Independence Day 2025

On December 8, 1950 my grandfather received a letter. As he would tell the story, it began this way, “Greeting: Having submitted yourself to a Local Board composed of your neighbors for the purpose of determining your availability for training and service in the armed forces of the United States, you are hereby notified that you have now been selected for training and service in the Army.” Family story has it that Grandpa’s response to this draft notice was, “I need better neighbors.” Grandpa spent two years in Korea. He commented that he’d never been colder in his life - which is saying something coming from a farm boy from Waverly. The episode of MASH where they’re all fighting over a pair of long johns would have been true to the freezing Korea experience. But better neighbors and frigid winters aside, Grandpa was always proud of his service. Although he was not enthusiastic to report, he had military honors at his funeral.

My grandpa’s relationship with the Army was complicated, as most honest relationships are. The Army made itself hard to love, but my grandpa decided to love, if not the Army itself, then what he felt his service represented.

Every relationship we have is complicated. With one another and with institutions. Love is not just a feeling, it is a choice, and we choose to love with eyes wide open to one another’s flaws and shortcomings. If the object of your affection is flawless, you might take a deeper look. You might not love that person or that place or that institution. You might really just love the idea of it.

Every year, when I pray the collect for Independence Day that we prayed this morning, I cringe a little bit when I reach the part where it says that the founders of our country won liberty for themselves and us. Because we know it was not for all of us - and it never has been. For all of the Episcopalians involved in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence - 34 of the 56 signers were members of what would eventually become our church after the revolution - the values we read about in our lessons today: to execute justice for the powerless, to welcome the stranger, to worship God alone, to desire a heavenly country above all others, and to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors, have always been lacking. We, as a church, are reckoning with our own complicity in 250 years of comfort within empire.

In the words of our presiding bishop Sean Rowe this week, “When religious institutions like ours enjoy easy coexistence with earthly power, our traditions and inherited systems can become useless for interpreting what is happening around us. But our recent reckoning with the federal government (regarding the resettling of Afrikaners and the continued status of churches as places of sanctuary) has allowed us to see clearly the ease with which the Protestant tradition of patriotism can lead Christians to regard our faith more as a tool of dominion than a promise of liberation.”

We, as a denomination, are working through what is similar to what those in a 12-step program would call a “searching and fearless moral inventory”. This requires individuals to take an honest and thorough look at themselves and their past behaviors. The inventory is not about self-judgment or criticism, but acknowledging the impact of one’s actions and, later on in the process, to make amends where necessary except when to do so would cause additional harm. The ultimate goal is to be in right relationship with oneself, one’s Higher Power, and one another.

A searching and fearless moral inventory is not an exercise in beating yourself up. It’s an honest look - good things should be unearthed as well. Former presiding bishop Michael Curry tells the story of when his mother, who had become an Episcopalian, took his Baptist father to church while they were dating in the 1940s. Bishop Curry writes, “My father didn’t feel comfortable going up for communion, but when my mother went up, he watched closely. Was the priest really going to give her communion from the common cup? And if he did, was the next person really going to drink from the same cup? And would others drink too, knowing a black woman had sipped from that cup? He saw the priest offer her the cup, and she drank. Then the priest offered the cup to the next person at the rail, and that person drank. And then the next person, and the next, all down the rail. When my father told the story, he would always say: ‘That’s what brought me to the Episcopal Church. Any church in which black folks and white folks drink out of the same cup knows something about a gospel that I want to be a part of.’”

I choose to be optimistic. I choose to be maybe a little naive. My daughter learned “This Land is Your Land” as part of her Kindergarten music program this year, and she continues to sing it all the time. She’s even taught it to her 2 year old sister. And there is something about hearing the promise of what we could be coming from those little voices that gives me hope that maybe someday we will be the land that’s made for you and me, no matter who “you and me” are. We have the opportunity as a church to make that fearless moral inventory of ourselves. To find where we have been wrong and where we have been right. To find where we have been the shining light of Christ and where we need to repent and return to the Lord. Although we as a church have failed in the past, we have the opportunity today and going forward to live up to the collect we prayed this morning: to strive for liberties for all in God’s righteousness and peace. The good news is that we always have the opportunity to repent and return to the Lord when we fall short. We worship a God that does not place limits on His love or His forgiveness. And each and every day includes God’s invitation to us to be more and more like the people God has called us to be. Amen.