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I loved the Fourth of July growing up. Often I was at camp in Alabama. The event of the day was the “County Fair,” an afternoon of staff-built booths where, with a token, you could shoot baskets to unhinge a seat and a counselor would fall into a giant tank of water, or you could pay the camp “sheriff” to make a local arrest and send a friend to jail. There were competitions in swimming and tennis, relays, three-legged races, and a raw egg toss. There was a Queen of the County Fair and her court. There was also an archery competition, and the best archer was named King of the Fair. Fireworks—mostly sparklers and Roman candles—were the evening entertainment. Not much, but still exciting in the dark of the mountain night with a campfire. Then a prayer circle with taps.
When I was not at camp, there was the Southwire Picnic. The big—and only—company in town hosted a barbecue: whole pigs roasted on a spit, Brunswick stew cooked in a giant vat, cornmeal hush puppies fried in an oil drum, and picnic tables all around. There were games there too, and a lake for swimming, but it was the food and hospitality that mattered. It was the early sixties, and a rare time when the so-called rules of segregation did not apply. No one spoke of it particularly. It was simply that the food and the tables had no dividing line—they were there for all. For a moment, some aspect of the Declaration of Independence—that “all are created equal”—rang through into reality, if only for a day.
I loved all those things. But even more, I loved that this was a holiday all on its own—a holiday without baggage. You didn’t have to have your relatives over for a big meal. You didn’t have to be at home. There were no presents to buy, no cards to send. You didn’t even have to go to church before the big reveal of gifts.
But of course, the Fourth of July—or the Fifth, as some speculate—really wasn’t, and isn’t, a holiday without baggage at all. Even from our 1776 beginnings, at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, there had already been fighting for a year and too much dying. Disagreements about how to move forward and vacillating national loyalties threatened unity.
Between the glorious language at the start—“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all are created equal”—and the decisive declaration of breaking from England at the end were enumerated grievances against King George III. Arguments about how the new United States would be governed abounded, including one related to so-called universal suffrage—a brief moment in which white women might be included. There were even those who called for the end of slavery and recognized its evil. It is said that Thomas Jefferson himself wrote such language, though he actually stood to lose something if it had been included.
The baggage we do not see lies in the edits discarded from those first documents, including the Constitution. Historian Jill Lepore, in a recent essay, speculates about what might have been—for good and for ill—in the rejected paragraphs of the final versions.
Over the years, my childhood view—and perhaps for some of you as well—yielded to the knowledge that Independence Day, baggage included, is a time to look back on the past, to pay attention to and learn from all the stories, and to let them inform our choices and actions for the future. The heavy times and the hope-filled ones were not finished with the Declaration or the Constitution. The baggage we carry forms a through-line across the decades: the removal of Indigenous peoples from their land, the Civil War, Reconstruction and its failure, the struggle for civil rights, and more. There are joys, of course, along with the regrets.
Each decade has had its own hopes and despairs—from wars to economic failures, natural disasters, climate change, threats to democracy, and the polarization in which we find ourselves today. Sometimes the baggage and the burden of these are heavy.
Yet lest we think our own time is singular, we have only to look around the world to know our troubles are neither unique to our geography nor our historical moment. And for us as people of faith, it is the lessons and witness of those of old whose words move us to lighten that load. Here I speak of the witnesses of our faith—the ancients, we might call them, our ancestors in faith. As we gather in community each week to listen to their stories and recommit ourselves to the promises made at baptism and to our life as disciples of Jesus—loving our neighbor, resisting evil, and standing against all the forces that oppose God—we gain strength from those who have gone before us.
Take Zechariah, whom we heard in today’s Old Testament lesson. His time was no bed of roses. Around 600 B.C., some 2,600 years ago, his people were in exile, their Temple in Jerusalem destroyed, refugees in a strange land. There was conflict in that same Middle East we know today. Yet Zechariah’s prophetic imagination offers hope for the future. He reminds his people of their own power of resistance, and even more, that God has not abandoned them and will not abandon them. Had they forgotten that God is not a warlord, but One whose almighty power is shown in mercy?
“For you are prisoners of hope,” he proclaims.
The God who made a way out of no way, who brought you out of slavery in Egypt and across the Red Sea, is the same God whose kingly humility and creative power are always present. Prisoners of hope. Captive to hope. Despair, even in exile, is not an option.
Some 630 years later, it is Jesus who offers hope to a despairing people living under oppressive rule. He calls them to account. He names the baggage. “To what shall I compare this generation?” he asks. “You dance when you should be weeping, and grieve when you should be rejoicing.”
And then, just as quickly, Jesus offers comfort and hope: “Come unto me, all you that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.” Bring your baggage here—be it personal, communal, or carried for the whole country. “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Like those ancients in exile, and like those in Jesus’ own day, we too sometimes get it wrong. We mourn when we should be rejoicing and dance with frivolity when we should be mourning. We too are sometimes blind to the world and its needs, or let our fear keep us from seeing or acting.
Yet we, like those of old, have the gift of God to carry on. We are prisoners of hope even in times of despair. We have the comfort of the Holy Spirit in our travail. And most of all, we have Jesus, who calls us to solidarity and promises to be yoked with us along the way.
So here we are, in this country some 250 years on, with much to value and celebrate—and with a great deal of work still to do for all God’s people.
May we keep praying, caring for our community, singing our songs, welcoming all people of every language, people, and nation. May we keep our vigils and continue to resist evil, as we promised in the baptismal covenant just last week.
We are still called to discipleship. We are still called to hope and to work for a faithful future. In the eyes of faith—and indeed in the whole of creation—life and history are messy. We all live in the middle of that.
And so we celebrate this holiday, these times, and that Declaration—with all its warts—which calls us to equality, creativity, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Amen.
