In 1630, a group of settlers were sailing to America. Their leader was John Winthrop. They would establish a settlement that would become known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
While still on board the ship, facing an unknown future in an unknown land, and yet full of great hopes and dreams, John Winthrop held up the words of Moses as a challenge. (Deut. 30:19-20).
Therefore, let us choose life
That we and our seed may live
By obeying his voice and for he is our cleaving to him,
For he is our life and our prosperity.
These settlers came knowing that freedom comes at a price. They knew that one is truly free only if one becomes a servant of God. One is truly free only if he obeys the voice of God and cleaves to God.
These were the first true American patriots. Their motto was the word of St. Paul: You were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
The Cost of Freedom
In 1776, another group of men prepared themselves to pay the cost of freedom. Let us look in upon the scene.
It is Tuesday, July 2nd, 1776. Thomas McKean is worried. Would Caesar Rodney, his fellow delegate from Delaware, get there in time?
This was the day the Continental Congress would vote for independence.
Delaware had three delegates. One of them, George Read, felt it was too early to vote for independence. He would vote “no” and cancel McKean’s vote. Rodney’s vote was needed if Delaware was to declare for independence.
Rodney had gone home to squelch a loyalist uprising that threatened his home territory. McKean had sent an urgent message, “get to Philadelphia at the earliest possible moment.” Rodney’s home was in Dover, 80 miles away. It would be late at night when he received the message
If Rodney reached Philadelphia in time to vote, it meant spending all night in his saddle. He’d have to brave thunderstorms and wind. Not only that, but Rodney was a sick man. He suffered from a painful malignancy that covered half his face. He’d put off getting it treated in order to take part in this very important Continental Congress.
Late afternoon was upon them, and McKean kept watching up Chestnut Street for Rodney. John Hancock took his place as president of the Continental Congress. The vote was about to be taken. McKean heard hoofbeats. Up Chestnut Street, Caesar Rodney came galloping. The tall, gaunt rider, mud-spattered and bedraggled, reined in his horse. He had ridden all night, having left Dover in a blinding thunderstorm.
When Delaware’s vote was called for, Caesar Rodney pulled himself to his feet. He said, “As I believe the voice of my constituents and of all sensible and honest men is in favor of independence, and my own judgment concurs, I vote for independence.” Then the tall, gaunt rider, mud-spattered and bedraggled, reined in his horse. He had ridden all night, having left Dover in a blinding thunderstorm,
When Delaware’s vote was called for, Caesar Rodney pulled himself to his feet, he said, “as I believe the voice of my constituents and of all sensible and honest men is in favor of independence, and my own judgment concurs, I vote for independence,” then he sank exhausted to his seat.
What Is True Patriotism?
In Caesar Rodney, we see exhibited the kind of true patriotism that marks the true patriot. True patriotism is the willingness to seek the good of all, in obedience to God, even when it means losing your all.
This thought was very much in the minds of a group of men, 56 in all, who gathered in Philadelphia on August 2, 1776. Their purpose: to sign their own death warrants—the official copy of the Declaration of Independence. These men were well aware that the king of England had declared them traitors, and, if caught, they would be hanged. Their future hung on a ragged, outnumbered, poorly equipped army led by General George Washington.
Who were these men? Twenty-four were lawyers and justices, eleven were merchants, and nine were farmers. Ten were the sons of preachers. One was a preacher. One was an elder statesman. Three were medical doctors. They were the richest men in America. They were the most educated men. And one, Samuel Adams, didn’t have a dime to his name. Friends took up a collection to send him to Congress.
Have you ever wondered what happened to them? They pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, that this nation under God would not perish from the earth. Five were captured and tortured by the British. Nine fought and died from wounds and hardships of war. Twelve had their homes pillaged and burned. Two lost sons in battle. Another had two sons captured. John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she lay dying. Their thirteen children fled for their lives. His mills and fields were laid waste. For more than a year, he lived in forests and caves.
Morris and Livingston suffered similar fates. Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British navy. He sold his home and his property to pay his debts and died destitute. Vandals and soldiers looted the properties of Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, McKean, Hayward, Rutledge, and Middleton. At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr. urged General Washington to fire on his (Nelson’s) home, which British General Cornwallis had taken over for his headquarters. Washington did, and Nelson, too, died broke.
These men, who suffered so much, were true patriots. They were willing to seek the good of all, in obedience to God, even though it meant losing their all.
I believe God is calling us to that same kind of true patriotism today, he needs people who will obey his voice and cleave to him. I do not mean that God is calling us to lose our homes, our possessions, or our lives. I believe God calls us in the words of St. Paul, who wrote to the Galatians: “You were called to freedom, brethren; Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal, 5:13-14).
Freedom carries with it the responsibility to, when we fulfil this condition of freedom, we will also enter the ranks of the true patriots, and we will never need to worry that freedom will ever pass from this land.
Through love, serve one another.
What does it mean to serve one another through love? Too often we say, “Give me the great, the dramatic deeds to do, and I will do them. Challenge me with the great sacrifice, and I will do it.” But that is not the kind of responsible action to which Paul calls us.
I want to share with you, once again, the story of one of America’s greatest heroes. He fought no battles. He did no great act of courage. He was never president. He was a simple man who did what he could to serve his fellow man through love. His name was Jonathan Chapman.
Jonathan Chapman was born in 1775 in Boston. There he learned how to plant and grow trees. In 1794, he rode into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the back of a wagon. There he built a log cabin and planted an orchard.
