This is a day to celebrate being a people of God in a nation shaped by the will of God. This is a day to remember who we are, where we came from, and to what we are called. This is a day for honor, love, and reverence.
Two years ago, the last time I was here, I mentioned that I had been doing some family history study, and that I had discovered that some of my ancestors had lived here in New Kent County. For several generations, some of my mother’s forebears lived in this region before settling in Breckinridge County, Kentucky. Now after I mentioned that, several of you asked what that family’s name was, and I told you, “Moorman.” Incidentally, I am always very careful to spell it out, M-o-o-r-m-a-n, because the name sounds rather a lot like a religion founded by a man whose name was Joseph Smith. No connection, I assure you, although it is very useful when the Mormon missionaries come to my front door. It gives them a pretty good shock to meet Joseph Smith!
But you asked, and I told you the family name was “Moorman”, and every one who asked thought a little, shook his head, and said, “Never heard of them.” “Don’t know anybody by that name.” “Don’t recognize that name.” My family may go back to New Kent County, and yours may have been here for generations, but your folks don’t know my folks. There is a very good reason for that: my folks were nobodies. They were not prominent. They did nothing special. They accomplished nothing extraordinary. Insofar as I can tell, they did not run for public office, they did not create businesses, they were not lawyers or physicians or even large landowners. They were small farmers, tilling the soil and staying alive as best they could – obscure, ordinary nobodies.
Oh, now there were some exceptions to that. Some of the Moormans made their mark. I have learned that the Moorman family came to Virginia from the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England, and there one John Moorman was convicted of smuggling and murder! Not the kind of thing I was hoping to see in my family tree! I also have discovered Achilles Moorman, whose will, probated in New Kent in 1785, distributed slaves among his children. I am not proud to have a slaveholder among my ancestors. But there it is.
So, in addition to the nobodies in my family I also have the notorious. In addition to those who did nothing prominent I also have those who did seriously wrong things. I cannot change the past. But I can come to terms with who I am and to what I will give myself. My background may be the nobody and the notorious; but thanks be to God, I can become somebody for the Kingdom.
This is a day to celebrate being a people of God in a nation shaped by the will of God. This is a day to remember who we are, where we came from, and to what we are called. This is a day for honor, love, and reverence.
Our God has always reached down into the nobodies to make for Himself somebody special. Our God reached out and summoned Abram from Ur of the Chaldees and promised that out of him there would come a great nation. God reached out to the family of Jesse and selected the youngest of Jesse’s sons and made David king in Jerusalem. And, as the apostle Peter says in this letter to Christians, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” The early church was made up of ordinary common people, nobodies. Paul describes them as “not many wise, not many powerful, not many noble.” And yet God did something special with them for His purposes.
This is a day to celebrate being a people of God in a nation shaped by the will of God. This is a day to remember who we are, where we came from, and to what we are called. This is a day for honor, love, and reverence.
Four hundred years ago the Spirit of God stirred in the hearts of some believers in England. Their names we hardly know and their lives are obscure, but something special happened. Among these nobodies, in the early 17th Century, there came some brilliant insights: that to be a true Christian you must know Christ personally, that to be a true church was not about being subject to the king or under the authority of a bishop, but it was to be gathered in covenant with Christ. These folks came up with the radical notion that every single person had the right to read the Scriptures, the right to profess faith and be baptized, the right to be a vital part of the church. I’m talking about us Baptists. Baptists began as people who, though they had none of this world’s power and status, knew that through grace they were children of the Most High.
This is a day to celebrate being a people of God in a nation shaped by the will of God. This is a day to remember who we are, where we came from, and to what we are called. This is a day for honor, love, and reverence.
And so it should not surprise us that culminating on the 4th of July two hundred and thirty-three years ago, a nation came into being, founded on the principle that all are created equal, all are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. It should not surprise us because we have seen God at work throughout history, and we know what He intends to do. He intends to take the downtrodden and make them into what Peter calls a royal people. He intends to take the oppressed and make them into what this Scripture calls a holy nation.
