Patriotism is not a Christian virtue.
To be clear, I find nothing inherently wrong with patriotic ardor. Indeed, I grew up loving my country and still do. I want to see the United States thrive and to live more fully into its founding ideals. But Christian discipleship—living as a disciple of Jesus Christ—is not attached to any one country or confined to any national borders (and let’s also note that discipleship might, on occasion, demand actions that run counter to national interests).
The timing of the Eastertide lectionary this year reinforced those convictions just yesterday about “God and country” and did so quite directly. On this Memorial Day weekend, we heard a poignant and beautiful image from the Revelation to John (21:10, 22-22:5), an image of the “Tree of Life,” whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
I have never been particularly fond of observing national holidays in a Sunday morning liturgy, but that passage from a complicated biblical book suggests a powerful way to frame our shared ministry as Christian people—not patriotically but for the sake of shared endeavor. More particularly on Memorial Day, the best way to honor those who gave their lives in service to this country is to work for peace, with justice, and the healing of all the nations.
That’s a tall order for any faith community, and certainly for the small parish I am privileged to serve in a lakeside resort town in the American Midwest. And yet, the way we shape our lives together in a community of prayer and service really does matter and does make a difference for the wider world.
Hearing also from John’s account of the Gospel yesterday presented some rich images for this kind of reflection and commitment (John 14:23-29). That passage features the promise Jesus made to send the Holy Spirit—a reminder that the Feast of Pentecost is just two weeks away. That gift is mission-critical for the Gospel because the Spirit creates, not a nation-state, but Beloved Community.
That image originated with Josiah Royce, a late-nineteenth-century American philosopher of religion whose work shaped the world-changing efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Civil Rights Movement. Royce seems particularly insightful just now, especially as an inspiring guide for Christian communities trying to navigate the perplexities and anxieties of this cultural moment.
We might recall that the lectionary portion of John’s Gospel yesterday comes from what is often referred to as the “farewell discourse.” Setting aside all the convolutions of those chapters in John, overall Jesus is trying to prepare his closest friends for his death, and to reassure them about his impending departure. “Don’t let your hearts be troubled,” he says. They don’t fully understand what is about to happen, but they certainly understand enough to be terribly sad.
Royce would have us notice in this passage what he called the religious mission of sorrow. Few of us likely think of sadness as having any kind of a purpose; it just is, and we either accept it or deny it. But Royce—who was well acquainted with very deep sorrow and grief in his own life and family—Royce urged us to consider that sorrow carries potential for insight; sorrow itself, he said, is a source of religious insight.
For this to be so we must look at the world courageously, not as we wish it to be or with any filters of denial, but as it really is right now—a world of injustice, and pain, and violence. Royce would have us see the world as it really is so that we can meet that world as bearers of light, workers for peace, and agents of healing.
This is what Royce means by the “religious mission of sorrow”—and I freely admit that this often sounds to me like a fool’s errand. The much more prudent path would surely lead instead toward self-protection, and the securities of privilege, and the isolating walls of safety so that we don’t have to see the wounded, the fearful, or the lonely.
But we don’t follow a “prudent path” when we follow Jesus. As the approaching Feast of Pentecost reminds us, we go where the Spirit leads—we go, as Royce put it, to the “homeland of the Spirit” to build Beloved Community.
I love Royce’s use of “homeland” for this, which is not in this case about finding a place of cozy rest but to situate the hard work of forging the bonds of lifegiving—and for Royce, that means “atoning” and “saving”—community. “Hard work,” because for Royce, the Spirit is always, without fail, what he called the “Spirit of Interpretation.”
“To interpret” in a Roycean sense is to make meaning from a particular moment or an event so that the world becomes a better place—not a perfect place (we can’t do that), but a better place than it was—and with the Spirit’s energy and guidance, we can do that!
The “event” Royce would have a Christian community constantly interpret, and not only in the Easter season but always, is the death and resurrection of Jesus—the one who was killed by imperial violence and raised by the God of new life.
What does this mean for us, right now, today?
How do we then live, in our neighborhoods and in the public square?
What should we do with what we have been given?
These are the questions we ask together in the “homeland of the Spirit” as we seek to build “Beloved Community” together.
John the Divine, the scribe for all the fantastical visions and wild prophecies in that final book of the Bible—John shows us what such a community entails. First and foremost, it’s about healing.
His vision of the heavenly Jerusalem—a classic and ancient symbol for “beloved community”—features a river flowing from the very throne of God, a river of the water of life. Planted on the banks of that river is the “Tree of Life,” which not only produces an abundant harvest of fruit, but also leaves that are for the “healing of the nations.”
That word, “nations,” is a rough Greek equivalent of the ancient Hebrew word more simply meaning “gentiles,” or “non-Israelites,” basically all those who are not Jewish. Or in contemporary parlance, all the others, whether those “others” are on the other side of the world or just the other side of town. And hearing also from the Hebrew prophet Joel yesterday (2:21-27), those “others” are also not-human—the soil, the grasses, the trees, the vines, all other animals.
That’s a common English translation of that phrase, but not very helpful if it evokes only the modern Western concept of a “nation-state.” John did not have anything like the United Nations or the European Union in mind but something much closer to home, indeed we might even say he had something more “homey” in view.
What John seems to describe, in other words, is God’s own heart for making a home among us, and not only from our biological kin or with our closest friends, but all those “others,” the ones who are different from us—sometimes just a little “not-like-us” and sometimes very different in skin color, and accent, and language, and custom, and even species.
And that’s precisely why the leaves of the Tree of Life are for healing.
Differences and animosities and hostilities—whether inflicted on those who are far away or by those who are across the street or unfold in the mini-ecosystems of our own backyards—all such differences create wounds, and some of them are very deep, and last for a very long time, making all of us terribly sad and sorrowful.
Now is the time—or as Royce would say, every moment is always the perfect time—to embrace the religious mission of sorrow and to interpret across our differences in postures of healing, toward thriving, and for the sake of the home God envisions for all.
Those who gave their lives for this country—for the sake of the democratic life and abundant liberty for which this nation ostensibly stands—they would surely urge us along this path and toward that Homeland of the Spirit.
Building Beloved Community together in that homeland, interpreting this present moment across our differences, would certainly be a legacy worthy of their memory.