Good morning! Happy Independence Day!

Today, dear friends, we enter into an ecclesiastical time machine and in giving thanks and praise to God today we do so in the words and forms used over 200 years ago by our forebears. Many of those forebears, who authored the words of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, were the same people who ratified the first American Book of Common Prayer in 1789, the service we use today. They were patriots and they were also men of the church, a church which for them had been the Church of England. It may come as no surprise that these 18th century churchmen were in the minority. The colonial Anglican majority never wanted independence from Britain and was certainly not in favor of revolution.

The commemoration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th was proposed for that first Prayer Book but was not included - now get this - until 1928. It was originally not included out of respect for those in the Church - and remember it was the majority - who did not support the revolution. By 1928, we can well assume, no one in the Episcopal Church thought that the American Revolution was a mistake.

Dear friends, this Fourth of July many of us don't feel inclined to expressions of unqualified patriotic zeal. Perhaps we should never feel so inclined since such unqualified zeal is frequently nothing more than nationalistic arrogance. Father Patrick J. Howell, S.J., expressed it well in yesterday's Seattle Times column entitled, "Uncritical Patriotism Can Subvert the Core of Jesus' Message." Perhaps you read his sober words in which he quotes the American naval hero Stephen Decatur who in 1816 raised a toast to "our country" with the words (quote) "In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong." (end quote) Our country, right or wrong? What has happened? What is happening? Many of us are very disturbed.

We're in a global war on terror, which has - and can have - no end; we're in a specific war in Iraq on the basis of false pretenses, a war many consider immoral, as Fr. Howell says in his column. Our government has used fear of terror to justify the circumvention of civil rights, to justify clandestine, illegal surveillance of suspected individuals, to justify the establishment of secret prisons and the practice of torture and, perhaps, most startling of all, the immunization of the Executive from all "checks and balances," which the framers of the Constitution considered absolutely essential in a democracy. What in the world has happened to America? What in the world is happening in America? Many of us ask ourselves: Is this the America I want to love and be proud of? Many of us can identify with the words of James Baldwin: "I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."

Dear friends, the readings appointed for the liturgical celebration of Independence Day are from Romans and the Gospel of Mark. Romans chapter 13 is the Apostle Paul's conciliatory nod as it were to the agents of the Roman Empire with words which have been (mis-)quoted to underpin many a tyrannical power: "The powers that be are ordained of God," Paul writes to the Roman Christians. The powers that be. These words of Romans 13 need to be juxtaposed to the words of Revelation 13 where the "powers that be" are called "the beast," a brutal monster of savage virulence, a force that is profoundly and utterly anti-God. Romans 13 needs the "corrective" of Revelation 13 and Paul, who was martyred under "the powers that be," would surely have agreed to such a corrective.

In Mark's Gospel we hear the words of Jesus himself. He formulates the much quoted aphorism which has come to characterize our Christian understanding of our relationship to State and Church: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. The context of these words was, of course, the question about taxes, but Jesus' aphorism opens that narrow context to a broader horizon. What are exactly the "things that are Caesar's" in the America of 2007? Interestingly, Jesus seems to be a "tax and spend" liberal with regard to the narrower issue at hand: Pay your taxes, he says. There's nothing wrong with taxes, nor with paying them "to Caesar." But what about the broader scope of Jesus' words? Are we to give Caesar our unqualified loyalty and obedience? Hardly. Our first loyalty and obedience must surely belong to God alone. Are we to trust Caesar? Again: hardly. We know how easily Caesar can become "the Beast." Dear friends, the fact that Jesus does not elaborate on his aphorism implies the unspoken challenge: You figure it out! Is that not our task to "figure out" what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God and to act accordingly? I think that was Jesus intention: not to give guidelines about church and state, but to challenge us to "figure it out," to learn from history, to help create structures in our public life which, at the very least, make it difficult for Caesar to become "the Beast." In our own American tradition it is the structures of checks and balances which put limits on power and opens the means to expose the abuse of power. We all have cause for great concern when Caesar seeks to dismantle the checks on his own power. Absolute power belongs to God, not to Caesar.

Dear friends, this Wednesday let us remember the framers of the Declaration of Independence with thanksgiving to God but also with prayers for our continued vigilance and our ongoing efforts to "figure it out," to sort out the things that belong to Caesar and the things that belong to God.

Before stepping back into our ecclesiastical time machine and returning to the liturgy of yesteryear, join me if you will in a litany of Thanksgiving for National Life found in our current Book of Common Prayer (pp. 838-839).