Before the Water Gate--A Holy Day
Diocesan Press Service. May 25, 1973 [73143]
(NOTE: The sermon below was preached by the Rev. John B. Coburn, D.D., at St. James' Episcopal Church, New York City, the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 20, 1973. Dr. Coburn is President of the House of Deputies of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church.)
In the year 445 B.C. the Jews rebuilt the wall around the city of Jerusalem. They had recently returned from their exile in captivity in Babylonia, and while they were gone the city had been destroyed, the walls torn down, and that holy hill a rubble. When they returned from exile they were determined that the Holy City and the Holy Temple would be rebuilt and would become the center for the national and religious life of the nation. They were determined that they would gather together those members of the nation that had been scattered, that they would restore the Temple to its former glory, that the capital city would be rebuilt, that their religion would be re-formed with absolute loyalty to God. That absolute loyalty was to be determined by their obedience to his laws -- and therefore they would disengage themselves from all foreign and corrupting influences. Everything that tended to diminish that primary loyalty to the One who had brought them now back from exile would be cut off. They were determined to rebuild a nation under God; to be loyal to him alone, and in obedience to him to attain prosperity as his people. That obedience was determined by their loyalty to the laws of the land -- to God.
So they rebuilt the Temple, they rebuilt the city, they rebuilt the wall -- the wall which was not only a defense against the physical attacks of the enemy but also the symbol of their gathering together in a peculiar relationship to one another because they were a peculiar people of God's -- that is, a particular people -- enclosing themselves apart from foreign influences, from anything that would tend to weaken that sense of a conscious, special relationship to the One who had delivered them from slavery and now had restored to them their capital city.
But to pass in and out of the city, which was necessary if they were to survive economically and if they were to be able to draw to themselves those other Jews who were scattered throughout the countryside, they built certain gates into the wall. The names of the gates describe them: the Valley Gate, to the south, opening upon the Valley of Hinnom; the Fountain Gate, which led to a spring outside the wall; the Sheep Gate, near the market, where sheep were bought and sold for sacrifice as well as for eating; the Fish Gate, where fish were brought from the coast and sold; the East Gate; the Horse Gate near the royal stables; the Damascus Gate, opening onto the road to Damascus; the Old Gate, restored; the Inspection Gate, the customs; the Dung Gate, also known as the Refuse Gate (we would probably call it the gate near the town dump).
There was also the Water Gate. That gate gave access to the Gihon Spring outside the wall and it was near the Temple area. In about 445 B.C., after the wall had been completed, all the people of Jerusalem gathered together in the square before the Water Gate. At one end there was a platform, and on the platform was the governor, Nehemiah, and the priest, Ezra, and the leading officials of the city. The purpose of their gathering was to be reminded once again of what the law of God was that they were to obey. So, in the presence of the governor, the head of the state, Ezra the priest read the word of God. It was to remind them that God was their God; God was their King; their loyalty to their country could be expressed only in loyalty to God, and that meant that obedience to the law of the land was obedience to God's law of righteousness and justice. On that particular occasion there was elaborated an explanation of the origin of a festival that came to be known as the Feast of the Tabernacles, or Booths, a celebration which the Jewish people have continued to this day.
We stand as a nation in the square before our Water Gate. We search to hear the Word of God spoken to this nation, a nation which claims to be "under God. " Perhaps we can get our bearings from that first Water Gate hearing. After the law had been read in such a way that the people could make sense of it and understand its meaning, they very naturally had a sense of judgment from God because they had not obeyed his will and they were therefore overwhelmed with guilt, which they all shared. The first word, then, that Nehemiah and Ezra spoke together to the people (that is, the head of the state and the representative of religion) was this: They said, "This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep; go share what you have with those who have nothing; do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." Extraordinary! The day is holy!
This day in our nation's history may be holy; it will be holy if we make it so. The day of the Feast of the Tabernacles became holy because the Jewish people made it holy by obedience to God's laws. God did not make it holy by himself; it was made holy by their loyalty to his laws of righteousness and justice, and truth and sharing. God did not bless America; we bless God. We bless God by obedience to his laws of justice. This is how we obey his righteous will. And then he blesses America. He does not bless an America that violates his laws any more than he ever has blessed mankind who has violated justice. There is no other way for America to be blessed, and there never has been.
Ezra and Nehemiah may have limited as they did, the sharing of material things to the Jewish nation alone -- which was perfectly understandable in the historical period in which they dwelt and in which it was necessary to draw together the Jews who had been scattered -- but their innate sense of how God deals with a nation was absolutely sound: justice among men is God's will. When you bring justice, you bring his blessing; when you bring injustice, you bring his judgment. When you obey him in a day of judgment and guilt, you make that day holy.
