinton, who said that it was “all about the economy” on his way to the White House, discovered a few years after during the impeachment process that it was all about integrity as well.
The economic boom of the 1990s did bring unprecedented prosperity to many, but the downside was increased poverty for many others. Newspaper columnist Joseph Perkins described it ask the “biggest income disparity of the post World War II era” (“Who’s Talking About The Poor Now?” by Joseph Perkins, Atlanta Journal-Constitution), and former President Jimmy Carter has warned all of us that this gap, he calls it “the chasm,”
between the rich and the poor, is the most serious problem we face today (“Carter at 75,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 26, 1999).
Surely others would say that terrorism is our worst trouble now. Few of us, including our national leaders, anticipated that it could or would happen to the only so-called “Super Power” left on this planet. But September 11, 2001 has changed all of that and our lives will never be the same again.
Even so, America rose to one of its finest hours in the midst of that tragedy, pulling together, praying for each other and promising with firm resolve and great courage that those innocent women and men who were lost in New York, Washington, D.C. and Western Pennsylvania will not have died in vain.
More than a year later, President George Walker Bush and many of our leaders are committed to keeping that promise here at home, over there in Afghanistan and anywhere else in the world that terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and dictators who will use them threaten the priceless but costly value of freedom. And once again, as has happened time after time before, this nation is struggling and becoming divided over the possibility of another war.
CONCLUSION
There are no easy answers my friends. You already know that. America has always respected differences of opinion, but in my own opinion, the most serious obstacle we face as we seek to embrace the Kingdom of God and American Dream is division. Division over political ideologies. Division that runs deep and turns vengeful, attacking other people including the President of the United States. Division in the nation, division in the church. Jesus once said “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand” (Mark 3:24).
I believe those words are especially true for this nation right now. Why? Because “united we stand, divided we fall” isn’t just a slogan on some highway sign out on the road. It’s at the core. It is at the spiritual center that holds us together in the Kingdom and in this country and we had better not ever forget that.
So as we sit down at our tables to celebrate Thanksgiving this week, we’ll lift up our hearts with joy and gratitude for all the blessings we have received and that is surely appropriate. But let us also get down on our knees and pray to God for peace in the Middle East, and that all of this world’s leaders will be given vision and wisdom and courage to do the right thing. And let us pray for the reconciliation and for the unity of this nation which we still call the United States of America.
“America, America, God mend thine every flaw (and we’ve got those flaws),
In the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Kingdom Of God And The American Dream
(“The New Colossus,” Emma Lazarus, 1903)
Confirm thy soul in self control, in liberty and law.