In
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Don’t
you just love it when the Fourth of July, Independence Day, falls on a
Thursday? When it falls on a Wednesday
we are expected to go back to work on Thursday and Friday, but on a Thursday
most employers just give up and give everyone Friday off as well. A four-day weekend for the Fourth! What could be more appropriate!
Independence
Day, of course, is the National Day of the United States of America, and on it
we commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence: “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. -That to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed, -That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Independence Day, then, is a celebration of the rejection of
undependable government for a government that will hopefully be more dependable
in guarding the nature and rights of men.
(And, yes, most if not all of the signers of the Declaration really did
mean to restrict independence to people of the male sex). Since the beginning this celebration has been
enacted in forms such as waving flags, singing patriotic songs, marching in
parades, shooting off fireworks, having picnics, attending concerts, giving
speeches, and conducting ceremonies.
Perhaps there is no more quintessential celebration of Independence Day
than the Fourth of July barbeque, a somewhat tardy version of which we are
hosting here at Marsh Chapel following the service today. (No, no!
I said following the
service. Now, get back in the pews so I
can finish the sermon!).
There
are a number of ironies associated with Independence Day. For example, those flags we wave with red and
white stripes and white stars on a blue field are the same red, white, and blue
as the Union Jack, the flag representing Great Britain, that is, the country
from which we were declaring independence in the first place. Also, the song “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” was
written in 1831 by Samuel Francis Smith while a student at Andover Newton
Theological Seminary, and first performed at Boston’s Park Street Church on
July 4th of that year.
My country, 'tis of thee,Sweet land of liberty,Of thee I sing;Land where my fathers died,Land of the pilgrims' pride,From ev'ry mountainsideLet freedom ring!
Of
course, we sing it to the tune of “God Save the Queen,” the national anthem of
the United Kingdom. Apparently we’re no
better at coming up with original tunes for our patriotic songs than we are at
coming up with original color schemes for our flag. And for some reason we celebrate the Fourth
of July, when the Declaration of Independence was supposedly signed, when in
fact it seems it was probably actually signed on August 2nd, and it
was on July 2nd that the Second Continental Congress voted a
resolution of independence that had been proposed in June. On July 3rd, John Adams wrote to
his wife Abigail, “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable
epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated
by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be
commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God
Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games,
sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this
continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.” Amazingly, we do precisely all of those
things, on the Fourth of July, two days after the event Adams meant to
commemorate. Oh well.
Independence
is a wonderful thing, but I must confess that over the past couple of weeks my
meditations and considerations have turned much more to the alternate side of
the coin: dependence. You see, on June
20th, at 5:53pm at Brigham and Women’s Hospital here in Boston, my
daughter, Lilly Alma Whitney, was born, weighing 7 pounds, 2 ounces, and 20.5
inches long. In the past couple of weeks
she has more than regained her birth-weight, and she takes seeming delight in
keeping my wife Holly and I from getting any sleep. She is a bundle of joy, and I am learning an
entirely new dimension of love. It is a
great joy, today, to welcome Lilly’s grandparents to the service, and
particularly her grandmothers reading the lesson and the gospel. Lilly and her mother are here too, Lilly
making her church debut, likely as not sleeping through the sermon, as I am
sure are many of her pew-mates.
Lilly,
being a newborn infant, is entirely dependent.
She cannot eat without help attaching to her mother’s breast. She cannot sleep without being rocked while
rubbing her back. When she poops, daddy
has to clean her up and change her diaper.
Like all newborns, Lilly’s head is approximately 30-40% of her
bodyweight, meaning that her neck is not strong enough to support it
properly. When we pick her up and hold
her, we have to be very careful not to let her head flop forward or backward or
left or right, any of which could at least prove detrimental to her ongoing
development. Lilly has a completely
undeveloped immune system, so those of you who would like to greet her
following the service will first have to participate in the ritual of
hand-washing, employing the vat of hand sanitizer I brought with me this
morning. (Her mother is an infectious
disease physician, after all). Lilly
cannot walk, or even crawl or turn herself over, so we have acquired all manner
of devices to help carry her, from car seat to stroller to sling to Mobi. Dean Hill was disappointed that we did not
name her Roberta, but he perked up a bit when I pointed out that we bought a
stroller named Bob.
