You have heard those monotone lectures before, and usually our minds wander, looking around at other things or our watch. But not this time. This ranger had passion and energy about his story. We were transported back to June 19, 1775. As we stand on the bridge facing east, three regiments of a force of 90 red coated British soldiers march at quick step toward us. Behind us on the other side of the bridge stands a company of Minutemen. Other Minutemen stand on the hill above us protecting a large manor house where their guns and weapons are stored. In the distance smoke rises from the town of Concord: had the British set the town on fire?
The British soldiers draw closer, bayoneted muskets pointed forward. They stop and there is silence. Minutemen face the soldiers. The British represent the face of oppression and injustice. Beating in the hearts of these colonial farmers and merchants is a fiery hope for freedom and justice.
Ralph Waldo Emerson captured the event in his Concord Hymn:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot hear round the world.
The ranger described the chaos following that first shot, Minutemen standing firm and firing back, three British soldiers fell, the other troops withdrew and began a forced march retreat back to Boston. Dozens of other soldiers were picked off by Minutemen shooting from trees and stone walls in the torturous retreat.
I can see the rock wall beside that Concord Bridge, where two of the soldiers were interred. James Russell Lowell, in his poem Lines, also remembers those men:
Two graves are here: to mark the place
At head and foot, and unhewn stone,
O’er which the herald lichens trace
The blazon of Oblivion.
In 1910 resident of Concord placed a plaque that I could read marking those graves beside the bridge, using other lines from Lowell’s poem:
Grave of British soldiers.
They came three thousand miles and died,
To keep the past upon its throne.
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide.
Their English Mother made her moan.
April 19, 1775.
My imagination returned again to that tense moment of the face-off between soldiers and colonists: it seemed to be a primal moment that reflected other similar encounters and struggles for freedom and justice.
March 1965, a wall of Alabama State Troopers blocks the march of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Edmond Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday. East German demonstrators face East German soldiers at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate 1989. Chinese students face Chinese soldiers in Tiananmen Square, Beijing 1989. Egyptian citizens face security forces in Tahrin Square, Cairo, 2011. Desmond Tutu faces South African security forces during the struggle against apartheid.
On this celebration weekend of American Independence, we remember the proclamation of July 4, 1776. And it is good in this Eucharist to have the grounding of these scriptures to remind us that the core values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness did not come originally from John Locke and the other Enlightenment philosophers.
These core values were first imagined in another face-off of Moses and Hebrew slaves in Egypt, challenging the imperial power of Pharaoh. This was a world where nothing new could happen, only life and death. If you were a slave, you hoped to eat and live another day and to die a quick death.
But Moses emerged as the first Jewish prophet, who as Walter Bruggemann describes, “imagined an alternative reality to the dominant consciousness.” The dominant consciousness was Pharaoh, who was God. He had the power. The alternative reality promised at Sinai was that a people of slaves would overcome the world’s number one political power and be led into wilderness and the land of promise. Out of the Exodus experience, the Hebrew people were given the radical ideas of freedom, of progress, of a future of hope.
They were also given another radical idea: that they are to work for the common good, for the widow, orphan, the immigrant, the foreigner. Everyone should have enough. At the heart of their spirituality was the Torah commandment to remember: remember what God did in that face off with oppression, what God did in the wilderness and how the unimagined reality of freedom became their new identity.
Life, Liberty, the pursuit of happiness are all gifts of the Jews from the Exodus event that have inspired unconsciously all struggles for freedom and justice.
As Americans the struggle of the American Revolution is part of our identity and we remember that freedom is never free. We remember that even today, this day, people are dying for the hope for freedom.
As Americans, we are reminded that we are not just citizens of one country, members of one religion, members of one family, and members of one race and gender. We are citizens of the whole world, one with all who believe, brothers and sisters with all who are sincere, and part of the one family of humanity. And these wider loyalties constitute our deepest identity.
Ron Rolheiser reminds us that Jesus redefined both our citizenship and our loyalties.
“Real family, real country, real religion, and real identity are not based upon blood relationship, skin color, gender, church affiliation or shared geography. What makes real family, country, religion, or identity is a share spirit, the Holy Spirit of charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long-suffering, faith, fidelity, gentleness, and chastity. These transcend all other boundaries of country, religion, family, race and gender. They are what ultimately ask for our loyalty.”
Our real passport is not issued by an individual country and baptism puts us in solidarity with others beyond any one faith or denomination. On this American Independence weekend we remember those who fought and struggled for freedom and those today in the global family who struggle against powerful forces and who also are inheritors of the gifts of the Jews.
Amen.
Resource used:
Multi-citizenship---Wide Loyalties, Ron Rolheiser, April 17, 2006.
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