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“A voice said to me, ‘Son of Man, stand up on your feet. I am going to speak
to you.... I am sending you to the Israelites, to a nation of rebels that has rebelled against me....
You must speak my words to them whether they listen or not, for they are a nation of rebels. Do not be
like that rebellious house.’” This is the word of God spoken to the prophet Ezekiel “in the 30th year on
the 5th day of the 4th month as he was sitting among the exiles on the bank of the River Kebar in the land
of the Chaldeans.”
Ezekiel, the prophet. Ezekiel, the word-bearer of God. Ezekiel was to “speak the word of God to
the rebellious people on the banks of the river in the land of the Chaldeans, whether they listened to it
or not, for then they would know that a prophet had been among them.”
And in another day, in another particular place and another particular time, in Nazareth of
Galilee, we find Jesus, the word-bearer of God, bringing the word of God to his own people, whether they
listened to it or not. And they did not listen to it . And they did not accept him. So he could do no
miracles among them there, and he was astonished at their lack of faith.
The word of God is never spoken “in general” or “at large.” It is always spoken to, and is always
either received or rejected by, a particular people at a particular time and in a particular place. In
the 30th year on the 5th day of the 4th month on the river bank in the land of the Chaldeans; or in the
town of Nazareth in the days of Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas during the Roman occupation; or in this
particular place, in the Chapel of Our Saviour, in Colorado Springs, in the Year of Our Lord 2003, to
keepers of Independence Day. And it is as keepers of Independence Day that we either hear or refuse to
hear, that we receive or reject, the word of God spoken to us in our day and in our particular place.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th-century French commentator on American life, said of us: “America
-- it is a nation of rebels.” And that we were, and that we are -- a nation of rebels. That’s what we
celebrated on the Fourth of July, a people dedicated to rebellion as keepers of independence.
We all need to reread the Declaration of Independence at least once a year. It is a perilous,
prophetic document. The Declaration is not only a declaration of independence, but also a declaration of
allegiance. The Fourth of July, like the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, raises questions: Independence
from what? And independence for what?
Clearly, if you read carefully what Jefferson and his colleagues said, American independence in
1776 was independence from the King of Great Britain, independence from laws and practices Americans
considered violations of our rights. But Jefferson’s is also a declaration of independence for something,
a declaration of independence with a living purpose, a declaration that speaks to us in 2003 as well as to
our ancestors in 1776.
The Declaration of Independence declares law to be good. Law is the way a free people agree to
order our lives, and even when laws are not as good as they might be, Jefferson recognizes that “all
experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
But according to the document we honor on Independence Day, law is not the ultimate allegiance to
which free people are bound. You’ve heard it said, “It’s the law! Therefore you have to obey.” But the
Declaration of Independence does not speak that way. In his powerful second paragraph, Jefferson makes it
clear that certain rights are God-given, unalienable, and that when law or government usurps what
inalienably belongs to free people, then the people have a responsibility to rebel. It is not only their
right, he says, ”it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future
security.” Because there is a higher law that trumps the law of civil governments.
Heady words. Perilous words. Prophetic words. And the Fourth of July is an ominous, prophetic
day. For the Declaration of Independence calls us, as God himself calls us, beyond unqualified allegiance
to any human authority, beyond unqualified allegiance to Great Britain, beyond unqualified allegiance to
Washington, D.C. The Declaration of Independence calls us, as God himself calls us, to a duty to hold
these and all governments accountable to a transcendent word, which led one of you to wonder this week if
the Declaration of Independence could even be written in our day, much less a revolution pulled off, in
our day which recognizes little beyond ourselves to which to pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our
sacred honor.
But it is because the Declaration of Independence recognizes a transcendent word, which measures
and judges our civil life, that Independence Day, a national holiday, is also a feast day of the Church.
And it’s because of the ultimate authority of that transcendent word that we have no national flags in
church, because our flag is the Cross, the symbol of our faith that reaches back and ahead and beneath and
beyond the flags of all lesser powers, including the flags of nations.
What the Declaration declares is not only independence, but also a principle for rebellion. And
the principle is this: that it is important and right for a people to obey the laws of their governments,
but only as long as the laws themselves are just, only as long as they promote the proper ends of
government. When that is not the case, then it is the people’s duty to rebel, because there is a word
that is higher and more binding than the laws of the state, and it is our duty to know that higher word,
the word which Ezekiel proclaimed by the River Kebar, and which Jesus proclaimed in Nazareth in the time
of Pontius Pilate, and which he proclaims in Colorado Springs in the Year of Our Lord 2003.
