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A Sermon Preached at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church, Oak Park, IL
on the Fourth of July Weekend, July 6, 2008, The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, (Proper 9, Year A, RCL)
by the Rev. J. Paris Coffey

Readings: Zechariah 9:9-12; Psalm 145:8-15; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

On my first trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, somewhere around the age of five, my brothers and I were each given a small sum of money to buy a souvenir. I don't remember what my brothers chose, but with pressure from my father I "chose" one of those reproductions of the Declaration of Independence . . . which ten minutes later I regretted. The parchment had a pungent odor and at the age of five I couldn't read a word of cursive. Still, the document had a certain mystery about it, especially since I assumed I'd bought the real deal.

Riding home in the car, fingering the strange paper that I was sure was fragile with age, I asked my mother about its words. She reiterated stories we'd just heard from our colonial-clad guides, reminding me that this was the document our nation's founders had signed to declare freedom from its mother-country. "In fact," she said, looking at the document through the glasses on the end of her nose, "it was the declaration that called us into being as a nation, and calls us still. This is a LIVING document," she told me in her school teacher voice. "Hang onto it." And with that she handed back the piece of paper, which was now more mysterious to me than ever.

I didn't hang onto it. It's long since gone - who knows where - but she was right, for 232 years after its adoption by American colonies demanding separation from England, the Declaration of Independence still calls us to account. It calls us to account for principles rooted in the July 4th, 1776 proclamation of our ancestors that freedom is a God-given right. As the Declaration of Independence states in paragraph two, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Obviously, our own countrymen didn't live up to these principles, since neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution that followed in 1788 freed the slaves. Likewise, women - although afforded higher status than slaves - were denied legal rights for many years, while Indians still fight for theirs. Clearly, the Fourth of July is not everyone's Day of Independence, although gratefully our pursuit of the principle of Divine freedom for ALL PEOPLE has never perished. Progress has been made, and yet each generation must hash out what it means in the concrete issues of its day to be "endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights" - including the right of religious freedom to pursue our own spiritual path.

Indeed, like it or not, we reinforce this freedom every time we say, "God bless America," as Nick Anderson, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, illustrates in a Fourth of July cartoon. In it an angry crowd of people wave American flags, shouting at one another and brandishing protest signs. One sign reads, "One Nation Under God;" the other "Unconstitutional;" while on the sidelines a contented couple smiles with approval saying, "God bless America!" This is the Declaration of Independence at work, or more to our point, God at work, for God gives us freedom to choose.

This means we can choose to reject God - and certainly a particular understanding of God - which, in truth, is the story of the whole Bible, another living document. Over and over again God's people turn their backs on God, although just as often they turn their backs on a new understanding-of-or- relationship-with the God who calls us to change. These choices, for better or for worse, change us and the way we live. They impact the world, but they do not change God, for as both Zechariah and the Psalmist suggest, whether we vote for God or not, "God's graciousness and kindness still extend; God's dominion endures."

In our arrogance we think that what WE decide controls every-thing, much as my children thought years ago when they wanted to adopt a stray cat. "What's the sex of the cat?" I asked, not wanting kittens along with the deal, to which they replied, "We don't know, but we thought we'd vote on it." Voting on the sex of a cat has just about as much of an impact on the cat's gender as our vote for-or- against-God has on Divine existence. Still, our choice impacts us, the world and our relationship with one another. If we think we're the ones calling all the shots - or even that God has put all things into OUR hands - our arrogance will keep us from the truth. If, on the other hand, we recognize God's presence in the world and God's love for ALL people, we will see things differently.

Such vision takes humility, which is the reason Jesus says in today's Gospel that God's truth is revealed to infants rather than erudite sophisticates who trust themselves alone. Truth requires relationship and relationship requires trust, which is what the world needs if it is to grow in freedom and understanding - growth to which God calls us through encounter with the Living God.

This, I think, is what my mother was trying to say to me when she described my smelly piece of parchment as a living document. Similarly, it's what presidential hopeful Barack Obama tried to tell our country this past March when he spoke in Philadelphia on race. Entitled "A More Perfect Union" - words chosen from the preamble of the United States Constitution - Obama's speech emphasized that the ideals on which our country was founded are not meant to be static but perfected over time by men and women working in relationship together with one another.

"We cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together," said Obama, "(perfecting) our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes." Indeed, I would add that we hold them in common with God, who endows us with certain unalienable Rights that we might enter freely into relationship with the Living God.

Amen.