As our nation looks toward the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, many will mark the occasion with fireworks, parades, barbecues and time with family and friends. Presiding Bishop Yehiel Curry invites the church to see this milestone as more than a celebration. It is also an opportunity for reflection.
The Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776, names a bold vision: equality for all people. Bishop Curry writes that “the declaration was and is a monumental document in the way it names the aspiration so boldly.” For that vision of freedom and equality, he says, “We can be grateful.”
At the same time, Bishop Curry reminds us that gratitude must be held alongside humility. The history of the United States is complex, and our nation has often failed to live fully into the values it has proclaimed. As Lutherans and as people of faith, we are called to name those realities honestly, confess where we have fallen short and continue working for the well-being of all people.
“As citizens, we confess the ways we have not yet realized the vision of the Declaration of Independence,” Bishop Curry writes, “and, more importantly, as Christians we confess the ways we have participated in or been complicit in failures to live into the vision God provides.”
That vision, he reminds us, is rooted not only in civic ideals but in our faith. Each person is created in the image of God, and in Christ we are set free to love and serve one another. Bishop Curry asks us to consider: “What does it mean to celebrate a promise that is real and yet still unfolding?”
For Lutheran Christians, this anniversary is an opportunity to remember our connection to one another through baptism, to repent of sin and to serve the common good. We live, as Bishop Curry says, in “the already and the not-yet”—grateful for the promises that have shaped our nation and honest about the work still before us.
Most of all, we hold fast to God’s promise. Bishop Curry writes that we celebrate “neither as a perfect nation nor as a perfect church but as a people held in God’s grace and called into community in service to all neighbors and for the sake of the world God so loves.”