Jefferson speaks of this higher Word as “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” People of the
Covenant under which Ezekiel lived speak of it as Torah, as the law or teaching of the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus speaks of it as this word as love of God and love of neighbor, the word on which
all lesser words hang.
What this means is that we human beings live under the obligation of conscience, under an
obligation to know and live by that word that transcends all custom, all popular pressure, and even all
civil law.
This is a founding principle of our national tradition. But before that It was a principle of
God’s Church. It is basic, fundamental. The question, then -- the question of our tradition, both as
Americans and as Christians -- is not whether we will be rebels. The question is: Whose rebels will we
be? Who receives our ultimate allegiance?
Ezekiel spoke a word from God to those who were in rebellion against the word of God. He spoke a
word of reminder to those who had forgotten Torah, to those who were in rebellion against the higher word
of justice and mercy that transcends any law of any state. In doing so, the prophet himself was a rebel
for God in the midst of a nation in rebellion against God.
As Americans, we celebrated on Friday, and we celebrate today as Christians, the tradition of
those who remind us, in our day and in our own nation, of the transcendent word of justice and mercy.
We celebrate the tradition of Henry David Thoreau, who willingly went to jail rather than pay
taxes to support a war fought in the interests of slavery. You will remember the well-known exchange
between Thoreau and his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Henry, what are you doing in there?” asked Emerson
when he strolled by the jail one day. “Ralph, what are you doing out there?” replied Thoreau.
Remembering Thoreau. Remembering Thoreau, as well as Jefferson and Adams and Franklin, is part of our
keeping of Independence Day.
And later when Congress later passed the Fugitive Slave Law, a law that required people in the
free states to return runaway slaves to their masters, Emerson remembered his friend Thoreau and said, “By
God, I will not obey it!” Remembering Emerson, too, is part of our keeping of Independence Day.
On Friday we celebrated as Americans, and we celebrate today as Christians, the tradition of
Calvary Church, a magnificent Gothic building with lovely polished wood paneling and furniture and a large
crystal chandelier, a church just five blocks from the Ohio River in what was the most fashionable
neighborhood in Cincinnati. We celebrate the tradition of that church whose pastor reminds us that “the
greatness of this church is not in its Gothic architecture, or in its beautiful furniture, or in its
crystal chandelier, or even in its social status. The greatness of this church is in its basement, below
us underground. For there we are on hallowed ground, ground made holy by the people of this church who,
at great risk to themselves, hid runaway slaves in the tunnels below ground, and fed them and helped them
on, against the law, to freedom in Canada.” Remembering Calvary Church and its hallowed basement is also
part of our keeping of Independence Day.
On Friday we celebrated as Americans, and we celebrate today as Christians, the tradition of
Nuremberg, where, at the end of World War II, we as Americans, in keeping with our tradition, held the
National Socialist Party accountable to a law higher than the law of its government, insisting that
genocide is a violation of a word greater than any human law, a word which obligates citizens of any
nation, including our own, to resist laws that violate the law of humanity. Remembering Nuremberg is also
part of our keeping of Independence Day.
On Friday we celebrated as Americans, and we celebrate today as Christians, the tradition of
Martin Luther King, Jr., and of all those with him who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their
sacred honor to that higher word in resistance to recent laws in our own land that reduced fellow human
beings to second- or third-class status. Remembering King is also part of our keeping of the Fourth of
July.
On Friday we celebrated as Americans the tradition of our own pledge of allegiance, a pledge that
is never made to the United States, right or wrong, but always to “one nation, under God,” a pledge made
not only to liberty, but also to that transcendent word that governs liberty itself, a pledge made to
justice, and not just for some, but for all.
As Father Richardson reminded us on Friday, the rebellion against George III is over. We are no
longer subjects of Great Britain, and we are once again friends with our British brothers and sisters.
But the call of the tradition of rebellion, the call of the pledge to justice, continues. We celebrate
this weekend, not only freedom won in the past, and certainly not only a flag. We celebrate a tradition,
which is an ongoing life committed to a living word, a life which we, as people of God and keepers of
Independence Day, are called by Ezekiel and Jesus and all the prophets to live in our own particular day
and place.
