3rd Sunday of Pentecost Sermon

When I started university, my goal was to graduate with a degree in linguistics in Teaching English as a Second Language so that I could go to El Salvador as a missionary. With this particular skillset, I could earn my own living teaching English to the kids and teenagers at the church I was connected with in San Salvador and then that would boost their earning potential and their economic prospects and hopefully lift them out of poverty.

I was living in Canada at the time but always had a sense that Canada was not where I was going to ‘end up’ but I was also not sure that I was meant to go back to the Netherlands where I was born, to try to sort out my place there as an adult.

Maybe it could be this third place or lots of other places I hadn’t considered yet. With a Dutch passport, and 4 or 5 languages under my belt, I could basically go anywhere God wanted me.

And I was ready, like the disciples in Matthew 9, to be a worker headed out to the harvest field. Here I am Lord. Where do you need me?

So, how did I end up here, settled in a comfy cozy American town, with my American family, and my very own American passport? Well, so… I met a guy…

And while the United States was not on my top list of countries to … go evangelize and teach English, I know very well that I’ve landed in a place that many immigrants look at as the dream country to end up in. And I’m not mad about it.

People leave their home countries and end up in other countries for lots of different reasons. For some people, life in their home country is difficult, painful, dangerous, or hopeless, and they leave because almost anywhere must be better. For others, like my parents and siblings and I, there was nothing terrible at home pushing our family to cross an ocean. It was simply the lure of a hope that more or better was possible elsewhere.

For me, barely twenty years later, it was love.

Different reasons!

And what makes America a great place to land is that kingdom of God values overlap with deeply held American values, especially as an immigrant, and especially for immigrants.

For one thing, America loves the idea of liberty and justice for all. Ask the average American and they’ll say:

It should not matter if you are tall or short, black or white, gay or straight, born here or elsewhere. Everyone deserves a fair shot. The Declaration of Independence proclaims that all men – people – are created equal and independent and have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And to you, I expect that feels like a given. Of course you should be allowed to make the most of your life. It’s obvious… If you grew up American.

Because there are other countries where this is not a given if you are a woman, or if you fall outside the cisgender / heteronormative binary, if you’re that other religion, if you are desperately poor or didn’t attend the right school or speak the right language. There are places where there is no right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness if you have a physical or mental disability.

But from its very founding, America was determined to be different and to aim for better. And this may not be as fully codified into law as some other countries, but it is baked into the very soul of America.

As American Christians, this principle feels good and right and familiar because we’ve heard something like it from Paul in Galatians 3 and Colossians 3: There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are … heirs according to the promise.

If you are here in America, then you too get to enjoy the privileges and benefits of America.

Another national ideal we love as Americans is a good old redemption story.

I mean, how many Disney princesses can you name who started out struggling to get by while working for their cruel step family, weighed down by the expectations their strict parents had for them, or locked in a tall tower wondering if their lives would ever be more only to end up at lavish parties, dancing with royalty, and overcoming their struggles at home because of their wit, courage, and determination?

Immigrants dream for this kind of hopeful new beginning, and for the most part, Americans love this for immigrants like me. And so, plenty of people come from elsewhere just dreaming of a fresh start. They’ve spent years struggling to make something happen at home: to get the education, the job, the opportunity to break a cycle or be the first in the family who… makes things better for themselves, whose family history, past circumstances, or misfortunes don’t hold them back anymore.

And this redemption arc is also central in our Christian faith.

After all, in Christ, you are a new creation – the old is gone, the new has come. The whole arc of redemption assures us that we can make a fresh start, to leave behind the things that used to define us and keep us stuck, and to step into a new identity, a new way of living, and claim a new allegiance.

This hope of a better life free from the weight of the old draws us in and comforts us and keeps us looking ahead. Both for immigrants and for Christians.

And then one other American value that overlaps with God’s Kingdom is care for the vulnerable, the poor, the outcast, the sick, and the weary.

When I had that thought, and not having grown up here or never having been there, I did a little reading up on The Statue of Liberty.

The Statue of Lady Liberty was conceived as a gift from French historian and fierce abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye and sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, on the occasion of the centennial of American Independence and so Lady Liberty carries a tablet inscribed with the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence (that’s July 4, 1776, for those of us who haven’t taken any American history classes), and she is depicted with her left foot on a broken chain and shackle. It was meant to honor America’s enduring independence and freedom as a Republic and its abolition of slavery after the American civil war. After a slight delay for the Franco-Prussian war, it was decided that France would cover the cost of the statue if America would provide the base and the pedestal.

But fundraising for the base and pedestal was a challenge and so in 1883, American poet Emma Lazarus, at the urging of her friend, wrote and donated a poem to an art auction for the cause. She, herself, had been involved in helping Jewish refugees flee Eastern Europe and come to New York and so she wrote The New Colossus.

The poem was read and displayed in the 1880s at an exhibit for the statue before it was completed, but after Emma Lazarus’ death, it was forgotten. Then in 1903, thanks to the efforts of a friend to honor Emma Lazarus’ memory, the poem was cast in bronze and mounted inside the pedestal and so the Statue of Liberty has become a beacon to people from elsewhere who need a safe haven.

This is The New Colossus:

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!”

This beautiful invitation to the “tired, the poor, the masses yearning to be free” is, I think, one of the core American values that most Americans would say makes this country special. For more than 200 years, there has been a sense of duty, of goodness, of real patriotism, around the free acceptance of a downtrodden, oppressed, persecuted, exhausted-from-just-barely-getting-by people who came from elsewhere.

And as Christians, we know how God wants us to treat the vulnerable, the marginalized, the displaced.

Again and again, in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, the scriptures urge God’s people to look after foreigners, not to withhold justice from foreigners, to provide food and clothing to foreigners, and to treat foreigners among you as a native-born.

The life of a newly arrived refugee, asylum seeker, hopeful immigrant is filled with uncertainty and instability. Where will they live? What will they eat? How can they make a little money? Who will show them the ropes and ease their unfamiliarity with the norms and expectations of life in America?

Dear Christian, Jesus wants it to be you who steps up to help the stranger in the land. Jesus has made it abundantly clear that loves the poor and cares for the lonely and he expects us to be welcoming to all. In the parable of the sheep and the goats Jesus says

“the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

And when those righteous people on his right say, but when did we do that for you?, he says, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

So while American bureaucracy is sometimes lagging and struggles to live up to these three ideals

• The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all – no caveats
• That everyone gets a redemption story where the old has gone, the new has come and a fresh start brings new hope
• Of being a land where the tired, the poor, the masses yearning to be free can come and make a better life for themselves

These are values Americans cherish and should be proud of because they do make America really special, and really appealing to people from elsewhere and no wonder!

Especially as Christians, these American values should inspire pride and love for this country because they are so similar to Kingdom values.And the fact that you get to live in a country where these deeply held spiritual values are embedded in your shared identity as Americans is worth celebrating here on America’s 250th birthday.