A Meditation on America’s 250th
July 5, 2026
6th Sunday after Pentecost ~ Communion
MINISTER
Rev. David J. Wood
SCRIPTURE
Ephesians 2: 17-22l Mark 12: 13-17
"“A Meditation on America’s 250th”
by Rev. David J. Wood
6th Sunday After Pentecost, July 5, 2026
First Congregational Church of Camden
Scripture Readings: Ephesians 2: 17-22 & Mark 12:13-17
An additional reading was provided by Penn Rogers who read for us his poem, “Declaration (Revised)”
Quills scratched on parchment,
powdered wigs nodding,
white men in waistcoats
complaining of taxes on tea
while ships of stolen people groaned at anchor,
while nations older than empires
were being carved into maps.
They raged at quartered soldiers
and “intolerable acts,”
as if liberty were only
a matter of where one hung his coat,
not of whose chains clinked in the fields.
They summoned ideals like stage props,
but would not look past the footlights.
And yet—
ink has a way of outlasting
the narrowness of its scribes.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident”—
truths larger than their hands could hold,
truths that slipped their grasp and ran loose,
refusing to be fenced by property lines.
“All men are created equal”—
a phrase born small,
but echoing louder with every stolen breath
that demanded it be real.
The words outgrew them,
they grew fangs,
they grew wings.
So let the ghosts of their compromises rot—
we need not bow to them.
We can seize the fragments they left,
forge a fire from their careless sparks,
and declare again—
not for their republic,
but for ours.
Life.
Liberty.
The pursuit of happiness.
They belong to us now,
all colors, all tongues,
all faiths, all loves.
We are many,
and it is our many-ness
that makes us strong.
[Note: This past May, Penn’s poem won First Prize in a statewide competition in Massachusetts’ “Concord250 Call for Poetry.” On the video, you can see Penn’s reading of Declaration (Revised). Penn is the grandson of FCC member Ward Wickwire.]
~~~~~~~~
This day after the 250th Celebration of the Declaration of Independence seemed like a good day to reflect on the meaning of citizenship. Let me begin with a few comments on the two texts you just heard.
First the text from Mark. It probably comes as no surprise that taxes have been a source of conflict for a millennia. In Jesus’ day, some thought it was treason against God to pay taxes to the Roman state. The Roman state, of course, considered it treason to refuse to pay taxes. Talk about being between a rock and hard place.
In response, Jesus does not provide a yes or no answer. Instead he questions his questioners.
He asks them for a coin. Note that Jesus does not have a coin. The fact that they do is an indictment in itself. The Jewish proscription against graven images should have prevented them from having such coinage in their possession.
They produce a coin. He asks, “Whose image does it bear? Whose title is inscribed on it?” “Caesar’s”
Tiberius Caesar reigned for almost 20 years during the time of Jesus. The inscription would have read, “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus”
In response, Jesus declares, “Then Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar…to God what belongs to God.
Every Jewish hearer would immediately connect where the image of God is to be found…not on any material coin but in the heart, the very center of the human being…that shapes how we live and move and have our being…to what and to whom we are devoted.
There always exists the possibility that we will render unto Caesar things that belong to God…
When a President promises to “protect my beautiful Christians” and that, with him in office, “Christians will have power” there are many who claim to be followers of Jesus who find that promise appealing.
However…there is no small portion of the Christian community who find such a promise appalling…who rightly regard that as nothing less than an invitation by a Caesar to render to him a devotion, an allegiance that belongs only to God.
Any rightful understanding of Christian citizenship requires a vigilance to understand first and foremost the things that belong to God. What else is a church for?
The Second text comes from Ephesians. In the passage we read and the surrounding verses, Paul tells us that because of what Christ has done, a new peace is now possible for every human being. Notice uses the language of citizenship:
“you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God…we are being built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
Our first citizenship, Paul writes, is as a people in the household of God…where by God’s grace we are becoming a new people. In this letter, Paul goes on to spell out the marks of such citizenship:
One that is rooted and grounded in love
Called to Live in humility and gentleness,
bearing with one another in love,
Speak truth to our neighbors…
for we are members of one another…
To be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you…be imitators of God….live in love.
In another letter to early Christians (Galatians), Paul writes that in that dwelling place, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
That citizenship in the household of God forms and informs how we understand whatever citizenship we may hold in any single country during our days on this earth.
We are bound to a God who transcends all national ideologies…and boundaries…and so, however imperfectly, we as citizen’s of God’s Household, devote our lives to living in love with our neighbors—seeking liberty, equality, and justice for all—in every time and place we find ourselves.
Rising again and again to that challenge…is at the heart of what it means to love God and to abide as a citizen of whatever country we find ourselves in. That is at once simple and complicated.
This brings me back to the Declaration of Independence…it is not Scripture…but it rings true to those for whom Scripture is sacred.
The Declaration of Independence was a radical departure…a new direction for a new world…it feels like it speaks of a fundamental understanding of human beings that resonates with what we know of God…and ourselves as children of God….
It is a mirror of who we were or are as a nation but a measure to which we are to be held accountable. That accountability is not to a person, or a King or a family or a dynasty who reign by some Divine Right.
As Penn so eloquently articulated in his poem, its power lies in its capacity to continually call us as a nation onward…and upward. Over the many decades or our history, the Declaration has proven to be an incubator of an imagination and inspiration for self-critique, civil disobedience, social transformation and renewal.
In the nazi death camp known as Buchenwald—-there was a sign over one of the main gatehouses that read: “Right or Wrong—my Fatherland!” That is a take on the phrase made famous by a US Naval Commander, Stephen Decatur, in a toast he made some 100 years before…”My Country, right or wrong!” —a phrase that became a popular way of defining the meaning of true patriotism.
In 1871, in a speech on the Senate floor in the US Capitol that received thunderous applause from the Gallery, Senator Carl Schurz revised that phrase: “My country right or wrong—if right, to be kept right; if wrong to be set right.”
When I think of what Christian citizenship looks like, like many of you, I think of think of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King standing on the National Mall in 1963…invoking the words of the ancient prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures AND the Declaration of Independence.
His aim was not to establish a Christian country, but to call his country to account for itself on its own terms. In his speech, he quoted from Isaiah 40:
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
He proclaimed these words from the prophet Amos:
Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
He also called on all Americans to be accountable to their founding documents: He called those founding documents a “Promissory Note.”
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.…
He went on….
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.
We are still rising. We are far from done rising.
And rise we must for the sake of all.
For those facing continued discrimination and injustice because of race, gender, sexual identity.
We must rise for the sake of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free…within our borders, at our borders and beyond our borders…
We must rise for policies and legislation that insures the health and well being of all…
We must rise in demanding a just tax code that does not alleviate the wealthy from contributing to the welfare of all..
This list is long and the need is great…
As one theologian put it:
As Christians, we are called to situate ourselves at the base camp of human need.
To which I would add…..
And to do all we can to make sure our government is found there as well.
William Sloane Coffin says there are three kinds of patriots: two bad, one good. I’ll let you decide which is which:
There are those who are Uncritical lovers.
There are those who are Loveless critics
And then there are those who carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country…reflective of God’s lover’s quarrel with the world.
I could not be more grateful at this time in our national life, to be among a community engaged in a lover’s quarrel with our country…a community who reflects in increasing measure the lover’s quarrel God has with and for the world.
Amen.