The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

"Americans balance patriotism and reflection," the headline read on Independence Day, as if patriotism were fireworks and flags and bratwurst and beer, and not reflection. And the New York Times claims that Sunday was made for the New York Times. And CBS used to say that weekends were made for sports.

And all this shows just how far down the slippery slope we’ve slid, how close to the bread and circuses of ancient Rome we’ve moved, because if patriotism is fireworks and flags and bratwurst and beer, and not reflection, then we might as well throw in the towel, because, as one of our Founding Fathers reminds us, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Both Sundays and the Fourth of July, both religion and patriotism were made for reflection, for remembering and for prayer, because the price of liberty is eternal vigilance We just forget.

And just as surely as God made little green apples, if we forget, we will lose our liberty. "The condition upon which God has given liberty to man is eternal vigilance." This is the form John Curran’s reminder first took in a speech on July 10, 1790. But Curran’s reminder reaches back at least as far as the Book of Deuteronomy: "Remember...," God told Moses and the people in the wilderness. "Remember that it was the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery into freedom, and led you in the desert these forty years.... For if, when you have eaten and are satisfied, when you have built fine houses and settled down, when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase, and all you have is multiplied...if, then, you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery into freedom, you will surely be destroyed." The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

This reminder is what we’ve been singing the past several weeks. In 1900, James Weldon Johnson was asked to speak at an Abraham Lincoln birthday celebration, but instead of the usual kind of speech, Johnson wrote a poem, which his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, put to music. Later, in 1920, James Weldon Johnson became the Executive Director of the NAACP, and somewhere along the line "Lift Every Voice and Sing" became the organization’s official song. It became known by many black Americans as the "The Negro National Anthem." But Johnson himself refused to call it that. Instead, he called it "The Negro National Hymn," because he did not intend his verse to be divisive. He was not speaking of the freedom of one people as opposed to another. He was speaking of that deeper freedom God promises to all human beings, white as well as black, a freedom that reaches back as far as Moses, and beyond.

Not long ago, Channel 17 aired a wonderful video produced by the Pikes Peak Library. The speaker was Buck O’Neil. O’Neil, now in his late eighties, was hired by the Chicago Cubs in 1962, the first black coach in the major leagues. O’Neil’s talk was about his life in the Negro baseball leagues before that, and about all the great baseball players of the Negro leagues, some of whom were as good as, or better than, Ted Williams, who died this past Friday. But many of us never heard of them, because, unlike Williams, they were never allowed to play in the major leagues because of the color of their skin.

And thirty-five years ago, when Williams accepted his nomination into the Baseball Hall of Fame, he said that his only regret was that he never got to face the best pitchers of his day, because they were confined to the Negro leagues during most of his career. Williams insisted that segregation in baseball had cheapened the white leagues more than it had limited the black leagues. And in his autobiography, he also notes the irony of his own origins and accomplishments. Williams’ mother was Mexican, and Williams, whose rookie year with Boston was 1939, thought it likely that if his father had been Mexican instead of his mother -- that is, had he had a Spanish surname -- he himself would not have been allowed to play in the major leagues.

O’Neil goes on to talk about how Jackie Robinson became the first black to do so because he was the right man at the right time. And O’Neil speaks of Branch Rickey’s role, as well as Robinson’s, in what he calls the "modern civil rights movement." "Oh, yes," he says, "ours is just the modern civil rights movement, because the civil rights movement goes back a lot farther than the 1940s, because, you see, we have a God who has been working on it a long, long time. Ours is a God," he says, "who sends the right man at the right time."

"Way back when we were slaves in Egypt," O’Neil muses, "God sent Moses. And then later, when we needed someone again, God sent Abraham Lincoln. And then later still, when Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson and Jackie Robinson and I were playing baseball, God sent Branch Rickey, who had the courage to bring up the right man at the right time. That’s the way God works."

And this is the story James Weldon Johnson’s verse tells as well, the story of God’s leading his people to freedom:

We forget that we do not yet live in the Promised Land. We forget that we’re still on the way. The liberty we have is not all the liberty we seek. The land we have is not yet the land we seek. The freedom we have is not all the freedom we sing of. We do not pledge our allegiance to ourselves as we are, as if God is finished with us. We do not pledge our allegiance just to a flag, but to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice, not just for some but for all.

Ours is a pilgrimage that began long ago with our father Abraham, and it’s a journey that ends only when we reach the city Abraham sought, that "city with firm foundations, whose architect and builder is God." We are still on our way.

We sometimes forget that God is not just the God of us, but not of everyone else. We forget that God is the mighty God of all, who is, as the Scriptures remind us, partial to none, the God who loves the alien, the stranger, the sojourner, the foreigner who is just passing through.

We forget that Abraham’s pilgrimage is our pilgrimage, that Moses’ story is our story, that Jefferson’s allegiance is our allegiance, that Lincoln’s struggle is our struggle, that James Weldon Johnson’s and Buck O’Neil’s and Satchel Paige’s and Ted Williams’ emancipation is our emancipation.

Oh yes, Independence Day, like today, the Day of Resurrection, is a day for reflection, for reflection and prayer, and for remembering our story.

