Sermon for July 5, 2026 || Proper 9A || Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Yesterday was the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. I spent a long time this week deciding whether or not I should frame my sermon around this auspicious day or ignore it, considering that our faith as followers of Jesus reaches far beyond the borders of a single country. The more I pondered, the more convicted I became that I should talk about the 250th anniversary of the United States of America in order to draw some parallels between our country and our faith. Both our country and our faith derive from high ideals. Both our country and our faith have been elevated by visionaries. Both have been sullied by villains. And today, on the first day of Year 251, both remain unfinished. That’s what we’re going to talk about for the next ten minutes: the unfinished nature of our country and our faith.

But first (of course) a tiny history lesson about the interwoven stories of the founding of the U.S. and the founding of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church began its life as the American expression of the Church of England. In fact, the first bishop of the Episcopal Church, Connecticut’s own Samuel Seabury, went to England to seek ordination as bishop. But they would not ordain him unless he signed an oath of loyalty to the King of England. Seabury refused, even though he had been a loyal Tory (that is, a supporter of the British) during the Revolution. Instead, the Anglican bishops of Scotland, eager to stick it to the English, did ordain Seabury, and he returned to the U.S. a bishop, who could now ordain new priests. In 1789, thirteen years after the Declaration of Independence, the Episcopal Church finished organizing and published the first American Book of Common Prayer. The only difference between it and the English one: “O Lord, save the state” instead of “O Lord, save the king.”

Okay, back to the unfinished nature of our country and our faith. In 2004, when I was a junior in college, I wrote a long paper about democracy for an upper level political science class. The paper argued that countries that were attempting to turn themselves into democracies were not allowing enough time for democracy to settle in and become the norm. Their people saw the example of the durable democracy of the United States and drew the conclusion that their countries could model themselves after our pattern. But what they did not see was the 200-plus years of the United States becoming incrementally more democratic than it had previously been. They did not see the iterative process of democracy, the three steps forward and two steps back, and so their democratic experiments fell apart at the first sign of backward steps.

On that day 250 years ago, the Founders declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” A little over a decade later, when that equality was tested in the first national elections under the Constitution, the only people who could vote were white men who held property. No poor white men. No women. No people of color. And the worst of it was that each enslaved person counted for apportionment purposes as three-fifths of a person. Moreover, the men who could vote did not vote directly for president, but for electors who would then convene in an electoral college to select the president. And still, with all of those caveats, the democratic reality of the early United States was by any metric an absolutely radical break from traditional norms of European-style governance.

In the two-and-a-half centuries since then, we have seen the expansion of the vote first to less prosperous white men, then to Black men with the 15th amendment, then to women with the 19th amendment, then to those aged 18 years with the 26th amendment. On top of that, the 17th amendment brought popular election of senators and the 24th amendment prohibited poll taxes. Those are the moments of three steps forward. Those are the moments to celebrate. On the other side of the coin, the rise of Jim Crow effectively shut down Black voting for nearly a century, unlimited spending in modern elections concentrates power among wealthy oligarchs, and the party primary system encourages increasingly extreme candidates selected by hardliners. In recent years the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and severe gerrymandering is moving the country closer and closer to single-party rule. These are the moments of two steps back, the moments to remember that democracy does not just happen.

As we celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary, we can do what we always do in church; we can hold multiple truths together in our minds. The first truth is that our country began with a vision of freedom and equality that was radical in its day. The second truth is that that radical vision has never, ever been radical enough to live up to the ideals that inspired it. On day 1 of Year 251, we remember that true patriotism is not blindly thinking our country is the best; true patriotism is the conviction that our country can always be better.

This same conviction holds true for our lives of faith. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ invite us to live the highest of ideals as his followers: ideals that we proclaim each time we share the Baptismal Covenant; values of respect, dignity, justice, and love; practices of community, repentance, witness, and care for creation. This life of Jesus is our inspiration, our revelation. And yet, this life Jesus invites us to live has always been beyond us, just as perfect democracy is beyond the reach of any country. But I learned this in another political science class: “Never let the perfect become the enemy of the good.” We can seek the good without reaching perfection. We can follow the Way, even as it loops, labyrinth-like, with every misstep off the path. Indeed, the Perfect calls us, knowing that we can only ever answer that call imperfectly.

Our country is unfinished. Our faith is unfinished. And this is how it should be, because a finished faith is no faith at all. Finished faith is fundamentalism. Finished faith is certainty. We protect and expand democracy by nurturing it each day, by getting every possible voter in the land to take an interest in what’s going on. We grow our faith the same way: in the daily walk with God, in the daily bread shared among us, in the daily prayers and practices that bring us closer to Christ, and in the daily recommitment to partnering with God in God’s mission of healing and reconciliation in this country and the world.

Today, I invite you to join me in recommitting yourselves to the imperfect life of faith, the unfinished life of faith. Take the next step along the path that Jesus has blazed for you. Then the next step. And the next one. As you plow the furrow of faith, yoked alongside Christ, look out over our country on its 250th birthday and see the myriad ways our faith calls us to act. With God’s help, take on an action to make this country better than it has ever been, knowing that if our actions are worthwhile and world-changing, they will remain unfinished. Both the work of democracy and the life of faith will never be finished, for both happen each day, as we strive for justice, equity, peace, and truth.

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Photo by Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash.