This is the time of year that kids go to sleep-away camp. Kids look forward to camp for weeks and months. Some start planning next year’s stay at Dunkirk on the ride home at the end of the week. Despite the excitement and pleasures of being at camp, many campers also experience a little (sometimes more than a little) homesickness. When we’re deprived of the familiar comforts of our home, we miss them.
How much worse would our homesickness be if we were forcibly exiled from our homes and our country, forced to march hundreds of miles to a strange land and to be held there by the enemies who had ransacked our homes and nation? As if that would not be enough to make us miserable, imagine that the land you had been forced to leave was the visible symbol of God’s favor on you and your people? That was the situation the psalmist was in when he wrote these words: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.” (Psalm 137:5-6)
I understand why someone would write this, but I think we still have to take issue with it. The writer places Jerusalem above his highest joy. Jerusalem was the holy city, the site of the Temple, which is the place of meeting between God and humanity. Jerusalem was the capital city where the descendants of David ruled. All true, but Jerusalem was only the sign of the promise and the evidence of the blessing – it was not the Source of the blessing or the Giver of the promise. God alone is worthy of being set above our highest joy.
This time of year, you will hear lots of people say that God has blessed our country. Indeed, we are blessed with incredible natural resources and we are the inheritors of a system of government that seeks to represent everyone. Our democracy governs by the will of the majority but protects the rights of those on the losing side of political arguments from oppression by the winners. This form of government has been a model of liberty for almost 250 years. We should celebrate it and be proud to be citizens of a great nation.
Unfortunately, patriotism sometimes morphs into a worship of country. Patriotism is not a refusal to criticize our country or an insistence that our country always does things better than others. The more we love our country and its people, the more we should do all we can as citizens to see that we live out the promise of liberty and justice for all people. Doing that often begins by pointing out where we fall short of the ideal.
As we celebrate our nation’s founding, I urge you to take stock of our blessings as Americans. Thank God for our nation and make a commitment to pray regularly for our country, our President, our courts, and all those who make our laws and enforce them. Commit yourself to holding our nation accountable to the principles of peace, justice, care for the weak and vulnerable, and the created dignity of every individual. These are biblical values – the values you have received from God, who alone deserves to be set above your highest joy.
Prayer: God of all nations, thank you for blessing this country and its people so abundantly. Grant us grace to be a blessing even as we pray for you to bless us. Amen.