Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's July 2, 2006 Sunday worship service.

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This weekend, there are two symbols that lay claim to our commitment and loyalty.

One, on display as annual festive event, puts Kingston on the proverbial map and brings nearly all of us out into the public square to demonstrate our support: that object that makes all this possible is, of course, the American flag, which seems to be everywhere: saluted, waved, pledged, reverenced, sung to, and even turned into a commodity; the old red, white and bleu evokes feelings too deep for words, for many. Like many powerful symbols, the flag contains many meanings, evokes many different feelings.

Is it an emblem of military strength, patriotic devotion -- a tangible object that signifies the whole national story of freedom and liberty, a potent celebratory symbol of America’s laudable national heritage? Or is it a reminder of how far we have yet to go, to make this land truly, the land of the free and the home of the brave?

With whatever eyes we behold it, it’s symbolism is so powerful that our Congress almost passed a resolution to ban its desecration, a quite ironic gesture in my opinion, given that the practice of freedom to protest embodied by the flag, and which the nation’s founders meant to protect, would now be prohibited and presumably punishable, had the resolution passed. It is unfortunate that the flag, best understood as symbol of a unity that transcends difference, is too often a symbol that gets appropriated for partisan purposes, even parlayed into a grab for political capital and gain.

What we do with that symbol of the flag is, of course, a matter of choice, the freedom to make a choice that is in and of itself further proof of the flag’s essential purpose. What will it mean when you face the flag and pledge: “liberty and justice for all” and how will those words “liberty” and “justice” and “all” be enacted in a way that will promote both national ideals and the welfare and good of all God’s children?

That other symbol, less ubiquitous, less frequently pledged or reverenced, less a source of public debate or disagreement, less, I dare say, even on our minds this holiday weekend, is one that relativizes the flag as well as all other commitments and loyalties. That symbol is a cup, and, of course, the cross that stands behind the cup.

There is no national holiday to commemorate it, no fanfare or fireworks to announce its place in our collective consciousness, yet we believe that here, on the table, is the essential symbol of true liberty and true justice for us and for all God’s children.

In our spiritual heritage as the covenant people of God, the cup has been a potent reminder of God’s gift of salvation. When the Psalmist was delivered from sickness or a near death experience, he went to the temple, and in the presence of the congregation, made a vow of thanksgiving to God. When he did so, much like our custom of giving a handshake as a pledge of trust, he sealed his commitment by lifting the cup as a gesture of loyalty and devotion to the God of his deliverance.

A paraphrase of this action by the Psalmist in Psalm 116 goes like this:

O What can I to good return
For all the bounty from Thy store?
Seen with Thy grace, my highest prize
Is naught, what can I give Thee more?

I lift salvation’s cup from which
Thou had me drink to seal my vow;
And in the sight of all around,
I honor my commitment now. (Psalter for Christian Worship, Michael Morgan)

Paying one’s vows in the sanctuary, offering the praise and devotion that God deserved – these were spiritual practices that confirmed one’s dependence on God.

We recall that Jesus, in his struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane, agreed to drink from the cup of suffering as a gesture of submission and solidarity with the will of his Father. And as he sat at table with his disciples, the cup from which they drank would have brought to mind the messianic banquet, the promised coming of the new age when God’s purposes would be restored through Israel and through Israel even to the whole world.

And Jesus took the cup . . . .

An ordinary gesture with ordinary friends, with an ordinary object . . . . but with extraordinary results.

I recently was having lunch with a new minister in our Presbytery who told me of a time he was in ministry near Berea College and a young student came to him for advice. She felt overwhelmed by injustice in the world and wanted just to go someplace, anyplace, to join a protest movement against various national ills prevalent in the news at the time. Where should I go, she wondered? My minister friend learned that she had allowed her commitment and loyalty to the Church and to Christianity to lapse, not unusual for college students. While not discouraging her passionate concern to protest and oppose various social ills, he said something to her that was very wise.

He said that there is an even more subversive activity you can engage in than going someplace to march with a sign or shout out slogans. Pick a church, any church, but a church where you’ve never been before and pick a Sunday when they are sharing communion, and go to that church and lift up the cup with them and make your pledge, and, in doing so, be reminded that God has promised to change the nation and the world -- by changing you.

National symbols, like flags, are powerful precisely because they say what words can’t, and they have the power to tap into and unite the deepest passions of a people. But flags and other symbols can also become idols, objects of a misguided devotion and worship. I have always thought that of all the sectarian religious groups in the broad spectrum of the American religious experience, that the Jehovah’s Witnesses probably got it right on the issue of the flag, for they have historically refused to pledge allegiance, finding there a disturbing contradiction to their faith, a faith which finds its true allegiance only in God.

Such a decision and silent protest will not be for every Christian, or for many Christians for that matter, I know, but at least we should be able to agree that the cup, and the cross behind the cup, do call us to the quite subversive activity of kingdom-building and kingdom-living, especially in these days when it is often difficult amid the fog of partisan politics and daily rhetoric about national security, to distinguish loyalty to God from loyalty to country.

And so, amid these confusing times, with the Psalmist, may we lift the cup of salvation and pay our vows in the sanctuary and make your own pledge of allegiance. And in doing so, may we declare our loyalty to the one alone whom we worship and serve. Amen.