In this time of great reflection on two hundred fifty years,
We remember, as a nation, times we've prospered, times of tears.
"We shall be," a preacher told us, "as a city on a hill" —
not to praise us but to warn us: We've a duty to fulfill.

Will we work for racial justice? Will we turn from fear and hate?
What is now the public witness that you call us to create?
As we celebrate our country, help us, Lord, to understand:
All of us must share the bounty and the goodness of the land.

In this time, O God, restore us to the land we're called to be —
where all people here among us know your blest community.
May we seek to be that city, not with pride but as a prayer.
May we love and serve you humbly, in our land and everywhere.

~ “In This Time of Great Reflection" by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette

To Rejoice, Mourn, Labor, and Suffer Together

A couple years ago my family took our first trip to Boston. We enjoyed wandering the city in the cool April temperatures. We caught a Red Sox game at Fenway and explored Boston Common, the nation’s first public park. We went on the Freedom Trail which highlights Paul Revere’s ride and other Revolutionary War historical markers about early European settlers. I have been remembering our trip as America turns 250 this week.

In a recent issue of Sojourners focused on America’s 250th birthday, Carolyn Winfrey Gillette shared her hymn “In this Time of Great Reflection,” inspired by John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon entitled "As a City on a Hill." While Winthrop’s sermon title sounds like a sermon on American exceptionalism, Gillette highlights how the sermon was actually a prophetic warning asking the citizens of Massachusetts Bay if they could live into the high moral task set before them in this new world.

From Winthrop’s sermon:

“… to provide for our posterity is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make other’s conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together …”

There are absolutely ways our nation has made strides to rejoice, mourn, and suffer together. Yet there are many ways the European settlers for whom this sermon was written — and their descendants of which I am among — neglected to see the humanity in all people. While we celebrate the founding of this wonderful nation, we recognize the dehumanizing horrors against Native American tribes removed from their lands, African Americans forced into the slave trade, and migrant workers and asylum seekers exploited.

Still, along with the admonition and chastising in Winthrop's sermon, there is also hope that we can become a people who choose mercy, humility, and shared responsibility. In some ways, we have grown in our understanding of civil rights and human dignity. At the same time, we know there is so much more to acknowledge, repair, and practice — especially in a time when our public life feels so deeply divided. I pray we take continued accountability and action so that we may live into the values the prophet Micah revealed. I am grateful for the United States, yes, and I fervently pray for a more perfect union.

I share this prayer from Jesuit priest, Fr. James Martin:

Loving God, on our 250th anniversary as a nation, help us to be just, loving, merciful, grateful, compassionate, and, above all, kind. Help our nation mirror the kind of people we want to be. And help us to avoid envy, cruelty, violence, boasting, prejudice, nationalism, and malice towards anyone. Help us to be loving, Amen.