A Declaration of Interdependence

Scriptures:     Jeremiah 28:5-9, Psalm 13  Romans 6:12-23,   Matthew 10:40-42

“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”  With these words –– words written right here in Philadelphia, at Independence Hall – the 13 colonies who would become the United States of America declared political independence from Great Britain.  The declaration went on to describe what the writers saw as the proper purpose of government:  “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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  And they went on to make the main point of their declaration, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government….”  It’s a sort of “Dear John” letter to the British Empire, telling them that we’re leaving them, and that, to turn around a quote from an old Seinfeld episode “it’s not us, it’s you”

Independence.  This word is a huge part of our American culture.  Less than 100 years after the declaration of independence, in order to protect their “peculiar institution” of slavery, a number of southern states tried to declare independence from the United States, prompting the American Civil War.  A year or so ago, Great Britain itself, in its Brexit action, declared its independence from the European Union – and they’re still sorting out the consequences, and will be for some time to come.  Closer to home, here in Philadelphia, we have Independence Hall, and a major health insurer is called Independence Blue Cross.  And as individuals, we like to tell ourselves that we are independent, self-made men and women, charting our own course.  Many Americans resonate with the lines of William Ernest Henley’s poem Invictus, of which the last two lines read: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

And yet our readings from Scripture today speak, not of independence, but of dependence on God and interdependence on one another.  In his letter to the church at Rome, Paul reminds his readers that they are not independent, but slaves – obedient either to sin or to God’s righteousness.  There’s no middle ground, no place to stand apart and claim independence from both sin and God.  As Bob Dylan sang during his Christian phase, “It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

But how do we serve?  We often think of serving God in terms of personal morality – “Don’t drink, smoke, or chew, or date girls who do” as the old saying went.  And individual morality has its place – in his 1^st letter to the church at Corinth, Paul said that our bodies are “temples of the Holy Spirit” and that therefore they should not, for example, be joined with prostitutes. (I Cor 6)  But it’s also true that the Pharisees of Jesus’ time also thought of service to God in terms of personal morality – fasting at the right times, tithing the right amounts, being seen with the right people - and Jesus told them more than once that they were missing the point (Matthew 23), that God desired mercy, not sacrifice (Matthew 9:13). 

Today’s Gospel reading reminds us that, much of the time, we serve God by serving others.  Our reading is at the very end of a long section of Matthew’s gospel in which Jesus is preparing to send his disciples out on their first mission without him.  He told them to go out among the lost sheep of Israel, saying, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.”  Theirs was to be a healing mission, as Jesus instructed them, “cure the sick, raise the dead” – yeah, Jesus, I’ll get right on that one – “cleanse the lepers, cast out demons”.  They were to travel light, not taking money for the trip or even a change of clothes, but depending on God to provide for their needs through the hospitality of those they visit.  And after all of that, Jesus comes to the words of our Gospel reading:  “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the One who sent me.”  And he speaks in terms of those who welcome a prophet or a righteous person sharing in the reward of the prophet or righteous person, and of being rewarded even for offering a cup of cold water.  That is to say, God would bless Jesus’ disciples on their mission, and God would also welcome anyone who welcomed or helped those disciples in their travels.

Those who provided hospitality to the disciples would share in the reward of those disciples – and so hospitality – a “holy welcome” to use the phrase of our bulletin cover – was absolutely essential.  In the times of the Old Testament, in the heat and dryness of the Middle East, travelers absolutely depended on the hospitality of others – without the availability of food and water along the way, a traveler would die.  By the time Jesus was preaching and healing, there were inns where travelers could stay – we remember that Jesus’ parents found no room in the inn, and that the Good Samaritan took the man who had been set on by thieves to an inn – but these were hardly luxury accommodations, and in any case, since Jesus told his disciples not to take money for their travels, they were not an option.  Tom Bodett of Motel 6 would not be leaving the lights turned on for Jesus’ disciples.    So when they entered a town, they were to rely on God to direct them to someone who would welcome them – and so, as they lived with someone in that town, the townspeople would get to know these disciples, not only by their words, but by their actions as they lived among them.   And by their hospitality, those who welcomed the disciples had a share in their mission.

Hospitality.  As July 4 approaches this year, we as a country seem to be in a particularly inhospitable mood, wanting to build walls – big, beautiful walls, with solar panels even – wanting to shred what’s left of the social safety net even more than it’s already been shredded.   In a time when our country seems to be telling the rest of the world, “We have no need of you,” there are many ways in which the church can witness to God’s call to hospitality and interdependence.  One small example is Arch Street United Methodist Church, located just a block away from City Hall, which was featured on 60 minutes back in May, telling about their experience in sheltering an undocumented immigrant who is living at the church.   Here closer to home, I’ve walked with our friend Isaac for more than a decade now in his journey to US citizenship….and all of us here at Emanuel have had a small share in welcoming Isaac. And I think we’ve all been blessed, as I hope Isaac has been.

Bottom line: We are dependent on God, and we are interdependent on one another.  Even the creation itself is witness to this interdependence.   Rabbi Arthur Waskow from the Shalom Center, located here in Philadelphia, reminds us of what we learned in our grade school science classes, that the oxygen we breathe in is generated by plants, who in turn take in the carbon dioxide that we breathe out – so that even though plants of course don’t breathe with lungs in the same sense we do, we can still say in a sense that what we breathe out, the plants breathe in, and what the plants breathe out, we breathe in…..and in his writings, Rabbi Waskow connects this shared breathing with the ancient name of God.  It’s often pronounced Yahweh, but the Scriptures only used the consonants YHWH…..and if we pronounce them just like that…YH on a breath in, WH on a breath out, it really does sound just like breathing.  Rabbi Waskow would also remind us that human activity is generating more carbon dioxide than the plants can take in, and so we are out of balance, facing a climate crisis.  And getting back to that cup of cold water, due to fracking and construction of pipelines for fossil fuels, in some parts of Pennsylvania, you wouldn’t want to offer a cup of local tap water to anyone because it’s undrinkable – though you might be able to light it on fire, which isn’t supposed to happen with water.  As Paul said in Romans, “we know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.” (Romans 8:22) Those labor pains are getting worse, much worse – and who can say what kind of world they will give birth to?  So, when it comes to the environment, hospitality and interdependence is intergenerational – we need to make it possible to offer that cup of cold water, not only to our neighbors, but to our children and their children.  Indeed, in the spirit of hospitality and interdependence, we need to ask ourselves what kind of world we’re leaving our grandchildren, and their children.  The bad decisions we’ve already made, and the short-sighted decisions we’re making, may now be creating an earth that will be uninhabitable for our great grandchildren.  It is for this reason that the Native Americans speak of caring for the earth for the sake of the seventh generation.

I’ll close with a verse of a song by Hezekiah Walker:

I need you  You need me  We're all a part of God's body
Stand with me   Agree with me  We're all a part of God's body
It is his will that every need be supplied
You are important to me
I need you to survive

You are important to me
I need you to survive

Amen.