Good morning, Friends! Thank you all for coming today. I want to start this morning with a special reading for Father’s Day. It was written by a Jewish scholar, about 180 years before the time of Jesus. We’re reading from this book in our midweek Bible study.
As we all know, one of the Ten Commandments is, “Honor your father and your mother.” We don’t always know the right thing to do concerning our parents. And honoring them isn’t always easy.
This section I’m going to read says a little bit more and spells it out. I’m not going to preach on this passage today, but I’m going to read it, because it has some good things for us to hear.
Listen to me, your father, O children;
act accordingly, that you may be safe.For the Lord honors a father above his children,
and he confirms a mother’s judgment over her sons.Those who honor their father atone for sins,
and those who respect their mother are like those who lay up treasure.Those who honor their father will have joy in their own children,
and when they pray they will be heard.Those who respect their father will have long life,
and those who honor their mother obey the Lord;Honor your father by word and deed,
that his blessing may come upon you.For a father’s blessing strengthens the houses of the children,
but a mother’s curse uproots their foundations.Do not glorify yourself by your father’s dishonor,
for your father’s dishonor is no glory to you.The honor of one’s father is one’s own glory,
and a mother dishonored is a disgrace to her children.My child, help your father in his old age,
and do not grieve him as long as he lives;
even if his mind fails, be patient with him;
do not despise him because you have all your faculties.For kindness to a father will not be forgotten
and will be credited to you against your sins;
in the day of your distress it will be remembered in your favor;
like frost in fair weather, your sins will melt away.Whoever forsakes a father is like a blasphemer,
and whoever angers a mother is cursed by the Lord.
Ecclesiasticus 3:1-16
Those words speak for themselves. I don’t need to say anything more about them. But they’re a good reminder about how we treat all of our fathers and mothers – not just because they’re family and we love them, but because honoring our parents is a command from the Lord.
We’ve actually had quite a lot going on for the last few days. Last Sunday was Flag Day. Today is Father’s Day. And in between them, Friday was Juneteenth, a national holiday. Juneteenth, as you probably know, celebrates the freeing of the last slaves in the United States.
Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st of 1863. But most slave owners in Texas didn’t tell their slaves that were free, until they were forced to. The last slaves to get the word weren’t told that they were free until June 19th of 1865, almost two and a half years later.
The Civil War was actually over. But some slave owners in faraway locations tried to hush it up. But on June 19th, Union officer, Major General Gordon Granger came riding into Galveston and read General Order #3 to the people of Texas.
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves. . .”
In black churches around the country, those words are read with reverence. People memorize them, the same way many of us had to memorize the opening words of the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address.
“All slaves are free. . .”
Later that same year, those words were confirmed by the 13th amendment to the United States Constitution, which says:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.“
Three years later, the 14th amendment was ratified. The first clause in the 14th amendment says:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Two years after that, the 15th amendment was ratified. It says:
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.“
Those words are part of the ultimate law of our land. And every public official, every soldier, sailor and airman, every citizen of our country, is bound by those words. That’s why we have the holiday, to remember them.
Now I want to turn and do some actual Bible study! We’ve been reading from the book of Acts for the last few weeks. Today we’re going to skip ahead and read another section from Acts chapter 22.
Paul had just come back to Israel, after teaching and preaching for years in Greece and Turkey. He had started new churches and made many new converts. He went up to Jerusalem, to pray and to visit the leaders of the Christian church.
And one day, Paul was in the Temple, praying, when some people saw him and got angry. They had seen him out in town, with one of his converts who wasn’t Jewish.
They were enraged, because they thought Paul had brought his new convert into the Temple with him. There was a strict law, that no one who wasn’t Jewish and hadn’t been circumcized could set foot in the Temple. They thought Paul was trying to pollute the Temple, and the penalty for that was death.
The crowd raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”
As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the Roman commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that Paul be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this.
As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?”
When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.”
The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered.Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.”
“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.
Acts 22:22-29
This is where the story gets interesting. Paul was born in Antioch, a city in modern-day Turkey. One of the Roman emperors had decreed that everyone who was born in Antioch was a Roman citizen.
Being a Roman citizen was really important. Most people in the countries that Rome conquered were not citizens. The way most people became citizens, was to be born of parents who were citizens.
You could also become a Roman citizen, if you served for 20 years in the Roman army, and survived. It was a reward for loyal service to Rome.
A very few special cities like Antioch, where Paul was born, were also granted the privilege of citizenship. And human nature being what it is, some people were able to bribe their way into becoming citizens.
