Scripture 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Matthew 7:24-27
Scripture 1 John 3:16-22
We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God, and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
Sermon
When I was in sixth grade, I wrote a poem. It is called, “Our Flag.” I will recite it for you now.
Our flag! Have you ever looked at it?
It’s very nice, you know!
A girl named Betsy Ross, it’s pieces she did sew!
Red for the blood our veterans shed,
A star for every state.
Choosing colors for our flag
Was surely no debate!
Blue for truthfulness
Was decided after a while,
And when Geroge Washington saw the flag,
He gave a great big smile!
“It’s just what I had hoped for,
A true work of art!”
“All it took was a needle and thread,
And a little of my heart.” (1972)
I didn’t know it then, but in writing that little poem, I was loving my country with my mind and my body: I used my mind to come up with the concept and the words, and my body—my hand—to commit the poem to paper, and then to stand up and recite it to my teacher, Mrs. Griggs, and the class. Before talking about loving God with our body, let’s talk for a bit about how we love our country with our body. There are many ways to do this.
We can love our country with our body by doing something as weighty as enlisting in the military, or something as uplifting as working in one of our national parks. We can love our country by teaching in a public school, or by showing up on election day and exercising the right and privilege of voting. We can love our country by celebrating with a barbecue and fireworks and singing a patriotic song.
We can love our country by exercising our right to free speech. We may do this by writing a letter to our congressperson. We may do this by taking part in a demonstration when we believe our government is not living into its promise of the right for all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This past winter, in the midst of protests of the treatment of immigrants, at least two American citizens paid for the right to free speech with their lives. They laid down their lives for this nation, in hopes that it might do better. They demonstrated in the hopes that our nation might live into the promise of the Statue of Liberty as found on a bronze plaque that is within the monument itself:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "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-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”[i]
We can love our nation with our body, and we can love our God with our body as well. This morning’s three scripture passages remind us of that. The body is, as one pastor has stated it, “the connective tissue between love of God and love of neighbor.”[ii]
We begin with two very pointed verses from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Don’t you know, he asks, that your body is “a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” As Christians, our bodies don’t belong to us; they belong to God. We’ve been talking about loving God with our mind, heart, and soul these past couple of weeks, and it’s easy to let thoughts and feelings about our faith take center stage. But Paul is exasperated that the congregation he is writing to seems to have forgotten that their bodies are, in fact, holy. They are holy in light of our baptism. They are holy because of the saving work of Jesus who laid down his life for God and for us. And they are holy because, by virtue of both our baptism and the crucifixion, we, too will be raised up, as Christ was raised up.
And so, as our Matthew reading points out, it is crucial that we remember that Jesus calls us to be “doers of the Word.” He says, “everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand.” Jesus is even more clear about the imperative to be doers of the Word in the parable of the Kingdom in Matthew chapter 25. He reminds us,
“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”
(Matthew 25:35-36)
“Truly I tell you,” he continues, “just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40)
We love God with our bodies when we love our neighbors with our bodies. Matthew 25 is a parable of salvation, and it doesn’t say a thing about what we think or believe. It speaks only about how we live. You gave food, you gave drink, you welcomed, you clothed, you cared for, you visited me, Jesus says. Now, enter my kingdom.
Our passage from the first letter of John, chapter three, also emphasizes that Jesus has laid down his life for his brothers and sisters, and reminds us to “love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.” (1 John 3:18) Our sacraments are bodily experiences in which we show our love to God, in deed and in truth. Every person of every age who is baptized has an experience of water. For some, it is the experience of total immersion in a stream or pool; for others, it is the trickle of water on their heads from a baptismal font. In both experiences, our bodies join in our remembrance of God’s great works through the gift of water: the Exodus through a God-controlled sea; Jesus wading into the waters of the muddy Jordan to receive John’s baptism; even the crystal waters of the river of life in the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. The waters of baptism are the water of life, and every one of us gets to experience that water, whether surrounding our body or flowing down our heads.
In the Lord’s Supper we re-enact Jesus’s final meal with his disciples. We are seated around that table on the first night of the Passover. We are there, hearing his words—this is my body, this is my blood—and we are taking in the bread and wine or juice, just as those first disciples did, assured by our faith that we are experiencing the true presence of Christ with us, among us, and in us. That food and drink becomes a part of who we are: we have been fed with the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation.
We love God with our bodies, whether we realize it or not.
We can, and do, love both our God and our nation, with our bodies. But there is a vast difference in what that love means. Nations ebb and flow, like the tides, subject to movements that come and go. Nations evolve over time. They may have, as ours does, a constitution and a structure that is meant to hold together, but these are only as strong as the integrity of those who occupy positions of power and influence. We may love our nation, but it is imperfect by its very nature. We may love our nation, but it is always our responsibility to love it with an inquisitive heart and a critical eye. We may love our nation, but we must never confuse or blur that love with our love for God.
God couldn’t be more different than a nation, God, who is immortal, eternal, almighty, all knowing, all loving, all wise. No human institution (or human running an institution) can possibly claim any of these attributes. No human institution—and I include the church in this—is perfect as God is perfect.
As our service ends this morning we will sing a beloved hymn, whose words include a prayer for our nation:
America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law. [iii]
If we love our nation, let love it with our body, as our conscience guides us; we us pray to the God whom we love even more to mend its flaws, and to help it to live up to its most beautiful and lofty ideals. And no matter what state our nation is in, let us persist in our first call, our greatest call: our love for God and for one another.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,” from The Oxford Book of American Poetry, Oxford University Press. p. 184, Lehman, David, ed. (2006).
[ii] Steve Thomason, A Deeper Life: A 6-Week Preaching Series for Epiphany 2024 (St. Paul, MN: Luther Seminary, Working Preacher Website, 2023).
[iii] https://www.lyricsondemand.com/miscellaneouslyrics/patrioticsongslyrics/americathebeautifullyrics.html