This morning we have a choice. We have the choice of observing the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost on the Church’s calendar or the Fourth of July on the nation’s calendar..

This Fourth of July we celebrate the birth of our country some two hundred twenty-seven years ago. We find ourselves, as we usually do on this day, celebrating being a great country, looking at the good things about this place in which we live. We have a tendency, though, to wrap our Christianity in the flag. It isn’t hard to figure how many churches in the US are celebrating the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost this morning and how many are celebrating the Fourth of July. The Fourth of July wins hands down.

We have no state-mandated religion in this country. The Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, with thanks to the Enlightenment thinking of the time, decided that it would be best not to do that. We are just about the only country in the world that does not have a state religion.  Because of that, in many ways, our faith gets caught up in our patriotism. And our patriotism gets caught up as misguided religion.

We hear about it every day, just one example being how the Christian Coalition is everywhere getting involved in politics, trying to get their people into office so that a return to a better way and a rule of law under God in this country might be possible. I prefer see that as the rule of tyranny by one group over the rest of us.

What is it that we are called as a nation to be as God's children? Not as Americans, but as children of God. During the 1960 Presidential Campaign John F. Kennedy was continually asked if he thought his Catholicism was going to be a stumbling block to him being a good President.  At the height of the Gulf War, after a particularly heavy bombing run on Iraq, President Bush spoke of our young pilots having done the Lord's work yesterday.  One wonders what it is we really stand for.

Jesus tells us to take his yoke upon us. When I was growing up I always had this idea of putting something very heavy and very disagreeable on me, and having Jesus there with a leash - leading me down the pathway with a switch like an Ox - "Come on, come on, go this way, now turn left, turn right." I didn't like the image very much. But now, I think more and more about what that yoke signifies.  You see a yoke of oxen.  It's never a yoke of ox.  It is always two, side by side, connected together. When Jesus asks us to take his yoke upon us - we are simply climbing into the traces with him, connected by the Holy Spirit, pulling together side by side with him: him empowering us, and us letting that power flow through us so that the job may be done.

Paul says in Romans, "I do the things I shouldn't do, and I don't do the things I ought to do." It is a statement we should to take to heart, both as individuals and as citizens of this country. For we do things that we really shouldn't do as individuals, and we have done so as a country. Yet because Jesus has come to us and has offered to let us jump into the traces with him by taking his yoke upon us, we hark back to what our Founding Fathers called us truly to be - land of the free, land of respect for all people, the land where we recognize that, ideally anyway, all human beings are created equal. And the expectation is that we treat one another that way. We don't do it well, and the history of this nation is fraught with examples of how we haven’t. Yet Paul's words keep coming back, "I do the things that I shouldn't do, and I don't do the things that I ought to do, but because I have died and have risen again in Jesus Christ, I can hope that the next opportunity I have, I will do my best." And so we press on. We press on not specifically as Americans, but as children of God in a world that is closer to itself than we choose to admit.

We see a lot of things going on which speak to us of evil; which speak to us of pain and suffering. And the yoke that Jesus lays upon us is to do something about that. Not as the policeman of the world, not as the biggest, baddest dog on the block, repaying violence with violence, but as people who have learned to respect and care deeply about their brother and sister human beings. To walk into the world trusting that God will guide us to do that which is right, to empower us to do it, to forgive us if we don't get it quite right and set us on our feet so that we may try our best again.

If we wrap ourselves in the flag we miss the point. If we take on the yoke of Jesus and  pull together, respecting and loving one another, we begin to see ways to solve the ills of the world without resorting to violence and destruction. We are residents of the land of the free and the home of the brave, yes.  Let us deliver that message to a world that would love to hear what that truly means, not from a position of power and force, but one of respect and caring for one another, for that is what makes us great, and it is what we were meant to be.

Amen.