The land of the free, that’s what we call our nation, O God of the whole world. Yet we learn again and again that this freedom isn’t shared equally. That for too many, it is a freedom to be oppressed, a freedom to be abused. It is a freedom to hate and demean and segregate and redline. That freedom is parceled out to the few, the privileged, the comfortable.
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.
It is still our dream, the American dream, the dream of the Kin-dom of God, that we will know true freedom. And that we will use our freedom not for self-indulgence, but for building up the blessed community of humanity, that those who have been denied their freedom by systemic racism will at last know the freedom God intended for all and for each.
On this independence weekend celebration, let us not be blinded by a false patriotism that claims all is well when it clearly is not. So, instead let us rise up as one body, one blessed community, one voice and sing “Oh freedom” over us all, in this life, in this nation, in this world.
May we, O God of true freedom, allow your Spirit to build our true home and be free, as only the Christ who was nailed to a tree can show us the way to this freedom. In the name of this Christ. Amen.
Derek C. Weber, June 2020. Praying for change: Daily prayers for anti-racism. UMC Discipleship Ministries.
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
