Faith Works: On being faithfully an American Christian

It is my honor to be speaking on Memorial Day at the Granville observance in Maple Grove Cemetery at 11 a.m. We will follow the usual procedure hallowed by time and tradition of a procession to the cemetery and a brief program, closing with the raising of the flag from half-staff, as it is to honor the dead from dawn, at noon to full-staff, in thanks for their service to our nation.

There’s been discussion in church circles in recent years around the concept of Christian nationalism, ranging from well-founded concern to extreme anxiety projected into imagined futures. Doom saying is a popular pursuit in any season: If you say something bad is about to happen often enough, you’ll always end up right sooner or later.

But we do have, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the books that are the Christian Old Testament, a whole bunch of prophets speaking who demand our attention as people of faith. I’m partial to Amos, and Isaiah has so much to say in any era, plus we need Micah if only to give us a simple basis for how to proceed.

It’s in Micah we get one of the most clear, distinct, and follow-able commands from God through that prophet’s speech: What does the Lord require of us? That we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8 if you want to check me on this.)

Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God. Those would constitute the basics, in any country, any age, for all people. Do justice, which means show a loving impatience with injustice; love kindness, which suggests we not be as impressed with harsh, mean, arrogant declarations as we can tend to be when they agree with our own pre-existing assumptions; finally, we look each day to a humble walk through this life towards the one who has the keys to the next, the One who is from age to age the same, even as this world changes, passes, decays, and ultimately ends. Walk humbly towards the One who will endure, and promises to take us along for a glimpse of what is yet to come.

I am an American. That’s a phrase which has a wide variety of vivid associations for me, as a Christian, as a preacher, as a person walking through this world. I was born one, but I’ve known many who have had the experience, strange to me, of choosing to come here (and a few brought here, to be sure). I claim a certain place in the American story, but know as a male of European descent with height and health and other privileges not earned but given I need to walk humbly in the great procession of Americans not all of whom begin from that kind of head start.

Walking humbly with God, let alone loving justice, means my national pride always needs to be held with a certain kindly caution. I hope and pray I’m as aware of that as I should be. To be an American Christian is no more an advantage to me than it is to be a Yorkshire Christian, or a Zimbabwean Christian. In fact, it may put certain extra obligations on my need to love justice, in a global sense.

The world is something God loved so much, it all was worth some sacrifice to redeem, to restore, to make whole. Not just any one country. As an American on this globe, I’m thankful my faith asks me to care about the destiny of it all, but tells me how to do so from the place where I stand.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s got a bit more to say on Monday, but not too long. Tell him how you mark Memorial Day at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Faith Works: On being faithfully an American Christian