7-5-21 - Happy Inter-dependence Day

You can listen to this reflection here.

This weekend we celebrate our independence as a nation, four years shy of our 250th birthday. We have experienced some hard times lately as a nation. The dream of America and the reality of America can seem as divergent as the viewpoints of its citizens.

Yet we celebrate. We celebrate the courage of those who fought to liberate themselves from the oppression of a colonial power, even as those same people continued to oppress and even colonize others.

We celebrate the dream of democracy, even as the strength of that democracy is being tested in ways not seen since the Civil War.

We celebrate the generosity that led America to open its doors to immigrants and make sacrifices for the liberty of other nations, even as we struggle with a resurgence of virulent nationalism.

We celebrate the impulse toward diversity and inclusion that represents the best of America, even as we reckon with the evils of racism woven into our very foundations as a nation – there would have been no federation of states had not the northern states agreed to abandon efforts to abolish slavery.

Moving out of the log-jams in which we find ourselves on so many fronts may just depend on our celebrating not only our independence, but claiming and cultivating our inter-dependence. That is a gift we Christ-followers have to offer our fellow citizens, for Jesus invites us into a relationship of inter-dependence with each other, with the strangers with whom we share our lives and communities, and with God.

Hear these words of Paul to the churches around Ephesus: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

Chosen. Loved. Adopted. Children. Words of relationship, and relationships are inter-dependent. Whatever you do on this holiday today, celebrate those around you on whom you depend, and who depend on you. It is the way to true freedom.

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