The weekend isn’t over yet, but we’ve had the fireworks, the
parades, the speeches, and while we might have a cookout or two left, the 250th
Independence Day of the United States is in the books. So, now what? Where do
we go from here?
Or, as my favorite TV president, Jed Bartlett, would say, “What’s
next?”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve sensed a strange
ambivalence about this year’s celebration. It’s been fifty years, but I remember
the exuberance of the bicentennial in 1976 and the run-up to it. Yeah, it was
the seventies—big hair, big cars, disco, and punk rock—but the buildup for the
party was well underway when I finished high school in 1975 and all through my freshman
year, until the big do the following summer. Yeah, I know about hindsight and
all that, but as I was working a summer job cutting grass, moving chairs, and mopping
floors at my home parish, all around that inner-city church there was celebration.
(And hype! Don’t forget all the bicentennial themed marketing!) Today? Sure, there
have been some America 250 or Freedom 250 banners (indicating the two competing
committees running the show), but last night’s fireworks were more or less on
the same schedule as last year’s… and I just can’t shake the feeling that there
just wasn’t as much energy around this as before. As a Washington native, I am astounded
at how few people showed up for the what ought to have been the party of the decade.
There have, of course, been at least two exceptions (three, if you count Tayor
Swift’s wedding to Travis Kelce on Friday): we’ve been watching the world cup
taking place around the US which, as I said last week, has been great fun and I’ve
really enjoyed seeing the geeky and enthusiastic crowds that showed up trackside
or at train yards to watch the Union Pacific 4014 Big Boy steam locomotive as
it made its way across the country from California to Philadelphia.
Maybe “250” doesn’t have the same panache as “200.” But I wonder,
do we really know what we’re celebrating? It could be that in ’76 we were, in
addition to celebrating our nation birthday, we were also blowing off steam
after a really difficult period of war, political upheaval, civil unrest, and scandal.
It seems to me that, as a nation, we are experiencing today the same kind of
spiritual mindset that caused Paul to write to the Christians in Rome two millennia
ago.
Paul wrote to Christians in Rome with breath-taking honesty,
about his spiritual life. “I do not understand my own actions,” he says. “For I
do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” It’s a basic human
truth, built into all of us.
I’m not speaking individually, as Paul did, but about us as
a nation. We know that we need to come together, to bridge our differences,
build on our variety and our capacity for good; but inevitably, we divide into
camps, zero in disagreements, and anxiously blame other people for our problems.
We can’t talk honestly about our history, because too often when we do, we
either ignore what makes us uncomfortable, re-write what went wrong, so that
instead of learning from our past we anxiously
takes sides and pick fights. As Paul said, we want the best, but we lean into
the worst.
It is hard to follow Jesus faithfully amidst all the noise and
bickering. So how does God respond? Well, for one thing we are given a gospel
that calls us to hear, listen and rest.
Think about how noisy today’s Gospel is. It’s full of kids playing
in the street with little or no supervision, calling out to each other,
quarreling, pretending, singing songs, and playing toy flutes.
Jesus says that this is exactly how we are. “…To what will I
compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and
calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we
wailed, and you did not mourn’” (Matthew 11:16-17).
Near my house is a lovely playground in a beautiful,
forested county park. And when school is out, it is wild. Kids from the very small
to middle schoolers are running, jumping, climbing, and generally making a
racket. And, if any of you have ever worked with or raised children, you know that
sometimes that exuberance can also lead to chaos, even conflict.
In the Gospel, Jesus talks about children in the town market
who call out “let’s play wedding!” or “let’s play funeral” to companions who
will not join them. We’ve seen this, when one kid comes to another and asks, “wanna
play?” and the other kid says “Nah!” and runs away. Jesus said the generation that rejected both
John and Jesus were the same way.
We don’t know how to ‘play nice.’ People said John the Baptist’s
way was too hard, but they also said Jesus’ way seemed too easy. (Matthew
11:18-19). But both John and Jesus announced the Reign of God, but is it a
wedding or a funeral? Should we feast or fast? Do we rejoice or repent? Should we
follow John’s way or Jesus’? Well, the answer to that question is “yes!” Both!
We have been invited in our faith and baptism to come play. We have been set
free from what holds us back.
So, what now? How do we use the freedom that God has given us?
For the last 250 years, we Americans have debated what
freedom means. I remember growing up, my elementary school has framed prints of
four Norman Rockwell paintings called “The Four Freedoms,” based on Franklin
Roosevelt’s January 1941, State of the Union message: Freedom of Speech, Freedom
of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.
The Scripture readings appointed for today suggest that
there is a still deeper question. Not simply, “Are we free?” but “What are
we doing with our freedom?”
