Sermon July 5, 2009
“Interdependence”
Luke 10: 25-43

Let us pray.

           This is Independence Day weekend. Yesterday, the Fourth of July was a time of unfurled flags, joyous gatherings with friends, delicious barbeques, colorful parades, noisy fireworks and in some places inspiring speeches by local dignitaries. While you probably didn’t have time to do all of those activities, I hope you had a chance to do few of them. The Fourth of July is that special time we set aside each year to celebrate our nation.  And today is a day of worship -- a time for religion and faith. Each of these -- patriotism and faith -- alone often generates more heat than light. But over the millennia together these two -- patriotism and religion -- have been downright combustible, leading to acts of oppression, and violence in the name of protecting one’s homeland or culture under the favored eye of God. Therefore, it is with some trepidation that I will attempt to link in a more positive light Independence Day and faith this morning.

          Independence Day is an appropriate title for the Fourth of July. It is a memorial to and celebration of that act 233 years ago on a hot July day in Philadelphia by which the 13 colonies declared that they were independent of England:

          We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America,

in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved …

The words are eloquent and the sentiment clear; America was going its separate way -- no matter what. No one can doubt the courage of the 55 colonists who signed that document declaring themselves to be free and independent. 

But I submit the genius of those 55 men who acted on that July 4^th in 1776 was in their recognition of their interdependence. This is how they ended that declaration:

And for the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

It is virtually impossible for us to understand all the factors that divided the colonies one from the other. The divide was not simply one of distance -- though we should not forget that it took an Adams from Massachusetts, a Jefferson from Virginia and a Rutledge from South Carolina weeks -- even months -- to get to Philadelphia for the meetings of this assembled congress. Indeed, news of the signing of the Declaration took weeks to reach the farthest corners of the colonies.

Truth be told the connections of each colony with England in terms of trade, communication, and culture were greater often than those they had with each other. And they were separated in other ways. New England, especially Massachusetts and Connecticut, were Puritan -- Congregationalism was practically the official religion. Quakers, however, had founded Pennsylvania. Maryland -- founded by Lord Baltimore -- was a safe haven for Catholics, while the Southern colonies were predominantly Anglican. Ethnically they were diverse -- the English, Irish and Scots in New England and the South, the Dutch in New York and the Germans in Pennsylvania and Maryland, The South was more upper class and agrarian, while the North more  a society of  artisans, traders and small farmers.  Indeed, colonies often distrusted each other from lack of contact but also from cultural and religious differences.

And so what they did on the 4^th was extraordinary because they came together and acted in unity. As Ben Franklin’s great entreaty reminded them at that propitious moment when they came to together to sign the document or not, “we must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” It took great courage to act so decisively in the face of the most powerful foe in the world. Other acts of similar courage have echoed down the centuries here and in far-off place such as Gdansk, East Berlin, Beijing, Johannesburg, Tehran and many others.

Certainly, this united action stemmed in part from the political astuteness of the group of 55 who signed the Declaration. They knew as Franklin trenchantly observed that they had no chance, acting separately against the greatest power in the world, and had only slightly better odds acting in concert. As David McCullough’s book, 1776,   vividly demonstrates we are here today in large part because of amazingly good luck and the ineptitude on a grand scale by the British military under Lord Howe. They allowed America to grasp victory from what should have been certain defeat.

Nor can we ignore the economic factors behind the signing of the declaration. The economies of the colonies were in shambles by 1776. The British had halted their own trade with the colonies and put in place embargoes to cut off the colonists’ trade with other nations. And inter-colony trade was insufficient to make up for these losses. The economic dependence of the colonies on England gave that country a stranglehold on the affairs of the colonists. So yes, economic realities played a part in the Declaration.

