July 5, 2026

A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, with Lessons appointed for Independence Day

[Video link] [Appointed lessons: Deuteronomy 10:17-21, Matthew 5:43-48]

Revolutionary War-era Philadelphia was a busy place. You probably know about the Continental Congress, which adopted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776. And about the Constitutional Convention, which hashed out the terms of the new Constitution in the same location in 1787. But just down the street, another convention gathered — the first General Convention of the Episcopal Church.

American Anglicans gathered in Philadelphia to figure out what their church would become now that the Revolution was over. A church that had been governed by Parliament and headed by the English King needed to find a new way forward in a new nation.

It must have been an awkward gathering. The Secretary of that first General Convention, Francis Hopkinson, was also one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The senior bishop present, Samuel Seabury, had been a loyalist, committed to the king and opposed to the Revolution.

The men who gathered in Christ Church in Philadelphia in 1789 to write the first American prayer book knew what a state church looked like. They also knew from experience some of its downfalls. The Revolutionary War had split parishes, set priests against their own congregations, and sent neighbors into exile. So when they wrote the first American prayer book, they made careful choices. They took the king out of the prayers, but they didn’t put George Washington back in his place. Someone proposed a feast for Independence Day. They said no.

It took the Episcopal Church 139 years to change its mind about what the church calendar ought to look like. Independence Day was added to our Book of Common Prayer in 1928. But even then, that choice was made with caution. The readings appointed are calls to humility. Deuteronomy: God “is not partial and takes no bribe.” God “executes justice for the orphan and the widow.” God “loves the strangers,” and “you shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And the Gospel: “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” There’s no proclamation of manifest destiny here. No claim that our government is specially ordained by God.

Has our church lived up to its own ideals? Sometimes.

When James Russell Lowell wrote the words of our opening hymn, “Once to ev’ry man and nation,” he was calling for the abolition of slavery. In that struggle, most of our church kept a respectable silence. People sometimes note with pride that the Episcopal Church never split over slavery, the way other denominations did. I’m not sure that’s a history to be proud of. We held together because we didn’t take a stand.

And yet we live in a state and a town settled, at great personal cost, by abolitionists. That’s also a part of our story.

When James Weldon Johnson wrote “Lift every voice and sing” in 1900, our congregations were almost as segregated as the nation around them, and it took us 80 years to add Johnson’s hymn to our hymnal.

But it’s also true that Episcopalians — lay people, clergy, and seminarians — marched, and even died, in Selma.

In 1789, our church chose restraint, and accepted some distance from the halls of power. Even though George Washington was in fact an Episcopalian, we would no longer be an established church. But, of course, power is seductive. We liked having presidents in our pews. And, too often through the centuries, we chose to avoid conflict to protect our status or to preserve the peace. Too often, in such moments, we were like those the prophet Jeremiah condemned for crying, “‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”

The Episcopal Church doesn’t hold the place in American life it once did. Maybe that’s good. With less to protect, maybe it will be easier for us to find a courage that we’ve sometimes lacked.

Two hundred and fifty years after the American Revolution, we find ourselves in a world that is again marked by division. And in times such as these, the Gospel calls us to a narrow way. Not to win. Not to make everyone happy. But to do justice. To care for the weak. To love the stranger. To pray, even for our enemies. To love our country without worshipping it.

Can faith and patriotism go hand in hand? I think they can. But a patriotism that walks with faith can’t be built on fear — fear of the stranger, or fear of losing status. It has to be built on love. But not the kind of love that refuses to see our own faults.

We’ll end today’s service by singing “America the beautiful.” Katharine Lee Bates wrote the hymn’s words in 1893, after a train ride that crossed the plains of Kansas. “O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain.” The open skies and waving wheat the hymn sings of are right outside our doors — and they are beautiful. But even spacious skies and amber waves of grain are more complicated than they might seem. Even wheat has a history.

Faith and patriotism can go hand in hand. But both scripture and our church’s history have taught us that faithful patriotism ought to pray not just, “America! America! God shed his grace on thee,” but also, “America! America! God mend thine every flaw.”

And then, someday, “crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.”