Therefore, when any of us attend the trial at Watergate, we are first of all judged -- every one of us -- and who among us does not have some sense of judgment, when truth is revealed, for the whole world to see, about how human beings act, when we all share memories of how we have acted and violated truth, or corrupted truth, or slanted the truth; on the basis of what we see that men have done out of self-interest, and of what we have done out of self-interest; when we recall the cutting of corners of honesty, the watering down of our integrity, the failure to stand up for the right when we know perfectly well what is right, joining in the conspiracy of silence, crossing to the other side of the road to avoid involvement -- when all this takes place on this day before the Water Gate we know we all stand under judgment. When righteousness and truth judge wickedness and sin, there is enough wickedness and sin -- though perhaps of a different kind -- in us for us first of all to confess our sins.
So the first word spoken to us in our Watergate trial is judgment, judgment upon every one of us. You can look into your heart, as I try to look into mine, to search out where the temper of self-will has tempered the righteousness and the justice of which we are all perfectly capable. We will come to no greater national health if we continue to stand aside and point our fingers at those over there who are now being exposed and say they are guilty. We are guilty -- and we can, in our own way, confess our sins against truth, against our own integrity, and against our own sense of justice and our own honesty. That is the first word.
But there is another word which follows directly upon this. It was spoken by Nehemiah and Ezra at that first Water Gate trial when they said: " This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep. "
To say that this day may become a holy day in our national life is to say that the laws of God are eternal laws. Obey them and you flourish as a nation; disobey them and you will decay as every other nation has decayed. It has always been an inward decay: the gate has been opened and decay comes in from outside and finds a welcome there within the city walls, within the walls of one's own heart. The laws of God are terribly simple: Be just to one another; be fair to other people; if you give your word, keep it -- even if it may be against your own advantage, keep it -- you will be better off in the long run if you keep it, you will find a dimension to life you did not know when you violated it. Share what you have with those who have nothing -- it is not yours, you are a steward of what you have been given. Put yourself in your neighbor's place; be concerned about yourself when you are in his place, whether it is the neighbor who has the same coloring or a different coloring, the same education or a different education, the same position or a different position.
There is in the laws of God nothing beyond the reach of any of us. We have all at times obeyed those laws as well as disobeyed them. When we obey them the day is made holy. Very simple. Then our strength comes in the joy of the Lord. That is an inward strength more powerful than any inward decay; the inward corruption is destroyed by inner integrity. That is what happens, if that is what we want in our personal lives and in our national life. It is inevitable.
In this morning's New York Times James Reston has this paragraph: "What the Watergate has done is to make a great many people around here realize that a whole lifetime of hard work and even good intentions can quickly be destroyed simply by failure to tell the truth or by obstructing justice by silence, or by taking money that they know they should not have taken. "
We are not going through, it seems to me, a constitutional crisis as much as we are a day of moral crisis. And because morality in the long run rises from religion, it is also a time of religious crisis. We are called to be moral not simply by our country -- although that seems so obvious today it is hardly worth mentioning -- but by our God. The laws of morality are his, built into the structure and the life of every nation of mankind, and it is in our allegiance to them -- the laws of morality and justice -- in our nation that we show forth the measure of our allegiance to him.
We cannot call men back to God. Only God can do that. We can, however, call men back to themselves, as we call ourselves back to ourselves, our deepest and best natures. We can bring new health to our nation only if we show forth the integrity of a new life where we are: in our families, in our communities, our business, our city, our country. Where we are honest, where we keep our word, where we act with integrity, we make every day a holy day -- and all the citizens of America will be able to make this day a holy day in our nation.
So what can we do about Watergate? This is what we can do. It is a moral responsibility, inescapable. It falls upon everyone in the square before the Water Gate -- all people, everyone who belongs to the nation.
For those who have a religious understanding of what history is about -- the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Nehemiah and Ezra, followers of the law of Moses; for those who view that law of the Jews as the schoolmaster bringing them to the law of perfect liberty in Christ; all of those who would enter into the joy of the Lord to make this day a holy day -- there is one thing more they can do: they can pray. They can pray day by day, by name, as the Jews in the Fifth Century did before their Water Gate: Nehemiah, Ezra, Mitchell, McCord, Haldeman, Erlichman, Dean, Caulfield, Kalmbach, Magruder -- all names named, and all the others.
Our prayer is that as we, where we are, try to obey the righteous will of God, as he gives us to understand it, with our own inner integrity so that justice may prevail in this land, so may they -- and so may this day of judgment in our land become a holy day. And together then may they and we enter into the joy of our Lord who becomes our strength.
Before the Water Gate -- a holy day.
Let us pray:
Take from us, O God, all moral cowardice, every inclination to get along by going along.
Confirm in us your spirit of integrity that when we know what is right we may do it. Give us confidence that truth will prevail so we may be loyal to truth and thus to you who art the Truth.
Grant that what we ask others to do, we may do ourselves, so that righteousness and peace may dwell in our land and the joy of the Lord be our strength under God. Amen.