Sabbath Devotional :: A National Sabbath

This year it feels like a tender mercy that the Fourth of July falls on the sabbath. Given our recent national struggles, a self-congratulatory and raucous celebration might not hit the right note. But perhaps a sabbath is exactly what we need right now – the chance to rest from our labors, reflect on where we have gone wrong, and recommit to creating a better future where we live more harmoniously with our fellow citizens.

Today, instead of centering our celebration on parades and fireworks, we could use the stillness of a Sunday to sit with the powerful and holy truths that motivated the first Americans as they created a national identity centered on divinely granted equality and the promise of rights and privileges common to every human being.

“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.”

Two hundred and thirty-nine years after they were first written those words are still worth celebrating. They acknowledge something wondrous and true; that we are all equal in the sight of our Creator. Perhaps having lived so long with this truth, we have lost the ability to feel the full enormity of its magnificence. Perhaps, faced with the weight of our own failure to live up to the ideal it represents, we feel morally justified in despising it.

But cynicism and disdain are horrible motivators, and they are antithetical to a sabbath experience. A holy day of reflection and rest can help us to see what is true and worth fighting for. It prepares us to sacrifice for the right, and it can restore our fractured and faltering faith.

More than anything else, we can use this national sabbath to fill our hearts with divine love for the women and men we share our nation with. We can try to sincerely internalize a belief that they are all children of God with rights and privileges equal to our own; that each person is a soul of great worth. On this Sunday, we can resolve to celebrate as disciples of Christ first and Americans second.

In his work the Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis shows us the way to this kind of celebration, and one that our own faith perhaps uniquely prepares us to hold:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities . . . that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

On this national sabbath, instead of just celebrating an extraordinary nation, let’s celebrate the extraordinary and divine potential of the people within it. Let’s be determined to help them each to a glorious destination. In doing so, we can joyfully honor our founding ideals through our commitment to realize the miracle of a society based on true equality.