July 4, 2021: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
Someone once said, “Who can ever forget Winston Churchill’s immortal words: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills.” That sounds exactly like our family holiday.”
Fireworks – it’s not just a 4th of July thing.
Jesus sure understood that…given the treatment he got when he returned to his hometown. Apparently, everyone there took offense at him. Yup – sounds about right to a lot of folks who are making their own journey back home to participate in their own version of family fireworks during July 4th BBQs.
Yet it is the words of St. Paul from our epistle this morning that I want to start with on this day in which we celebrate freedom. In the passage today, he reflects on having been given a thorn in the flesh…by Satan no less…which he continues to bear with great pain. He then writes “Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
Now, there have been some who think this thorn he bore were the scales on his eyes that Christ put on him when he knocked him off his high horse – quite literally – on the road to Damascus. I don’t think that is the thorn St. Paul is referring to, and I think it matters a great deal to us now – particularly on this Sunday when we celebrate Independence Day as a nation.
But before we go any further, I want to make it very clear that St. Paul is NOT saying that anyone who is oppressed, or abused, should just put up with it in the name of Jesus. What on earth could folks be thinking about when they say such a thing? The Jesus I know, the Jesus in my heart, would never ever want any child of God to suffer. Even when he placed those scales on St. Paul’s eyes (then Saul, by the way), he then sent someone to remove them – it was the only way to get Saul to really see – to come to understand the path he had been on, and how destructive to himself and others it was.
See, Saul, before his encounter with the risen Christ and his name change to Paul, was fervent in his persecutions of the earliest followers of Jesus. He didn’t stop at denouncing them – he sought them out to have them arrested, tried, and executed. Saul stood approvingly on the side as he watched our first martyr, the Deacon St. Stephen, being stoned to death. He went to the high priest and asked for introductory letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that he could bind those followers he found there and take them back to Jerusalem to have the same fate. That is who St. Paul was, and his words we heard this morning is a perfect lesson to read on this day.
You know, I have wondered of late how perfectly timed this 4th of July, this Independence Day, is – coming just after the month of June. Coming just days even after the Independence Day for LGBTQ+ people of June 29th – the anniversary of the Stonewall riots of 1969, which marks the beginning of the modern march to freedom for those who dare to love who they love. June being Pride month – not because LGBTQ+ people are free to be who they were born to be, but as a defiant act of witness against oppression. Today also comes just weeks after Juneteenth, when in 1865, the last of the slaves were told they were free – when people of color could claim independence, though we know that still isn’t really true. Then there is June 4th 1919, when the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote passed Congress (though it did not become law until August 18th, 1920, and women are still not given equal rights in the Constitution). Juneteenth was just made a Federal Holiday, as it should be. I long for the Federal Holidays of June 29th, and August 18th, and another to honor the original peoples of this land, because this day of Independence, of freedom and liberty for all, our nation celebrates this day is an elusive thing for many in this country – even today.
In his famous speech given on July 5th 1852 at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass said “I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine.”… What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
Indeed, Mr. Douglass was right.
Now, it is true that this is a secular holiday – so you might be asking, “what to a Christian is the 4th of July” given that our freedom lies not in a flag, but in Jesus Christ? While that is true, perhaps we need to listen to another part of his speech that day, when he said “…the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.”
Today, the church could add to this speech that the bible, our faith, has, and still does, sometimes take sides with the oppressors – those who would oppress on the basis of race, gender, who one loves, country of origin, language, ability, age, and so much more. The number one domestic terrorist threat today in our country are from so called White Nationalists, who of all things, claim a Christian identity. They don’t burn Stars of David or Crescent Moons, but crosses, and carry banners that claim Jesus as their savior. But oppression doesn’t always come in such dramatic or violent forms as white supremacists demonstrate – it comes as well in legal restrictions supported by bible waving followers of Jesus, and in doctrinal condemnations by the same.
Now, did anyone notice the interesting location of Mr. Douglass’s speech? Corinthian Hall? While a coincidence, I do think what he is saying would be understood by St. Paul, for he was one who oppressed in the name of his faith, and it was his actions in the world, the pain he inflicted on others, that I believe became the very thorn he speaks of in this epistle – the thorn of the flesh given as he says by Satan. It is one many of us bear as well, especially on this day, for as long as we stay silent while others are oppressed, we are no better than Saul, or any of those today who do the same in Christ’s name, and we bear that painful thorn.
Yet, if you continue on in his epistle, we see that there is hope – hope for St. Paul, hope for us – hope found in the grace upon grace Jesus offers us, and it is indeed sufficient, as Jesus tells the suffering Paul, to live out our lives in Christ. And how we do that, is what Jesus is telling us in the gospel today, and we need to pay attention, because even when we are well meaning, when we want to “walk in love as Christ loved us,” we sometimes make a mess of it all.
