The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for July 27, 2008

Texts: Isaiah 11:1-10/Matthew 6:25-34

Title: “Manifest Destiny”

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to relive it.” The philosopher George Santayana and all thoughtful people agree that history has much to teach.  We live into the future but how effectively we live, and how fulfilling that experience is likely to be, is in many ways contingent on the lessons we have learned from the life already lived.

              We may be the products of our history, however that does not mean that we are determined by it.  We may ignore the past.  We may do that. Or, we may decide, for whatever reason, to spontaneously chart a new course.

              Yesterday is a memory; tomorrow is an aspiration, today, the moment we are living, is a link in that chain, its full significance yet to be revealed. 

              Yesterday is past, irretrievable. We may sweep up and clean up the mess we have made, but we will never relive yesterday to a better outcome. Yesterday is past. Night will never fall on such a day again.

Today is what we have, but the significance of this day for many of us rarely registers as it is being lived. Most commonly it is deemed merely a transit point from yesterday to tomorrow.

Tomorrow is where the action is. We may live today, but much of what we do is preparation for tomorrow, a report to finish, a medical exam to prepare for, a trip to pack for. We are forward looking. We care about the future. 

              We care about the future.  It’s the prudent thing to do. Now some feel, and quite rightly so, that their freedom to alter the future is very limited.  History has been cruel. The future is something to which one surrenders, “what will be will be,” rather than being a hope inspiring object of pursuit. For people who maintain that attitude life is fragile, a modest candle flame buffeted by shifting winds.

              In our privileged circumstances life is, for most of us, not fragile.  We experience life as unfolding according to a logic we may not really penetrate, but nonetheless trust.  Explaining the circumstances that brought her fiancé into her life, Margaret explained, “It was just meant to be.”  Many of us have found ourselves making just such a statement. “It was just meant to be.”  Why do we make such statements?  We make them because life for us is meaningful, meaning rich.  We believe that there is a logic to life, that we have not been placed on this earth only to be abandoned to the whims of fate.

              The logic to which Christians subscribe is founded upon our faith in God. Whims of fate have no standing in this world God created. That Margaret met her fiancé, “it was just meant to be,” was an event to which God was a party.  Of course, we persons of faith believe that there is no event, no experience, to which God is NOT a party. That has been an article of faith among people of faith since God appointed Abraham to establish the nation that would become Israel.

                Our forebears on this continent believed that God appointed them to populate this land.  John Winthrop, a member of the Pilgrim band that arrived here in the first decades of the 1600s, was firmly committed to that belief. “For we must consider [he wrote]that we shall be as a city upon a hill.  The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.”  Winthrop and his band were firmly committed to the belief that God ruled, past, present and future.  They believed they were cast in a specific role in bringing that future to realization.

              Though God’s name was not invoked George Washington, 150 years later, picked up Winthrop’s theme, naming Providence as the great benefactor presiding over the settlement of this nation.: “The Citizens of America [he wrote], placed in the most enviable condition, as the Lords and Proprietors of a vast Tract of Continent, comprehending all the various soils and climates of the World, and abounding with all the necessities and conveniences of life, are now by the late satisfactory pacification, acknowledged to be possessed of absolute freedom and independency.  They are from this period, to be considered as Actors on a most conspicuous Theatre, which seems to be peculiarly designated by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity.” Were Washington to rewrite his message for a contemporary audience the word selection would be different, but not the convictions underlying it.

              Not by chance, but by God’s providence, the continent was made a stage upon which human initiative and greatness could be displayed, so said Winthrop, Washington, and many of our founding fathers.

From the very beginning when the Pilgrims huddled around campfires a stone’s throw from Plymouth Rock, continuing on to that period when the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were drafted and our first President elected, the eyes of this nation have been fixed on the future.  Throughout our history on this continent we have never waived in the belief that our experiment in democracy and nation building would succeed.  We believe God himself has been invested in that outcome.

              About 1830, while our self-confidence as a nation was building, in step with the rapid population increase the nation was experiencing, a new step phrase was coined to summarize our aspirations, that phrase was “manifest destiny.”  This is John Louis Sullivan writing in 1833, “Our manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”  Manifest Destiny was the conviction given birth in our early history that God had special plans for America and its future.  Manifest Destiny means, “that which is inevitable.”

              What we see reflected in the three statements of John Winthrop, George Washington, and John Louis Sullivan I have just quoted, is the unbridled self-confidence and idealism that has flourished in this country throughout our history.  It is the conviction that those populating this land are, with God’s help, masters of our own destiny.  God is on our team to direct and encourage.

              Where are we headed?  For us the future has always been inviting, a welcome mat spread at our feet.  We have lived from challenge to challenge confident that no problem is insoluble.  Moreover, ours is a self-confidence that has been undergirded by the conviction that God himself has made us an instrument of his will.

              Now Manifest Destiny can be a very self-serving concept.  It has been used to justify the abuse of power and authority in service to purely parochial ends.  The Israel we meet in Scripture played up the Manifest Destiny card.  Proud and vain she took advantage of the special status that was hers as God’s chosen people.  Expressions of gratitude to God for all that God had done on her behalf, gave place to thoughts of entitlement.  In time she became less and less responsive to God’s call.  Soon the nation split into two separate kingdoms, the heirs that sat on King David’s throne repeatedly demonstrating through their abuse that they were unworthy to hold such office.

              This morning’s lesson from Isaiah is datable from a time when what remains of King David’s legacy is in shambles.  The notion of Manifest Destiny that inspired the hopes of the nation was exposed as bankrupt.  A mere stump is seen where the proud, towering tree that was Israel stood.  Israel, no longer confident, felt abandoned.  For all appearances God’s providence had directed here down an alley that no light could penetrate.  Israel’s future was very much in doubt.

