By coincidence, the Fourth of July falls on a Sunday. At least in my faith tradition, church and state tend to be kept separate, so that church is about things spiritual, but you don’t hear much about community and national issues. The sanctity of life and changed morals in America are exceptions, but otherwise worship follows the calendar of the church while life outside the sanctuary has its own rhythms and observances. Sunday being the Fourth, it’s logical to ask how faithfulness to Christ impacts the neighborhoods and nation in which we live.
Sunday’s Gospel lesson in many churches reports how Jesus returned to His hometown, spoke in the synagogue, but got bad reviews. “They took offense at him.” Jesus challenged their conventional beliefs and practices. Lesson: what goes on in our hearts and minds in worship has an impact upon the communities in which we live. “He could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief” (Mark 6:5-6). Worship is a contest of wills, my will or God’s will, and the outcome makes a difference where you live.
A faithful Fourth for followers of Jesus is not a complicated church-state issue. Jesus says, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it. ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37-39). I take that to mean that if we are serious about God and faith and church, we’ll be bringing the help and hope of Christ to the people of… fill in the name of your town. Second-guessing my own ministry, we talked generally about outreach but how many actual programs of help and hope did we do in our community? Talk about evangelism can be like a hunter shooting with no target in sight, simply hoping a deer will wander into the path of his shot. One place where church and state are not separate is when we do good works in our community, and that too is “the free exercise” of our faith.
Wishing you and yours a happy, safe, and faithful Fourth.
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