Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

February 19, 2006

ON THE LORD’S SIDE

Scripture: Joshua 24:1-29; Romans 13:1-7

Many years ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an advertisement for a multi-national corporation with the title:

THIS WILL MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER

And here is what it said:

“If you sometimes get discouraged, consider this:

He dropped out of grade school, ran a country store, went broke and took 15 years to pay off his bills. He married, but suffered much sadness in his family. He ran for the House of Representatives and lost twice. He ran for the United States Senate and lost twice. He delivered a speech that became a classic, but the audience was indifferent. He was attacked daily by the press and despised by half the country. Despite all of this, imagine how many people around the world have been inspired by this awkward, rumpled, brooding man who signed his name, simply, A. Lincoln.” (A message published in the Wall Street Journal by United Technologies Corporation, Hartford, Connecticut)

Together with many of you and millions of other people across this country, I have been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best selling, Pulitzer Prize winning biography entitled “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.” It is a story not only about the suffering and sadness in his own life, but also about the hope which beat deep down in his heart to hold this nation together in the midst of the War Between the States.

As he moved to Washington, D.C., Lincoln recruited his political adversaries to join him in governing a bitterly divided country. To those who sought revenge and retaliation, he spoke words of forgiveness and reconciliation.

One of his generals, about to execute a young soldier who had deserted a fierce battle during the war, appealed to the President for his opinion, and Lincoln replied “It seems to me that it doesn’t do a boy much good to shoot him.” Later on, in his second inaugural address, delivered before a crowd of 50,000 citizens on the 4^th of March, 1865, Lincoln spoke those familiar and famous words which now belong to American history:

“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away…with malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” (From “Team of Rivals,” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon and Schuster, 2005, page 699)

And when one of his closest advisors from the North resisted that kind of equanimity and forgiveness and insisted that “The Lord is on our side,” Lincoln is quoted to have replied:

“I am not at all concerned about that, for we know that the Lord is always on the side of right. But it is my constant anxiety that I and this nation should choose to be on the Lord’s side.” (From Pulpit Resource, Glendon Harris, Publisher and Editor, 1984, page 24).

Tomorrow, we will celebrate President’s Day, as we recognize and honor the long line of leaders elected to our highest office, and two in particular – George Washington and Abraham Lincoln – who stand out above all the rest. Both of those great men helped to guide this country through the ravages of war, and then sought to bind up the wounds of this nation with the healing hope of peace and reconciliation.

Washington lived a longer life and was able to see many of his dreams come true before he died at the age of 67 in 1799. Lincoln, who was born ten years later in 1809, was tragically shot down by an assassin’s bullet on the 14^th of April, 1865, and he died the next morning, less than a week after Generals Grant and Lee had begun to forge the peace at Appomattox.

All of this is to say that we have much to remember on President’s Day about two of our finest and most illustrious statesmen who helped to lead this nation through conflict, division and controversy toward a vision of reconciliation and unity, a vision which, pray to God, is still alive in the hearts and minds of Americans today.

So it was long ago as Joshua stood before the people of Israel to help them recall the mighty acts of God which had brought them all into the Promised Land. Battles had been fought and won, alliances with some of their adversaries had already begun, and Joshua wanted the Hebrews to remember that it was not so much what they had done but rather what the Lord had helped them accomplish.

On that day, their great leader Joshua addressed the crowd and shouted out loud so that all could hear:

Now therefore fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the Gods which your fathers served beyond the river, and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if you be unwilling to serve Him, then choose this day whom you will serve – whether the Gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river, or the Gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord! (Joshua 24:14-15)

It was a compelling “state of the union address” and the people responded with affirmation and a promise – We also will serve the Lord, for He is our God! (Verse 18). Little did they know of the trials and tribulations which they would face in the future as that small nation was caught in the crossfire of international conflicts between armies of Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians and then the Greeks and the Romans, lasting for more than a thousand years.

Even less could the Israelites imagine the internal struggles that would eventually tear them apart as ambitious leaders sought after the throne; as rival tribes fought a civil war of their own which finally divided them into two kingdoms – northern and southern; as some aggressive people began to accumulate wealth and property while the less fortunate fell into the depths of poverty; and as prophets named Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and Micah together with some others, tried to warn them of the suffering, the sorrow and the devastating exile to foreign lands which would surely follow if they did not remain faithful to their original promise.

Choose this day whom you will serve, Joshua proclaimed to those ancient people, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord! That was and is and always will be the one promise which lays the foundation and sets in motion the purpose and direction of a life, a family, a church and a nation.

III

But what are we to do when the choices we have to make aren’t clearly defined as black or white, yes or no, good or bad but somewhere in between? And how can we as people of faith navigate in this complex world when we disagree with one another?