We
do of course anticipate that Lilly, over time, will achieve her own
independence, but doing so is a process of us as her parents accompanying her
on the journey of life and faith, not only to be independent physically, but
also emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. This movement from dependence to independence
is the process of maturation. It happens
over time. Undergraduates who will start
in September at Boston University are emerging out of the process of being
accompanied by parents, but still aspire on toward greater levels of
independence and maturity. College
students learn to set their own alarm clocks, manage their own bank accounts, and
find their own food. A year or so later,
when they move from the dorm to an apartment, they may even learn to cook that
food for themselves.
It
is not the case, however, that this movement from greater dependence to greater
independence is ever entirely linear or ever reaches an absolute at either
extreme of the spectrum. Many young
people, as their personal independence grows, discover that it can be helpful
to have a partner with whom to share the responsibilities of life. Some
find such a collaborator with relative ease, while for others it can take quite
some time to find someone who is appropriately dependable. And so, every year we host myriad weddings
here at Marsh Chapel, particularly in these summer months, in which people
commit to one another in a life of mutual dependence, of interdependence. Just last week the United States Supreme
Court struck down key components of the Defense of Marriage Act and let stand a
ruling overturning Proposition 8 in California, marking further steps toward
marriage equality in these United States.
What a heartwarming juxtaposition to have such celebration of the right
of so many at last to enter into relationships of mutual dependence only one
week before our national celebration of independence.
The
same balance between independence and dependence holds at the socio-political
level as well. It was not the case that
the founding fathers sought to overthrow the tyranny of Great Britain in order
to establish an absolute anarchy. They
explicitly said in the Declaration of Independence that once the old,
oppressive government was overthrown, then it was incumbent upon the people to
institute a new government. So it was
that the leaders of the day turned their intellectual focus to designing a new
democratic government that they believed would be more dependable in enabling
its citizens to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. This is precisely what our brothers and
sisters in Egypt are struggling toward as we speak. Nevertheless, even upon the achievement of
the founding fathers’ best efforts, there were some cruel restrictions on who
could be considered independent in this new country. If you did not own land, you were not
independent. If you were a woman, you
were not independent. If you were a
slave, you were certainly not independent.
Yet, socially and economically, the white landowners who had supposedly
achieved independence were in fact quite dependent on all of these classes of
people. So it was that A.G. Duncan wrote
alternative abolitionist verses to “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” only a dozen years
after the original verses were penned:
My country, 'tis of thee,Stronghold of slavery,
Of thee I sing;Land where my fathers died,Where men man’s rights deride,From every mountainside
Thy deeds shall ring!
Interesting,
is it not, that at the apex of the Civil Rights Movement Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. quoted not this verse but the original to inspire the nation to end
segregation? In the end, however, it
makes sense. The original verse is a
hymn to independence while the alternate is a reminder that every new
achievement of independence is yet also an arising of new levels and manners of
dependence.
Here,
then, the theological turn. It was the
great Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher who claimed, in his
monumental tome Glaubenslehre, The Christian Faith, that religion is
the feeling of absolute dependence.
Religion is the feeling of absolute dependence. Strange to think, is it not, that the great
liberal American pulpits that have for so long emphasized the freedom offered
for a life lived in the light of the Gospel, can all trace a lineage back to
the liberal lion Schliermacher and his principle that religion is the feeling
of absolute dependence? Or perhaps not
so strange that in a country that puts such high value on independence we would
cast our final dependence onto one who is ultimate, infinite, and so utterly
dependable. For Schleiermacher,
Christian freedom arises out of the matrix of absolute dependence on God. This is the final outworking of Martin
Luther’s insistence that experience of God for Christians is unmediated by
human institutions. We can depend
directly on God, in prayer and in song and in breath, and so are free and
independent from any worldly power and institution. Or at least we would be, if we were living in
the kingdom of God.