Our forebears were laughed at, scorned, and put down in their day. No one seemed to think this little thing called the United States had any future. I’ve just finished reading a biography of John Adams, and learned that Europe heaped scorn on those rebels. The English knew they had military superiority. The Dutch knew they had commercial superiority. And the French – even though they assisted with our Revolution – the French forced Adams and his colleagues to wait for months before they could even get a hearing with the French government. Europe thought the Americans were fly-by-night nobodies. Yet here we are, one nation, under God, indivisible, holding out the hope of liberty and justice for all. Out of humble beginnings, fed by streams of immigrants from every corner of the globe, a nation built out of nobodies.
Oh, I tell you, this is a day to celebrate being a people of God in a nation shaped by the will of God. This is a day to remember who we are, where we came from, and to what we are called. This is a day for honor, love, and reverence.
What then must Christians do with Independence Day? What must believers learn to do as citizens of this nation? Peter lists our tasks as honor, love, and reverence. “Honor everyone, love the family of believers, fear God” (or reverence God).” Honor, love, and reverence. Let’s look at these quickly:
I
First, we are to honor everyone. We are to respect every human being. We are to see everyone as a person worthy of respect. It will not matter what their race or color is; it will not matter whether they are rich or poor; it will not matter whether they are male or female or young or old. Honor everyone; that is what our Bible teaches us. That is what America stands for. And that is what we are to work toward. Honor everyone.
The church I served in Washington, the church Pastor Vallerie calls her home church, some forty or fifty years ago was faced with a daunting reality. The old southern city of Washington was changing rapidly; neighborhoods that had been the homes of an all-white population were quickly becoming home turf for black families. The churches in those neighborhoods found many of their members moving out to the suburbs. What were those churches to do? How would they handle this challenge?
Well, quite a few churches moved. They sold their buildings and bought land out in the suburbs and re-established themselves. But Takoma Park Baptist Church made a different decision; those people decided that they would stay in the same location where they had been since 1919, and that they would seek to reach and to serve whoever might come. And come they did, black and white, rich and poor, young and old, and built a strong church, for one simple reason. They honored everyone. They saw in each person the potential God had placed there. They saw worth in everyone.
So the first task for Christians on this Independence Day is to honor everyone – to commit ourselves to the things that will build up our communities, to strengthen and support positive things – public schools, law enforcement, parks and libraries, everything that builds people. And I will probably get thrown out for saying this – we ought to pay our taxes cheerfully. Taxes are the price we pay for our freedom. I know they are a burden; but to honor everyone and do positive things, let’s just commit cheerfully.
This is a day to celebrate being a people of God in a nation shaped by the will of God. This is a day to remember who we are, where we came from, and to what we are called. This is a day for honor, love, and reverence.
II
But now, Peter says that we are to do more than honor everyone. He says we are also to “love the family of believers.” We are to love the family of believers, the church. I’m sure you noticed the difference in the verbs; honor everyone, but love the family of believers. Love is a much stronger and more intimate thing than honoring, isn’t it? Love is a deeply personal investment in a particular group, in a special place. The church.
At the root of our nation is the principle of the separation of church and state. That principle means, as the Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” We ought to know that phrase, have it memorized, able to recite it just like we recite John 3:16, because it is so fundamental. It means that the government is to keep its hands off the church. No state-sponsored church, no prayers written by school boards, nobody telling preachers what to preach! Church and state, separate, but each important.
But if the government isn’t going to support the church, then who will, and how? We will. You and I will. Why? Because we love the church. How vital that in this nation there be strong churches, churches whose members truly love them! There is no substitute for that. Unless there are churches to preach and teach, our children will grow up knowing nothing of the Lord. Unless there are churches to minister and encourage, the vulnerable will suffer. The church is God’s instrument to reach out to those who struggle with the whole range of human problems – poverty, ignorance, addiction, on and on. Through the church the lost are found, the broken are made whole, and the weary find rest. We must love the church. And that love means personal involvement, deep and profound personal involvement.
