ON COOKING FROGS
July 2, 2000 • Independence Day
Mark 6:1-6 • 2 Samuel 7:1-14a
I’ve never done it or even seen it done, but I’ve been told that there are two ways to cook a frog. One way is easy, the other difficult.
The difficult way is to drop the frog into a pot of boiling water. You try that and the frog will jump out so quickly that it won’t get burned, and then you’ll have to chase a angry, frightened frog around your kitchen. That’s the hard way.
The easy way is to put your frog into a pot cool water over a low burner. Because the water’s comfortable to begin with, the frog will stay there. Indeed, he will stay there without complaint until he’s thoroughly cooked.
Now, I don’t know why you’d want to cook a frog, and, as I said, I don’t know if this method of cooking really works — it’s just what I’ve been told. But whether or not it works on frogs, as an analogy to the way sin works, I think it’s pretty accurate.
With sin, you might think it’s pretty cool to begin with, but if you’re not careful you’ll be spiritually — and maybe even actually — dead before you even realize that the water’s gotten hot.
On this the closest Sunday to the 224th celebration of our American independence, I wonder if we might also apply “the cooked frog analogy” to the way we Americans deal with threats to our democracy. It seems that we do very well with immediate and clearly defined threats. Something like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the face of such danger we react quickly and decisively. We jump right out of the pot and do what we have to do to protect our interests!
But if there’s no crisis, no immediate and unmistakeable danger, we’ll sit there in the slowly heating water until our goose is cooked.
I think of the rising tide of violence in our land, for instance — especially gun–related violence and the growing problem of violence among our young people. I don’t know if you heard about it, but the General Conference of our church two months ago voted to call for a stop in the sale of all handguns. Period. That’s like jumping out of the pot. I expect many of of you don’t agree with that vote, and that’s OK... but I wonder if you’re old enough to remember how it was — what the problem of violence was like, say 50 years ago, and how it has intensified in the last 50 years, and the role that easy access to guns, and especially handguns, has played in that intensification. The water’s gotten a lot hotter in the past five decades, has it not? Now try to imagine what it will be like in another 50 years if the violence continues to worsen at the same rate. How long will it be before every one of us is afraid to let our children out of the house?
So why don’t we do something about it now? How hot does the water have to get? Are we human beings or frogs?
Or take another example: money in politics. If there’s a threat to our democracy it’s that. Think of the exorbitant cost of political campaigns today, the way money calls virtually all the shots in our political process, and the way the campaigns themselves have been debased by the soundbytes, attack ads and negativity that the exorbitantly expensive television ads make so effective.
Or think, for example, of our growing materialism as Americans. This may well be the greatest threat of all, materialism, consumerism, and the exaltation of greed as good, and along with it, the ever–widening gap between those at the top and those at the bottom of our economic ladder. We are a fabulously weathly people. We have more things, more stuff today that we’ve ever had. The lifestyle of almost anyone in this room would be envied by richest men in the world a mere hundred years ago. But are we happier? Are we more secure? Do our lives have meaning and purpose? Are we fulfilled? And, to bring it back home to the democracy we love, are we more or less likely to vote or to be actively involved in the political process? Are we human beings or are we frogs? The water’s getting hotter. Is that really your final answer?
As most of you know, I’m not much for waving the flag here in church. Indeed, I don’t really like it that we have a flag here in the sanctuary. That’s a relatively recent phenomenon, you know. Until the 1930’s no church had a flag in its sanctuary. It was then that flags began to be distributed by the Ku Klux Klan — a sort of community relations program I guess. The so–called Christian flag was created to offset the presence of the American flag in the symbolic arena of the chancel. I don’t think it belongs here. But I’m not willing to fight about it.
It’s not that I don’t love this country. I do. I’ll be out there on Tuesday, marching in the parade and taking part in the festivities — I hope you’ll pay to try to dunk me. I’ll go watch the fireworks on Tuesday night and I’ll get a tear in my eye when the synchoronized radio soundtrack plays the patriotic music and snipets of stirring speeches from Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ll be there, and I’ll wave a flag. I’ll sing the National Athem. I’ll say the pledge of allegiance. And, I’m proud to tell you, I haven’t missed voting in a single election, local, state, or national, in the last fifteen years.
