“Independence” is one of those words that has a special power to it in American culture, an energy. Not just because July 4th – Independence Day – celebrates the establishment of the United States of America, but for the vigor applied to it and its closely related counterparts often held as American ideals. The thirteen colonies became the United States when they were no longer subject to the monarch of Britain. Freedom from subordination to a king was the defining political transition of America’s establishment.
As a person of faith, and as a person whose vocation is serving that faith, I’m grateful our founders made it abundantly clear that we should never be a nation with an established religion. Our religious freedom enables us to worship freely in ways that are not always possible elsewhere in the world.
Perhaps that’s why I enjoy the irony that, in our freedom, in our independence, we find ourselves subject to a king, practicing a faith of dependence.
Last Sunday I considered American notions of freedom that tend to lean heavily on individuality, autonomy, and self-determination. These are often lifted as ideals, as the necessary privileges and practices for the American Dream.
And I get it: this nation became a nation by declaring it was no longer dependent, no longer being controlled by something else. But dependence doesn’t only mean being controlled by someone or something else, it also means relying on someone or something else.
Reliance on another is not only okay, but necessary. Reliance is not weakness.
Did you know that “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” used to have the opposite connotation that it has today? Today this phrase is often thrown about to encourage people to do for themselves, to put their backs into it.
But here’s the thing: pulling yourself up from your bootstraps is physically impossible. And I don’t mean that it would be a feat of near-impossible strength that few people have achieved, I mean physics. Pulling yourself up by the straps on your boots is as viable as lifting yourself off the ground by pulling on your own hair.
The original implication of the phrase was just that: don’t be ridiculous, that can’t be done on your own. Sadly the irony of the impossibility, it seems, is lost on those attempting to encourage others with this phrase today.
But even more than that delightfully awkward phrase, I’m reminded today that reliance on God is precisely what our faith calls us to. That we are being ridiculous when we think we can go it alone, and thankfully don’t have to.
Independence was, in fact, the first temptation offered to Jesus during his time in the wilderness. “The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread’” (Matthew 4:3). Make it on your own, Jesus. Declare your autonomy from God. Profess and practice your independence.
But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4).
This is Jesus’ insistence that we be dependent on God. And we know from later chapters that dependence is not a physical necessity here. Jesus’ capacity for miraculous food creation emphasizes that the dependence on God he is practicing is one he chooses.
That’s the choice we continue to be called to today, and the choice a portion of our freedoms we celebrate today allows. Happy Independence Day to you all. I pray it will be a day of rest and joy for you and your family and friends.
Rev. Ben Richards
