Suprised by Independence Day

Last month during a Men’s Bible Study conversation, we were reading Ephesians 6 – namely, the text discussing, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” We asked, “who exactly are these rulers of the darkness of this world” and the response ranged from government officials to any persons in authority, including church authorities. A few comments were made on the American tendency to call all authority figures principalities and powers out of our need to be autonomous individuals, living under no one’s control.

In response, and much to my surprise, I invited the men to turn to Romans 13 to test our ideas about government and ecclesial authorities as “rulers of the darkness of this world.” (I rarely go to this text because it too easily ordains all government authorities, blindly). We read the text and questioned how this text reads the Ephesians text….

As we often do, this sparked a new question. Gunnar raised his hand following the reading of Romans 13 and asked, “based on this text, will we be celebrating Independence Day during worship on July 4? Will we sing patriotic hymns? I was looking for the nearest door, but instead, decided to engage a topic I knew had been festering under gossip elsewhere in the church.

We had an exceptional discussion on the place of patriotism within the Christian life. At least 6 WWII veterans and multiple other vets were sitting in the room, so this was an important and personal topic. We were able to agree that Sunday morning worship - worship on the Lord’s Day - was too sacred to disrupt with placing one nation as the subject of concern, for that space is reserved for the Triune God. We are not a church with an American Flag in the sanctuary, though we have one in the Narthex, and we are not an overly one-sided church, politically. We knew that nothing was not an option, so after great and lengthy discussion, we agreed that at the conclusion of worship we would have an Independence Day tribute, where we would sing, pray, and remember our great nation – which it is, as imperfect as we may be (Romans 3).

Anyway, July 4^th has come and gone, but I would like to reflect on the tribute. The planned order was simple:

            Reading: Romans 13:1-12, Isaiah 26:1-13

            Hymn - Faith of Our Fathers

Solo - O Beautiful for Spacious Skies

Hymn - Mine Eyes have Seen the Glory

Closing Prayer for our Nation

We completed the order, and we celebrated the joy of freedom and independence. We prayed for the nation, and we almost concluded the tribute. But then, Bud DeMoy, a 92-old gentleman known for his grace and care, slowly stood up. He asked to say something, which is highly out of character, and so we offered him a microphone. He took the microphone and began:

Imagine, if you will, that is it 1863. The president at the time was Abraham Lincoln, and his vice president was Hannibal Hamlin. President Lincoln was set to visit the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. VP Hamlin asked if he had any remarks, and Lincoln said, ‘no’, I trust that the Minister of the Interior would take care of any remarks. VP Hamlin told him that the people will want to hear from their president.

“He retired to his room that evening,” DeMoy continued, and the following morning he emerged with the brief, yet powerful Gettysburg Address….”

DeMoy paused, took a deep breath, and proceeded to recite the address in its entirety. I could hear other elderly members of the church saying it with him. He began with a clear tone of recitation; however, his tone shifted and he spoke the words about America as if they were his own. It was a powerful sense of identity – there was new life in the words, and I was proud, in a new way, to accept that part of American history is President Lincoln, who was able to reunite a divided country, live into our beliefs that all people are created equal.

When he concluded that great 246 word address, we then ended the tribute – the departing words were: “let the person and work of President Lincoln, who pursued justice and reunited a divided nation, guide our Independence Day celebrations.

I was grateful that we were able to worship God and celebrate our country without confusing the focus of worship. I was proud that we had space for Bud to speak (this could have never occurred during regular worship). And I was proud that Independence Day was not a partisan issue, but a remembrance of a great man who moved our country forward in terms of human dignity.

Words to Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.