Sacred Honor

What does the Declaration of Independence have in common with the story of Jesus being disrespected in his own home town?  Read on!

 Sacred Honor

Psalm 48:Mark 6:1-13 

The Independence Day holiday often invokes the word “honor.” We honor our country, we honor those who serve our country, and we honor the symbols of our country: the flag; the colors red, white and blue; Uncle Sam; and all the rest. So I have been reflecting about honor.

In the story we heard today from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus laments that prophets are not honored in their own hometowns. It is something that he experienced, and most of us have, too. We attend the funeral of a neighbor, and discover that she is an honored member of a profession we barely knew was part of her life. We overlook the wisdom of our colleagues and hire outside “experts” to help our organizations thrive.

The shadow side of this is that when we are in our hometowns, we do not honor ourselves. We underestimate our own talents, experience, and authority. I have always been struck in this passage that when Jesus is disrespected by the people in his hometown, he cannot perform any “deed of power” while he is there. Their failure to honor his teaching and his healing power diminishes those gifts.

What Jesus did in response to that experience was to honor his disciples by giving them authority and sending them out to work in the countryside. He sent them without provisions, without extra clothes, without money. Instead, he sent them with confidence – by honoring their ability and their resourcefulness, and by blessing the work they were to do.

Just as importantly, he taught them to honor their own ministries – even if they were rebuffed by the people they were trying to help. If they were not welcome, they were instructed to leave, and to “shake off the dust that is on your feet.” And with that assurance and instruction, and with the honor they were given, we are told that they “cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”

But there is another sense in which honor is important – the sense in which Girl Scouts say “On my honor I will try ..”; the sense in which academic institutions rely on the “honor system,” and the sense in which the signers of the Declaration of Independence wrote “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” This is “honor” as a keen sense of ethical conduct, as integrity. It is the quality that makes a person’s word a guarantee of performance.

I heard these words yesterday, as the reporters and hosts of National Public Radio read aloud the entire Declaration of Independence. I don’t suppose that I have heard (or read) the whole thing since I was a high school student. Most of it is a long list of grievances against the king of England – all of which I studied in American History, and very few of which I remember in any detail today. But at the end, that evocative phrase: “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

I do remember enough history to know that the signers of the Declaration were putting their lives and fortunes into danger. The colonies were occupied by British military forces, and the list of grievances already included instances of the murder of colonists. And most of the trade to the colonies was controlled by Great Britain, so the fortunes of these landowners were also in peril.

But I am intrigued by their mutual pledge of their “sacred honor.” I believe that sense of honor is grounded in a belief system that values more than just our own individual comfort or gain. Honor calls us to base our decisions on those values. Sacred Honor calls us to base our decisions on our understanding of what is divine, what is ultimate, what is holy.

So this weekend might be a good time to reflect on our own sense of Sacred Honor. Two years ago, in my pastoral prayer for this Holiday weekend, I identified four things as the Christian convictions we carry into civic life:

• our commitment to the dignity of all God’s people;
• our striving for reconciliation and healing;
• our investment in peace;
• and our hunger for justice.

My prayer for this year is that we might recognize these convictions in the people of our own hometown, and that we might hold on to these convictions in our own lives, even when we are questioned, doubted, or opposed by others.

What that means, of course, is that I am assuming that we are all prophets – that we are all prepared and willing to speak the truth to a world that is awash with untruths. That is what the signers of the Declaration of Independence did with their list of grievances and their refusal to tolerate them. Now that we are done with the speeches and fireworks, maybe it is time for us to celebrate the Fourth of July not so much by honoring the flag or the American Eagle, but by pledging to one another our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Prayer for July 5, 2009 (At Valley Grove Church)

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

God of all the earth, we offer our prayers this morning especially for the prairies that were home to our ancestors, and which are preserved here for generations to come.

We thank you first for the beauty of the prairies, and for the variety of plants and animals that have made them their home. Open our eyes to see this variety, and our minds to understand the complexity and elegance of the ecosystem that is all around us. Keep us mindful of the sacred connections among all these living things, including ourselves.

We thank you, too, for the fertility and lushness of the prairie, and for the ways that humans have used that fecundity to feed their neighbors and, indeed, the whole world. We are grateful, too, for the settlers and families who have made their homes here, and for their vocations of farming, dairying, herding, and orchard keeping.

Still, Creator god, we must confess that we have not always protected and cared for our land, and especially for our prairies. We have considered human needs, but neglected to consider the needs of the fauna and flora that were here before we arrived. So we pray that we will be good stewards of the gift of the land, so that it will be a blessing to our children and our grandchildren, and their grandchildren.

And we confess, Lord, that we have not always protected and cared for our neighbors who work the land. We have let our desire for convenience and economy be the excuse for low wages and poor conditions for farm workers, and for complicated regulations and financial uncertainly for farm owners. Forgive our selfishness, we pray, and nudge us into awareness of all the costs of what we eat, including the ones we do not pay.

God of all creation, let our love for these prairies remind us of the love of all people for the land that nourishes and nurtures them. Renew our resolve to honor and respect all of your creation: the mountains and mesas, the coastlands and deserts, the marshes and lakesides.

All this we pray in the name of the one who lived among us on this earth, and lives among us still as our Risen Savior, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us ….