But being a Roman citizen was important. It gave you rights and responsibilities. You could own property, and leave it to your family.
Being a citizen meant you were protected by clear laws covering marriage and divorce, collecting debts and enforcing judgements, who could vote and who could be a public official and who had to pay taxes.
One of the key things was, that if you were a Roman citizen, and you were living in some other country in the Roman empire, you couldn’t be arrested and tried by local laws. You were immune from arrest and punishment by local rulers. Instead, any offenses you made had to be tried in front of a Roman court, by Roman laws.. And every Roman citizen had the right to appeal to the Emperor, in person.
So Paul was not just a Jew, not just a Christian, but a citizen of Rome. The crowd in the Temple was starting a riot, getting ready to stone him, and the Roman soldiers came running to see what was going on.
Paul was arrested and taken to the barracks. And because he looked like all of his fellow Jews, the Romans were about to tie him up and flog him, to try to beat the truth out of him.
It all came to a stop, as you heard, when Paul identified himself as a citizen of Rome.
Paul went on to be tried by the Roman governor. On the way to court, a group of fanatical Jewish opponents tried to assassinate him. Paul told the governor his story and testified about his faith, and the governor laughed and said that Paul was trying to turn him into a Christian.
Paul finally appealed to Caesar, and was transported to Rome. He almost died in a shipwreck along the way, and he spent two years in jail in Rome, waiting for his trial before the Emperor.
The written record fades out at the end of the book of Acts, but Christian legend says that Paul was beheaded in Rome – a martyr to his faith. Quite a story!
Why am I talking about all this today? What’s the connection?
I’ve told you two stories – two pieces of our history. One is about citizenship in the United States. The other is about citizenship in the Roman Empire. The connection is, both of these stories are about citizenship. About belonging. About rights and responsibilities.
Last weekend was the celebration of Flag Day. The flag is supposed to be a symbol of national unity, not division. Millions of people all around the country repeated the Pledge of Allegiance, which ends with the phrase, “one nation, indivisible, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”
Not for just a few people. Not just for the people of one party, or one color, or one religion. It says, “with liberty and justice for ALL. . .”
We don’t all have to be the same. No intelligent person expects that. We come from different backgrounds, from many walks of life. We live in different communities. We attend hundreds of different places of worship, or none at all.
We don’t enjoy the same kinds of food, or listen to the same music, or dress the same. But we are all promised and guaranteed the same freedoms.
Being a citizen means that no one is a slave any more. It means we’re all expected to obey the same laws.
Every citizen has the right to vote in every public election – and anyone who tries to prevent citizens from voting, is in violation of the spirit and the letter of the Constitution.
Being a citizen means you have the right to live in your home without fear, peacefully with your neighbors. It means you can apply for any job for which you’re qualified. You have to right to attend public schools and colleges, and that schools need to have substantially equal facilities and instruction.
You have the right ride on public transportation, and you don’t have to step to the back of the bus. You have the right to use public facilities, and to marry a person of any color or religion or sexual orientation who agrees to marry you. That’s the law.
You have the right to assemble peaceably. You have the right to freedom of speech and the press. You have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. There’s a long list of rights which spell out in detail your rights under the justice system. I’m not going to try to repeat them all here.
My point is, that these are all rights of all citizens of our country.
This is not a political sermon. If you know me, you know that I don’t do those. This is a reminder about citizenship.
We are all citizens. Even if we don’t look alike, talk alike or sound alike. And under our Constitution, even people who aren’t citizens, still have many rights.
The other thing I want to say, is that there are two kinds of citizenship. We are citizens of our country, and we are also citizens of the kingdom of God. One doesn’t cancel the other out. We are bound by the laws and Constitution of our country, which promise equal rights to everyone.
And we’re also bound by the gospel of Christ. We can’t pick and choose which of the commandments and teachings of Jesus we obey. If anything, Jesus calls us to a higher standard than the law of the land.
To love one another. To put mercy first. To be humble at all times. To live generously. To forgive often. To bless, and not curse.
As citizens of the kingdom of God, our relationship goes far beyond the boundaries of our nation. Our fellow citizens in the kingdom of God are men and women, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, slave and free.
We belong both to our country, which started 250 years ago, and also to the invisible kingdom that Jesus came to start, long before that, to the kingdom where are all children of God, all made in God’s image, all made to be free.
This is just a reminder, in case you forgot, or in case you’ve got any questions.
I didn’t make any of this up. This is law and Constitution, gospel and good news. Let’s remember who we are. We are all citizens.