But I can’t wave the flag here. At least not with a good conscience. And it’s not because I don’t love this land. I do. But I love God more. And here in his sancutary in the context of his worship I don’t want to give the appearance of setting my devotion to “Kingdom of America” on anything like a level with my devotion to the Kingdom of God. For I know that the Kingdom of God stands in judgement of all earthly kingdoms including the one I live in.
I know that disappoints and upsets some people. I don’t like to upset folks, but I’ve gotten used to it. In that I am being true to the prophetic tradition of our faith. As Jesus himself said: “No prophet is ever totally accepted by his own people.” Why not? Because a true prophet speaks the word of God in a way that challenges the very group that finds its identity in that scripture. And a prophet does that, not because he hates his country, but precisely because he loves it, and he feels that the water’s getting hotter.
That’s exactly what Jesus did. And, I suspect, that’s why and how Jesus knew, early in his ministy, that a fate like that of the prophets was in store for him.
It always takes nerve to be a prophet for God in this or any other land, but God gives that opportunity to each of us.
Most of you know I have a daughter Rachel. She was born on March 21st. I almost named her after the patron saint of that day, a woman named Perpetua who lived in the third century. (I decided not to push for it, because I hoped one day to be able to name a boy “Israel” and I didn’t want to use up all my “name-giving capital”) Perpetua is the first female Christian of whom we have anything written. It’s her diary. An account of her imprisonment and martyrdom because she refused to pledge allegiance to the king. She gives an account of her trial before the governor who pleads with her: “Have pity on your father’s grey head! Have pity on your infant son (whom she was nursing in prison)! Offer a sacrifice for the emperor’s welfare.” But she answered, “I will not.” The governor asked, “Are you a Christian?” And Perpetua answered, “I am a Christian.” And for her refusal to do her civic duty she was executed.
The temptation to make an idol of the emperor, to sacrifice to the nation and to put it on a par with God, is a temptation in every land. I do not like civil religion. The worship of nation. The mixing of allegiance to God and allegiance to government. In my dislike I stand in good company. Read the quotes in your bulletin.
Those founding fathers were very afraid of any intermingling of government and religion. The word “God” was intentionally left out of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They were against any civil authorities (which would include school boards or the principals of schools) sponsoring any kind of prayer or religious activity.
In essence, then, the Supreme Court is correctly interpreting the intent of the authors of the constitution when it bans school-sponsored prayer, the reading of the Bible over the intercom, or the posting of the Ten Commandments.
You might not like that as a Christian here in Cabarrus County where you may be in the majority. But I know that I, for one, would be glad for that interpretation were I to live in Utah, for instance, where Mormons are in the majority and where, were it not for this constitutional protection, the reading and teaching of the Book of Mormon might be forced upon my children in public school. Or Hawaii, where some areas are predominantly Buddhist.
We need to learn as Christians to give thanks for and support the Constitutional separation of church and state — not try to find ways around it. Did you know, for instance, that the original constitution of the State of North Carolina provided that no person could hold office who “denied the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the Divine authority of the Old or New Testament, or held principles incompatible with the Freedom and Safety of the State”?
That might sound OK to you, until you realize that the word “Protestant” eliminated Catholics, and the words “old and new testaments” eliminated Jews, and the words “incompatible with the Freedom and Safety of the state” eliminated pacifists like Quakers and Moravians. Thank God that such religious strictures, perhaps supported by a majority in this state at one time, could not stand the test of the U.S. Constitution.
But it’s not only the constitution that calls for such separation. I think that’s what God wants too. You can see that in the story of David. David’s become King. Now Israel can be a national power like the other nations. And to be a major player in world politics the King must live like a King, so David builds himself a palace, a fine house made from the cedars of Lebanon.