After planting his orchard, Johnny bought some hives of bees. He gave the apple-blossom honey away. “The bees didn’t charge him for it,” he said.
This was the time when the settlers were moving west. The wild fruit out on the frontier was bitter. Johnny knew this, so he began giving deerskin pouches of cultivated apple seeds to the passing settlers bound for Ohio.
In the twelve years he lived in Pittsburgh, an idea kept growing in Jonathan Chapman’s mind. He would take apple seeds out west and plant apple orchards for the settlers.
Walt Disney has romanticized the story of Johnny Appleseed. He shows Johnny looking after the pioneers, wishing he could go, too. But he doesn’t think he has what it takes to be a pioneer. Yet, the words of the pioneers haunt him:
Git on a wagon rolling west,
Out to the great unknown.
Git on a wagon rolling west,
Or you’ll be left alone.
According to Walt Disney, Johnny’s guardian angel appears. I would like to suggest that the words that Walt Disney puts in the guardian angel’s mouth are really the words of a plan that Johnny and God dreamed together. He tells Johnny that he can go west and that “there’s an awful lot of work out there to do.”
“Not all the pioneers have to cut down trees,” the guardian angel told Johnny,” You can be a pioneer who plants them. Wherever there are homes, son, the folks will need apple trees.”
“Why Johnny Appleseed! You just think of the things that apples make!”
Apple pies and apple fritters,
Apple cores to feed the critters,
Tasty apple cider in a glass.
Apples baked and boiled and frizzled,
Taffy apples hot and sizzled,
And there’s always good old apple sauce.
The romance of Walt Disney aside, the idea had been growing in Johnny’s mind. He would take a load of apple seeds westward to the pioneers on the frontier so that they might have flowering, fruitful orchards like his own.
Serving Others Through Faith In God
It is evident from the record that the basis for this strange behavior of planting apple seeds came from Johnny’s faith in God. Johnny was open to God and open to man. He saw something that he could do, and he did it. Out of love, he served his fellow man.
Johnny was a true patriot.
One day, Johnny loaded two canoes with apple seeds and started down the Ohio River. When he got to Muskingum, he followed that to White Woman Creek. Finally, he ended up along Licking Creek where his load of seeds ran out. Behind him, farmers were rejoicing in their seedlings – soon to be waving orchards, and they talked about the strange man who brought them. They called him Johnny Appleseed.
Johnny made many trips back to the cider mills of Pennsylvania for seeds. They say that folks are still talking about the queer, blue eyed man with long hair hanging to his shoulders, barefoot, wearing ragged clothes. On his head he wore a tin kettle for a cap.
Johnny Appleseed did many things for the people and for the animals. Birds ate from his hand. He was followed by a grey wolf that he had rescued from a trap. A trapper came upon him one day, playing with three cubs while their mother bear looked on and placidly and kindly.
Johnny knew the direction by instinct. He never carried a compass. They say he walked barefoot in subzero weather without freezing his toes.
He was a friend of the Native Americans and was made a member of the Shawnee tribe. In spite of this, in 1811, during an uprising, he warned the settlers and brought them help. He rescued the wounded. He was saved from being shot himself when the bullets that hit him were embedded in the bible he always carried.
Hundreds of Ohio acres bloomed with pink blossoms. His seeds had reached the banks of the Wabash River. He was welcomed everywhere by the grateful farmers. When he sat down at a table with them, he would not eat until he was sure there was plenty of food for the children. After eating, he would stretch himself out on the floor, take out his bible, and read what he called “news fresh from heaven” – the Sermon on the Mount.
His voice, they say, was first “loud as the roar of wind and waves, then soft and soothing as the balmy air that quivered the morning-glory leaves about his grey beard.
One day, Johnny Appleseed trudged twenty miles to reach the home of a friend near Fort Wayne, Indiana. He sat down on the doorstep to eat his meal of bread and milk, he read aloud from his bible for a while, and then went to sleep under his beloved apple blossoms, and Johnny Appleseed never woke up again – in this world.
When the news reached Washington, old Sam Houston of Texas made a speech about Johnny Appleseed in the American Congress. He said, “This old man was one of the most useful citizens of the world in his humble way. Farewell, dear old eccentric heart, your labor has been a labor of love, and generations yet unborn will rise up and call you blessed.”
Yes, Johnny Appleseed was as great and true a patriot as any who signed the Declaration of Independence. He was a truly free man. He was free because he had bound himself as a slave to Jesus Christ. He was free because he obeyed God and cleaved to God. He was free because, in love, he served his fellow man. That is what patriotism is all about.
Our Challenge: Become a True Patriot
Today, the challenge to become true patriots is thrown at our feet. We have seen that true patriotism begins with God. God has said to us, “This day is set before you life and death – choose.”
Therefore, let us choose life that we and our seed may live by obeying his voice and cleaving to him, for he is our life and our prosperity.
We have seen that to choose life by obeying and cleaving to God may, in certain times, mean losing all, as did the patriots who sacrificed their all for liberty in those fateful days of 1776.
But we have also seen that to choose life by obeying and cleaving to God, serving our fellow men through love, may mean to do the unglamorous, the unheralded, the simple thing, the thing no one else wants to do. Jesus gave the example of doing the servant’s task of washing the disciples’ feet. He did what the others weren’t willing to do. At another time, Jesus said, if we are faithful in little things, then we will be worthy to be trusted with big things.
The true patriot is one who is willing to serve through love, doing the little things. Will you answer the call to become a true patriot today?
