Fat 'n Happy the Rooster Blah, Blah, Blah

Just Another Jim

Just Another Essay



Jesus Christ, the Might of America

Essay Posted April 29, 2008 by James E. Nelson

Christ is risen!

The Orthodox have finally journeyed through another Holy Week, stayed up all night awaiting Pascha, and are beginning the fifty day celebration of Christ’s Passover and victory. But my thoughts are still back on what we prayed on Great and Holy Friday.

On Friday night of Holy Week the service, which is essentially a funeral service, focuses on the Lamentations, a very long poem divided into three groupings. The service is best understood when seen in context of the services around it. Thursday night—the “Last Supper” service—also focuses on the relationship between Jesus and Judas; it emphasizes that Jesus gave himself up to Judas and those who arrested him willingly. Saturday morning is a divine liturgy focusing on the mystery of the victory that occurred in the grave. And between these two services are the Lamentations, on Friday evening, which mourns the loss of Jesus.

(This, by the way, is something that impresses me every year at Holy Week. The facts that Jesus willingly allowed himself to be captured, tried, and crucified—the focus of Thursday night—and that his death was the felix culpa, the “blessed fault” that made Christ’s victory over death possible—the Saturday morning service—does not mean that we are not full of sorrow and pain at his loss and death. In spite of the fact that it was both planned—Thursday—and purposeful—Saturday—we gather on Friday evening to have a funeral and sing the Lamentations.)

By and large, the Lamentations are a pretty traditional “akathist” style poem (in other words, a very long hymn). Akathists are written for various people and events and they tend to look at the event or person from every imaginable angle. And two of the angles considered when mourning/celebrating Christ’s death is the impact it has on two major institutions: the nation and the church. In v. 10 of the second stasis we hear the line, “Magnify thy might of America. / Blessing us with peace and freedom evermore.” and then in v. 11 we hear, “Keep the Church from every dissension free. / Blessing us with peace and freedom evermore.”

While not frequent, it is a regular feature of Orthodox liturgical prayers to pray for the “strength” (as in this prayer) or the “victory” of the nation the church is in. I am always jolted by this and still find it a bit disconcerting. I think that’s because of the triumphalism that was an inherent part of the fundamentalism in which I grew up. The state’s enemies became, by extension, the church’s enemies and imprecations were called down upon them (on the one hand) while mostly blind and unthinking support was given to our own leaders, especially if they claimed to be Christian.

This American style melding of Christianity and nationalism is generally done through the lens of the second coming of Christ and the last judgment. The most enduring icon of this union is Julia Ward Howe’s beloved Battle Hymn of the Republic. It’s reference point is the War between the States, the bloodiest war America has ever fought. What is telling is that Howe chose Armageddon rather than Golgotha as the interpretive framework for all the death and destruction. It conceives victory as the good “trampling down” the bad, and squeezing their blood out like grape juice. Too often in the Evangelical/Fundamentalist tradition, the excessiveness of the imagery is relished to the extent that we imagine our government’s enemies (which are, by extension, the church’s enemies) so utterly destroyed that their blood would flow “as high as a horse’s bridle” (Rev. 14:20).

But there are two fundamental differences between that imagery that I grew up with and that I sang every Thanksgiving and fourth of July in church, and the imagery that is presented in the Holy Thursday Lamentations. First, the Thursday Lamentations picture comes from Golgotha rather than Armageddon. So it is that the blood that flows is Christ’s (and by extension, ours) rather than our enemies. Victory comes, not by trampling down our enemies, their arteries like so many grapes squirting under our shoes, but rather through defeat and death—our defeat and death

Second, rather than the enemies of the state becoming, by extension, the enemies of the church, the Christian’s enemies are the enemies of truth. Only to the extent that the state will defend the truth will Christ be “the might of America.” The Lamentations don’t deal with the international flow of oil and commerce, nor regional stability, nor propping up political strong men in South America and central Africa. This is not to say the state doesn’t have an interest in the free flow of oil, or making regional political friends, but by implication, God doesn’t much care about such “raging of nations” (Ps. 1). What he does care about is the truth and the “true victory” that comes through humiliating defeat which leads to authentic peace and freedom.

Try to run a presidential campaign on that slogan!

To make this point abundantly clear, the first verse is repeated at this point as a summary of this stasis: “Right is it indeed / Life bestowing Lord to magnify Thee, / For upon the cross were thy hands outspread / And the strength of our dread foe hast thou destroyed.”

Could a nation actually gain strength and victory from such an approach? We might never know. Since the days of Constantine, nations (the full spectrum of nations, from self-consciously Christian, to historically Christian, to vaguely religious) have been conquering under the sign of the cross. Unfortunately, they’ve been doing it with Armageddon style tactics rather than the divinely battle-proven Golgotha style tactics.

Can Jesus Christ, who conquered through the felix culpa and the ignominy of death, be the “might of America” or any other country that chooses to call out his name? He can. But let me warn Christians against such “folly.” If your prayer is fervent and God is faithful, the blood that’s spilled might be your own.