And then David calls in the prophet Nathan. Nathan is the first prophet of the new Kingdom of Israel. Other ancient kings had prophets too. They worked for the King, lived in the palace. They were soothsayers, astrologers, and, for the most part, “yes men.” That is, they told the king what the king wanted to hear. But not Nathan. Nathan is the first of what will become the a long list of Hebrew prophets who are not there to tell the king what he wants to hear. Their purpose it to tell the king what God wants him to hear, which is quite often exactly what the king doesn’t want to hear!
God has sent these prophets. It’s as if the nation of Israel said, “We want to be like other nations! We want a king.”
And God said, “OK, you can have a king, but I’m going to send you a prophet to remind you that you are who you are only by my grace. You live under a covenant. You owe me something. You owe me righteousness. Justice. Generosity toward the poor. Hospitality toward the strangers. Mercy towards sinners. Stewardship over all I have given you. You owe all of this to me, and I’m gonna send a prophet so you won’t forget!”
Nathan is the first such prophet. His finest hour comes later, when David murders Uriah the husband of Bathsheba, and Nathan calls him on it. But here, earlier in the story, David has just built a palace for himself and he calls Nathan in and says, “Look, I’ve got this nice house and God has no temple. I’m gonna build God a temple.” Nathan tells him to go ahead.
But that night God comes to Nathan and instructs him to go and tell David: “Would you build me a house to live in? I don’t live in houses! All these years I’ve been moving around in a tent. I intend to live that way forever! I can’t be confined. I’m free. I cannot be possessed. I am sovereign and I don’t belong to any nation or king. I won’t belong to Israel. I won’t belong to America. I won’t belong to any nation, so don’t go building me temples with human hands. I don’t live in national shrines.”
And then there’s this wonderful play on words. “You cannot build a house for me, but I will build a house for you.” Which means a dynasty.
The story ought to stop there. God’s made his point. I don’t belong to any nation, he says, so don’t go building houses for me as if you could confine me. But of course, the story doesn’t stop there. The next line says that Solomon, David’s son, will build the temple. That’s an addition.
Some later editor added that to words that God spoke to Nathan and that Nathan spoke to David.
The editor added that because that’s what Solomon did. The temple was part of Solomon’s great project to build the nation of Israel into a superpower. Solomon wanted God on his side. So he built a temple and tried to tie together the religious and political life of the nation.
Solomon’s project was a disaster. He bankrupted the country. He used slaves to do it and imposed heavy taxes. The people got mad at him, and immediately after his death his kingdom disintegrated. There was civil war and his nation was forever divided in two. But Solomon had to justify himself, so the story was changed: “Yes, God said, no temple, but what he really meant was no temple during David’s reign, but it’s OK to build it later if you want.” And they did. And the result was disaster.
So, the lesson is here, even though the text has been edited. And the lesson is that God is not the possession of any nation. Not even the nation of Israel, his chosen people. God is certainly not the possession of the nation of the United States. And God will not be used by any nation for its projects of domination and power. Indeed, God sits in judgement on those projects. Those projects have within them the seeds of their own destruction. The water’s getting hotter, and like whistles on steam kettles, God’s prophets are sounding the warning.
We are, like all nations, “a nation under God.” That phrase was added to our Pledge of Allegiance in 1952 by our last great warrior president — whose name was also David, by the way. He put it in there, that we were “a nation under God.”
But it was Lincoln who spoke most eloquently on our nation’s relationship with God. He’s the one who gave us the phrase about “one nation under God.” It’s in his second inaugural address, which begins as a kind of pedestrian speech, summarizing the war effort, like a report of a president to his people. But then the words began to soar, mounting higher and higher, as if on eagle’s wings, until the speech becomes one of the great speeches in the history of the world. I encourage you to go find it and read it this 4th of July.
Lincoln portrays God exactly as the Bible portrays him. He is a God over America, just as he is God over Israel. “The Almighty has his own purposes...” wrote Lincoln. God is sovereign over this and all nations. We don’t possess him. We don’t own him. And neither side of any conflict can claim God as their own. Powerful words from the leader of a country in the midst of a civil war, a time when usually the King is claiming God’s support for his cause.
“The Almighty has his own puposes....” And if we are wise, we will stop making claims and start paying attention to the prophets... who are telling us that the water is getting hot.