Political freedom and spiritual freedom are not the same
thing. The Apostle Paul understood that. In his letter to the Romans, Paul says
something startling: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want
is what I do.” I suspect most of us know exactly what he means!
We know the experience of wanting to do one thing and
finding ourselves doing another. We want to be patient, but we lose our temper.
We want to be generous, but we cling tightly to what we have. We want to
forgive, but we carry old grievances. We want to love our neighbors, but fear
and prejudice get in the way.
And what is true of individuals can also become true of
nations. We can proclaim liberty while tolerating (or even propagating)
injustice. We can celebrate equality while excluding some of our neighbors. We
can speak of human dignity while turning away from those who are suffering or
most vulnerable. We can honor freedom while failing to ask whether everyone
truly has the opportunity to flourish.
The founders of this country understood that free societies
require “virtuous” citizens. That’s why the government stays out of religion by
giving belief space to breathe. It’s also why we have public education and
libraries. Paul goes even deeper, though. The problem is not simply that people
sometimes make bad decisions. The problem is that there are forces within us
that distort us from becoming the people God created us to be.
The Christian faith has never allowed us to imagine that
freedom alone is enough. Freedom is not an end in itself. The question before
us is always: freedom for what?
That’s when Jesus enters the conversation when he says in
today’s Gospel, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy
burdens, and I will give you rest.”
Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not
promise victory, nor power, nor wealth. He doesn’t preach national greatness or
that our side will win. He promises rest.
I’ve always been intrigued that in the Declaration of
Independence, Thomas Jefferson lists the things people pursue, as God-given,
inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the “pursuit of happiness.” I suspect that
Jesus’ notion of “rest” and Jefferson’s idea of “happiness” might be related. Look at Jesus’s vision of a healthy society. Instead
of wealth, power, military strength, economic growth, influence, Jesus asks:
Are the weary finding rest? Are burdens being lifted? Are people being treated
with gentleness? And then Jesus invites us to “Learn from me; for I am gentle
and humble in heart.” What’s fascinating to me that when Jefferson, a
Unitarian-leaning Anglican, took scissors to the Bible, cutting out all the miracles
and stuff he thought unscientific, the part of Jesus’ teaching that we read
today is one of the things he left in! Jefferson apparently like Jesus’ ethics
more his healings.
Miracles or not, Jesus’ vision of God’s reign presents a
different vision of life than our competitive dog-eat-dog, go-go-go way of
living that we think of is normal. And it is a very startling vision by
comparison. We don’t typically celebrate gentleness and humility in public life.
We admire strength. We admire confidence. We admire winning. But Jesus, who
said that the truth will set us free, points us toward humility, not coercion; carrying
burdens, instead of crushing enemies, in short, Jesus teaches an ethic of love.
That, I believe, is what Christian freedom ultimately means:
not merely freedom from something, but freedom for something:
freedom for love, freedom for compassion, freedom for justice, freedom for
mercy, freedom for building communities where every person knows they belong,
freedom for participating in God’s work of healing the world.
So, on day 1 of America’s 251st year, where do we
go from here? What shall we do with this hard won, still unfolding, freedom.
Shall we use it only for ourselves? Or shall we use it to
build a society where burdens are lighter, where the weary find rest, where the
vulnerable are protected, where strangers are welcomed, where the hungry are fed,
the imprisoned visited, and the homeless are sheltered? Shall we exercise power
with humility, and live so that love of neighbor is more than a slogan?
The Gospel never asks us to reject our love of country, but
it does ask us to measure every nation—including our own— and the actions of
our citizens and leaders against the character of Jesus Christ.
Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe wrote this for year's Independence Day,
Churches like ours, protected by the First Amendment and practiced in galvanizing people of goodwill, may be some of the last institutions capable of resisting this administration’s overreach and recklessness. To do so faithfully, we must see beyond the limitations of our tradition and respond not in partisan terms, but as Christians who seek to practice our faith fully in a free and fair democracy.
We did not seek this predicament, but God calls us to place the most vulnerable and marginalized at the center of our common life, and we must follow that command regardless of the dictates of any political party or earthly power. We are now being faced with a series of choices between the demands of the federal government and the teachings of Jesus, and that is no choice at all.
This is not the same kind of patriotism that has guided our church since its founding in 1785, but this July Fourth, it may be the most faithful service we can render — both to the country we love and the God we serve.
Jesus tells us that real, lasting power comes through service and that greatness is found in our mercy. We are invited to learn from Jesus; who is “gentle and humble in heart.” And having begun to learn from Jesus, while doing his work of love, and praying every day that God will give us the wisdom to use our freedom well, we may, with God’s help, become more and more the kind of people, and the kind of nation, that more closely reflects the gentle and humble heart of Christ himself.
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