This week in America we'll celebrate the birth of our country 241 years ago on our 4th of July "Independence Day." I'm always astonished to remember how very young our political experiment is compared to the arc of world history and to any other major country.

On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress of the thirteen American colonies approved a resolution to declare independence from Great Britain. Henceforth they would be a sovereign nation of thirteen "United States." Two days later, on July 4, the Congress approved the "Declaration of Independence" that explained their vote.

America's national holiday always makes me feel the ambiguous relationship between the sacred-eternal and the secular-temporal, between my pledges of allegiance to the church and the state, and between the different visions of the city of God and the city of man.

Our global readership at Journey with Jesus continually reminds me that being Christian and being American are two different things.  For our budget year that just ended on June 30, Journey with Jesus served readers in 202 countries.  In 160 of those countries, we had five or more readers.

Of course, it's good and natural to love your own country. I experienced this pull of patriotism when my family lived in Moscow from 1991 to 1995.  We enjoyed so much about living in that great city, founded in 1147, but I also missed many things about America.  There's truly no place like home.

The vision of Zechariah, unknown Italian, Sicily, about 1300.

The problem with patriotism is that it can lead to nationalism.  And nationalism, as CS Lewis observed, believes that my nation is "markedly superior to all others."

Lewis once encountered a pastor who espoused such noxious nationalism.  He asked him, "doesn't every nation think of itself as the best?"  The clergyman responded in all seriousness, "Yes, but in England it is true."

Lewis concludes, "To be sure, this conviction had not made my friend (God rest his soul) a villain; only an extremely lovable old ass. It can however produce asses that kick and bite. On the lunatic fringe it may shade off into that popular Racialism which Christianity and science equally forbid."

For the nation Israel that was founded as a theocracy — the direct rule by God alone, the reading from Zechariah this week reinforces a global rather than a parochial perspective. His political poetry speaks to us today 2,500 years after he wrote.

About fifty years after Babylon conquered Israel and deported them in 586 BC, the military balance of power shifted.  On October 13, 539 BC, Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered the Babylonian king Nabonidus in the Battle of Opis on the Tigris River, near modern Baghdad.

As a tolerant and enlightened ruler, Cyrus issued an edict in 538 BC that permitted the subjugated Jews to return to their devastated home land. Thus began Israel's "post-exilic" period.

Repatriation to Israel was a brave choice, and not all the Jews returned. Economically-speaking, they were better off in pagan Babylon than in holy Jerusalem, for their capital city had been ransacked and was in shambles.

When Israel's present reality was bleak, the prophets envisioned a better future. What is human hope if not the expectation of a future? That's what Zechariah did for the repatriated Jews living in war-torn Jerusalem (Zechariah 9:9–10):

"Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!
     Shout, daughter of Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
     righteous and having salvation,
     gentle and riding on a donkey,
     on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will take away the chariots of Ephraim
     and the war-horses from Jerusalem,
     and the battle bow will be broken.
He will proclaim peace to the nations.
     His rule will extend from sea to sea
     and from the River to the ends of the earth."

When you read his poetry carefully, and imagine yourself back in the time and place of a repatriated Jew trying to eke out a subsistence living in his devastated country, you see how Zechariah subverts our normal expectations. It's not what most Jews would have wanted to hear.

Prophets Habakkuk & Zechariah, by contemporary Nicholas Papas.

A king will rescue them, yes, but why these words about righteousness and salvation instead of revenge and retribution? Defeated nations demand retribution. A king riding a colt? Such political parody must have struck Zechariah's original readers as crazy.

Thank God for the promises of peace, that all the enemy's military hardware will be removed from the capital's streets — chariots, war-horses, and battle bows. But peace to the enemy, peace to all nations, peace from sea to sea, and peace to "the ends of the earth?" Why such universal blessing when national survival was at stake?

Zechariah envisioned a future far different than the one the Jews back then understandably sought, given their humiliating circumstances, and certainly compared to the canons of conventional political wisdom.

The future that his poetry envisioned is characterized by national humility, not political hubris. It imagines a king who rides a young donkey rather than a regal stallion as emblematic and not oxymoronic.

The future kingdom is also peaceable, not provocational.  God's kingdom is one of peace and not war: "I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war-horses from Jerusalem, and the battle-bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations." We should abhor war, not glorify it.

God's coming kingdom is also universal, extending to the ends of the earth, rather than ethnocentric or nationalistic. In Zechariah's political calculus, God's kingdom extended far beyond the boundaries of what we normally think of as a geo-political state. No nation is exceptional before God, and no nation is excluded. "His rule will extend from sea to sea, and from the river [Euphrates] to the end of the earth."

According to our Christian story, God created the entire cosmos.  In Genesis he promised to bless "all the families of the earth."  In Revelation he gathers people from "every nation, tribe, people, and language."  In a clever play on words, in Ephesians Paul says that God is the patera of every patria — the "father of every family."

World flags.

He isn't the God of ancient Jews alone, or the God only of contemporary Americans. God is the father of "every family in heaven and on earth."  Which is why Paul also says in Romans 8 that God will redeem "the whole creation."

For Christians who believe that God loves all peoples and nations without exception or favoritism, and who wish every nation peace rather than violence, the anniversary of the American Revolution invites us to deeper reflections beyond patriotic rhetoric. Zechariah's peace poetry challenges us to imitate his God, and to love all the world like he does.

Image credits: (1) J. Paul Getty Museum; (2) Nicholas Papas; and (3) Flagshag.com.