This year it will be a strange 4th of July.
This year we will celebrate our “liberty” even as military vehicles rumple through the streets of our cities using the violence of the few to justify crushing the peaceful dissent of the masses.
This year some of us will be celebrating America as a powerful military empire with flags and firecrackers. Others of us will be in grieving for America as an unfulfilled hope for universal human rights.
It is vital this 4th of July for Christians to take the flags out of our sanctuaries. We must return to the call to love beyond every boundary. If our love does not reach beyond family or nation it is not the love that embraces enemy as well as friend and, thus, heals the world of animosity.
When we allow our leaders to dismantle protections for anyone else, it is our own rights we throw away. We can only love our nation by loving the earth and our human family more.
This year Christians must remember that ours is not the Christianity of the inquisitors and crusaders. We must be the descendants of people from every religion and worldview who suffered for saying “no” to Pharaoh, and then suffered for saying “no” to Caesar.
This 4th of July poses us with the question, “do we now stand ready to suffer for saying “no” to any American Caesar whether liberal, conservative or MAGA?”
Resistance to tyranny was once a central part of many religions. The midwives of Egypt disobeyed Pharaoh so Moses could be born. Moses killed an Egyptian for mistreating his people. Mary sang a song while she was pregnant that her son would topple the mighty and lift up the weak.
It is important for Christians to remember that God didn’t invent the cross, Rome did. Rome didn’t crucify people for their religion. The reason the Romans put Jesus on the cross was probably because they thought he was an insurrectionist.
The great friends of humanity, whether religious or not, have called us to resist tyranny, by not submitting to anyone’s persecution. This 4th of July gives us the opportunity to demonstrate we would not have been good citizens of the Nazi regime but would have broken the law to protect the all targeted people in Nazi Germany.
The proof of our love is not found in any religious ritual or sectarian creed. We can only embrace the love that grows into justice by joining in resistance to every form of domination and injustice anywhere in our human family.