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Sermons
Sermon for the Fifth
Sunday after Pentecost (Independence Weekend)
Proper 9, Year B
July 5, 2009 Randal B. Gardner
While the foundation of our
nation’s laws was laid in the Constitution, and the idealism
that founded this country was put forth in the soaring prose of
the Declaration of Independence, the reality of the nation we
have become was forged in the Civil War, by far the bloodiest
and most costly war we may ever wage.
By its end the Civil War
re-established three central ideals that distinguished the
United States from most of the nations of the 19th
century. First among these ideals is that public law, forged in
the ponderous conversations of a representative government, must
prevail over all other claims to power and privilege. The second
ideal, far more difficult to maintain, is that this nation is
called to adhere to what is right. Apart from holding fast to
what is right and good, this country forfeits its claim to be a
nation of free citizens dedicated to liberty and justice. The
third of these central ideals is a faith in the value of citizen
government itself, believing that free people will ultimately
agree to what is right, even though periods of insecurity,
prejudice, and shortsightedness may confuse that vision for a
generation or more.
If there is a leading figure
in forging these three ideals, it is Abraham Lincoln. If there
is a leading figure who shaped the moral conviction by which
Lincoln led us through that terrible war, it is Frederick
Douglass.
Lincoln and Douglass were
unlikely characters to take such leading roles for the country.
Lincoln was born in poverty and by the time of his election was
so physically deformed by some genetic illness that commentators
generally described him as gruesome. Douglass was the son of a
slave woman impregnated by her white owner. That same man kept
Douglass as a slave, but his wife taught the slave boy to read
and encouraged him to desire freedom. Douglass escaped from his
slavery in his twenties and fled to New England, where he gained
a good reputation for his brilliant speeches and passionate
writing. He remained a quasi fugitive until a group of British
business men bought him his freedom in 1846.
Both Lincoln and Douglass had
high intelligence and a gift for using language to move hearts
and win arguments. Both were self-educated, and both were
captivated by the dream of the United States as a City on the
Hill, as a Beacon for all Nations. Lincoln learned the law and
spent several terms in the state house.
He served one term as a
congressman from Illinois and declined the political suicide of
becoming the governor of the Oregon Territory, even though that
position was graciously offered to him by President Taylor.
Douglass founded his own newspaper, and his published essays on
abolition and the need for education established him as a
leading voice in the movement to end slavery.
Lincoln was elected because
of his inspiring and sensible speeches, interspersed with folk
humor and wisdom that endeared him to the people —at least the
people of the North. Seven of the southern states seceded after
his election, and several more were poised to do so. Lincoln’s
initial approach was to act on the hope of conciliation,
extending such olive branches to the South as the promise not to
interfere with slavery, supporting a fugitive slave law that was
harsher than any before it, and endorsing a constitutional
amendment that would have made slave ownership permanent in any
state where slavery was already practiced.
Douglass was outraged by how
Lincoln turned away from the anti-slavery sentiments he had
described in his campaign. In a series of essays published in
his paper, and a series of letters to the President, Douglass
reiterated time and again that God expected better of a nation
and its President than compromises on the question of slavery.
Lincoln was determined to limit the scope of the war if
possible, and did everything he could to make it possible for
the secession to end on terms Southerners could accept.
However, when Lincoln’s son
William died of typhoid fever in 1862, he was moved by a deep
sympathy for all those who had already grieved the loss of sons
to the growing war. That personal feeling for the war’s cost
began to move him toward a clearer resolve that the war’s end
should be for what was right and true, and shortly after his own
personal tragedy he penned the first draft of the Emancipation
Proclamation.
In a series of speeches and
letters that followed, Lincoln began to show a deep belief that
the continuation of slavery would prevent the restoration of the
Union, and the for the sake of the Union the practice of slavery
must be abolished. Douglass, who nearly left the United States
in despair at Lincoln’s earlier disregard for the interests of
slaves, felt encouraged to remain and continue to express his
hopeful vision for a nation not only freed of slavery but one in
which an equality of races could bring forth a greater energy
for good than any nation had previously achieved.
Now constantly encouraging,
often in the form of criticism, Douglass used every possible
method to shape Lincoln’s growing resolve to make the issue of
slavery the basis on which to win the war. Though costing him
the support of many northerners who had no interest in sacrifice
on behalf of slaves or freed blacks, Lincoln finally issued the
Emancipation Proclamation and insisted that the abolition of
slavery needed to have the force of an amendment to the
Constitution.
Where Lincoln’s genius met
Douglass’s more easily expressed Christian faith was in the
resolve that the war’s end must rest upon a clear practice of
forgiveness. No punitive recourse was to be taken against the
confederate soldiers, nor against those who had bought and sold
slaves. Lincoln was able to express a deep faith in God’s
providence and in the stewardship of the good he was entrusted
to serve as President, but he never wavered from the humility
that kept him from claiming to know the details of God’s will.
Lincoln’s faith was clear
that God had given a general moral outline for humanity, and in
that faith he found the resolve to oppose slavery and to see
reconciliation as the great theme of salvation. He never
suffered the hubris to suggest that God loved the citizens of
the North better than those of the South, or that Southerners
were more evil than he was. Together these two remarkable men
expressed a vision for the United States that clarified the
untenable violation of human dignity which slavery was, that the
restoration of common law applied to all equally — even through
war — would be essential for the continuation of the great
American experiment in liberty, and that the energy of the
people — Northerners, Southerners, former slaves, and former
slave owners — was at the center of the dream upon which the
United States was founded.
Few declarations made in
history are more radical, nor more hopeful, than words like
“liberty and justice for all.” Lincoln and Douglass carried this
nation through its darkest period in history. By their moral
vision and personal sacrifices they gave our nation a rebirth —
“a new birth of freedom,” as Lincoln put it — and restored for
awhile the sense that ours was a nation given a chance by God to
be a shining light for all people.
Having broken the yoke of
slavery by enforcement, it has been the continuing recollection
of their words and recitations of their characters that broke
the yoke of slavery with moral force. Within a few generations
the righteous imaginations of Lincoln and Douglass became the
unequivocal truth for our nation. In the end their words have
become the words of the American people, and by their
inspiration our nation reaffirmed once more the radical claim
that all are created equal.
In the end ours is a nation
which exists solely for the sake of being righteous, in which
liberty is not a license but a responsibility, in which the
confusion every generation suffers eventually resolves into a
capitulation of the truth and the restoration of a claim that we
are called to be more than what other nations envision. Our
nation exists for the very sake of demonstrating that God’s gift
of freedom to humanity was not a tragic error, but the ultimate
hope of the creation.
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