It is the tradition of conscience, the tradition of living moral judgments, a tradition that calls
us to more than conformity to the least common denominator of standards set by the world, or by the state,
or even by the Church. Both as Americans and as children of God, it is the tradition of the obligation of
every person to know and listen for that higher word to direct our lives.
“Speak my words to them,” the Lord said to Ezekiel, “whether they listen or not, for then they
will know that a prophet has been among them.”
And that is what Jesus did. He spoke and lived the word of God, the word of moral freedom, the
word of justice and mercy, to his own people in his own particular place and time. And they did not hear.
And he was astonished at their lack of faith. But because of Jesus, we know that a prophet has been among
us and that he speaks the Word of God among us in our particular place, in Colorado Springs in the Year of
Our Lord 2003 -- a word not just from the past, but a living word for the present and future, a word
about the way we teach our children, or the way we don’t teach them, a word about the way we treat the
unborn, or the poor and the weak, or the outsiders, or the lonely, or those different from ourselves, both
in the nation and in the Church.
“You have heard it said that the law is good,” said Jesus. “You’ve heard it said, ’Love your
neighbor and hate your enemy. Love your neighbor, but don’t have anything to do with Moabites and others
who do not serve the Lord. Hate your enemies.’ That’s what the law says,” said Jesus. “But I say to
you, Love your enemies, and pray for them. Pray for those who persecute you. Everyone loves those who
love him. Jews loving Jews, Palestinians loving Palestinians, Americans loving Americans, that is simply
to be expected. Even sinners do that. But I say to you, go beyond that. Your goodness should have no
limit, just as the goodness of the one to whom you owe allegiance, your Father in heaven, knows no limit,
not even the limits of law. The law is good. But it’s too little, too limited. Law is good as far as it
goes. But when the law limits your goodness, or when it usurps or violates justice, or when it asks of
you obedience to what is not good, then your allegiance,” Jesus adds, “is to justice and mercy and love,
and to the God of justice and mercy and love.”
This is the independence we celebrate this weekend as Americans and, to an even greater extent, as
Christians. We celebrate the independence, the moral independence, God gave us at creation. We celebrate
God’s creation of us as morally independent beings, as morally free persons, whose freedom is so great
that we are free to choose what is good even when it differs from what law requires or allows. For that
is the gift of God we received at creation, the ability to hear, the ability to hear the word of the world
and the word of the state, on the one hand, and to hear the word of God, on the other, and the freedom to
decide for that higher word.
Because that is the purpose of freedom The purpose of freedom is to serve God, the source of
justice and love and mercy, and to be no longer the subjects of lesser words and lesser gods. This
service, the Prayer Book reminds us, is perfect freedom, because to serve the God of justice and love is
to choose -- freely, for ourselves -- that which is good.
Even in the most difficult and undesirable of circumstances, we are free to choose what is good,
to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. It is a freedom whose purpose is greater than
even life itself, and certainly far greater than the pursuit of happiness. It’s the freedom to live, as
Jesus lived, a life of love that knows no bounds.
And that’s why we sang on Friday and again this morning, not just of the free, but of the noble
free, of those who love country more than self and who love mercy more than even life itself. Noble
freedom, magnanimous freedom, the freedom of those who would choose the good -- justice and mercy and
love -- regardless of circumstance and law, the freedom of those, like Abraham, who know that we are but
aliens and sojourners on earth who seek a city prepared by God, where there are no national boundaries and
no ethnic or racial boundaries, because all such boundaries are, finally, artificial, because there are no
boundaries to God’s love and goodness.
So we sang and prayed on Friday, and we sing and pray today -- as Americans, but even more as
Christians -- that in this land we will cast our lot with that divine Love that has led us in the past,
for He is our ruler, guardian, guide, and stay, His paths our chosen way. With Abraham and all the
prophets we sing of God, and of that land whose good is crowned with brotherhood, from sea to shining
sea.
The questions of independence, then, are these:
Not just, ”Are we free?” But, “What are we free for? And, “How free do we want to be?” Not
just, “Are we a good people?” But, “How good a people do we want to be?”
Answering these questions -- freely, for ourselves -- is the ultimate act of our independence,
and of our allegiance.
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |