This Sunday, attendance will be low (weirdly, as patriotic people prize freedom of religion; I guess it's the freedom not to worship?). I'm being cynical already. Feelings may be at a fever pitch about how July 4 fits into church, and then I’m focusing on — what? — Abraham nearly sacrificing Isaac (with a nod to Romans 6).  

Below you will find (a) thoughts on our texts, mostly Genesis 22, (b) and the counsel I’ve given regarding how to talk about July 4 and keep people happy without surrendering theologically — excerpted from my book on preaching, The Beauty of the Word: The Challenge & Wonder of Preaching (which I see Amazon has marked down to $5!). I also have a blog, “Jesus and July 4,” which went semi-viral a couple of years ago.

So: Romans 6:12-23, which exposes our vapid adulation of freedom as ridiculously misguided (but find kinder words when you tell this to your people!). “Free” isn’t what we are; “free” is how Paul describes the gift of God, eternal life, not chosen or earned, and despite and in redemption of sin and its wages, death. When I speak on this, I try not to indulge in mockery, but it makes me crazy: on July 4 people say “We remember soldiers who died for our freedom.” First of all, deceased soldiers are commemorated on Memorial Day, not July 4. Current soldiers don’t have a day, really, as Veterans Day is about soldiers who are retired. But regardless: how shameful would it be to suggest that soldiers defend or die so we can be… free? Free to do whatever we want? Free to drink beer and roast hot dogs? No soldier’s life is worth that.

Finally, if you’re interested, as I am not so much, in Matthew 10:40-42. This “whoever gives a cup of cold water” is intriguing — for my money, not quite enough for an entire sermon. I am reminded of that scene in Ben Hur where Charlton Heston is parched and nearly dead in the desert when a passerby (it’s Jesus, but we only see his shadow) gives him a drink. The favor is returned when Jesus is bearing his cross and Judah Ben Hur bolts through the cordon of soldiers and offers him a drink.

How to Handle July 4 (excerpted from The Beauty of the Word):

On the Sunday that looms nearest July 4 (or Memorial Day, or Veterans’ Day), many American Christians yearn for something “patriotic,” whether this means singing “God bless America” or a message on the sacrifices soldiers have made for our freedom, the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, perhaps even a Pledge of Allegiance. How we cope with these requests, which may be subtle and sweet, or shrill and angry, might range from simply ignoring the national day in question, or knuckling under and just letting them have their way, or even waging theological combat against patriotic usurpations of Christianity.

But why do people care so much and feel so passionately about these matters? We can diagnose various flaws in theological formation or in the civic religion that dominates our culture. But at the end of the day, people (like people in other nations!) have a kind of fealty to America, a pride in their homeland, a deep desire for God to be meaningfully connected to their nation, their society — and the impulse can be lovely, and there must be ways to tap into the more promising side of that impulse without feeding the dark side. I know that I too often have not reckoned thoroughly enough with the fact that I seem insufficiently patriotic to Church members for whom military and “patriotic” matters are viscerally powerful. I have preached against wars, against armaments, against an America first mood, against patriotic arrogance, without a robust pastoral awareness in myself that I am talking in front of people who got off carriers and stormed a beach at Normandy and saw friends left and right shot dead, people who sent sons off to the insane jungles of Vietnam and saw them return home mangled, people who served nobly and with little remuneration in the armed forces, people whose sense of self has always been shaped by family and heroes who value what I seem to be trouncing.

Aren’t there ways to acknowledge what they hold dear without a triumphal acclamation of all Americana, without endorsing a war or political party, without perverting the Gospel’s understanding of words like “freedom,” yet also without appearing to be ignorant or unappreciative or just plain insensitive? Surely, while treating the text of the day, we can forage about and find some illustration from American history that might faithfully embody what we are trying to say.

George Washington did not leave his soldiers alone at Valley Forge, but suffered every discomfort they did — and perhaps the incarnation of God’s Word is like that. Once near Memorial Day my text led me into an exploration of why bad things happen, and I reflected on the memories a friend shared from his experience on Omaha Beach in 1941. Another July 4, I thumbed through the remarkable correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two longtime enemies who mellowed and became cherished friends before dying on July 4, exactly fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. People who adore July 4 felt entirely enfranchised, but I said not one word about the grandeur of America or that God birthed this country for some manifest destiny, but instead spoke of the reconciliation of enemies.

This article originally appeared on the author's blog. Reprinted with permission.