But political necessity and economic realities were not the critical glue that held these folks together. It was a shared sense of interdependence that arose from a profound view of the worth and equality of all men. Hear, again Jefferson’s profound words,

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by

Their creator with certain in alienable rights; that among

these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness …

They joined together in mutual commitment because they were all of equal worth and aspirations. They recognized that the worth and aspirations of each individual was secured only when they acted in concert. Each neighbor must look out for the other for their individual and collective benefit.  

I do not believe this country was founded as a Christian nation. Those 55 signers at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, included Christians to be sure, but also some deists, some religiously unconventional and ambivalent like Jefferson[1] and even, I suspect, an atheist or two. To be sure a sense of divine providence was present in the minds and hearts of many assembled in Philadelphia. But most directly they were influenced by the Enlightenment -- by writers such as Hobbs, Locke, Rousseau and others, who talked of natural rights, liberty, equality, the social contract and the consent of the governed. It was a remarkable era of political theorizing and these colonies had a disproportionate number of individuals knowledgeable and thoughtful about such subjects.

And so I am sure it was not conscious and yet, I think, that in the Declaration of Independence or I submit this Declaration of Interdependence, the signers grasped the lesson of the Parable of the Good Samarian. Remember the question to Jesus that prompts the telling of the story of the beaten man saved -- not by the pious but by the despised outlander. The question was “and who is my neighbor?’  And remember the answer, “the one who showed [the victim] mercy.” The neighbor was not the pious person or the most important or the most admired. And while the parable doesn’t directly say so the neighbor wasn’t the smartest, the strongest or the most successful either. He was the merciful one – the one who loved the other. 

And what of the victim – he is the other neighbor in the parable. Why was he helped? We know nothing of him – he was simply a man. We do not know his identity, his background, his religion, his age or anything other than that he was a man on the Jericho Road beaten by robbers. What is it that defines a neighbor in this parable? Isn’t it or equality -- that we are all equally children of God – created in God’s image with talents and potentials that define us as beloved human beings? That equality in God’s eyes is universal.

While the declaration uses different terms,  isn’t the power of the  Declaration of Independence and the experiment in government that the colonists first started -- this recognition of the inherent worth and potential of all human beings  and that for such worth and potential to flower they must be  preserved  and nurtured for each and everyone no exceptions. In other words we are fullest as divinely created human being (and as citizens) when we are loving and supportively interdependent or to put it in biblical terms when we are Good Samaritans looking out for each other.

And isn’t that the challenge we face in our modern world? It isn’t easy to be good Samaritans of others, when we are pressed ourselves. It isn’t easy to give the innkeeper those dollars for victim when we have fewer of them because of an economic slowdown.  There is a provocative article in the most recent issue of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin entitled, “Good Samarians in a World Economy”. It discusses the scope of neighborly obligations in a global economy. It highlights the challenges for this country as the engine that uniquely drives the world economy. Should we be focused simply on stimulating our own economy or helping the world? If our economy recovers will that not help the rest of the world? And is that enough?

The answers to such questions are complicated and beyond my ken and expertise. But history has shown that we as a nation have gotten into our most severe difficulties when we have ignored the words of the Declaration of Independence and lost sight of the lesson of the Good Samaritan. When the Constitution endorsed a second class status for African Americans, we started down a path that betrayed our own best ideals. We are only now making true and significant strides to overcome that. And what of our treatment of the Native Americans -- were they treated as if they had inalienable rights like the settlers? Or the Japanese interned in the camps during World War 11. What of their inalienable rights?  And what of women relegated to second class status for so many years? When we let economic, political and security expedients of the moment trump our ideals we lose our footing.

The words of the Declaration of Independence – reminding us that we are all neighbors of equal worth – are as apt, inspiring and difficult to achieve as they were 233 years ago. But thank God for that day and for that Declaration. It challenges us to move forward in pursuit of our best ideals – loving and supporting our neighbors where ever and whoever they are -- because they are all beloved children of God with inalienable worth. What would our world be like if there was a renewal of mutual pledges of our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor in support of those ideals in the Declaration of Independence or is it Declaration of Interdependence? Amen