Advent Devotions

America at 250: Holding gratitude and humility

Dear church,

As we look toward the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, many of us will celebrate with fireworks, parades and barbecues. Independence Day often brings us together with family and friends. Yet there is more that connects us than our communal celebrations. We are also connected through a common vision.

Signed in 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaims a vision of equality for all people. While there were other nations pushing for equality at the time, the declaration was and is a monumental document in the way it names the aspiration so boldly. As we observe and celebrate the 250th anniversary of that signing, we also affirm the vision of freedom and equality it casts. We can be grateful.

And with contrition and humility, we acknowledge all the ways we have failed to embody that vision. As members of this church, we are called to “pray, participate in, and advocate for civic life in the United States that reflects God’s activity and call, which seek both the well-being of all people and a creation marked by justice and peace” (ELCA social statement Faith and Civic Life, p. 89).

As Lutherans, we know the importance of naming realities for what they are. As citizens, we confess the ways we have not yet realized the vision of the Declaration of Independence and, more importantly, as Christians we confess the ways we have participated in or been complicit in failures to live into the vision God provides. This vision is rooted in creation and redemption. God crafts each person in God’s own image and sends Jesus Christ to redeem us, setting us free to follow Christ’s new commandment to love one another.  

The history of the United States is complex, and all too often we have fallen short of our stated values. Indigenous peoples across this land have been forced to cede their ancestral homes and pushed to reservations. Women and men have been prevented from voting because of their sex and race and spat on and jailed when they demanded their rights. Japanese American families were interned during World War II. Queer and transgender people’s lives are obstructed by federal and state orders.

There is a photograph of Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine Black teenagers who integrated Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957. Books under her arm, she faces forward as angry white people crowd behind her. She was just trying to go to school.

Holding both the failures and the vision in our hearts and minds, I invite us to ask ourselves, “What does it mean to celebrate a promise that is real and yet still unfolding? What does it mean to be a people who always live in ‘the already but not yet’”?

This is a central question for us not only as we mark the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence but also in our daily lives as people of faith. The prophets repeatedly remind us of the vision God casts for all of creation, and they call us to account when, as God’s own people, we fall short.

When we fall short, we remember we are rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We think, speak and live out faith through God’s future. God’s future is resurrection. As a church, we are turned not only to the past but to the future God is making possible right now through us as we love and serve others.

As Lutheran Christians, we believe that God calls us to:

• Remember our connection to each other through baptism, as Scripture teaches us: “We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Romans 12:5).

• Name sin for what it really is and to repent of it, as the Augsburg Confession and the catechisms remind us.

• Serve the common good in society as “earthly measures toward God’s intention” (Faith and Civic Life, p. 11).

As we celebrate 250 years of the Declaration of Independence, we can hold gratitude and humility, possibilities and shortcomings. We continue to live in the already and the not-yet.

And we hold fast to the most important promise of all: the presence of God with us, the power of the resurrection of Christ, the accompaniment of the Holy Spirit and the ever-unfolding grace of God.

We celebrate this occasion neither as a perfect nation nor as a perfect church but as a people held in God’s grace and called into community in service to all neighbors and for the sake of the world God so loves.

In Christ,

The Rev. Yehiel Curry
Presiding Bishop
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America