Hilton Head Island, SC – August 27, 2023
The Chapel Without Walls
Exodus 16:9-14; Ex. 16:31-35
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “I have heard the murmurings of the people of Israel; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you will be filled with bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” – Exodus 16:12 (RSV)
The 17th and 18th centuries were a time of strict orthodoxy among English speakers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The Puritans in England and New England were examples of that. But it also was a time of widespread deism. In essence, deism is the idea that God had sufficient power to create the universe, but that He withdrew from His creation, and He hasn’t been heard from very much ever since. Deism rejects the notion of divine revelation, and instead declares that humans have no choice other than reason to govern the world, since there is no one else capable of doing it. God is a distant deity to deists. The Bible therefore has little meaning for deists.
Many of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence and adopted the United States Constitution were deists. Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration, was a self-and-widely-acknowledged deist. Though God is briefly mentioned in both of our founding documents, they do not suggest that God was the prime mover in the establishment of our nation.
For believers in God, the alternative to deism is theism. The major world religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism – are theistic. They subscribe to the conviction that there is a God or gods, and that God intentionally relates Himself to us.
The traditional understanding of the doctrine of providence is that God guides and directs the affairs of the human race. Most or possibly all of whatever happens happens because it is God who caused it to happen. We are free agents in the world, but most of us believe that God influences us in our decisions. He also provides us the means of sustaining ourselves in life. The words provide and providence are obviously related.
There are gradations in the concept of providence, as you might expect. Some people believe virtually everything is determined by God. Thay might be called “determinists,” meaning they think that God ultimately determines everything that happens, but He does it primarily through people. Others think God determines only major issues. Still others think God gives human beings the mental and physical abilities to do what needs to be done for the good of all, but that He doesn’t do any of it Himself. As Winston Churchill said to the Franklin Roosevelt and USA during the two years before the Japanese drew us into World War II, “You give us the tools, and we will finish the job.” Lend-Lease was the result of that plea. In whatever way providence is specifically understood, it proclaims that God gives us the tools to do whatever jobs are necessary, but we are the ones who do what needs to be done. If these disparate notions do not seem to be clearly connected, they aren’t; in the end they are theological mysteries.
John Meacham wrote an outstanding biography of Abraham Lincoln called Let There Be Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle. It is one of the best if not the best biography I have ever read, except that I didn’t read it. On the 2000-plus-miles driving odyssey I took the week before last, I listened to a recording of the book for almost every mile. It clearly explains a theological expansion of Lincoln’s thinking during his later years that I had previously been led to believe was non-existent.
Even though Lincoln regularly attended the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield and the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, he never joined either church or any church. I always thought of him as something of a skeptic in religious matters. But in John Meacham’s telling, the Great Emancipator became more and more of a theist as the pressures of the presidency consumed his every waking moment. I used to suppose that Lincoln talked about God to win votes. (It might be hard for you to believe, but some politicians actually do that.) Prof. Meacham convinced me that Lincoln became more religious, or at least more spiritual, in the years leading up to his death. Incidentally, this sermon is different than it would have been had I not invited John Meacham to ride with me for over two thousand miles.
As a young child, Lincoln attended Baptist churches with his parents. However, they were Calvinist Baptists. Thus they believed that God directly controlled much if not all of human existence (which is something John Calvin did not believe, but I’m not going to take time to explain that). Initially that concept was anathema to Lincoln. As his political career evolved, though, he began to perceive the hand of God guiding him and the Union as the Civil War dragged on. Fairly often he referred to the providence of God in the conflict.
In Meacham’s preface, he makes some remarkable references to Lincoln’s growing convictions regarding the leading of God in human events and in his own life. Frederick Douglass was a famous freedman Black activist against slavery. He was present when Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. Douglass said that it sounded “more like a sermon than a state paper.” Commenting on that, Meacham wrote that it was both. (Prologue xix).
Then Meacham wrote, “To Lincoln God whispered His will through conscience, calling mankind to live in accord with the laws of love.” When the Lincolns’ eleven-year-old son Willie died of typhoid fever during the first winter of the war, Pastor Phineas Gurley told them, ‘What we need in the hour of trial is confidence in Him who sees the end from the beginning….Only let us bow in His presence with a humble and teachable spirit, be still and know that He is God; let us hear His voice and inquire after His will’” (xx). Many people would not find comfort in those words; Mary didn’t, but Abraham did. Both of his so-to-speak “pastors” helped Lincoln grow in his theological ponderings.
