I think it’s a remarkable thing that we date the birth of our nation not by the final victory in the War of Independence, but from the signing of a document that was written when that war was still young, and the outcome was seriously in doubt. We don’t set off fireworks on the anniversary of the ratification of the Constitution or take a long weekend to celebrate the inauguration of the first President, but we do for the signing of a piece of paper that establishes no permanent institutions, or any laws. The Declaration of Independence is a complaint, a cry for justice, and at its heart is a deeply personal sense of betrayal.
Contrary to what you might think, the Declaration doesn’t have anything bad to say about the institution of monarchy per se. It doesn’t lay out a plan for republican government. It doesn’t even really say a whole lot about what used to be called “the rights of man.” What is does do is describe a King of England who has broken faith with his American subjects. It lists in great detail the things which a just sovereign would have done that this King has refused to do. It enumerates all the things he has done that show callous indifference to the well-being of the American colonies. It is a description of a relationship that has failed.
It is hard for us to estimate the personal anguish that those men would have had to work through to sign that paper. They were English, after all. As it had been for generations of their forebears, the supreme symbol of that Englishness, the language and laws, the culture and customs, was the sacred person of the king. Loyalty to the king was a keystone of their sense of piety and personal honor. It was only out of the most profound sense of injury that they would have given that up.
And it is easy to forget that when they said “all men are created equal” they were not putting forward an abstract principle. They were saying that in the eyes of God, commoners are the equal of kings— and not just any commoners but they themselves. Those 56 men in that hot room in Philadelphia were addressing the King of England as another man, one who had done them wrong. And by the simple act of signing a paper, they took that king’s divine right, the sacred power of the sovereign state, into their own hands, the hands of tobacco planters and printers, merchants, preachers, and lawyers. No wonder they ended the Declaration with these words: “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” They’d just kicked the props out from under the only world they knew; divine Providence and one another were all they had left.
The Bible is full of such moments, turning points in history that are, also crises of personal decision, fraught with personal risk. The epic story of Abraham and his descendants begins a new chapter in God’s dealings with humankind through the ups and downs of a single family. When we pick up the story this week, that family is at yet another crossroads. Sarah has died, and Abraham is very old. It is time for the covenant with the one God to pass on to the next generation. But the next generation is their son, Isaac. The promise of the covenant is of descendants as numerous as the stars in the desert sky, and all they’ve got is Isaac. If the story is going to continue, it’s going to have to become a love story.
Abraham sends his servant back to Mesopotamia to look for a wife for his son. The servant is faithful, and God guides him to just the right place at just the right time. Still, it is up to Rebekah to say the right words, to show herself generous and forthright and kind. And when she has given the servant a drink, and drawn water for his camels, and he has come to her fathers’ house and explained his errand, it is still up to her whether she will go along with the plan. Not for the last time in the Bible, the fate of the salvation story waits on the consent of a young woman.
In the biblical worldview, to be human is to be faced with real choices, but they don’t happen in a vacuum. Rebekah’s entrance into this story is scripted by divine Providence even down to the words she will say to Abraham’s servant at the spring. It is a part that is written perfectly for her character. Nevertheless, everything depends on her willingness to play it. She has a real choice to make.
The bible tells us that our freedom and responsibility are real, but our lives are an ensemble performance. Rebekah has to make her choice, but it is shaped by the choices Abraham has made, and the servant, and her brother, and her father. And she is saying yes to a husband she has never met. She is taking a risk, and this story will not be complete until Isaac plays his part, says yes to her, and takes her into his mother’s tent and loves her. In choosing love, Isaac and Rebekah are saying yes to their lives’ fulfillment, and at the same time they are keeping faith with God. Their marriage serves God’s providential purpose for the covenant family who will be their offspring.
Loving relationships, whether family relationships or friendships, have this quality of divine providence about them. They are not necessarily what we would have chosen for ourselves if we had sat down and written out a prescription for our ideal. But they have a mysterious way of enticing us towards those critical decisions that make a real difference for ourselves and for the world. Which is not always easy. Most of would rather do almost anything than change. But the divine grace we call Love is the one thing that can overcome the hardest resistance. When I think of the really fateful choices that I’ve had to make in my life, it’s love for others and the love of others that has gotten me off the dime.
When I was eighteen years old I faced the decision of whether or not to register for the draft. If I did, I felt, I would be acquiescing to a resurgent militarism that I felt was a threat to the moral, economic, and physical survival of my country. If I did not, I would forfeit the federally-funded grants and loans that kept me in the elite private East-coast college I was attending. I agonized over this decision, but in the end I refused to register, and dropped out of college, a choice that, for good or ill, made me the person I am today.
The turning point in my being able to do this came one night when I started to think of all my friends and schoolmates from high school and college, all the other young men I knew, and I understood deeply that none of them could make the choice I was about to make. Not because they might not have wanted to, not because they were less noble or virtuous than me in any way, but simply because the circumstances of their lives were different. This was a decision that I could make, alone of all the people I knew, and so I had to make it.
The way of Jesus offers us a burden, but it’s a burden we can bear. It is the burden of knowing ourselves so deeply connected to others, that we can live out our own unique individual story. It is the burden of making the difficult choices that only we can make, but the rest of knowing that our responsibility is not total, and the wisdom of God orders all things. It is the burden of helping put on a party where every imaginable kind of weirdo and disreputable character is invited, and the relief of finding your name on the guest list. It is the burden of love, which carries with it every kind of risk and disappointment and loss, but it is also the lightness of being loved with a tender ferocity that will not let us say no.
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