Even in this young land our story’s roots are ancient and our pilgrimage long. Ours is a story that reads like a litany, a litany that began not 226 years ago, or even 400 years ago, but thousands of years ago, with people from Asia moving across the Bering Strait in search of life on the American continents. It continued in the 15th and 16th and 17th centuries with the Spanish and the English, some of your ancestors and mine, who sought economic and political and social opportunity and more space for differing religious beliefs. It continued in the 18th and 19th centuries with poor and unemployed Germans and Italians and Irish, some of your ancestors and mine, all of whom, by faith, sought a new and freer home.

And part of the litany is sung by Africans, but in a different key, because they were brought to this land against their will, just as Joseph was taken into Egypt against his will. But in their captivity, God sent Abraham Lincoln and James Weldon Johnson and Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, and you and me, to travel with them to that Promised Land of which our Declaration of Independence and pledge of allegiance speak.

And of course the litany continues with those from Scandinavia, some of your ancestors and mine, and with others from China and Japan and Korea and Laos and Vietnam and Haiti and El Salvador and Guatemala and Mexico and Russia and Iran and Iraq and India and Pakistan and every corner of the world, all seeking, as we did before them, sanctuary and opportunity and liberty, all seeking our native land, that land of which we sang this morning, that land, under God, of which the Bible speaks, the land whose architect and builder is God, the land of the noble free, where we are free to do more than wave flags and eat fifty hot dogs in twelve minutes, that land where we are free to remember, and to reflect, and to love the sojourner and the stranger among us, and even our enemies.

There was a day in our national past when we feared the foreigner and the stranger. It was a day not unlike today. And it was in just such a day that Franklin Roosevelt was asked to speak to the Daughters of the American Revolution, a group who claimed the name "patriot" because, they thought, they were true Americans who could trace their ancestry to the Founding Fathers. And Roosevelt reminded them of their heritage. "My fellow immigrants...," he addressed them as he began his speech. "My fellow immigrants," he reminds us. My fellow foreigners, my fellow aliens -- we who are just passing through this way, seeking to grow from slavery to freedom.

What Independence Day and today, the Day of Resurrection, have in common is that both remember a slavery we seek to shed and a freedom we’ve been given to share. Both are days of reflection and prayer. Both the Day of Resurrection and Independence Day not only remember events of the past, they also invoke the blessings of God upon a promised future, a future whose possibility, we remember, requires commitment and sacrifice

The aliens who found themselves in America in 1776 prayed this prayer. They established their independence with a statement of assurance and hope and promise -- that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that the purpose of government is to secure that endowment, not only from enemies abroad, but also from forgetfulness within. Independence Day is not only a day for fireworks and flags and bratwurst and beer, but a day for reflection upon a divine destiny, a pilgrimage whose end is liberty and justice for all.

The promise of our land is as nothing without the promise of God. The promise of our land is feeble -- indeed, impossible -- without the promise of God, God’s promise to bring us fellow immigrants, all of us, to that city with firm foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

It is a promise that reaches back long before the United States of America. It is a promise first heard by Abraham, that ancient pilgrim who set out not knowing where he was to go, but who went, by faith, looking for the promised City. It was heard later by Moses and the people of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. It was heard later still by Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. And it is heard even now in the wilderness of our present world, as our Lord calls us much as Moses called the people in the wilderness of Sinai: "My fellow immigrants," he says. "My fellow immigrants, you have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for them. Pray for those who persecute you, so that you and they, all of you, fellow aliens and sojourners in this world, may be children of your Father who is in heaven and inheritors of the promise."

Reflection, prayer, memory, and commitment -- this is what Independence Day is all about. And it’s why these words of Jesus, assigned to be read and reflected upon on the Fourth of July, are also appropriate for this Seventh Sunday after Pentecost. Because true liberty is that liberty St. Paul holds before us, the freedom, through Christ, not to indulge our sinful natures, but to choose what is good, to serve one another in love.

This is the choice that stands before us. Both as Christians and as Americans, we are free to choose that which is self-serving and base or that which is good and noble. It’s a choice that stands before us continuously, because of the freedom God has granted us. Both as Christians and as Americans, we sing not just of freedom, but of God’s freedom, the freedom to choose that which can save us as we want to be, the freedom not just to be the free, but to be free in a particular way, to be the noble free: "My native country, thee, land of the noble free, it’s thy name I love."

The noble free. What a powerful word, "noble"! We should never slide over that word unreflectively. It’s from the same root as the word "to know." To be noble means to have discernment, to understand the real value of something. "Noble" implies superiority of mind and character. Noble freedom is the freedom to be for all that is outstanding and above reproach and to resist that which is petty or common or cheap.

Noble freedom is the freedom St. Paul is praising and giving thanks for today: "I find that in my mind I want to obey God," Paul says, "because it is his law that I approve of. But in my sinful nature, I find that I am unfree to do it, because I am a slave to the law of sin. But thanks be to God! For because of Christ Jesus, the Spirit of life has now set me free from the law of sin and death. Christ has given me a new outlook and freedom. (NEB) He has set me free from the law of sin, so that I might live for the life of the Spirit."

Freedom, in other words, is not its own end. The end or purpose of freedom is not just to be free. Freedom is a gift, a gift God has given us to use for a purpose or an end beyond itself. The purpose or end of freedom is nobility; the purpose of freedom is to do what is good and right and just and merciful. This purpose, this end, Paul reminds us, we are now free, through Christ, to choose. And it’s this purpose, this destiny, we pray for this morning:

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.