SPEAKER_00 0:00

They've had judges for many generations, local leaders who work together for protection and leadership. But it has been a time of war and unrest. If you ever want to read about stuff that you never thought was in the Bible, read the book of Judges. It all happens there. And so the people of Israel are worried about the future. And so they decide they want a king. They want to be like the other nations. And you heard them, we want a king who will go out to war on our behalf. We want somebody else to do our work. And God warns the people of Israel that a king is going to exploit them in all of those ways. A king is going to tax them. And the people want a king anyway. And God, while disagreeing with their rationale and very disappointed in them in that way that a parent is, I'm so disappointed in you, lets them do it. Because one of the ways that our God loves us is in giving us free will to determine our own systems and to make our own mistakes. And we're here today because some children of God gathered 250 years ago to make a similar but different choice to the people of Israel 3,000 years ago. How shall we be governed? Is the way that it has always been, or at least the only way that we have ever known it to be, the way it should be? Or might there be some better word? And so 56 men gathered in Philadelphia 250 years ago today to sign the Declaration of Independence, words full of grand ideas and ideals, including what we heard today. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now I know that I was not included in the all Thomas Jefferson wrote. Looking around the room, most of the people in this room were not included in the all that Thomas Jefferson wrote. And yet, he was more right than he knew. Because he set all as the standard for equality and for rights. And what a brilliant promise and image. And even though it was not perfectly fulfilled 200 years ago, and even though it is not perfectly fulfilled today, all people are created equal, and they have rights simply for being human that don't rely upon being any one particular creed or faith tradition. It doesn't rely upon citizenship. There was no citizens yet. They were just getting done with being subjects. Just to be human meant to have the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And human beings have a right to determine and participate in and consent to their form of government and to change it when it's in error. If you've not read the full Declaration of Independence in its entirety for a while, I encourage you to go home and do so today. And especially the He has section, which follows the glorious ideals, which outline all the offenses the king has committed and matches up fairly well against 1 Samuel 8. Because it gives us further understanding of what it means to have a government that is for the benefit and service of the people and with their consent. Here are a few of the he has sections. He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power, for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us, for protecting them by a mock trial from punishment, for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states, for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world, for imposing taxes on us without our consent, for depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury, for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. The things that mattered 250 years ago to the men in that room in Philadelphia matter today. We're living in a time of peril. That's not news really anywhere in the United States right now. We disagree on the cause and remedy for that matter, but I don't hear anyone walking around in 2026 and saying we have completely fulfilled our ideals and living in peace and prosperity with the entire world. I saw pictures and video this morning of masked members of the Patriot Front, a white supremacist group founded after the Charlottesville demonstrations in 2017, marching through the streets of Washington, DC to champion a vision of America that explicitly does not include all. And yet, on March 23rd, 2026, I got to have a perfect encapsulation of what it is to be an American today. I had to fly from Houston Airport to Kenya. And you may remember upon my saying this that March 26 was the absolute apex of the failure of Congress to fund the TSA. And so I was in line for over four hours, silently fuming at our leaders for their inability to work together to provide basic services for their citizens. But also, the people in line with me were awesome. We asked each other's names, we found out where we were going, what time everyone's flight took off, we made predictions about who would make their flights. We shared snacks and water bottles. We held places in line for us when we needed to use a restroom. And when someone tried to cut in line, we took care of it. Because we had a collective sense of right and justice and fairness. And the employees at the Houston Airport who had been brought on in droves to make up for the lack of DSA agents were also amazing. Working so hard to get us to follow, you know, combs with caution tapes zigging and zagging all around the basement and the bowels of the Houston Airport in the worst nightmare Disneyland line ever. But there we were, we were racially and socioeconomically diverse. We were not all citizens of the United States, and I'm certain we were not all members of a single political party. And yet, I fell back in love with America that day for four hours. And I made my flight. Look around you right now. Look around at the people who are here. Look at your neighbors, the people you know, the people you don't know. These people around you, you share a bond with. A bond of shared humanity, shared rights, shared hopes. Polly Murray, the episcopal priest, but more importantly, civil rights leader and lawyer, said, I want America to be what she says she is. And I consider it part of my responsibility to do that. It's a kind of patriotism. Years ago, when my friend Linie Varnice was being installed as the rector of St. Mark's in the Bowery, New York City, there was a moment where normally in the process of the service, they present the canons in the church, you know, our governing laws as a church. And they're presented with the words, obey these canons. And that day, the canons were being presented by the vice president of the House of Deputies for the Episcopal Church, Byron Rushing, who is a black politician and state representative from Massachusetts. And Byron said, Receive the canons of the church and remember that they can be amended. Celebrating that government can be amended. Those gentlemen who gathered 250 years ago today knew they were going to have to amend their system of government and did so at great peril for their lives. Ben Franklin was heard to say, if we do not hang together, we shall most certainly all hang separately. But they knew it wasn't perfect as it was, and they started amending things right away once we have a system of government, always improving in search of, if not perfection, a further completion of our ideals. All has been expanded again and again as we collectively realized who was fully human, something that many people already knew in 1776, if not our founders. And so on this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we have a time to reflect on what we do hold dear and what we are willing to sacrifice and risk for it, in the tradition of those who wrote it. Do we believe in all? And if we do, what will we do about it? The moment is hard, differently hard than in 1776, perhaps. But Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, wrote words to her son John Quincy Adams in 1780 that I think are good to hear as a letter she wrote to us today in 2026. These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life or the repose of a Pacific station that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman. May it be so in our time as well.