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July 2,  2006, Independence Day, All Souls' Episcopal Church 

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

     Almost twenty years ago I was among a group of clergy from various denominations taking part in a memorial service honoring members of the armed forces killed while serving in the First and Second World Wars. The clergy in attendance were from nearby towns and village. A Baptist minister, originally from Texas, led us in a scripture reading. Our preacher was another clergyman who spoke of how our fallen soldiers fought and died in order to defend peace and bring peace about. His text was “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Half-way through the sermon, I heard the Baptist minister from Texas behind me muttering to himself and saying, “They didn’t fight and die to defend peace. They fought and died for liberty.”
     Three thoughts went through my mind. The first thought was that I loved his accent. The second thought was that what he said sounded like a particularly American point of view. The third thought was that he was absolutely right. Liberty! Sacred Liberty was what they fought for and died defending. On this Independence Day our minds and hearts must attend to matters of liberty. President Lincoln referred to America as a nation “conceived in liberty.” President Washington wrote of how the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of government, were staked on this experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

     Of course, the spirit of the Revolutionary period was famously expressed by Patrick Henry, who declared: Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!  I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death.

     Liberty was first and foremost on the hearts and minds of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Liberty was the cause to which they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. It is what led these men, at great personal cost, to sign their names to a document declaring that essential human rights and freedoms are not things dispensed to us by government, but that certain inalienable rights have been bestowed upon us by our Creator, and that governments are instituted to secure these rights, chief among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Inalienable rights, by definition, do not derive from government. They come from God. The purpose of government is to secure these rights. To paraphrase our current Commander in Chief, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not government’s gifts to Americans, they are God’s gifts to humanity. Governments are put in place to secure these gifts.

     Of course, liberty, and the blessings of security, don’t always quarter in comfort. We make ourselves secure in order to ensure the free exercise of liberty. “Liberty”, as John Winthrop declared, is the proper end and object of authority.” And yet, from time to time, one of the greatest threats to liberty arises when authorities believe that liberty must be suppressed in order to be defended.

     Justice Marshall observed: History teaches us that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when Constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. Thomas Jefferson wrote: I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences of too much liberty than to those attending to too small a degree of it. And then, there is this maxim which appeared on the title page of Benjamin Franklin’s treatise on the Constitution: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

     Of all people, Christians should best understand that the precious gift of liberty was purchased with sacrificial blood. Every time you enter this church, cast your eyes upon the cross over the altar and remember the price of liberty. Christ died for your liberty. Our Lord shed his blood and offered his life upon the cross in order to spare us from the penalty of sin, to free us from the condemnation of the law, to secure our salvation as newborn sons and daughters of God, to break down the wall keeping us from God, and to bestow upon us what St. Paul called “the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Christians must understand that legitimate forms of secular government are put in place to secure the concrete expression of this glorious liberty.

     The founders of this nation believed that liberty and self-government were concepts inextricably linked. George Bernard Shaw once quipped: “Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” He might just as easily have said that self-government means responsibility. Self-government means more than casting a vote on occasion. It means governing yourself; governing your actions; governing your life in such as way as to secure liberty for you and your neighbor.

      Liberty is a right nurtured by virtue. We cannot and we shall not remain a free nation unless we are a virtuous nation. We cannot remain a people of liberty unless we are a people of virtue. President Reagan was appealing to this virtue in his first Inaugural Address when he said: How can we love of our country and not love our countrymen; and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they are sick, and provide opportunities to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?

     If America is to remain a nation in liberty we must be a virtuous nation, and there must not be too great a gulf fixed between public virtue and private virtue. In other words, it is not enough that we be a nation of good policies; we must be a nation of good people. We cannot enjoy liberty if we are governed by tyrants. Our individual vices and passions – greed, lust, anger, and so forth – are such tyrants who can turn us into slaves. When reason is held hostage by the appetites we are no longer capable of the sort of deliberation and self-government that secures liberty. There has never been a form of government so well devised or so sure established as to secure the blessings of liberty while its citizens are ruled by the tyranny of their passions. In order to be a free nation we must first and foremost be a good nation; a nation which appeals to the better angels of our nature.

     On Independence Day we give thanks for this sweet land of liberty; a land of crowded cities and wide open spaces, of prairies, beaches, deserts, and forests stretching from sea to shining sea; a land founded upon truths taken to be self-evident which point to inalienable rights bestowed upon humanity by God himself; a land still traveled to by those yearning to breathe free. We give thanks for our independence and for those who served in the past and who serve in the present and who offer their last full measure of devotion to defend it. We give thanks for self-government and pray for the grace to sustain it to our posterity. We are thankful that “where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.    

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