A Truly Free Nation
7/4/2010
The Reverend Paul J. Kowalewski, Ph.D.
Independence Day
Today, of course, is the Fourth of July--a holiday in which we celebrate the birth of the nation, a day to celebrate the freedom we enjoy in this land. Today will be marked by backyard barbecues, fireworks lighting up the night skies to remember those bombs bursting in air. Today we will conjure up images of a liberty bell, minutemen, our forbearers signing a declaration of independence, guaranteeing inalienable rights.
Yes, today is a national holiday, but it is also a designated prayer book "holy day" on the calendar of the Episcopal Church. Today, as we gather on this Independence "holy day" we hear scriptures from the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy and from the Gospel of Matthew. They teach us an important lesson about what it really means to be a genuinely free people. So today, in light of these illuminating Scriptures, I'd like to do more than remember the likes of Jefferson or Washington and Adams. I'd like to tell another story about our forbearers in this land, and tell a tale of ancestors who inhabited this nation for countless generations, well before that signing of a declaration of independence in 1776.
I start my story in the year 1220. Pilgrims, those Puritan immigrants from England, have arrived on the shores of this country. While they have come here to escape religious persecution, they have also come to here to build a new world--a civilization which would be founded upon and informed by the biblical and Gospel values of compassion, equality for everyone, mutual respect for everyone.
The problem was that, in the very beginning, these pilgrim immigrants never even had a chance to begin their building of this new world. As they arrived on these shores they were totally unprepared to survive in the strange, foreign environment and harsh climate of what would come to be known as New England.
In their first winter here, more than half the immigrant pilgrims died of starvation and disease. They didn't know what crops to grow here or how to grow them. Many froze to death because they didn't know how to build shelters that could withstand the harsh New England winters. They contracted exotic new diseases in this foreign land for which they had no medicine or cures.
Now, unknown to these Pilgrims, there also lived another civilization of people along that Massachusetts shore--a civilization of people that had dwelt in the land for a thousand years, and had already developed a very sophisticated civilization much like that new world those pilgrims were hoping to build here. They were the native peoples of the Algonquin tribe known as the Wampanoag Indians. While the Wampanoag never heard of the Bible and knew nothing of Jesus, they had, in fact, already developed a civilization which already embodied those biblical principles the Pilgrims hoped to employ in the new world.
The Wampanoag were a deeply spiritual people who believed that the Great Sprit of God dwelt within all the creation--in all people in all things--weaving it all together into one harmonious whole. And so, they lived a life that was characterized by reverence for the earth and deep respect for one another. Everyone in the tribe believed that everything was a gift--the earth and it's bounty--the land, their possessions--all gifts to be shared with everyone else for the building up of the common good. Hospitality was a prized cultural virtue for these native peoples, and this hospitality was to be extended not only to one's fellows in the tribe but to any and all who they encountered on their journey through life. So, even strangers were welcomed and cared for--especially strangers in need.
And so it was no wonder that, when they stumbled upon the diseased and dying immigrant pilgrims who had now become their neighbors, the Wampanoag peoples immediately came to their rescue. They shared their food and clothing with them--deer meat and beaver skins. They taught them skills for surviving in this new world--how to cultivate corn, which plants were poisonous, which plants could be used as medicine, how to dig for clams and get sap from maple syrup.
It is no exaggeration to say that without the kindness and generosity of the native people, the pilgrim immigrants from England would have all died during their first year here. And although these native peoples were eventually persecuted by the European White Man, and rejected as pagan savages to be converted, they were anything but godless savages. Rather, they were and are a shining example of what the scriptures we heard today teach us: "Love the stranger. Do more than only love those who love you."
They were indeed the very first people on these shores to be one nation under God with liberty and justice for all. They were the first nation from whose seeds would spring up the United States of America, and on this day I want to honor these native peoples and look to them as an example of what a "truly free" people are really all about.
Today on this Independence Day, in the year 2010, as I reflect upon the state of the nation, I have come to believe that we truly do live in dangerous times--dangerous because we, as a nation are at risk of losing our very identity of being a genuinely and authentically free people. We live in a time of "rugged individualism" in which freedom has been redefined. Somehow we have lost sight of the notion that we are free so that we can support one another and build up the common good. Instead, by and large "freedom" is now thought of as the rights of individuals to do whatever they want in order to achieve personal gain and personal power. Freedom has come to refer to a license for the strong to dominate the weak rather than being an opportunity for the mighty to lift up the lowly.
In New York harbor stands Lady Liberty. Over the years she has been a living symbol that we are a country who loves the foreigner as with arms open wide she has welcomed millions of immigrants to these shores--the tired and the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free. But, today we live in a climate of fear and so in these times we are more inclined protect ourselves from and guard against the foreigner and to shun those who are different. Our current economic crisis is largely the result of unbridled greed, and so the rich get rich while the poor get poorer. And yes, in this beautiful land of ours, selfishness and personal interest have led to the systematic destruction of the environment, the poisoning of the air, the heart-wrenching pollution of the oceans, so that one has to wonder what will be left for generations to come.
And so, I think that, now more than ever, Independence Day needs to be more of a holy day than a holiday. Let us look to these Illuminating scriptures once again, digest these words from Deuteronomy and Matthew once again, look to the example of our ancestors and remind ourselves what it really means to be a people who are truly free lest we lose our very soul as a nation.
In today's Gospel, Jesus tells us to be perfect as God is perfect. To be as perfect as God is perfect, one would need to be in total harmony with everything and everyone--unconditionally compassionate. But how can we frail human beings possibly be as perfectly harmonious, or as absolutely compassionate as God? Our human condition always pulls us down and locks us into our selfish defensive egos, always urging us to do violence and build walls. And so it quickly becomes obvious that we cant possibly be as perfect as God unless God gives us the strength and power to do so. To be perfect as God is perfect, we need God's higher power.
And so, on this Holy Day of Independence we must not only remind ourselves about what it means to be a truly free people, but we must also be humble enough to get down on our knees and pray for God's help to be the kind of people God desires us to be. God desires that we live in harmony, that we exclude no one, that we extend our hand to the stranger, that those who are stronger will care for and help those who are weaker. That's the kind of perfection God desires of us and of all nations. Today we humbly pray for God's help to accomplish that which he desires.
Back in 1630, in a sermon given aboard the Arabella as the ship arrived in Plymouth Harbor, John Winthrop exhorted his Pilgrim flock who were about to embark into the noble task of building a new world. The words he spoke to them back then couldn't be more timely or more appropriate for us to hear on this Fourth of July in the year 2010.
"We must delight in each other. Make others' conditions our own, mourn together, labor and suffer together always remembering we are all members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit and live in the bond of peace. And in doing so, the Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways."
On this Holy Independence Day, let us vow once again to be a people who are truly free--one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. Let us vow to be perfect even as God is perfect. So help us God!
Amen.
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