I spent the first three years of my life in the tiny village of Cabot, Vermont, where my dad served two little churches. My parents loved it there and made many life-long friends. At the same time, small town dynamics could be intense, especially for the pastor’s family. Every once in a while, my parents would make a long drive just to escape into the anonymity of a Dunkin’ Donuts. I’m told that when I was born, people would stop by at all hours to see me, so my parents finally just placed my bassinet in the front window of the parsonage where passers-by could get a peek. My mom jokes that this early notoriety is what turned me into a shy, introverted person. We also have a family story about the year I starred in the town’s fourth of July parade. I rode, rosy cheeked and wild haired, on the hay wagon festooned in red white and blue, next to Arnold, a local dairy farmer and cherished family friend.

Looking at the grainy snapshots and silent movie footage of that day, I can feel it… our deep nostalgia about America, the dangerously simplistic mythology embedded in our Fourth of July rituals. The African American scholar and activist Dr. Cornel West, who teaches at Union Seminary in New York, praises the American Revolution, saying it was “the beginning of an anti-imperial movement against the largest empire of the day.” At the same time, he reminds us that this movement’s impulse toward freedom, democracy, and equality was “wedded to genocide of indigenous peoples and wedded to barbaric enslavement.” These sins are not incidental to who we were or have become, West argues; they are integral. He says, “There’d be no US democratic experiment, as precious as it is, without the land stolen or without the stolen labor… it was their labor that produced the wealth that was the foundation, the prerequisite, and the precondition of the democratic experiment.” ¹ Historian Ibrahim X. Kendi notes that American history is not a story of linear progress; it is a struggle of dueling consciousnesses—a tug of war between racist and anti-racist forces. ²

Amid this complexity, this both/and of our national story, what I celebrate on this anniversary is our possibility. I believe we are in a moment of incredible opportunity. In the overt struggle between White Christian Nationalism and multi-racial, multi-faith democracy, we face a reckoning. This moment fully unveils our choices and what is at stake in them. Perhaps we are finally ready to confront our sins, heal our hypocrisies, and become the nation we’ve claimed to be.

Today’s Gospel passage, too, describes a reckoning, a moment in which Jesus called his society to embrace truth amid hypocrisy. He accused “this present generation” of being like children in the marketplace who can’t agree on what to play. I don’t think he was talking to the crowds before him; he was addressing the religious and political leaders who were off stage, invisible and yet in control. They had imprisoned John who preached repentance, a heart-felt and sober return to God, and now they sought to silence Jesus by labeling him a party animal, discrediting his joyful, inclusive, liberatory message as mere gluttony. They collaborated with oppression in order to amass their own wealth and privilege. They did not care about the welfare of the people. They could not enter into the fullness of human experience expressed through both dancing and mourning. In all this, they violated the deeper spirit of the Jewish law—the call to love God, self and neighbor—expressed in all traditions of wisdom and faith.

Jesus’ prayer raised up the potency of that political moment. The movement led by John and Jesus was a revelation, an uncovering, an apocalypse; it brought a power shift with the potential to birth a new society. The possibility of this transformation was hidden from those who benefited from the present power arrangements—because they had no desire to see it.

So Jesus’ words of invitation and comfort that close today’s passage are addressed to those living under the weight of oppression. “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” These words echo the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5—words of blessing for the poor, the sick, the grieving, the peacemakers, the merciful, and those persecuted for telling truth and seeking justice. “Rest for your souls” is a deep kind of harmony that is the gift of the Creator on the seventh day of creation. The Sabbath is the weekly, tangible practice of rest. It is a holy pause in which we can receive the divine mending that is always at work in the world and yet never fully realized. After Israel’s time as slaves in Egypt, the Sabbath also became a day to remember that free people can and must choose to balance work with rest.

The reference to the yoke is a common metaphor for the Jewish law. With this reference, Jesus implied that there were some using the law as a weapon to control others and place unfair burdens on them. Jesus read his own tradition differently. He found in the ancient path of Judaism a God who uplifts the oppressed. He preached a God who is fiercely on the side of justice, like the angel of mercy in Tiffany’s window, who snaps the authoritarian rod of punishment and shields the little ones with her own body. “Take up my yoke upon you and learn from me.” This is an invitation to an equitable partnership. Disciples of Jesus learn by emulating him; they carry only what Jesus himself is willing to carry.

Friends, let us welcome this present reckoning. Let us enter into a restful, restorative pause. Let us ground ourselves again in truth that has the power to set us free.

In that spirit, I leave you with an incredible poem by Matt Moberg—local artist, and theologian—which he posted yesterday. Read the Poem

¹ “Guilty of Our Own Innocence with Cornel West” from Homebrewed Christianity
² How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi