Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Our Brother, James Madison

by Dave Wilkinson

Matthew 22:15-21, Joshua 4:1-9

July 4, 1999

In our passage from Joshua, the people of Israel are crossing over the dry bed of the River Jordan into the Promised Land. God has prepared the way before them by damming the current. As they cross, they pick up stones from the stream bed. These stones are to be built into a monument for the future. They are placed at Gilgal as a way for parents to communicate to their children what God has done.

Today, July 4 is an opportunity to pick up some stones from our own nation's story and to ask the question, AWhat do these stones mean? What does this particular stone say about our story? What does this stone say about the duty we owe to our God and our response to what God would have us do?

If I were to ask you to identify one of the founders of our nation, who immediately comes to your mind? No doubt for many it is George Washington, the AFather of our Country. For others it is probably Thomas Jefferson, the brilliant author of the Declaration of Independence. Both Washington and Jefferson have memorials of dazzling white stone in our nation's capitol.

But this 4^th of July morning, I am thinking of another stone. This stone is not dazzling white. In fact, it's kind of drab. He has left no white stone monument. But he has left us a much greater monument that has stood the test of time, corruption, civil war and global upheaval. I am thinking, of course, of James Madison.

Madison didn't look like much. He was scarcely 5'4" and weighted only slightly over 100 pounds. He had some serious illnesses and an ongoing nervous disorder that left him exhausted and prostrate after periods of severe strain. In addition to his real illnesses, he was also a hypochondriac.

He was smart enough. He went to Princeton and graduated in two years instead of four. But, he was unsocial and never participated in sports. There were 12 members of his graduation class. Eleven had parts in the program. Madison's only participation was to quietly receive his diploma.

However, Madison did have one strength. He had a mind that had been shaped by the Word of God and by an eloquent leader's ability to apply the teachings of the Bible to the problems of human society. Madison's great teacher was The Rev, John Witherspoon, the Presbyterian President of Princeton from 1768 to 1792.

It was said of John Witherspoon, "He shaped the men who shaped America!" From among his three hundred or so students emerged 33 judges, three of whom were appointed to the Supreme Court, 56 state legislators, 29 United States congressmen, 21 United States senators, one Vice-President, and one President -- James Madison, the father of the Constitution and the prime-mover of the Bill of Rights. Five of the nine Princeton graduates among the fifty-five members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were students of Witherspoon. Witherspoon served as a member of the Continental Congress during the Revolution and was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Madison had entered Princeton to study for the ministry. But with Witherspoon's mentoring, he left Princeton convinced that the ministry to which God was calling him was the ministry of helping to shape a new nation -- a nation that would last.

Madison's moment came in 1786, five years after the end of the Revolution. Since the Revolution our nation had been under the Articles of Confederation -- called a "league of friendship" and a constitution for 13 sovereign and independent states We were a loose confederation of competing states -- much like the situation that has led to the current trauma in Yugoslavia. The central government could not regulate commerce. It could not tax and was generally impotent in setting commercial policy. It could not effectively support a war effort. It had little power to settle quarrels between states.

Saddled with this weak government, the states were on the brink of economic disaster. The depressed condition of business was taking its toll on many small farmers. Some of them were being thrown in jail for debt, and numerous farms were being confiscated and sold for taxes.

In 1786 some of the farmers fought back. Led by Daniel Shays, a former captain in the Continental army, a group of armed men, sporting evergreen twigs in their hats took up arms in Massachusetts. Although the insurrection was put down by state troops, the incident confirmed the fear that anarchy was just around the corner. From his idyllic Mount Vernon setting, George Washington wrote to Madison: "Wisdom and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm."

Madison thought he had the answer. He wanted a strong central government to provide order and stability. He wanted a government of rule by the majority -- but a government that would protect the minority. Following a commercial conference in Annapolis, Madison and Alexander Hamilton of New York called on Congress to summon delegates of the states to revise the Articles of Confederation. To Madison this was the chance to reverse the country's trend.

Madison had already drafted a document called the Virginia Plan of Union -- the forerunner of the Constitution. He was chosen to represent Virginia at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. There he was in the company of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton.

James Madison was a man in the middle. He was not gifted with Washington's imposing presence. But he was more articulate and more creative than the first president. He lacked Franklin's breadth of interest, infectious wit, and unique diplomatic style, but he more profoundly understood the problems of government. John Adams was more learned and more aware of the tragic dilemmas of human life. But Madison was more skilled at fashioning institutions likely to cope in some way with those dilemmas. Jefferson had a superior vision of the potential for life under republican government. He had a special gift for the memorable phrase. But Madison had a more subtle political sense.

He was not the object of adoration like Washington, nor the symbol of democracy like Jefferson, nor the orator like Patrick Henry, nor a soldier like Richard Henry Lee. But he was what he needed to be, and what our nation needed -- a person of intelligence, knowledge, and facts.

He was the author of 29 of the 85 Federalist Papers, member of the first United States Congress where he fathered the Bill of Rights, the United States Secretary of State, and the fourth President of the United States. He outlived all 54 of the other founding fathers. But he has no monument in Washington today -- except the one that sits is a glass case in the National Archives -- the Constitution.

Our country has only been a fact in the story of the world for 223 years. That is only a little over ten percent of the last two millennia. There are many countries that are much older. But of all the countries in the world, only one, Iceland, has had its present form of government longer than the United States. And Iceland has neither our history nor our diversity. Iceland has never had to elect a president in the midst of a civil war. Iceland has never had to impeach a popular President.

Madison was able to build to last because he was free from illusion. He recognized the basic selfishness of man and consciously designed a form of government with checks and balances -- one that would deliberately keep competitive forces in check.

The Constitution of the United States, like the constitution of our Presbyterian Church on which it is partly modeled, is built on the belief that power corrupts. It is designed to limit. The Founding Fathers scoffed at many thinkers of the French Enlightenment for claiming humankind was innately good. Even that child of the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson sounded like Madison when he wrote: "In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." Madison said it more simply: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

C.S. Lewis wrote in an essay on equality: AI am a democrat because I believe in the fall of man. The real reason for democracy is that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

Madison was the chief proponent of the Bill of Rights. He, the shaper of the Constitution, recognized more than most the limits that must exist on government. Madison did not believe in Constitutional Rights. He recognized that rights come from God. As the ninth amendment states, the people had all their rights and liberties before they made the Constitution. Madison taught that the Constitution does not give us rights. It only guarantees them. The Constitution was formed, among other purposes, to make our liberties secure -- secure not only as against foreign attack but against oppression by our own government.

Madison was able to build well because he was free from the drive to exalt party, faction or class -- to make the U.S. Constitution a tool of one class or group against another. Madison was free to build large because he knew he was building not for himself or his state or his social class but for God.

We know this because he said it. Madison would never have agreed with those who insist that our duties as citizens override our duty to God. He said the exact opposite. In his 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance he wrote: AIt is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to Him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe. Madison clearly knew what it means to give Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to give God what belongs to God. It showed up in his work.

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: AIf you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The apostles who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire. the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the slave trade all left their marks on earth precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven.

Those words could serve as a suitable epitaph for James Madison. He knew that he was working under the gaze of God.

Brothers and sisters, the eyes of heaven are also on us. May we build as well for the new millennium as did James Madison, our brother and example in Christ.