              Where are we going?  What will happen to us? Since our founding, we Americans have lived in motion, “Actors [to quote our first president] on a most conspicuous Theatre, which seems to be peculiarly designated by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity.”  We have lived well and we have accomplished much, spared throughout our history much of the anguish neighbors around the world have experienced.  Clearly God’s favor has rested on us.

              Where are we going?  What will the future bring? In our privileged circumstances it is easy to believe that our destiny under God is secure, both as individuals and a nation, that we are exempt from any and all contingencies that might impede our forward progress.  Yet in truth God cares nothing about our nation of origin, skin color, size of a nation’s Gross National Product, or a nation’s self-perception.

              You see, Israel assumed she was in a different league.  It is a notion we in America find compelling.  God, however, has his own ideas of manifest destiny, of where this world and all of us are headed.  Under God’s scenario Israel fared none too well.  She would endure hard times.  God, however, remained the guarantor of her future. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse [Jesse was king David’s father, and the stump of Jesse was David’s defeated kingdom, Israel].  A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch grow out of his roots.  The branch, to which Isaiah is referring, or course, is an agent of God who will bring hope and peace to the world.

              We crave peace, yet for all our good intentions, yet despite all the people who throughout centuries have made peacemaking their life’s work, we do not have peace. Our desire for peace and harmony with God always runs up against self-seeking ambitions and strivings. Yet we can do better than we are doing. The past does not rule the present or future. Our ambitions and strivings can be redirected, our aims can be reconciled with God’s aims.  It was out of that conviction that God sent Jesus into our world.  “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse…”  God so loved the world that he wouldn’t surrender it to humankind’s vain designs.

              We Christians believe that a Savior did appear out of the rubble that was Israel, and heir to David, who rose like a shoot and branch in the midst of this world, and that Savior, Jesus, will in God’s own time inaugurate God’s reign here on earth; wolf living with lamb, cow and bear grazing together, child playing over the hole of the snake.  We Christians belief that the manifest, inevitable, destiny God has planned for this world has everything to do with Jesus, that, in fact, Jesus is the world’s truth and its hope for the future.

              Where are we going?  What will the future bring? There is not one destination for Americans, another for Italians, another for Mexicans, and still another for Swedes.  There is but one manifest destiny, one plan that is consistent with the will of God who created this world and all of us, and that is the plan God is working out through Jesus, and those who have been baptized in his holy name.

              Where are we going?  What will the future bring? There is no future apart from God, no dream world to which we can aspire apart from him. God’s providence directs our destiny.  I make that declaration not on my own authority, but on the authority of Jesus who in his life, death, and resurrection assures us that his grace will sustain us no matter where the events of life might take us.  No, do not worry. To the outer reaches of what we might be called upon to face or suffer, God in Christ will be there. Have courage. Maintain hope. Wherever we shall go in the future God has already been. Amen

PRAYER

              Sovereign Lord, the earth is yours and we are yours.  It is upon those faith claims our lives are established.  Sovereign Lord, the earth is yours and we are yours.  The words are familiar, but the reality to which they point is difficult for us to fathom. There are times when the events of life discourage any thought that this world is your domain, that these lives we are living are of any consequence in the grand scheme of things.  Lord, we pray that your presence may be felt in our midst, that the familiar forms in which our worship is conducted may not dull our senses but rather help us to encounter your holiness in a new way.

              God of the ages, we live in an enlightened age, or so we think.  O yes, we have products, computers, cell phones, and all manner of labor saving devices.  We have airplanes, nuclear energy, cloning, antibiotics, all of which prove how smart we are.  We are sophisticated, capable of unlocking the mysteries of the gene or studying a star in the distant havens.  We are bright and articulate, and we know many things.  Help us, O God, to know the right things in the right way.  Where we are self-deceived, trading in falsehood and neglecting truth, open our eyes.  Where we place personal ambition ahead of personal righteousness, show us your better way.

              O God, you are at work in our world today ordering the events of this life to your purpose.  We pray for the faithful through whom your will is being carried out.  We pray for the initiative of the members of this church who make opportunities and experiences available.  We give thanks for Jennifer and Heidi who so generously shared their time, faith, and wisdom with the young women whom they shepherded at Montreat this past week. We give thanks for Amelie and others whose vision for Christian education will be actualized this fall in our rotation workshop Sunday school.

              O God, you have called each one of us to the vocation of servant hood, given each of us a share in building your kingdom.  It is through your Spirit at work in us that your kingdom is being proclaimed. Help us to remember our vocation, and to take its requirements seriously.  From idleness and sloth preserve us that in challenges accepted, and effort undertaken, we may refine the gifts you have placed in your hands.

              Living God, we pray for those who live in harm’s way, both our military personnel, and the innocent civilians who are the pawns of war.  Hasten the end of the wars in which our country is engaged that energies now committed to destruction may be turned to rebuilding.  We pray for representatives of the international community, men and women who serve on the bread lines, and in hospitals in Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations where danger lurks.

              We pray for our neighbors who face economic uncertainty, particularly the unemployed.  We pray for those whose savings have been decimated in the economic downturn.  We pray for those who cannot afford health care or prescription drugs.  O God, be with our government leaders that the decision they make will address the needs of those who are most impacted by adversity.

              Abide, O Spirit, with those who bring special needs today.  We continue to pray for Mary Ann, Pam, Shane, Rudy, and Joyce.