The Torch We Keep
What the Prayer Book asks for when it prays for the nation.
A torch is not a monument. You cannot set it down and admire it. It burns while you hold it. It burns down as it burns. It goes out unless someone keeps it lit.
The prayer appointed for this day remembers a torch, the torch of freedom the founders raised for people not yet born. But notice what the prayer does with the image. It does not ask us to stand guard over a flame already burning safely on its own. It asks for grace to keep receiving liberty as a living gift, something maintained not by memory alone, but in righteousness and peace. To pray it is to hope.
To Love a Country Out Loud
I have prayed for the nation many times without noticing I was doing it. The words go by in the current of a Sunday service, one petition among many, and they are gone before they land. I suspect I am not alone in this. Most of us have said more of the Prayer Book than we have heard.
So it is worth slowing down over the prayer appointed for this day, and letting it be new again.
Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Hear what it does before it asks for anything. It gives thanks. It names the liberty won “for themselves and for us,” and it says so plainly, out loud, without embarrassment. Then it turns toward what must be received and maintained, asking for grace to keep those liberties in righteousness and peace. Gratitude and hope, spoken in one breath. To pray it is to love the place on purpose.
Zeal and Forbearance
There is a second prayer, the Collect for the Nation, and it keeps the first one honest.
Lord God Almighty, you have made all the peoples of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace: Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Hold the two things it asks for together. Zeal for justice. The strength of forbearance. Zeal without forbearance curdles into something that tramples. Forbearance without zeal goes slack and calls itself peace. The prayer will not let you keep one and drop the other. It asks for a love of country ardent enough to want justice, and patient enough to wait on grace while working for it.
The readings appointed for the day show what that love looks like once it touches the ground. It looks like a God who takes no bribe and secures justice for the orphan and the widow. It looks like the command to love the stranger, because you were once a stranger yourself. It looks, in the Gospel, like praying even for your enemies, since the sun God raises rises over them too. This is not a love of country hollowed out. It is a love of country enlarged past anything a flag by itself would think to ask.
A Better Country
The reading from Hebrews reaches further still. It remembers Abraham, who “set out, not knowing where he was going,” and lived in tents in a land he had been promised but did not yet hold. He was looking, the passage says, for a city with foundations, “a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”
A torch and a tent belong to the same journey. The torch is the traveler’s light, carried on the road through the dark. The tent is the traveler’s rest, pitched each night a little farther along. Abraham had both, the fire and the canvas, because he was on the way. So it is with us. The liberty this country has received is a light we carry, and we carry it as a people still traveling, at home and on the way at once. To hope toward the better country is not to love this one less. It is to love it with your eyes up, glad for the home you have and expectant of the one to come.
The Same Breath
So this weekend the country will be loud, and glad, and that is no small thing. The church adds something quieter to the noise. A few sentences, asked of God. Grace to keep our liberties in righteousness and peace. Zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance. A homeland loved, and a better one hoped for, carried in the same breath.
They are small words to set against so large a thing. You say them anyway. You may find that to pray for a country, and to hope for it out loud, is already to have begun serving it.