A Reflection for Independence Day All
Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC July 3, 2016 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Second Readings
I made an executive decision and switched the
lessons that were scheduled for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost and
inserted the lessons for tomorrow, Independence Day. However, later on, I am including an excerpt from
one of the original readings. The Hebrew Testament Lesson for Independence Day
Celebration is from the Book of Deuteronomy. The word “Deuteronomy”, meaning
“second reading of the Law”, comes from the Greek translations of the Hebrew
Testaments around the 3rd Century BC when many of the Jews living
outside of Judea could no longer read Hebrew and spoke mainly Greek. The Hebrew
name would have been chosen from the first words of the text, “These are the
Words”, in the same way Genesis was, “In the Beginning”.
Deuteronomy was an attempt by later generations to look back at Moses and reinterpret Moses for their present time. This is a necessary task for all societies - the redefinition of the past for the present and the future. It is the task of bringing all of the unconscious things that we do and assume, both light and dark, understood and repressed, to conscious light and making a decision on how to proceed. Carl Jung reflected: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who has spent his
whole professional life looking at our past to understand our present, said in his commencement address to graduates
at Stanford University on June 16:
Each generation
rediscovers and reexamines that part of its past that gives its present new
meaning, new possibility and new power. The question becomes for us now—for you
especially—what will we choose as our inspiration? Which distant events and
long dead figures will provide us with the greatest help, the most coherent
context, and the wisdom to go forward?
In Shakespeare’s The
Tempest, there is a shipwreck and some of the waterlogged survivors gather
together to reflect on why it happened, but Antonio introjects:
We all were
sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.
Much of the Book of Deuteronomy is like a bunch of
sermons on the subject of how they were to live their lives being faithful to
the mosaic covenant of being God’s representatives in this world. As God cared
for the poor, the widows, and orphans, so were they to care for the poor, the
widows, and orphans. As God’s arc of the universe bends toward justice, they
are to bend toward justice. As they had periods in their lives when they received
no justice from others, so they were not to let this happen to others. As they
were loved by God when they were strangers in Egypt, they were also to love the
strangers living in their land. Their past was their prologue to their dreams
of their future and their discharge.
The author James Michener was not a religious man,
but he loved the Book of Deuteronomy and the first Chapter of the Epistle of
James as a guide on how to live a good and decent life and as an outline for a
just society. In his book, The Source,
a character says: “If you want to understand what it is to be Jewish, re-read
the Book of Deuteronomy five times in a row.”
Many of my forbears were Scotch-Irish who, out of
economic deprivation, had come from lowland Scotland and Northern English
border areas to settle in the Ulster plantation region of Ireland. There they
met exploitation and abuse from the English absentee landowners and resentment
from the native Irish, especially during the English Civil War and the Irish
Confederate Wars. After decades of strife, they came to America where all the
land was already settled, so they went to the frontier Appalachian region of
the Alleghenies and Blue Ridge where land was cheap and they hoped they would
be free from injustice. The sentiments in the Declaration of Independence
appealed to them, a nation committed to Justice, care for the downcast, and
welcome for the stranger. They wanted to be free and serve God in peace. Their
past was their prologue to the hearing the words that came in July of 1776: “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Over the years, some of the people unconsciously
edited that call to say that, of course, “Men” meant only white, land-owning males. Only they were equal, and everybody else less
than equal. Thomas Jefferson himself who penned those words and, even though a
slaveholder himself, was deeply troubled by slavery wrote: "Indeed, I
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot
sleep forever." As Paul, the writer of the Galatians reading for today,
the 7th Sunday after Pentecost (I told you I would bring it in…)
warned about this unconscious editing for one’s own agenda:
Do not be deceived; God
is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you
will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will
reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is
right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever
we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for
those of the family of faith.
That harvest time came for our country when what we
had sown was reaped by that lazy, and at the time, a convenient unconscious
editing. The nation had to revisit its prologue and had to bring back to the
light of consciousness all of the dark and denied and, in its refusal, fought a
great civil war. Lincoln in Gettysburg, reflecting on the fact that the Union victories
at Vicksburg and Gettysburg were accomplished on the anniversary of the
Declaration of Independence, revisited that prologue of “Four Score and seven
years ago”, calling the people to revision what is to come and our discharge in
order that “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.”
Ken Burns continued in that commencement address:
You know, it is terribly fashionable these days to criticize
the United States government, the institution Lincoln was trying to save, to
blame it for all the ills known to humankind, and, my goodness, ladies and
gentlemen, it has made more than its fair share of catastrophic mistakes. But
you would be hard pressed to find—in all of human history—a greater force for
good. From our Declaration of Independence to our Constitution and Bill of
Rights; from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth,
Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Land Grant College and
Homestead Acts; from the transcontinental railroad and our national parks to
child labor laws, Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act; from
the GI Bill and the interstate highway system to putting a man on the moon and
the Affordable Care Act, the United States government has been the author of
many of the best aspects of our public and personal lives. But if you tune in
to politics, if you listen to the rhetoric of this election cycle, you are made
painfully aware that everything is going to hell in a handbasket and the chief
culprit is our evil government.
I don’t
think politics is a dirty word. I am honored to have met, known, and admired
people of both major parties who have offered themselves for public service,
and I pray for all of our elected leaders. I pray that we will have the wisdom
to know that we will reap what we sow. If we sow division and hatred to promote
our own selfish agendas, that is what we will reap. If we sow justice and mercy,
then that is what we will reap. I am under no illusion that my elected
representatives will always agree with me, and all of us have flaws. We are
very fortunate in that we have had elections in this country for the last 12
score years. While we are ill-served by sound bites, slogans, and huge
outpourings of campaign moneys, elections are a flawed but necessary exercise
to revisit the prologues of our past, to bring to full consciousness our dark
and light, and to discharge the attaining of the dreams of our future.
Second Readings (poem)
The
Voter reviews the options in election.
The
Vestry retreats to ask about mission.
The
Searcher retraces steps to larger home.
The
Worshipper returns to give new thanks.
The
Memory recasts the plots in old stories.
The
Reader rereads and more understands.
The
Prayer resounds all those names said.
The
Thanker redoubles with deeper praise.
The
Priest recalls of becoming a Parson.
The
Pastor remembers the visits made.
The
Husband revisits his marriage vows.
The Father
relooks at daughter’s pictures.
The
Neighbor relates a family connection.
The
Enemy’s reassesses anew as a sibling.
They all
refine again thinking second again.
Trusting
refinding deeper meaning to yes,
To renewing
prologues of a newer dream.