In the second part of the gospel, after being rejected by his hometown, Jesus sends his followers out in pairs, and telling them not to take anything with them – no money, or extra provisions. They are to go from village to village, and stay with whomever welcomes them, as they proclaim the good news. Why?
Well, one thing is that it makes them vulnerable. They must rely upon the kindness and compassion of strangers. They must also enter into the life setting of others, especially those whom they hope to bring the good news. Both require courage and humility – both are needed by followers of Jesus – and so often we get this part wrong.
In our past, while well intended perhaps, we have approached ministry and mission as bringing God to others – as though God isn’t there already. We went into places like bible bearing bulls in China shops, talking but not listening, proclaiming but not seeing. Jesus is telling us that the way we are to be in the world is as servants who love as he loved – and that takes courage and great faith, because it won’t go over well with a lot of folks. He knew this – bearing the rejection in his hometown, and the ultimate rejection on the cross.
The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Whatever you do you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you into believing your critics are right…Peace has its victories but it takes brave men and women to win them.”
That is true, but I think many of us feel more like the cowardly lion of The Wizard of Oz, who lamented to Dorothy when they met, “Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll go with you,” said the Lion, “for my life is simply unbearable without a bit of courage.” “You will be very welcome,” answered Dorothy, “for you will help to keep away the other wild beasts. It seems to me they must be more cowardly than you are if they allow you to scare them so easily.” “They really are,” said the Lion: “but that doesn’t make me any braver, and as long as I know myself to be a coward, I shall be unhappy.”
We too will always be unhappy if we do not have the courage we need to live out our baptismal call in Christ, and oh how we must, because here’s the thing… there are still many who cannot claim freedom on this day – who are still in chains, chains that sometimes we – through our action or inaction – have placed on them. As followers of Jesus, we must be him in the world, or we – cowering in our fear – will never know the true joy found in him – for we know that as long as there is one of God’s children in chains, none are truly free.
And like our savior, we are not meant to preach to the hometown crowd, to just come to church on Sundays with like minded folks, never moving beyond our own comfort zone.
And like St. Paul, we cannot proclaim the gospel without first seeing the thorn in our own side – the one that bears the mark of our own sin against others – and allowing that pain to remind us of our need for humility, and of God’s great compassion and grace that restores us to new life.
And finally, like those first apostles, we cannot live as disciples of Jesus without first stripping ourselves of the arrogance of our own self-righteousness, and putting on the garment of humility that Christ himself modeled for us, becoming prophetic witnesses of the gospel by first entering into the life setting of others. For there we will see that we do not bring Jesus to them – we find Jesus IN them, and that the gospel is proclaimed in the loving relationship found in humble service – not bible thumping born of a sense of superiority.
All of this that we are called to my friends will take courage – because proclaiming the good news of God in Christ will bring about rejection, condemnation, and backlash born of fear by those who have power, as the gospel is something that overturns the world order – that breaks down walls of hate and builds bridges love, that stands against the powerful to free both the oppressed and the oppressor. And yes – both are in chains.
This past week, the church celebrated, the feast day of Pauli Murray, recognized in our calendar of saints, who was a woman of color, a civil rights lawyer, a priest, and one who fought against what she called “Jane Crow” – the sexism of our world. Some say she was gay – others that she was trans – though that wasn’t a thing understood well in her time (or even now). Anyway, Pauli Murray once said “When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. Where they speak out for the privileges of a puny group, I shall shout for the rights of all mankind.” This saint of our church had courage – courage to be who she felt called to be in a world that wanted to reject her for her color, her gender, her sexuality, and her expression of gender. Yet she knew that true freedom lies in all people being free, not a reversal of oppressor and oppressed. She pushed to draw the circle wide, not to move the circle in another direction. Her courage and vision, like that of Frederick Douglass, is needed by all of us today, and it won’t be easy.
We may feel a bit like the cowardly lion, feeling as though we do not have what we need to be who we are called to be, but remember – the courage the lion needed was always deep within him. The lesson he learned was that courage isn’t something that comes from a lack of fear, but it is the willingness to act in the face of fear. Our lesson, found in Jesus, is that the grace upon grace given us in our baptism, our confession, and in the Eucharist, is indeed sufficient enough to restore us, and give us the strength to boldly bear witness to him, to be him, to meet him, and to serve him in the world.
What then to a Christian is the 4th of July?
It is an important reminder of who we are, the thorns of our own sin, and the redemptive grace found in living out our call as followers of Jesus – that one day, by our witness in Christ’s name, all may know they are the beloved of God just as they are.
Then we can celebrate.
Then we can rejoice.
For only then we will all truly know freedom.
Amen.
For the audio, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here:
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
July 4, 2021
The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
1st Reading – 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
Psalm 48
2nd Reading – 2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Gospel – Mark 6:1-13