Alas,
when we come back down from the mountaintop of absolute dependence, we find
that we are still living in this fallen, broken world. Our lessons today have something to teach us
about living in a fallen, broken world. In
the conclusion to his letter to the Galatians, Paul is coming at the problem
from the side of independence: “All must
test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor’s work, will
become a cause for pride. For all must carry their own loads.” In eternity we are absolutely dependent on
God, but in the present life we are responsible for ourselves, for sowing what
we will in our own work. Nevertheless,
Paul indicates that we can begin to feel what it will be like to depend on God
absolutely in eternity: “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will
fulfill the law of Christ” and “whenever we have an opportunity, let us
work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.” We participate in the feeling of absolute
dependence, as though seeing it through a glass dimly, as we experience
interdependence, or mutual dependence, in our lives.
If
Paul was approaching absolute dependence from the side of independence, Jesus,
in our Gospel reading, approaches it decidedly from the side of
dependence. Over the course of the Lucan
narrative, the disciples have become increasingly, persistently, and stubbornly
dependent on Jesus. Just prior to the
reading we heard, many are offering to join Jesus if they can just run and take
care of one more thing before they do.
But Jesus has turned his face toward Jerusalem and the passion and the
cross, so he sends them out, cutting them off from their many dependencies: “Go
on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of
wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the
road.” Nevertheless, the kingdom of God
is announced not so much in words but by entering into relationships of
interdependence, of mutual dependence, in each place the disciples go: “Whatever
house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who
shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will
return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they
provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to
house.” From the side of dependence, as
well, it is through interdependence in this life that we receive a foretaste of
the absolute dependence on God that is a hallmark of the kingdom.
It
is little wonder that so many in our world have adopted a preference for
independence over dependence, making relationships that are truly
interdependent that much harder to achieve.
After all, submitting to some level of dependence requires that there be
a certain level of dependability in the one to whom we submit. Alas, our human experience is that people are
never quite as dependable as we would hope, and institutions seem utterly
incapable of a reliable degree of reliability, made up of less than dependable
people as they are. Deplorably, there
seems to be no less dependable institution in our time than the church. How do we know this? The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
reports that at this point 20% of adults in the United States are religiously
unaffiliated, and that number jumps to one third if considering only those
under 30 years of age. These are the
so-called “nones:” not members of religious orders, but rather those who, when
asked about their religious affiliation, check the box marked “none.” It is notable that the “nones” are not so
much questioning the dependability of God, as those who identify as atheist
have only ticked up slightly. Rather,
they have declared independence from institutions that purport to provide the
opportunity for cultivating relationships of interdependence but fail to do
so. A significantly higher percentage of
the unaffiliated than the public in general believe that religious institutions
are too concerned with money and power, focus too much on rules, and are too
involved with politics. At the same
time, a significantly lower percentage of the unaffiliated than the general
public believe that religious institutions bring people together and strengthen
community bonds, play an important role in helping the poor and needy, and
protect and strengthen morality. Many churches
are trying desperately to deny that they are as undependable as the “nones”
claim, but the response of denial misses the point entirely. Dependability can never be demonstrated in
words, but only in actions, and the actions of too many churches belie their
words. The “nones” own experience is of
the lack of dependability in the church, and insisting that the church is
otherwise than their experience smacks of hubris and hypocrisy. Whether it is financial mismanagement,
exclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons, or tolerance of
sexual abuse by clergy, who can blame the “nones” for disaffiliating, or
demurring from ever affiliating in the first place? In all honesty, there but for the grace of
God go I, and I am convinced that at least some who do go, go with God.
In
these summer weeks we are hearing from the voices that inhabit several of the
most significant pulpits of northern Methodism.
I am not one of them. I am not a
Methodist, although I grew up one, and I only ever occasionally inhabit this
pulpit, in the chapel of an historically Methodist university. My role in this preaching series, then, is
not to speak to Methodists or for Methodists, but rather as a finger pointing
at the moon, providing some orientation as to what you might listen for in the
weeks ahead. The question that must be
posed to Methodists, at least as much as to those who remain affiliated with
any other religious institution, is this: How will you go about demonstrating
your dependability such that you may faithfully provide a foretaste of absolute
dependence on God, that is, of God’s kingdom?
How will you declare interdependence?
Amen.
Now,
if you will excuse me, I have to go change a diaper.
