Rector's Sermon
4 July 2010

First Reading	Psalm	Epistle	Gospel
Deuteronomy 10:17–21	Psalm 145:1–9	Hebrews 11:8–16	Matthew 5:43–48

      July 4th celebrates the birth of a new nation that was seen as an experiment. It is no accident how many of the communities and states in our land have the preface “new” before them. There was a definite desire to break with the past, even if there was widespread disagreement of what that meant. As in any true experiment, our founders didn’t get everything right. Many of their assumptions were narrow and myopic and needed to be challenged, and radically enlarged. When the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were written, over half the population in colonial America were excluded in some way or another from its protections. Definitions, borders if you will, needed to be discarded, revised, and redefined again and again. Yet this is not a bad thing. It shows courage and honesty to admit, as James Russell Lowell wrote, “time makes ancient truth uncouth.” It is by experiment, trial and error, openness to fresh ideas and insight, that true progress in the scientific world and greater justice in the political world occur. Lincoln was correct in saying that our nation initiated a new birth of freedom – a government of the people, by the people, for the people, but what it meant in 1776, in 1863, or in 2010 has dramatically and thankfully changed.

      Life in faith develops in a similar fashion. That is why the life of faith is described as a journey, as a venture, a life of discovery and revelation, all implying something different from a static, absolute and fixed existence. As we gather together and worship together, we grow together.

      The Book of Hebrews from which our first lesson is taken was likely written around the years 70-80, when the initial enthusiasm of the early Christians was waning. The first disciples had all died. Jesus had not returned as hoped. The church was not growing as fast as it had previously. Opposition was building. In the larger empire, political instability also was increasing. The writer of Hebrews understood that many new converts were getting discouraged and disillusioned. The author of Hebrews knew that the fire in the hearts of people of faith needed to be stirred and fed. “Look at the example of those who went before us!” the author implored. Look at what the founders of Israel, Abraham and Sarah, endured. They had every opportunity to turn back. But they went on in faith, for they trusted God would lead them to a better place. They did not see clearly into the future, but they had confidence in God’s future and because of this, the fire in their hearts did not go out.

      The great leaders of this land, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., among others, all endured times of profound stress and discouragement. It was tempting for Washington to send the volunteers, who made up the army at Valley Forge, home for the winter; for Lincoln to seek a peace in the compromises of the past, or for King to just shut up, lay low, or accept small limited victories. We are beneficiaries of their great legacy because they persisted and refused the temptation to turn back or shrink from the uncertainties and hardships ahead. They trusted in a larger vision they knew was there, even if they themselves would never enjoy its manifest fruition. I suggest that they were sustained by Biblical wisdom.

                While history is not strictly cyclical, there are easy times and difficult times, seasons of stress and seasons of calmness, patterns of growth and patterns of retrenchment. What the Biblical witness is telling us is that people of faith hold on. People of faith are the man and woman of all seasons, who serve to keep the fires of God’s promises alive and pass on the roadmaps of the future to later generations.

      “All these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind they would have had the opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be their God; indeed he had prepared a city for them.” It is idolatrous to identify the city of God with the United States or any political state. Nonetheless, the lessons from Hebrews are transferable into our present political life. I suggest many of those lessons provide the insight of what makes the Fourth of July worth giving thanks for and celebrating.

       And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.