Living the Dream

Independence Day

The Rev. Tim Nunez

May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen

This weekend we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The thirteen British colonies were barely a year into the Revolutionary War that would continue another seven years. The founding fathers and the people they represented had faith in a vision they could not see, ideals they thought were rooted in God although they were yet developing.

These built upon their conviction that all men were created equal with inalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” “All men” meant all people, but of course that wasn’t true in 1776. Almost 4 million people, about 12.5% of the population were slaves. Native Americans were being steadily pushed out of their lands. Women couldn’t vote.

The U.S. Constitution would not be written for another eleven years and it would take over two more years for it to be ratified by all thirteen states. The Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion would take two more years to be ratified as amendments to the Constitution. But the direction that percolated from decades of irritation and unrest and was distilled into the Declaration was good, right and true and fed into those documents and have been pressing forward for more complete realization ever since. Just like Abraham.

Abraham’s vision from God included innumerable descendants, a land to call their own and through him a blessing to all peoples. He would not see any of that, only his two grandsons, Esau and Jacob. He would not see how fraught and difficult that path would be for his descendants. Four hundred years of slavery in Egypt, forty years in the wilderness during the Exodus, and an ongoing cycle of struggle after they settled in the Promised Land, and ever since, around the world. We are grafted into that vision as well.

I’d like to share a few passages that reflect the beauty and the challenge of the American Dream.

I Hear America Singing

By Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

This poem captures a spirit of American people living the dream. It rings true in our hearts, but it was published in 1860, just before the Civil War.

The Gettysburg Address

By Abraham Lincoln

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Civil War was still underway. The “unfinished work” was still underway. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was still more than two years away, and Lincoln would not live to see it. That advanced, but did not resolve the problems.

Nearly 100 years later, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was giving a speech at a civil rights march in Washington D.C. The speech was good. But the great singer Mahalia Jackson interrupted him and said, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” Dr. King left his prepared remarks and spoke from his heart. Here is part of that:

Excerpt from the “I Have a Dream” Speech

By the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream . . . I have a dream that one day in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today . . .

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning. “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountain side, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes ofCalifornia.

But not only that. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountain side. Let freedom ring . . .

When we allow freedom to ring—when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We are free at last.”

I want our young people to listen very carefully. Do not confuse the failures of our institutional and organizations with the dream. As one grows, one sees the failures. Every institution I love has failed at times; my schools, my employers, every one of them. Government at every level is such an easy target. Families fail, too. Our church is flawed; the Church is flawed. We are flawed individuals.

That is why Jesus came, to heal and redeem our flawed and broken nature, and to call us forward to realize the dream.

We are gathered here this morning as citizens of the Kingdom of God. We hold that vision together, although we have different perspectives on how it looks and we disagree on how best to achieve it. Do not be discouraged. Live the Dream.

AMEN!