Sermon for July 4, 1999

Pastor Gunnar L. Anderson

"THE BEST OF AMERICA"

Woody Guthrie once wrote, Roll on, Columbia, roll on." Last summer while I was driving from Seattle, Washington, where my cousin had just gotten married, to Jacksonville, Oregon where I would visit friends, I had to decide which way to go. I looked at the map and, of course, saw the mighty Columbia River marked as the border between these two states. I thought, "Well, I have never seen the Columbia. I'll go down there, and ride along the river towards the coast. Then, at the mouth of the river, I'll take the bridge across to Oregon."

And then I spotted the words written on the map on the Oregon side: "Fort Clatsup." And I said , "That's my destination for today." Have you ever heard of Fort Clatsup¤ It's an important place in American history, but not terribly well known, I'd suspect.

Fort Clatsup was the encampment of Lewis and Clark and their expedition, known as the Corps of Discovery during the long, wet winter of 1805-06. President Thomas Jefferson had commissioned his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and army captain, William Clark, to lead the Corps to explore and map the recently acquired Louisiana Purchase. Leaving from St. Louis, paddling the Missouri River, across the Rockies, to the Columbia, this intrepid band of adventurers proceeded onward to the Pacific, when winter fell!

I decided to visit Fort Clatsup because I had seen the Ken Burns Public Television documentary on Lewis and Clark. In fact, I recorded it, and took note of the following words spoken by the distinguished narrator, Hal Holbrook:

"Now a decision was needed; where to spend the winter¤ Staying near the ocean meant they might meet a ship, get provisions, perhaps send a man back to Washington by sea. They could stay on the north side of the Columbia, though the Chinook Indians there charged what Clark considered extravagant prices for everything. They could stay on the south side of the Columbia where the Clatsup Indians said there was plenty of elk for food and clothing. Or, they could head back up river toward the Nez Perce where they could count on drier weather."

"Then the captains told the crew that the issue would be decided by a vote. One by one the name of each member of the Corps of Discovery was called out."

Writer, Erika Funkhowser, then continues, " I think the vote they take at the mouth of the Columbia is an incredibly dramatic moment in American history; and I think these two, for me, brilliant leaders (Lewis and Clark) decided to throw this decision back at the democratic unit, and say, 'What do we think¤'"

Adds historian Dayton Duncan, "That moment to me is a quintessential American moment. I mean, they could have just, the captains could have said, 'We're heading back up river; or, we're camping over there; or, we're doing this, or we're doing that.' And instead, they decided each person is going to say what they think in the presence of everybody else. So one by one they had the men say what they wanted to do. And they let York vote. He's a black man. He's a slave. It's 60, 70 years before slaves will be emancipated and get to vote. Sacajawea casts her vote. She's an Indian, and a woman; and it's going to be a century before Indians and women get to vote in the United States. They're not really in the United States at this moment, but they had jumped out ahead of time! It was Lewis and Clark at their best, which is America at its best!"

Concludes Holbrook, "In the end a majority decided to cross to the south side of the Columbia. There they would spend the winter with an entire continent between themselves and their countrymen."

We,, we are their countrymen, less that 200 years later; and on the Fourth of July we are drawn together. For the Fourth of July is all about "THE BEST OF AMERICA!" The Fourth of July is all about freedom! But freedom, as we know, has its costs.

To paraphrase our friend, Father Kenneth Gorman of Holy Cross Episcopal Church, from his eloquent invocation delivered at North Plainfield's recent Memorial Day observance: from the snows of Valley Forge, "to the fields of Gettysburg, to the skies over Kosovo, we have witnessed the struggle for freedom," a struggle dripping red with blood. Indeed, the very fireworks with which we celebrate the Fourth of July do not signify picnics and parades, but "the rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air!" And to have seen in the past two months, up close and personal, a people persecuted for their race, their religion, and their ethnicity; a people trying desperately to cling to who they are and to what they believe, I think, makes the value of our own freedom, our own human rights, our own Bill of Rights, so very vivid and altogether precious!

Editor Edger Trexler writes in last months' "Lutheran" magazine: "Milosevic may or may not succeed with his evil intent, but the rest of the world can hardly look away. We have seen too many egomaniacs kill too many to do that. I've shuddered when walking through Dachau and Buchenwald. Talk is always preferable to war, but massacres cannot be tolerated."

Still, my heart leaps with hopeful joy to hear the prophet Zechariah cry, for us heralding Christ: "lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he." But then in the very next phrase we are told that our king is "humble and riding on a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem...and he shall command peace to the nations." I also like Jeremiah's words that we heard last week: "As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet."

So a big part of the cost of freedom for each and every one of us is responsibility! We are to use our freedom well and wisely; to seek after justice and peace which makes our country and our world a better place to live, and which is simply a tenet of our faith! Freedom is a gift, and the Bible says that we are to use our gifts "for the common good." The trouble comes, as Paul tells us this morning, that "...I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do."

Indeed, Thomas Jefferson wrote his immortal words in the Declaration of Independence ratified on the first Fourth of July: "all people are created equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights;" yet York voted 60, 70 years before slaves were free, and Sacajawea voted over a century before women and Indians had rights. And important ways this struggle for freedom and equality is still ongoing! Governor Whitman is under fire this very weekend for the supposed continuance of racial profiling by State Police, and who hasn't heard the name Abner Louima¤ And beyond, is it possible that sometimes we take freedom too far¤ Wasn't it just a week or so ago that the Senate turned down a bill that would have made it harder for people to get guns; seemingly knuckling under to the pressure of the National Rifle Association and its president, Charlton Heston, who, after the Littleton, Colorado school shootings, commented that such tragedies could be avoided if more people had guns. Moronic!

Yes, we Lutherans rejoice in our basic belief that God grants us the dignity of freedom of the will to make choices. Only thing is, we will always make wrong choices; and so we are driven continually to our knees before the cross needing to be forgiven. As Paul cries introspectively, "Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death¤ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Does that mean, then, that it doesn't matter what we do because God's grace will take care of it¤ Is it okay to continue to sin because God will forgive us anyway¤ Paul has told us emphatically on each of the last two Sundays: "By no means!"

In Galatians, Paul continues: "Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, carousing, and the like." And smack in the middle of that list of sins is "licentiousness," license. "For freedom Christ has set us free," Paul says, not for license, not for anything goes, not for irresponsibility, but for freedom used well and wisely "for the common good." Paul adds, we are free for "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."

So, I love what we heard Paul say last week: "Now that you have been freed from sin," you are enslaved to God!" According to Jesus in today's Gospel, "if we lay down the burden of insisting that God dance to our music, then we will be free to dance to God's music," to the wonderful melody of mercy, forgiveness, healing, and rest for the weary!

And that we can dance; that we can preach Christ, crucified and resurrected; and that we can gather here with our white skin and our brown skin and our black skin, coming from South America, from Africa, from Germany, from Norway and Denmark and Sweden, even from Ireland; that we can freely worship on this Sunday which is also the Fourth of July; that's "THE BEST OF AMERICA!"

"Roll on, Columbia, roll on!"

AMEN

Copyright © 1999 Gunnar L. Anderson. All Rights Reserved.

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