Today is Independence Day in the United States of America. I have, in the past, always posted some small patriotic item on this day, but today also happened to be the Lord’s Day. Patriotic as I am, and as important a national event as this day is, I am first a citizen of the Kingdom of God. I cannot replace, or even mix, the day’s worship with earthly patriotism. This is the Lord’s Day.
Yet I think the two observances can come together, and perhaps should. But let me suggest that this be no day for national pride among true patriots, but rather an occasion for profound humility. All that we celebrate on this day is a gift from the hand of God. Our nation’s founders — I will not claim that they were Christians, though some were, or that this is or ever was a “Christian nation” — almost unanimously recognized and spoke aloud of a divine Providence, and rightly so. This nation was born, and remains today, because it pleases God to have it so. Any noble acts of men that we commemorate are nothing but extensions of God’s grace. That our nation still stands in spite of the ignoble acts that predominate today is a further display of grace, grace of such immensity that it ought to crush us right down to the ground and force us, prostrate before the God we mock, to confess our sin and plead for mercy.
On the previous two Saturdays, I have begun remembrances of “The Hymns of my Youth.” Along with those hymns, I remember the accompanying order of worship. In that order, immediately following the opening hymn, was a confession of sin. It seems to me that the one place in which I can blend my two citizenships on the Lord’s Day is in confession, and in a plea for mercy, on myself as an individual, and on my nation as a whole. And I think, in this, readers from all nations can join me.
“Almighty God, our Maker and Redeemer, we poor sinners confess unto Thee that we are by nature sinful and unclean, and that we have sinned against Thee in thought, word, and deed. Wherefore we flee for refuge to Thine infinite mercy and beseech Thee for Christ's sake, grant us remission of all our sins, and by Thy Holy Spirit increase in us true knowledge of Thee and of Thy will and true obedience to Thy word, to the end that by Thy grace we may come to everlasting life, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
—The Concordia Hymnal (Augsburg Publishing House), 1960.
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