Congress first passed a resolution declaring our independence from England on July 2, 1776. The vote was 12 to nothing, with the New York delegation abstaining because they hadn’t received any instructions from the New York Legislation on which way they were authorized to vote.
Having taken this decisive step toward freedom, the Continental Congress spent two more days debating the wording of the document that was to be sent to Great Britain informing them of this action. As you probably know, that document was written by Thomas Jefferson with a number of minor editorial changes suggested by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.
The Declaration of Independence was revolutionary in more than just its intent to assert its own authority to separate from the mother country. It also proposed radically new theories of government and individual rights.
Most governments of that era were monarchies which operated under the divine right principle. Because the right to wear the crown was hereditary, it was believed that God intervened directly in the birth process to select the right ruler for various circumstances.
A different theory of governance grew out of the Church in which certain groups of Christians, including Congregationalists, strongly upheld their right to assemble, to elect their own leaders and to jointly determine their own rules for governing their organizations.
Based on that belief, a political theorist named John Locke argued that each person had a natural right to enter into a contract with his or her neighbors to determine the form of government under which they wanted to live. It was this doctrine of natural rights to which the Continental Congress pointed as its authority for breaking away from Great Britain.
On July 4, 1776, no one could know what the result of this rebellion would be. They only knew that they were standing up to the strongest nation on earth and that the success or failure of their cause would depend on God.
There was always a very deep religious feel to the Colonial cause. In fact, after the war, George Washington wrote, “There never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their affairs than those of the United States, and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency, which was so often manifested during our revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God, who is alone able to protect them.
The signers of the Declaration were a good cross-section of the upper classes of that time. Twenty-four of them were lawyers or judges. Eleven were merchants; nine were farmers and large plantation owners. All of them were well-educated men of means. But they all signed the Declaration of Independence knowing that the penalty would be death if they were captured by the British.
The document itself ends with the words, “For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” And many of the 56 signers of that document had to pay an extremely heavy price for making that pledge.
Five of them were captured by the British and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the Revolutionary Army while another had two sons captured. Nine fought and died from wounds or hardships brought on by the Revolutionary War.
Some had their properties looted, or lost their ships, or had to hide out—living in caves—until the war was over. Many died destitute—ostracized by their friends for signing the Declaration.
That was the price of the freedom they provided for all of us. Because of the gift of freedom that they passed down to us, most of us living in modern America have been saturated with blessings to a degree unimaginable at the time of the Revolution. Yet we take those blessings for granted as if they were somehow simply our fair share.
In a similar situation, Abraham Lincoln once said, “We have forgotten the gracious Hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom or virtue of our own.”
In the early days of our country great sacrifices were made for the public good. Today most Americans have a hard time imagining these kinds of sacrifices or realizing what great responsibilities go with the freedoms we enjoy.
We may know that Jesus says, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required...”[i] but we don’t think about it very often.
And, of course, we do know that there are some among us who are denied certain rights and privileges on the basis of prejudice or fear, but we rarely stop to take a public stand on behalf of their liberties. We see injustices in our country and assume that they’re so outrageous that surely someone else will take care of them. And then we forget about them.
But in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus calls us to a greater level of commitment. He says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
The ease he’s talking about isn’t the ease of inaction. What he’s referring to is shouldering a task that is custom-designed for each person’s specific gifts and abilities. True freedom can never be found in inactivity, because then we will become dependent on the decisions and actions of others, whether they are good or bad.
True freedom—like that imagined by the signers of the Declaration of Independence—lies in taking a stand for what’s right and then facing the consequences, whatever they may be. According to the Bible, true freedom can only be found in service to Christ—otherwise we become slaves to the whims of the world around us.
James Watkins has written, “Peacemaking is the central declaration of the gospel. Grace...is experienced as peace. The peace which only God can give is able to heal the brokenness, pain and insecurity which most of us experience.
“When we know God’s peace, Christians go into the world in great joy to point to and become a part of God’s peace-giving... Peacemaking occurs whenever Christians encounter brokenness, conflict, injustice and pain. Consequently, peacemaking occurs in our own lives, our families, congregations, communities and in the international arena.”So, the American Revolutionary War has put us in a unique position to wage God’s peace in the world. And, with God’s guidance, that is something to which we can pledge ...our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. AMEN.
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