Sermon: The God of Liberty

Texts: Zechariah 9:9-12; Luke 4:14-19

Date: July 3, 2011

Stephen Soderland, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

“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.” 

This statement declares the highest ideals of our country, ideals that we have been striving to uphold for more than two hundred years.  Our understanding of Thomas Jefferson’s famous declaration has deepened over the years to become more and more inclusive. The phrase “all men are created equal” no longer applies only to white, male property owners.  I hope our nation will continue to grow in how we understand the call for liberty to all – radical inclusiveness, no exceptions.

The call for liberty is also a central theme that runs throughout the Bible in the stories of the Exodus and of the Babylonian exile.  The Old Testament writers understood God as the one who sets the captives free.  It was by God’s liberation that the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt.  All of the books of the prophets are in the context of the Babylonian exile.  The early prophets such as first Isaiah wrote at a time when Israel and Judah were under attack and certain to be conquered by Babylon.  Later prophets, including second Isaiah that Jesus quotes in today’s reading wrote from exile in Babylon after Jerusalem had fallen and the temple had been destroyed.  Zechariah is one of the latest prophets, from the generation after the return from exile when the people of Israel were trying to rebuild a devastated homeland.

Starting next week, Emily will begin a sermon series on the minor prophets.  They are called minor only because they are shorter books than the major prophets.  As a happy coincidence, the lectionary for today had Zechariah as one of the readings, one of the minor prophets that is not in Emily’s series.  So, I will anticipate the start of her series by preaching on Zechariah.

The Babylonian exile was a traumatic event in the life of Israel.  Think of how traumatic the attacks of September 11 were for this country, then multiply that several fold.  Can you remember the reactions to the September 11 attacks?  One immediate response was to ask ourselves, “Why do they hate us so much?”  This was a time for self-reflection, for soul searching, perhaps even for national repentance.  The question that the ancient Israelites asked was “Why has God abandoned us?”  How could God let the chosen people be defeated and let God’s temple be destroyed.  Was this because of sins of the nation as the prophets declared?  Or did this mean that the covenant with God was over and they should start shopping around for another god?

A second response was the desire to strike back.  This was not really an option for the ancient Israelites, who were by then a third-rate military power caught between powerful empires.  But it must have been a response they longed for, since all the prophets feel required to emphasize that liberation comes from God, not from our own military strength.  Within a few months after September 11, our national soul searching was drown out by the drums of war.  If we couldn’t strike back at the elusive enemy who attacked us, we felt a need to strike at someone – a country that had supported our enemies, or even a country that hadn’t directly supported them, but was sympathetic to our enemies.

The response of self reflection in our nation and the call to repentance has not gone away, it just doesn’t make headlines any more.  Some of us recently saw a video of a talk by pastor and theologian Walter Bruggemann on the nature of evil.  He was asked what he would preach if he gave a sermon on the 10^th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.  He responded that his main theme would be the need for the United States to repent of our imperialism and to break away from the demonic power of greed.  [From a talk on March 15, 2011 at Elmhurst College, “A Conversation on the Nature of Evil”].

Harsh words – some would even say unpatriotic words.  But, the prophets also had harsh words to say about their own nation.  To the prophets, the reason that Israel was attacked and conquered was that the nation was unfaithful to God’s call for justice and righteousness. The rich were devouring the poor, the courts were crooked, the officials were corrupt, the people had abandoned God’s way.  Israel wouldn’t be in the fix it was, if it had stayed true to God. 

So, what does Zechariah say, now that the exile is over and the people have returned to a devastated homeland?  It wasn’t through their own efforts that they returned home.  Fifty years after Babylon had conquered Israel, Persia conquered Babylon and Israelites were permitted to return from exile.  Even in their liberation from exile, Israel is still just a pawn of the powerful empires of the day.  So, there’s not much point in trusting in God for liberation, is there?  Why not just stay in Babylon and forget about God?

Not so, says Zechariah.  It is the Lord God who comes to us triumphant and victorious.  God is the king who will command peace to the nations, whose dominion is from sea to sea. (Or should we say from sea to shining sea?)  It is the Lord God who sets the prisoners free, who returns us to our stronghold and restores double what we lost. 