In what ways did God’s providence manifest itself in the war? Was God the cause of the Union defeat at the first Battle of Bull Run? Many Southerners said so. Did God lead Lincoln to name the disastrously cautious and inept George McClellan as the commander of the Union Army? Many historians might think so, but wisely none of them ever clearly wrote that. Did God direct Pickett to make his bloody charge up the hill at Gettysburg at what has ever since been called “the High-Water Mark of the Confederacy,” or Union general Phil Sheridan never to arrive at Gettysburg with the cavalry, or Grant to march miles down the west side of the Mississippi at Vicksburg, then cross the river, and then turn north again to lay siege to and conquer Vicksburg from the east? Exactly how did --- or does --- God’s providence operate? Can we be certain?
As Lincoln’s thinking about providence evolved, so did his thinking about slavery. He always opposed slavery, but in the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates he made no references to abolishing it; he only wanted it contained in the states which then allowed it, and he insisted it must not be practiced in any of the territories which then had not yet become states. Before the war Lincoln favored colonization for free Blacks in Africa, but by the end of the war he became convinced they wanted to remain in America, and he did everything he could to insure that would happen.
By the summer of 1862 Lincoln had decided to declare all the slaves in the Confederate states to be free, but he did not announce the Emancipation Proclamation by executive order until January 1, 1863. In essence he was encouraging slaves to flee to the North so that the males among them could then join the Union Army. He was an unusually astute politician as well as commander-in-chief.
John Meacham is a committed Christian, and his portrayal of Lincoln seems to suggest that Prof. Meacham thinks Abraham Lincoln became a unique if also an unconventional Christian by the time that John Wilkes Booth assassinated him on Good Friday in 1865. There were many times that Lincoln thought the Union would lose the war because of bad decisions by him and by the Union generals. He also was sure up until the presidential election of 1864 that he would lose that election. If the North won a major battle, he thought he might squeak through, and Sherman defeated the Confederates in the summer of 1864 in Atlanta. Lincoln ascribed that victory to God’s providence. Was it God who won in Atlanta, or was it Sherman?
Sixty years ago, I read a statement while in seminary about providence. I never committed to memory who wrote it, but I never forgot it. It said that providence is the means by which God uses our decisions for his own purposes. God doesn’t cause us to do what He wants, but He uses human actions, even bad actions, to accomplish His will. If we don’t do what He wants, God apparently overlooks it, but if we do His will, it is because His spirit touched our spirits. The first stanza of one of my favorite hymns says, “I sought the Lord/ And afterward I knew/ He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me/ It was not I who found, O Savior true/ No, I was found of Thee.” God’s holy spirit inspires us to do His bidding. It isn’t the Third Person of the Trinity who inspires us; it is the lower-case holy spirit of God who moves us. His spirit within us leads us to seek justice and kindness. “Have Thine own way, Lord/ Have Thine own way/ Thou art the potter/ I am the clay.”
One summer afternoon Martin Luther was struck by a lightning bolt. He thought it was God who struck him. After he picked himself up off the ground, he loudly exclaimed in response, “I will become a priest!” “Well, that’s your decision, not mine,” I suspect God said. Did God smite Luther, or was Luther smitten by a natural occurrence? Whatever caused it, God used Luther’s bolt-from-the-blue experience for Luther to begin a much-needed reformation of the medieval Church.
In the book of Exodus we are told that the Israelites were starving in the wilderness, and they saw no way that they could ever make it to the Promised Land. God told Moses that he would provide quail for them in the evening and bread in the morning. We are to deduce that great flocks of quail descended on their camp every evening, and in the morning manna covered the ground, although I find that almost impossible to deduce. They used this substance that no one had ever seen before to bake bread. Thus they were strengthened to continue their long trek.
God’s providence is clearly observed by some people and is totally invisible to others.
Especially during the immensely stressful four years of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln increasingly perceived God’s hand in the chain of events which led up to the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. Key factors caused him to believe that when events seemed their most calamitous, providence placed certain individuals at just the right time in the right place, and seemingly impossible victories were snatched from certain defeats.
Is providence always evident, or is it sometimes deliberately hidden? Is it visible to some, and invisible to others? Can anyone know beyond doubt how providence operates? Was there anyone else who could have led a splintered Union through the most bloody war in our history other than that tall, homely, brilliant strategist from Springfield? By his death all Americans were resurrected into new life, but it took many years for that process to transpire. In Abraham Lincoln, a broken nation was again made whole. Thanks be to God - - - and to Abraham Lincoln.