Sermon for Independence Day (transferred), July 5, 2026
Deuteronomy 10:17-21; Psalm 145:1-9; Hebrews 11:8-16; Matthew 5:43-48
Happy late Fourth of July, the 250th
anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I talked about the preamble to that amazing
document in the sermon two weeks ago, for Juneteenth – specifically the
national vision statement the Declaration gives us: 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.”1 I believe we’re tremendously blessed to have our
national creed stated so clearly.
But, of course, a creed is there to be
lived out. In our Baptismal Covenant, we
begin by stating the Apostles’ Creed – what we believe about the nature of God
– and we flesh it out with five promises about how we’ll live our belief. Well, we needed a guide for living out our
national creed, too; and that’s the Constitution. It’s far from a perfect document, as its 27 amendments
make clear. But it begins with words
that will never be amended, our nation’s purpose statement – the Constitution’s
preamble. If, like me, you’re of a
certain age, and you were blessed to watch Schoolhouse Rock along with
your Saturday-morning cartoons, you might even carry our national purpose
statement in your head, set to music. I
will resist the temptation to lead us in singing it, but here it is: “We the People of the United States of America,
in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic
Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and
secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”2
Now, as we hear that national purpose
statement, there’s one important detail that doesn’t come through, one that mattered
to the people who wrote it. That detail
is the look of the words on the page. I
imagine you can see it in your mind’s eye. When you picture the preamble of the
Constitution, what stands out, of course, are the first three words: We the
People, written five times bigger than the rest of the text.
Now, those three words didn’t come down on
tablets from Mt. Sinai. They were a
choice, and they reasonably might have been different. The Constitution could have begun, “We the
delegates to this Constitutional Convention” or “We the States now United” or
“We the victors of the late Revolution.” But, instead, the Constitution begins, in
giant letters, “We the People.”
And, it turns out, there’s a story behind
that, something I learned from a newspaper column last week. The column is about “The Founder … We Don’t
Remember,” a man named James Wilson.3 James Wilson was a delegate to the
Constitutional Convention in 1787; and, it turns out, he was one of the primary
editors of that great document, so he has a place close to my heart. He was on the five-person Committee of Detail,
and he wrote the first draft, which compiled all the previously adopted
resolutions and proposals. And that
first draft, in Wilson’s handwriting, began with, “We the People….”4
Like all of us, Mr. Wilson had a
backstory, and his backstory makes those first three words all the more poignant.
In 1779, three years after Independence,
Wilson was living in Philadelphia, a wealthy lawyer with one of the city’s
finest homes. Four years into a brutal revolution,
with the economy a shambles, the regular folks of Philadelphia were not exactly
impressed. Wilson and his family were
living in opulence when most people couldn’t afford what little food there was.
People also questioned Wilson’s
allegiance because he had opposed the highly democratic state constitution
proposed for Pennsylvania, and he’d defended loyalists being tried for treason.
So, one night in 1779, a drunken mob set
out for Wilson’s beautiful home, looking to even the score. The mob attacked. In the firefight, seven people were killed and
another 17 wounded.
Wilson escaped, but I can’t imagine how
traumatized he must have been. You could
see how he might have broken with the movement at that point and hightailed it off
to Canada. Instead, Wilson remained
because he could understand why the mob was so upset and looking for someone to
blame. Wilson had grown up poor in
Scotland before his family emigrated to the colonies. He knew what it was to be hungry and under the
English thumb.
So, instead of nursing resentment toward
the people who’d attacked, Wilson doubled down on democracy. There in the Constitutional Convention, he
pulled a copy of the Declaration of Independence from his coat pocket and read
from it to the other delegates, reminding them that the people of the colonies had
bound themselves together to advance their inalienable rights to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. His point
was that “the people are … ‘the legitimate source of all authority’”5
– despite the fact some of them had stormed his house and tried to kill him. So, the first three words from Wilson’s Constitutional
drafting committee are the ones that ring down to us today: “We the People
… ordain and establish this Constitution.”
We find ourselves in a day when focusing
on the well-being of those who aren’t part of your own tribe might seem naïve. I imagine it seemed naïve back in the day,
too. Even more so than now, the
Revolutionary period was a time of extremes. You had leading citizens renouncing their
national identities. You had brother
fighting against brother, our Civil War, Part One. You had poor people literally rioting in the
streets, shooting cannonballs into the homes of wealthy lawyers. Common purpose must have seemed like a pipe
dream. Maybe it still does.
