Genesis 12: 1-5a
Hebrews 11: 8-16
"On Being An American"
July 4th weekend is a good time to consider America: What is this nation whose birth we celebrate with parades and fireworks? One good way to consider the question, "What is America?" is to ask another question, “Who are Americans?” If we can decide who an American is we can come closer to understanding what America is.
In 1970 I thought I was on my way to Viet Nam with a lot of other Marines who landed on Okinawa. We sat around Naha, Okinawa for four or five days before some of us got orders not to Nam, but to Japan to join some of the first troops pulled out of Viet Nam as part of the Vietnamization of the war.
I wound up stationed at a Naval Air Station in Iwakuni, Japan, a former Imperial Navy Air Base from World War II. My bunkmate was named Bob Pearson. Bob was 6’3” tall, and because he was in the Navy, he had a beard and sideburns and long hair. Bob's hair was red and his accent was straight out of east Tennessee.
One day Bob and I were out in the countryside somewhere when we noticed we were being looked and laughed at by several older Japanese women. Bob knew some Japanese and he engaged them in small talk. They asked where we were from and when Bob told them all he got was more laughter and giggling behind hands.
Bob told them we were both Americans and they simply could not believe it; would not believe it. No people who looked so different and sounded so different as the two of us did could possibly be from the same country.
The harder Bob tried to explain the less he was believed. After all, they knew what a Japanese person looked like. They knew just by looking at someone if he or she was Japanese. Surely it had to be the same for Americans. Bob and I could not be Americans: One or the other - but never both.
That was the first time I encountered the strangeness of being American. Unlike almost any other nation in the world, being an American does not mean you were born in a certain place or came from a certain ethnic background or share common physical characteristics. Being an American is not tied to body type, eye shape, hair color, tribal origins, accent or race. It is something very different.
Let me jump way ahead to another experience of the strangeness and uniqueness of being an American. I am sure you remember the terrible destruction of the space shuttle Columbia as it disintegrated over Texas, on February 1, 2003.
I remember after the shock of what happened looking a wonderful picture of the flight crew who, until they died, I had paid no attention to at all. I was struck by that picture. It was so clearly and wonderfully American. It could have come from no other country.
First of course was the technological feat itself and the courage of the crew members with their great smiles and eagerness. All pure American. But it was the make up of the crew that got me.
The pilot was named William "Willie" McCool. He was born in San Diego, an Eagle Scout, an Annapolis graduate and a Commander in the USN. And his name was Willie McCool. Where else in the world but America could you find a space ship pilot named Willie McCool? No where.
There were two women in the crew. One was named Laurel Clark. She was born in Ames, Iowa raised in Racine, Wisconsin and received her M.D. form the University of Wisconsin. Laurel had curly brown hair and the warm, friendly face of a midwestern farm girl.
The other woman, a PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder was named Kalparra Chawla. She was born in Karnal, India, immigrated with her parents to the United States and became a naturalized American citizen in 1990.
There was Michael Anderson, an African American from Plattsburg, New York, who spent most of his life in Washington State. He had a masters in physics from the University of Washington. He was a pilot with thousands of hours of flight time and a Lt. Colonel in the United States Air Force.
There was this crew who simply had to be Americans. No other country but America could assemble such a group and put them in control of a multibillion-dollar space machine. The crew of Columbia was a picture of America at its very best.
Another American, this one I actually met if only for a few minutes, is one many of you knew for years. Emile LaBranche, Jr. was an American. He could not possibly be anything but an American. He was African American. His last name came from the name of the plantation where his ancestors worked as slaves.
After college, Mr. LaBranche joined the Army and fought in the Pacific campaign in World War II for his country that at the time considered him inherently incompetent to lead, and refused to consider him worthy to share such things as restaurants, water fountains, swimming pools, beaches or seats on buses and movie theaters with whites.
Mr. LaBranche, a man of great intellect, education and generosity, fought for a country that did not exist. It must have been the vision of a nation that Mr. LaBranche fought for. As with so many others, Mr. LaBranche put everything he had on the line for an America that did not recognize him, that really did not recognize itself, but that somehow he saw and believed in. Mr. Emile LaBranche, Jr. was a real American.
I want to show you a picture of two other real Americans. I love this picture. It does not matter what you think of Barack Obama or if you voted for him or not. He is what America looks like; in fact, he is the face of America. Black father from Kenya, white mother from Kansas, born in Hawaii, raised in Indonesia, toughened up in Chicago, smart as a whip as my mother used to say. And he is the President and that is something that just would not happen in any other country.
Next to him is Tammy Duckworth, daughter of Frank Duckworth and Lamai Si, a native of Thailand. Tammy was born in Bangkok, Thailand in1968. She joined the ROTC while at George Washington University and later joined the Illinois National Guard.
While working on her PhD in political science at Northern Illinois University, her Guard unit was deployed to Iraq. Tammy, a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, was shot down and lost both legs and partial use of her right arm. She remains in the National Guard at the rank of Major and is now an Assistant Secretary in the Dept. of Veterans Affairs. Tammy Duckworth is still serving this nation. Tammy Duckworth is absolutely a real American.
Somewhere in these faces and lives is America, the real America. Somewhere in these lives one can find hints of the words that gave us birth: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... "
I know if those wonderful, laughing Japanese women were shown this picture and told, "These are Americans", they would pass out on the spot.
America is an idea, an ideal. It is a work in progress, always changing, always evolving, hopefully towards being the sacred place described in our Declaration of Independence. It is a place that is hard for most of the world to understand and hard for us to understand as well.
America as an ideal is as close as I can come to knowing what America actually is. And it is at this point, and at this point only, that I believe there is a valid connection between this country we are working on and the faith we profess to believe.
As Christians we should be very good Americans. As Christians we should understand America for what it can be. Not that we are better or more entitled or more patriotic or more "real American" than others. Not at all.
It is that we, who are a people of faith in a promise yet unrealized, should be able to keep working with that faith, remain sustained by that faith even when all seems lost. We know about a land we cannot see and about a destination we strive for but will probably never reach. We know about the promise of new life and hope where there seems to be only death and despair. We know about the power of truth to lift and empower and to sustain us.
That is our faith. That is also our country. We should be good Americans because we know how to work towards an ideal no matter how hard or futile the work may seem. We know that we can love a destination we cannot see, a place we cannot quite grasp, a truth we cannot quite realize and that is exactly what America happens to be.
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