Let’s Remember We Are Also World Citizens

Wikipedia photo of flags at the United Nations, in alphabetical order.

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

a song of peace for lands afar and mine

This is my home, the country where my heart is:

here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

but other hearts in other lands are beating

with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,

and sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight, too, and clover,

and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

So hear my song, O God of all the nations,

a song of peace for their land and for mine.

Lloyd Stone  (1934 hymn, sung to the tune Finlandia)

Our nation’s semiquincentennial celebrations will certainly focus on the kind of individualism and patriotism that has made the US one of the most powerful countries in the world.

There is much to celebrate about our nation, especially its ideals of “liberty and justice for all,” and "Give me your tired, your poor…” There is also much to lament about the darker parts of our history, especially our mistreatment of native Americans and of African slaves. 

As we reflect on our past and dream about our future, this is also a good time to reflect on what it means to be citizens of the larger world. We are, after all, fellow residents of one fragile but wonderful planet we share with our biologically-related cousins all over the globe.

Our faiths affirm that we have a common origin and form one interdependent human family, and that we share with each other the responsibility for the care and maintenance of spaceship earth. Our founders made the bold claim that all men (i.e., all human beings), “are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” We all breathe the same air, and are dependent on the same soil, water and weather.

We aren’t born with that sense of interdependence. As infants we are totally egocentric, and see everything and everyone as existing solely for our benefit. Over time humans become more ethnocentric, seeing ourselves as special members of our families, congregations, communities, and nations.

Our next challenge is to become more “cosmocentric,” seeing ourselves, and seeing our nation, as an inseparable part of a larger, interdependent world family. Many of us believe that God not only created the cosmos, but so loved the whole world (kosmos) that God’s only begotten was offered to redeem it. In Jesus’s first sermon he announced the reign of God had arrived, a heaven-governed kingdom on earth not bound by time or by artificial borders. The Christian observance of Pentecost celebrates the birth of a nation of nations, a people from all over the world who pray and work daily for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. 

Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165), described how “followers of the Way” related to former aliens and former enemies: “We who formerly … valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to everyone in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with [people] of a different tribe, now… live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies.”

The Hebrew prophets proclaimed a reign of worldwide harmony, justice and peace as coming not in some future far-off heaven, but right here on planet earth:

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Isaiah 2:2-4

The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, and a little child will lead them.. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Isaiah 11:6, 9

The battle bow will be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nation; his dominion will be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. Zechariah 9:10

Methodist theologian and author Georgia Harkness wrote a third verse to Stone’s hymn that has become my prayer for our 250th anniversary:

This is my prayer, O God of all earth’s kingdoms,

Your kingdom come; on earth your will be done.

O God, be lifted up till all shall serve you,

and hearts united learn to love as one.

So hear my prayer, O God of all the nations.

Myself I give you; let your will be done