You say “Well, read the Bible – you’ll find the answers there,” like the bumper sticker which declares: “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.”

If you will take your pew Bibles out of the racks again, turn with me to Romans 13 and let’s look at and listen to the words Paul wrote long ago:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, anyone who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of them who are in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive their approval, for they are God’s servant for your good.

(Romans 13:1-3)

Now, if the leaders are, in fact, women and men of integrity who follow the laws of the land, then this command from Romans 13 makes sense. But when Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the protestant pastor and professor who served the church in Nazi Germany, finally realized that Adolph Hitler and the leaders of the Third Reich were not, in fact, rulers instituted by God but instead power crazed megalomaniacs possessed by Satan who were hell-bent on wiping out the Jews and defeating the free nations of the world…then Bonhoeffer decided to join a conspiracy against those destructive leaders and agreed to break the sixth commandment in plotting the death of Hitler himself – a decision which cost Bonhoeffer his life.

Did that Christian man who was executed in a Nazi prison camp in 1945 struggle with the Biblical admonitions in Romans 13 and Exodus 20 where the Ten Commandments are found? You bet he did. Dietrich Bonhoeffer got down on his knees and he prayed for God’s guidance. Then he acknowledged that the forces of evil had tilted the scales of justice all the way down, and he decided that God had called him to do whatever he could to help to set things right.

One of his colleagues, another pastor named Martin Niemoller, also a prisoner who survived, lived to write these words which tell us what was at stake:

In Germany, the Nazis came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I was a Protestant, so I did not speak up.

Then they came for me! But by that time, there was no one left to speak up for anyone.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had to make a similar decision in 1954. He was only 26 years old and the new pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. But when Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat and go to the back of the bus, Martin Luther King, Jr. was asked by the local NAACP to get involved, and he did. His wife, Coretta Scott King, whose memorial service was held here in Atlanta earlier this month, described her husband’s situation this way:

“In 1954, the civil rights of African Americans were more imaginary than real. Their segregation was the law of the South. This law gave a Montgomery bus driver the right to have a 42 year old black seamstress, Rosa Parks, arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger. When word of the December 1 incident reached the NAACP, its president quickly called a meeting…the time had come for a bus boycott…and the leader recommended was Martin Luther King, Jr.

The objective was to force the city to change the law…and finally, the United States Supreme Court upheld Montgomery’s Federal District Court ruling, declaring ‘Alabama’s state and local laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional.’

By introducing non-violent protest as an effective strategy against unjust laws, Dr. King emerged as a national and international symbol of racial justice…which was finally rewarded by passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which gave black Americans equal access to the polls with white Americans.” (From “I Have A Dream,” Edited by James M. Washington, Forward by Coretta Scott King, 1986/1992, Harper Collins Publishers, pages X and XI in the Forward)

CONCLUSION

For Bonhoeffer, the Nazi leaders were not instituted nor blessed by God and somebody had to stop them. For King, it was the law of land which he knew was wrong and needed to be changed.

In our lives and in this nation today, there are issues of major proportions which we are trying to face. Many Americans agree with the President, with his advisors and with the Congress who decided to send our soldiers into Afghanistan and Iraq. Many other Americans disagree with that decision, and if you watched the State of the Union Address on television, you could see it with your own eyes - that chamber, like our entire nation, is divided.

Jesus said, A nation divided against itself cannot stand and we had better pay attention. So it is my hope and prayer that somehow we will find a way, as more and more Americans and UN forces and Afghan and Iraqi citizens die or are wounded, to bring that painful struggle to an end.

Our democratic system allows for dissent and protest, and there are Christians on both sides of the debate, just as is the case with abortion, the rights of gays and lesbians, the death penalty and the allocation of our resources in the federal budget. Is it anti-American or un-Christian to disagree with those who are in authority? Not if we do so in a non-violent, civil manner where all the voices can be heard from every side.

But where we get ourselves into trouble as a nation, or as faith communities with denominations and local congregations, is when we draw the line and declare that God is on our side. What happens then? Well, the conversation ends and we point our fingers with self-righteous indignation and say “You’re wrong, I’m right” and we go on with the fight…which is not God’s will.

How do we know? The Bible tells us so – Ephesians 1, verses 9 and 10:

For God has made known to us…the mystery of His will, according to His purpose which He set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time – to unite all things in Him (in Christ), things in heaven and things on earth.

As we continue to pray and to work toward peace, reconciliation and unity among all of God’s people on this earth, let us remember and never forget – that is the way God wants and wills it to be.

Abraham Lincoln believed it and so can we as we remember those profound words:

“…For we know that the Lord is always on the side of right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and the nation should choose to be on the Lord’s side.”

So it was then, so it is now and so it always shall be!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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