Homily for Independence Day 2026


Abraham lives in tents.

A tent is not a permanent residence.

It can be raised, taken down, and carried elsewhere.

The image does not mean 

    that the faithful despise the world 

        or neglect the places where they live. 

Abraham digs wells, negotiates with neighbors, 

    raises a family, and buries his dead.

He lives fully where he has been placed.

But he does not confuse the place where he lives 

    with the fulfillment of God’s promise.

That is also the Church’s calling.

We live in this country.

We participate in its institutions.

We vote, serve, teach, work, build, protest, obey, 

    and sometimes resist.

We seek the good of our neighbors.

But we do not confuse this country with the city of God.

Every flag flies beneath the judgment of God.

Every constitution remains a human document.

Every nation is temporary.

Only God’s kingdom endures.

 

The collect gives thanks for liberty.

There is much for which to give thanks.

Yet the liberty proclaimed 250 years ago was not shared equally. 

Some who spoke of liberty enslaved other human beings.

Some who claimed a new nation 

    displaced people already living upon the land.

Women, Indigenous peoples, enslaved persons, 

    and many others stood outside 

        the freedom being celebrated.

Not everyone appears in the national portrait in the same way.

Some stand there as founders.

Some appear because they were owned.

Some because they were removed.

Some because they were forbidden to vote.

Some because they struggled 

    to make the nation’s words apply to them.

Christian gratitude does not require innocence.

We may receive what is good with thanksgiving 

    while telling the truth 

        about the suffering through which it came.

Indeed, truth is one way gratitude is purified.

 

Deuteronomy names God as:

“God of gods and Lord of lords,

    the great God, mighty and awesome.”

We expect greatness to be displayed through conquest, 

    wealth, armies, monuments, and power.

But Deuteronomy directs our attention elsewhere.

God shows no partiality.

God takes no bribe.

God executes justice for the orphan and widow.

God loves the stranger and provides food and clothing.

The great God is not impressed by greatness 

    as nations usually define it.

God measures common life from the edges:

    from the place of the widow,

        the orphan,

            the migrant,

                the refugee,

                    the worker who can be exploited,

                        the person who cannot purchase influence,

                            the one whose accent, poverty, 

                                or legal status makes it difficult to be heard.

The question is not simply whether powerful people are free.

The question is whether 

    people without power can obtain justice.

 

“You shall also love the stranger, 

    for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Memory in Scripture is not nostalgia.

God’s people are not told to remember Egypt 

    so that it may celebrate how far it has come. 

The people of God remember so that we will not become Egypt.

A people once oppressed can learn the habits of the oppressor.

A nation shaped by migration, 

    forced displacement, 

        and the search for refuge

            can still become suspicious of strangers.

A people grateful that doors 

    once opened for them 

        can close the doors behind them.

The Church must give the stranger a face.

The stranger is not an abstract political issue.

The stranger is the person harvesting food, 

    cleaning a hotel room, rebuilding after a storm, 

        sitting beside a frightened child, 

            awaiting an asylum hearing, 

                or trying to understand a language 

                    not yet familiar.

Before the stranger is a category, 

    the stranger is a neighbor loved by God.

 

Jesus says:

    “Love your enemies 

        and pray for those who persecute you.”

The powers of this age survive by making enemies.

They teach us to divide the world into the righteous 

    and the wicked, 

        the real people and the traitors, 

            those whose fears deserve attention 

                and those whose suffering can be ignored.

Political factions are very good at loving those who love them.

Jesus asks, “What more are you doing than others?”

The Church’s public witness 

    is not that Christians will hate more effectively 

        on behalf of the correct side.

The Church bears witness by practicing another manner of life.

We pray for political opponents by name.

We refuse language that denies their humanity.

We protect even an adversary from lies and false accusation.

We listen before answering.

We resist injustice without desiring the destruction of the unjust.

We come to one table 

    without first demanding political uniformity.

Enemy-love is not passive.

It opposes evil.

But it refuses to become the evil it opposes.

 

The collect does not ask God merely to preserve liberty.

It asks for grace to maintain liberty 

“in righteousness and peace.”

Liberty without righteousness becomes privilege for the strong.

Liberty without peace 

    becomes endless conflict among frightened 

        and hostile factions.

Righteousness asks whether justice can be bought.

Peace asks whether we can oppose one another 

    without seeking one another’s destruction.

The Church contributes to the common good 

    not by pretending that America is sacred,[16]

        but by living here according to the practices 

            of another country.

Justice for the vulnerable.

Welcome for the stranger.

Prayer for the enemy.

Truth without contempt.

Hope without illusion.

These are signs

    —not the completion

        —of the better country we seek.

 

After 250 years, this country has not arrived.

No country ever does.

Nations rise and fall.

Institutions endure for a time and then change.

The work of one generation is handed unfinished to another.

We live here.

We receive what is good with gratitude.

We tell the truth about what has wounded and excluded.

We seek justice for those without influence.

We welcome the stranger.

We pray for the enemy.

We maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace.

But we do not place our final hope 

    in the perfecting of any nation.

We are looking for the city that has foundations,

    whose architect and builder is God.

We have seen that promise from a distance.

By faith, we greet it.

And as strangers and pilgrims,

    we seek to live here

        according to the life of the country that is to come.

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