Proper 9a 2026, July 5 Independence Day
Romans 7:15-25; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
Jack Hardaway
No matter where I go there I am.
Where ever we go- we take ourselves with us, there is no escape.
A new place, but just as stuck as before.
I don’t do what I want to do, and I do what I don’t want to do.
Paul states the predicament of faith and love and relationships and of our nation so clearly.
“Who will rescue me from this body of death?”, Paul says.
Who will set me free from this slavery to the power of sin?
I love so poorly.
The Gospel is that Jesus sets us free. And the terrifying glory of that gift is that the more I fail the more that Grace abounds to set me free.
The mystery of it. The further I run away the closer that God pursues, so much so that some have described the pursuit as being God hunted, and Christ haunted.
It is like a gothic tragic comedy, a vaudeville stage play, Laurel and Hardy, the more I fail the more God’s grace abounds. Who’s on first? Grace beats us there.
The paradox of Grace, the further we fall the closer grace draws near.
The freedom of faith and grace can be elusive, but it is also relentless.
Much like the freedom that our country has been pursuing for 250 years, true freedom is a tricky thing. We aren’t there yet.
The overlapping of faith and politics.
I am only free when I choose love, otherwise I am a slave to sin.
How to get there as a nation?
I have no idea. God’s grace abounds even more.
How to live with faith in the Grace that pursues us and be a citizen of a nation with unimaginable wealth and power, and corruption, and greed and poverty, and generosity, and kindness, and love, a country crowded with contradictions.
God’s grace abounds.
Citizens of God’s kingdom and citizens of the United States of America.
We should feel that tension.
And that tension is what we should celebrate, the freedom to discern and explore the elusive power of freedom, the freedom to choose love.
Celebrate the tension. It means faith is alive. Treasure that tension, it means our Nation is alive. Keep the feast.
Happy birthday America.