Proverbs 11:14
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16, 39-40
On recent Sundays the scripture lessons have invited us to consider the seen and the unseen, what is visible and what is invisible. Abraham and Sarah welcomed strangers and in doing so, entertained angels without knowing it. Hagar and her son Ishmael were on the edge of death until the God of seeing opened her eyes and she saw a well providing life-giving water.
This morning as we move toward Independence Day, our national story reminds us of the importance of what we are able to see and what we fail to see.
“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.”
What could be more obvious? The writers and the signers of the Declaration of Independence attested to that which needed no demonstration, no proof, no explanation—truths that were plainly visible, self-evident: equality, rights that cannot be taken away. Anyone could see these realities.
And in the draft list of the causes which impelled the Continental Congress to separate from Great Britain, Thomas Jefferson included the charge that the King “has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare,” he concluded, “is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain.”
Those words didn’t make it into the Declaration signed on July 4, 1776. Jefferson would later blame the delegates from South Carolina and Georgia for the removal of that complaint against the King. But he did not blame them alone. He also faulted the northern delegates who represented merchants who at that time were themselves involved in the Transatlantic slave trade.
To many, it was not self-evident that all men were created equal or that they had an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and so this new nation, our nation, emerged out of what has been called our “original sin”—the slave trade in which both the North and the South we complicit.
Nor was it self-evident that women, and poor people, and indentured servants were also endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, as they, too, were variously denied life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
“Where there is no guidance,” Proverbs tells us, “a nation fails.” Or as the King James Version translates: “Without a vision, the people perish.”
Nothing in the Declaration of Independence is legally binding. But it provides something as important as the rule of law. Even with its fundamental sin of omission, it provides the vision for us as a nation. It gives us an identity as an American people to guide us in the way we might go if we so choose.
That vision was not fully grasped by everyone in 1776—not even by the Declaration’s primary author, the slave owner Thomas Jefferson. And because of objections from the North and the South, that vision was not given full expression.
At the time Abigail Adams warned: “Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.”
Seventy-six years later Frederick Douglass famously asked: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
Things not seen limited the promise of liberty.
Limited vision meant that many of the people perished without knowing the freedom that was declared.
But in increasing numbers over time—enough people were able to see what was self-evident. Enough people caught the vision of the equality of all people that those words have continued to prod and challenge, continued to inspire and encourage us in our evolving 241-year struggle for freedom and equality.
We fought a Civil War, we marched for women’s suffrage, we faced jail and injustice and violence and murder, we debated and voted and petitioned and protested out of the faith that is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
We keep coming back to the life-giving guidance of the Declaration of Independence and its self-evident truths, that Abraham Lincoln called “a rebuke and a stumbling-block to tyranny and oppression.”
In “American the Beautiful” we sing of “patriot dream that sees beyond the years…” This dream as yet unrealized dream is the hope that looks forward to a new age when God will wipe away every tear. This as yet unrealized dream is the love of country that seeks the best for the nation and its people. The vision of self-evident truths, of rights held by all people raises our sight beyond what is so that we can move toward what might be.
Of course, our failure to see fully slows us down. Just yesterday, Margaret Jordan wrote in The Washington Post: “Most Americans have not been taught to see and embrace African American history as part of their history as Americans. Indeed, in the telling of American history, we have failed to fully grapple with the reality of slavery and its lasting hold on society. This has consequences.
“It would be simplistic,” she says, “to suggest that in understanding our past we will find all of the answers. But I do believe that without deeper reflection and engagement with our history — in all of its complexity — we will not have the foundation of understanding and respect on which progress can be built. Without it, we remain trapped in a vicious cycle powered through complacence and ignorance.” [i]
So it is good for us as well to join our voices with others in “Lift Every Voice and Sing”—a song that reminds us the road of freedom and equality is not easily traveled.
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered;
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
Now, this is a song that grew out of the African American experience, which it describes honestly as “bitter.” James Weldon Johnson and his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, nearly forgot that song after they wrote it in 1900 for a celebration of Lincoln’s birthday in Jacksonville, Florida. But the children who sang it kept singing it and sharing it with other children and in twenty years’ time it spread throughout the South.
We’ve joined in the singing of that song several times, although sometimes I wonder if it’s appropriate for this mostly white, although increasingly diverse, congregation. Dr. James Abbington, at Emory University's Candler School of Theology, Atlanta, Georgia, a great scholar in African American hymnody, provides some help when he tells of his experience conducting a 1,000-voice choir for the annual Detroit Branch NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner. He says: “The choir was made up of Anglo-Americans, Canadians, Native Americans, Koreans, Italians, Jews, Arabs, African-Americans and others, and ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ was one of the selections for that occasion. After the first rehearsal Jewish, Korean, and Native American members of the chorus approached me and said, ‘This song isn’t just for African-Americans and people from Africa, it belongs to all of us who are “true to our God and true to our Native land.”’”
Many are still on the stony path—and patriot dreams must look closely at what is in order to continue walking under the guidance of the vision of freedom.
Indeed the hope of our nation is found only as we face current reality.
We begin to see the possibility in patriotism when it is stripped of illusions. American exceptionalism must give way to a recognition that we are one in a world of nations, aware of the power that we hold and its potential for abuse as well as its many benefits.
While appreciating the freedom and equality that we do see, we need to continually be aware of our lack of vision and the danger to ourselves and our nation when we miss self-evident truths.
We can celebrate the slow but certain spread of freedom in our nation and the people and the sacrifices that have made this possible. We can celebrate the example of our own state that has a long history of supporting the basic rights of people, from outlawing slavery while we were still a territory back in 1839 and to our own Supreme Court’s decision that allowed full marriage equality for all people years before the United State Supreme Court saw the light.
Our sight is often poor.
So let us seek to be open to the guidance and the vision without which we will fail and perish.
John Adams said, “I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. -- Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means.”
This Tuesday, then, let us look up, look beyond and celebrate and give thanks for the toil and blood and treasure that allowed this nation to take our first steps to freedom, for the toil and blood and treasure that secured that freedom for all people, and for the toil and blood and treasure that continues to allow this imperfect nation with our flawed leaders and flawed citizens to move forward in freedom.
In the days ahead may we continue to see and seek this nation’s good.
[i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/too-many-americans-still-dont-see-black-history-as-their-own/2017/06/30/6561e04c-5b59-11e7-9b7d-14576dc0f39d_story.html?utm_term=.20153e3b3aff