I think James Wilson might have said that
what unifies us is choosing to be us. We may not get it right in any given moment –
in fact, you can read our history as one example after another of not
getting it right. But you can also read
our history as call and response: the call to remember whom we aspire to be and
the response of taking one more step to expand the boundaries of “We the
People” balancing liberty and justice for all.
So, as we celebrate this feast of
Independence Day, I hear our readings as a call to notice how the Good News and
our national aspirations intersect, and then a call to remember whom we aspire
to be, in both our spiritual and secular lives. Maybe most fundamentally, I think the Good
News and our national aspirations intersect by calling us to pursue not what is
easy but what is hard – the “narrow door” through which Jesus calls us to step into
God’s kingdom (Luke 13:24).
First, from Deuteronomy, we heard Moses,
on the doorstep of the Promised Land, reminding his people to default toward
humility despite being God’s chosen. Yes, Moses says, God has blessed and is
blessing you beyond measure. But
remember why: to live out the heart of the One who formed you. “The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of
lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no
bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the
strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger,” Moses says
to these people about to occupy other people’s lands, “for you were strangers
in the land of Egypt.” (10:17-19) Once
you’re in charge, Moses says, it’ll be easy to think you did this all on your
own and then to serve your own interests. But you’ve been chosen to show God’s ways and
purposes to others. So, follow God’s
lead, Moses says, and do what’s hard instead.
Then, from the Psalms, the writer praises
God’s “unsearchable” greatness (145:3), awesome majesty, and “wondrous works”
(145:5). And what do those wondrous works
look like? How does the creator and
sovereign of the universe wield ultimate power? “The Lord is gracious and merciful,” the
psalmist says, “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all and has compassion over
all that he has made.” (145:8-9) All …
not just the blessed, not just the chosen, not just the familiar, but all.
Loving the good and the faithful would
be easy. But God does what’s hard
instead.
Then, in the epistle, the writer reminds
these Jewish followers of Jesus that their founding father, Abraham, was
someone with no capacity for great things on his own. Instead, what Abraham had was an immense
capacity to trust that, even in what seems like endings, God is always working
something new. Abraham and Sarah stepped
into their journey with God not in fear but in hope. Their focus was the homeland not where they
were but where they were going – “a better country, that is, a heavenly one”
(11:16). Getting stuck in present fear
and failure is easy. But God calls us to
do what’s hard, to help build what’s coming, instead.
And finally, in Matthew, Jesus tells his
followers absolutely the last thing they want to hear. In the Sermon on the Mount, the Torah version
2.0, Jesus says over and over not to ask, “What’s enough?” but to ask,
“What is God’s heart?” Don’t just not
murder each other; reconcile with each other. Don’t just not commit adultery; respect each
other as equals, not objects. Don’t just
follow the rules in punishing evildoers; kill them with kindness to change
their hearts. Don’t just love the
neighbors who love you back; love even your enemies and pray for your
persecutors. Following the law and
reveling in self-righteousness – that’s easy. But God calls us to do what’s hard, to expand
the circle, instead.
Our nation’s 250th birthday is certainly a time to celebrate, but it’s also a time to remember – to remember the deep complexity of what it means to live as a faithful follower of Jesus among “we the people” in 2026. The easy way is Christian nationalism – to wrap the baby Jesus in the American flag and decide, in advance, that if the United States does something, it must be God’s will. The more challenging path is to be not a Christian nationalist but a Christian American. That means patterning my life on the vision and purpose of the Baptismal Covenant. It means patterning my civic engagement on the vision and purpose of our nation’s founding documents. And it means, every day, whether in the pew or in the public square, to choose to be part of “we the people” called by God to do what is hard.
1.
“Declaration
of Independence: A Transcription.” National Archives. Available at: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript.
Accessed July 3, 2026.
2.
“The
Preamble.” Constitution Annotated: Analysis and Interpretation of the U.S.
Constitution. Available at: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/preamble/.
Accessed July 3, 2026.
3.
Wegman,
Jesse. “The Founder We Need Is the One We Don’t Remember.” New York Times,
June 26, 2026. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/opinion/declaration-independence-constitution-james-wilson.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share.
Wilson’s story, as told here, comes from this article. See also Wegman’s book The
Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution.
4.
“Manuscript
of the Committee of Detail Report, August, 3, 1787.” American Treasures:
Documenting the Nation’s Founding. Available at: https://constitutioncenter.org/american-treasures/manuscript-of-the-committee-of-detail-report/kiosk.
Accessed July 3, 2026.
5.
Quoted
by Wegman and found in Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal
Convention of 1787. Rev. ed. 4 vols. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1937. Volume 1, Chapter 13, Document 18. Available at: https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s18.html.
Accessed July 3, 2026.