Next week I will be preaching at a church in Maryland, where I served as interim pastor back in 1981-1982. There are very few people now who were a part of that church 27, 28 years ago when I last preached there. In fact, there are very few people there at all, even though this church is located right in the middle of a booming suburban community, with new houses all around and new people moving in all the time. And yet this church appears to be dying. So I asked one of their leaders for suggestions as to what I should preach next week. She said to me, “I think you need to preach about what it means to be committed to the church.” She said, “We do have some new families, but they don’t seem to want to do anything.” I asked her for more, and she said, “Our people don’t seem to get it that it takes work to do church. We need for somebody to volunteer to teach Sunday School. Or if somebody would just pick up a shovel and help take care of the grounds.”
Taking care of the grounds: that got hold of me, because, you see, I am married to Mrs. Garden Team of Montgomery Hills Baptist Church, where we are members. I have been spending my Saturday mornings, along with several others, under my wife’s direction, pulling weeds and planting shrubs and pruning and cutting and cleaning … it’s work! It’s tough work! But do you know I have come to love our church more just because of that? The pride we feel when other members come up to us and say, “This place looks great!” I’m going to recommend to the church where I will preach next week that they recruit some people into a grounds keeping team! Because if you put your hands on something you love it more. If you put your hands and your heart and your money into your church, you will love it. And you will discover that without the churches America cannot survive. But with the churches, if we will love them, we can shape an entire generation. Honor everyone, but do more than honor the family of believers. Love the family; love the church.
This is a day to celebrate being a people of God in a nation shaped by the will of God. This is a day to remember who we are, where we came from, and to what we are called. This is a day for honor, love, and reverence.
III
And so Peter brings us at last to the heart and core of all this. If we are to be good citizens, then honor everyone. If we are to invest in something that makes a difference, love the church. But, bottom line, “fear God.” Bottom line, if you truly care for this nation, if you genuinely love this church, understand that we live under the mercy of a God whose purposes are vast, a God whose plan for His fallen children is of greater scope than we will ever know. Fear God, reverence God, know that as the psalmist said, “It is He that has made us and not we ourselves.” Reverence this God whose love goes out to everyone, not just middle-class people, not just white people, nor just black people, not just Baptists, not just Americans; get a glimpse of the vastness of God’s creation and of the depth of His desire to redeem us all. Reverence such a God.
Peter puts it so eloquently when he says, “To this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. … By his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.”
Brothers and sisters, all our efforts toward doing justice, as fine as they may be, will fall short if we are not in personal touch with the living God. We will run out of energy and the barriers will be too large; but with God all things are possible.
And our churchmanship, all the things we do to make church inviting, will fail if there is no one who is on intimate terms with the Father. Without a personal relationship of reverence, what the church does will be a tinkling bell and a clanging cymbal, sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Honor, love, and reverence. God is God. God has come in Christ. God has sent the Spirit to connect with us personally. Today, find that, know that, sense that, embrace that. Honor, love, and above all, reverence.
This is a day to celebrate being a people of God in a nation shaped by the will of God. This is a day to remember who we are, where we came from, and to what we are called. This is a day for honor, love, and reverence.
Oh, the Moorman family I told you about? My ancestors, the nobodies and the notorious? John Moorman the smuggler and murderer? Achilles Moorman the slaveholder? That’s not the end of the story. That’s not all there is to report. For Achilles begat William, and William begat Jesse Venable, and Jesse Venable begat Jesse Lewis Moorman, a dentist in Cloverport, Kentucky. And when Dr. Jesse Lewis Moorman died in 1908, the newspaper reported, “Dr. Moorman had been an honored and substantial citizen of Cloverport for fifteen years, and the town knows that he was a Christian in his home, in his church and in his business and social life. He was a devoted father, a faithful church worker, paid his debts, and was a true friend.” Out of the family of smugglers, murderers, slaveholders, and countless nobodies, God grew a saint. My great-grandfather, for he knew the Lord. If the Lord can do that for my rag-tag family, He can do that for you and for yours as well.
This is a day to celebrate being a people of God in a nation shaped by the will of God. This is a day to remember who we are, where we came from, and to what we are called. This is a day for honor, love, and reverence.
