Independence Day 2026

I like to joke that there are five things that make me the most patriotic: air shows, the Olympics, leaving the country and coming back, salads that involve no lettuce but copious amounts of mayonnaise, and Rocky IV. As I was reflecting on that list - all of which are true - I tried to discern what all of those items have in common. And as much as an air show and mayonnaise might not seem related, they are in how they engender an emotional response in me. When I was interviewing for my first job out of seminary, looking at moving to Colorado after five years in Virginia, the folks at Grace and St. Stephen’s took my family to a restaurant across the street from the church for lunch. When we sat down, we got water in those big plastic Pepsi cups - if you’ve lived in the Midwest for any amount of time, you know which ones I’m talking about. And my husband saw those cups and said to me, “I’m home.” It’s not that those cups are any better. It’s the emotional threads that they tie together. And each of those items on that list create an emotional response in me. In fact, I should probably switch out my salad item for Hy-Vee pasta salad with hunks of cheese in it. Turns out, that’s a very specific Hy-Vee geographical area thing. But my point is, it’s about the emotional response more than it is about any of those things being objectively “good” or “better” than anything else. (With the exception of the cinematic masterpiece that is Rocky IV)

I tend to waffle a little bit about what to do with Independence Day and church. Especially with the undercurrent of Christian Nationalism, celebrating the country as a Christian service has to be done delicately. I grapple with how to celebrate our independence at church without suggesting that God favors us more on account of our nationality - because He doesn’t. All are one in Christ Jesus. But as I waffle and start to think, “maybe we should just do the readings for whatever Sunday after Pentecost we’re on”, I look at the Independence Day lessons. And man, as the kids would say, they slap. Bangers only lessons.

None of these readings even come close to approaching a claim that Americans are superior because of our independence. They are not self-congratulatory. To be honest, the readings are more like a prelude of Christ the King. They are all about how great God is and how great our responsibility is as beloved children of God.

Every year, when I pray the collect for Independence Day that we prayed a few moments ago, I cringe a little bit when I reach the part where it says that the founders of our country won liberty for themselves and for 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 in the way in which we live them out. 

On this day of all days, we ought to be wary of what can be called civic religion — like “In God We Trust,” or “One Nation Under God” — because civic religion, while appearing to pay respect to God, often domesticates and manipulates religion in service of political ends. Both of those phrases, “In God We Trust” on our money and “One Nation Under God” in the pledge of allegiance, didn’t even enter into our civic consciousness until the Cold War. Rather than a heartfelt statement of love of God, they were reactionary responses to the “godless Soviets”.

No matter how much lip service the Empire pays, Empire’s ultimate goal is always to usurp the authority of God. No matter how many monuments to the Ten Commandments are erected, no matter how many public school Bible studies are required, no matter how many national days of prayer are held, what Empire wants is God’s authority upon itself. Empire wants to claim that God is on its side. The power of claiming that whatever you do is justified because God says so is an intoxicating potion of power. But the truth is that the United States is not the Church. And Scripture’s promises and commands are for all of God’s people, not for any particular country. God does not bless nor love America any more than God blesses or loves any other people.

We, as The Episcopal Church, have recently been and continue to reckon with our own complicity in 250 years of comfort within Empire. Being Christians, at our best, has always been about recognizing our own sinfulness and asking for God’s forgiveness as well as His guidance and help. To realize we cannot and are not expected to redeem ourselves, but to rely on our redeemer Jesus Christ to lead us into the way of righteousness.

We have to be careful that we, like Empire, are not simply paying lip service to things that matter. At the last Nebraska football game I attended, there was a moment where for some reason Kevin James came up on the Husker Vision screen and said something like, “I got three things to say: God bless America, God bless the troops, and Go Big Red”. And he got a big cheer. And I was just left with questions. First, why Kevin James? But also, one of these things is not like the others. What do the troops have to do with this football game? It takes things we should actually care about - both the troops and God’s blessing - and reduces them into cheap applause lines. And then we can pretend that we care about them by cheering while in reality doing nothing more in our lives to show that we care about them. Cheering the screen required no sacrifice on our part. It was just a self-congratulatory moment that enabled us to feel good about ourselves for free - with no action. But true discipleship is always costly.

There was a story in the news this week about a man who sent a harsh email to a government official. Months later, federal officials tracked him down to intimidate him, going as far as to follow him and his seven-year-old daughter while they were on vacation. At first, he and his wife wrestled with whether or not to share his story publicly, knowing it might affect his family and their safety in some way. While on the train home, the man’s wife, an Episcopal priest, sent him a text about how the previous Sunday's gospel lesson kept coming into her mind. She said "It's Jesus talking to his disciples and talking about the cost of discipleship… [that] it's not going to be peaceful. You do have to tell the truth in public. And people won't necessarily like to hear it." That helped the couple decide that they should go public with what happened and continue to be critical of government actions they disagree with — despite the intimidating visits from federal agents. He said one unexpected silver lining from this ordeal is that he no longer feels as powerless as he once did. That “if they hadn't come after me, I would have just been a guy whose sole act of defiance was writing a stern email to a faceless bureaucrat who was never going to read it. But for them to come after me six months later for that one email, it makes me feel like we do have a lot of power. It makes me feel like they do care that we're speaking up."

One thing we can learn from our founders is fearlessness. The willingness to step forward and step out. To sign our names to our causes publicly, not just on a message board hiding behind a screen name. To boldly say what it is that we believe, knowing there will be costs but that our faith in Jesus means we can’t not speak out. We are called to boldly proclaim the Gospel in all that we say and in all that we do. Maybe that is the point of Independence Day being a recognized holiday in the Episcopal Church - to remember the gift of the freedom and independence the Gospel gives us - all of us. Amen.