St. John’s Lutheran Church
Albany, New York
5 July 2026 + The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 9 / Lectionary 14a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
The Rev. Josh Evans

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“Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask,
why am I called upon to speak here today?
What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?
Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice,
embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?
And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar,
and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings
resulting from your independence to us?

“Would to God, both for your sakes and ours,
that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions!
Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. […]

“But such is not the state of the case.
I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us.
I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary!
Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.
The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.
The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence,
bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me.
The sunlight that brought light and healing to you,
has brought stripes and death to me.
This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.
You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

One hundred seventy-four years ago today,
in Rochester, New York,
escaped slave and ardent abolitionist Frederick Douglass
spoke these words on the occasion of the nation’s 76th anniversary
of its declaration of independence,
at the heart of which Douglass poses the question
that gives his speech its common title:
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?”

Douglass’ speech came less than two years
after the Fugitive Slave Act was signed into law –
requiring all escaped slaves to be returned to their “owners” –
and less than a decade before the very issue of slavery
would rip apart the country in the deadliest war of its history.

Douglass unabashedly calls his audience to account –
not least of which includes the complicity of the American church –
for the hypocrisy of a celebration of independence
while at the very same time perpetuating the slavery of others,
“the great sin and shame of America.”

One hundred seventy-four years ago, Douglass asks:
What to the slave is this Fourth of July?

One hundred seventy-four years later, I wonder:

What to the immigrant family –
whose spouse, parent, child, sibling, friend, coworker
has been detained and disappeared by ICE –
is the Fourth of July?

What to the family of 7-year-old Harbe Nagi mourning their child –
amidst a surge of hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric
from business owners in our own community,
in a country that enshrines as its First Amendment the freedom of religion –
is the Fourth of July?

What to the transgender teenager, deadnamed and misgendered,
fearful for their life and uncertain of their future –
whose very right to exist as their whole and holy self
is under attack in the name of religion –
is the Fourth of July?

What to a nation bitterly divided across partisan ideologies,
whose aspirational ideals of liberty for all
have yet to be fully realized 250 years later,
where the fireworks feel like less a celebration
and more a reminder of the bombs that shower destruction
on our siblings around the globe,
is the Fourth of July?

What to the faithful follower of Jesus
combatting the rise of Christian nationalism –
which is really no Christianity at all –
is the Fourth of July?

“Come to me,”
Jesus says in the familiar words from Matthew’s gospel,
“all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.”

That’s a stunning and beautiful and hope-filled promise.

And it doesn’t end there:
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.”

And here’s the thing about yoking:
It takes two,
working together.

I don’t think it’s any mistake
that Jesus’ words of promise
also call us to be yoked together –
and maybe have something to teach us
about freedom.

From the very beginning,
God knew it was not good for us to be alone,
and so God created a helper and a partner for the first human.
God knew the truth we have also come to experience:
We are better together –
in community, in partnership, in solidarity:
sharing one another’s joys and concerns,
celebrating with those who celebrate,
mourning with those who mourn,
collectively carrying burdens too heavy for any one of us to carry alone.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.”
Learn that you are always interdependent on those around you.

Our namesake reformer Martin Luther understood two things well,
as he writes in his 1520 essay “The Freedom of a Christian”:

First, God in Christ has made us free –
free from the power of sin and the ways we harm one another.
This is the heart of the gospel, the good news, that we cling to.

And second, our freedom also makes us free to serve
and to love our neighbors in the same way
that Christ has served and loved us.

In other words, we are simultaneously freed from and freed for:
Freed from the ways we rely only on ourselves
and separate ourselves from one another,
and freed for community, partnership, and working together
toward reshaping the world-as-it-is
into the world as God longs for it to be.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.”
Learn that you are always deeply connected to those around you.

What, then, to the faithful follower of Jesus
is the Fourth of July?

It is freedom:
the freedom that is ours in Christ
that liberates us from our selves
and calls us into community.

It is belonging:
in the commonwealth of God’s reign –
beyond any national identity or citizenship,
beyond any partisan ideology or political affiliation –
yoking us together in Beloved Community.

It is allegiance:
to the gospel,
to the good news of God’s redeeming and liberating love
for the whole world.

It is hope:
in God’s future,
of rest for all who are hurting
and refuge for all who all are vulnerable.

“I do not despair of this country,”
Frederick Douglass says in closing.
“There are forces in operation
which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. […]
I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. […]
The fiat of the Almighty, ‘Let there be Light,’
has not yet spent its force.
No abuse, no outrage, whether in taste, sport, or avarice,
can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.”

This is our calling
as faithful followers of Jesus:
to serve God in freedom and in peace,
and to use our liberty in accordance with God’s will
for the well-being and flourishing
of all whom God has made.