But this triumphant God is not a king of military power.  He is humble and riding on a donkey, instead of a war horse.  The words “triumphant and victorious” in the Revised Standard Version can also be translated as “righteous and having salvation”.   The triumph of this king is not a military triumph.  God will take away the chariots from the Northern Kingdom and the war horses from Jerusalem and will break the bow of battle.  Victory does not come from our own power.  To the ancient Israelites this would have been like us hearing that God will take away the fighter jets of NATO and the missiles of the United States.  That is not what we want to hear and not what Israel wanted to hear.

I see a shift in thinking that begins about time of the prophets.  From the days of Moses and Joshua to the days of David and Saul, the Biblical writers assumed that it was right for Israel to defeat their enemies militarily.  They even saw it as a moral duty to attack the enemies of God.  By the time of the prophets, this view is changing.  The ideal world that God plans to bring about is now a world of universal disarmament.  Perhaps this is seen as a real possibility or perhaps it is only in a distant future when God has transformed the world.  But, it is a definite turning away from the earlier reliance on their own military strength.   Jesus takes this even further, and teaches that we should turn our other cheek now, and love our enemies now, not in some distant future time.

There are multiple levels of meaning in this text as in much of the Bible.  That is one reason why the scriptures resonate so deeply in our hearts.  On the national level, Zechariah is talking about a literal return to a homeland after two generations of exile, of rebuilding a devastated and war-torn land.  On a personal level, these verses speak about God liberating us from whatever situations in our lives need liberation, of rebuilding the things in our lives that have been devastated. 

There are many in this congregation who are faced with the need for liberation and rebuilding after devastation. I can think of a church member who has returned home after a stroke and is slowly working to regain use of a right hand whose fingers have become useless.  Zechariah proclaims that the Lord of liberation is with her as she rebuilds her life. 

There are those among us who are grieving over the death of a husband, wife, or family member.  How can we rebuild our life without a loved one who was central to all we are?  There are some who are facing serious illness or diminished abilities.  There are some who are in the exile and powerlessness of unemployment.  Zechariah promises that the Lord will set the prisoners free from the waterless pit.  This will be done by the power of the Lord and not by our own strength.

The passage from Isaiah in today’s reading is also about liberation at a personal level.  This is the scripture that Jesus chose as his text at the beginning of his ministry.  He chose this as defining what he wants to teach us about the God of liberation.  It is the Lord who gives good news to the poor and the oppressed, who releases the captives, gives sight to the blind, who binds up the wounded and comforts the broken hearted.  This is a God, not of vengeance and punishment, but a God of restoring and building up.  And who is it that the Lord has anointed to declare the good news?  Is it Jesus alone, or is it you and me?  We are called on to proclaim liberty in our lives, in our nation, in the world.

We have much to repent of and much to celebrate on this Independence Day.  It is too easy to be discouraged and to see only the exile and not the homecoming, only the devastation and not the rebuilding.  I was impressed with the perspective of the keynote speaker at my niece’s high school graduation recently.  Bill Gates, Sr. spoke at the Roosevelt High School commencement and shared his insights from the perspective of an 85-year-old. 

He asked if any of the class of 2011 were of Japanese ancestry.  If they had been in his graduating class, they would not have been able to graduate.  They would have been shipped off to prison camps during their senior year.  The U.S. government later apologized and admitted that this was wrong.  The Bainbridge Island memorial project has a motto Nidoto nai yoni “Let it not happen again.”  I think that is a safe bet.  Even at the peak of hysteria after the September 11 attacks when people were looking around for someone to blame, President Bush and other leaders constantly re-iterated, “Muslim Americans are not our enemy, Islam is not our enemy.”

Gates also addressed those of African descent.  When he graduated from high school, African nations were colonies of European powers.  Since then all of these nations have gained their independence.  When he was in high school, African Americans couldn’t eat at lunch counters with whites, had severely limited opportunities for education and jobs. The Civil Rights movement has removed these barriers.  He spoke of the progress in women’s rights and contrasted the limited job opportunities when he was in high school to the present time.

Of course, all of us can see the progress that still needs to be made.  We fall short of liberty and justice in so many areas.  One area that I see where we have far to go is the mind set of “us” versus “them”.  I long for a world where there is only “us” and no “them”.  There is progress in this direction – who would have expected France and Germany to be part of the same European Union, instead of bitter enemies?  That would have been unthinkable just one generation ago.  We are moving towards a single human family.  It is not steady progress, we go two steps forward and one step back.  But I am convinced that we are moving towards a time when Zechariah’s vision will be a reality: peace to the nations, God’s dominion from sea to sea, to the ends of the earth.  Amen.