When I was growing up a kid, July 4 was not particularly celebrated by my family.  We might see the parade on main street, or light a few fireworks at our home far outside the city limits; nothing too grand.  However, my memories around July 4 really started as an adult driving to my parents house around this holiday.  As my brother and I got older, and had our own jobs and money, we would join with my dad and the three of us would buy an obscene amount of fireworks.  Each year began a tradition of out-doing ourselves from the year before; Katy finally stopped asking how much I was spending. :) We were mostly celebrating family, and gathering together to celebrate and be grateful for a nation that we all loved.  

Our country was founded on some very ambitious ideals: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, the right to assemble- just to name a few in the first amendment.  As a priest, this amendment is the one I exercise most often, as each Sunday I am gathering with you to worship in the church of our choosing, with no possible consequence from the government, a privilege that many of our Christian forebears did not enjoy. 

 

We are given the right to vote, and through which to shape our country as we see best.  These ideals were ambitious, and honestly I do not think our founding fathers even knew how ambitious they were- 245 years later we are still trying to live into these ideals and create a country where everyone is free to vote, free to speak, free to worship, and loved and honored for who they are.  

We have more to do as a country, to become who we started out trying to be.  As Christians, we are “in the world, but not of the world,” and that includes our citizenship.  We see the places where the foreigner is not honored as God has commanded, we see the places where race determines ones freedom and rights and God’s children are oppressed.  We can see the places where equality and freedom is not shared with different genders or religions, we witness the storming of the capital and the attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power; we as Christians see how far we have to go to live into God’s vision for our country and the freedoms upon which our country was founded.  

I believe that the best way to be patriotic this week is to be grateful for our country and everything it gives us- this is no small list!  And also to also see how we can do even more and be even better.  We can see our strengths and celebrate them, and also see our weaknesses and work for change. We can be a part of the change that continues our tradition of living up to the values of equality, liberty, and freedom.  Go be Christ’s presence “in the world”- go forth in the power of the Spirit! 

 

Jesse+