A Better Country: Independence Day (Matthew 5:43-48)

July 4, 2026, Independence Day, Season after Pentecost

Matthew 5:43–48, Psalm 145, Hebrews 11:8–16, Deuteronomy 10:17–21

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you on this Independence Day.

The BCP 2019 recognizes Independence Day as a National Day with its own appointed collect and lectionary readings. The collect for today frames the occasion with a careful theological hand: “Lord God, by your providence our founders won their liberties of old: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to exercise these liberties in righteousness and peace.” (BCP 2019, p. 636) Two things are worth noting before the sermon begins. First, the collect attributes the winning of our liberties to God’s providence, not to the genius or virtue of our founders. Whatever wisdom they brought to the work, the collect credits the source. Second, the petition is not for more liberty but for the grace to exercise rightly the liberty we have. The question the Church brings to Independence Day is not how good the nation is but how responsibly we are using what we have been given.

That framing becomes more pressing the moment we look at the Gospel appointed for today. Matthew 5:43–48 is the final antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount, and it may be the hardest six verses Jesus ever delivered. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:43–44, ESV) On any day of the year this is demanding. On Independence Day, a day that by its nature celebrates the winning of liberties from an adversary, it is pointed. The Church does not set aside the Gospel for National Days. It brings the Gospel to bear on them. And the Gospel appointed for this day is the one that refuses to let any human loyalty, including the loyalty of patriotism, substitute for the impartial love of God.

Our Gospel passage is Matthew 5:43–48. But before we enter it, let the other readings speak first. Our Old Testament reading is Deuteronomy 10:17–21, where Moses describes the God whose blessing we invoke: “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.” (Deuteronomy 10:17–18, ESV) And then the command that follows directly from the character of God: “Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19, ESV) The God whose providential hand the collect acknowledges is not a God of national preference. He is the God who is not partial, who defends the fatherless and the widow, who loves the sojourner because Israel itself was once a sojourner. The blessing of this nation is received from the hands of a God who cares especially for those whom nations are tempted to overlook.

The sequence in Deuteronomy 10 is worth slowing down on. Moses is preparing the people to enter Canaan, and he begins their national charter not with a list of national achievements or a vision of national greatness but with a description of God’s character. The Lord your God is the great, the mighty, the awesome God. And the first thing that character produces, before any instruction about worship or sacrifice or the keeping of festivals, is the defense of the powerless. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow. He loves the sojourner. Israel is commanded to do the same, and the reason given is not abstract: you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. The memory of having been the vulnerable one is the source of the obligation to defend the vulnerable. A nation that forgets what it was like to be without power loses the theological ground for caring for those without power. The God of this national day has built that memory into the structure of his commands.

A word is necessary about the word sojourner before we proceed. The Hebrew is ger (GARE): a resident alien, a foreigner dwelling within Israel’s borders who was economically vulnerable and dependent on the justice of the host community. The category is not defined by legal status in any modern sense, since the ancient world had no equivalent to contemporary immigration law, but by social and economic exposure: the person who is not protected by the network of kinship and citizenship that the native-born take for granted. We should resist the tendency, common on both sides of the current political debate, to narrow the word to fit a predetermined conclusion. The progressive move of applying ger exclusively to those who have entered a country without legal authorization is too narrow; so is the conservative move of excluding precisely those people from the category. The text will not be recruited cleanly to either side.

The New Testament broadens the category further, and in a direction that may surprise us. When 1 Peter 2:11 addresses its readers as “sojourners and exiles,” it is not speaking about immigration. It is speaking about the Church: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” (1 Peter 2:11, ESV) The whole Church, in every nation and in every century, is described as a community of resident aliens, people who belong ultimately to another country, who live in the present age as those whose final citizenship is elsewhere. That is the primary application of the sojourner category in the New Testament. Before it is about anyone crossing a border into the United States, it is about every baptized Christian living in the world. In Hebrews 11, which we read today, the patriarchs acknowledged that they were “strangers and exiles on the earth.” (Hebrews 11:13, ESV) Abraham was not an undocumented migrant in Canaan. He was the model of what every member of the Church is: a person whose deepest allegiance belongs to a city with foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

This does not dissolve the legitimate authority of a nation to define and enforce its borders. Romans 13 establishes governing authority as an ordinance of God, and orderly immigration law serves the common good of both the host nation and those who seek to enter it. Respect for that law is itself a Christian obligation; entering a country in violation of its laws is not morally neutral, and a nation has both the right and the responsibility to enforce its laws, including the removal of those who have entered illegally. The same tradition that commands care for the sojourner commands submission to governing authority, and these two obligations do not cancel each other out. What the Gospel will not permit is contempt for the person who stands before the law. No legal status, or lack of it, removes the image of God from any human being. A person may be lawfully removed from the country and still be owed basic human decency in the process, because the God of Deuteronomy 10 who is not partial and takes no bribe sees every person regardless of their papers. The command to treat people with basic human decency does not have a legal-status exemption. What it does have is a proper frame: care for persons, within the law, and without contempt for those who stand before God exactly as we do.

Psalm 145 is the appointed psalm for today, and it is a psalm of unambiguous praise: “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.” (Psalm 145:3, ESV) It is also the psalm that frames the praise correctly. This is not a psalm that praises a nation. It does not say: great is America and greatly to be praised. The greatness in view is the Lord’s alone, and his kingdom is “an everlasting kingdom.” (Psalm 145:13, ESV) No earthly kingdom is everlasting. The gratitude that belongs on Independence Day is directed upward, not inward. The freedom we celebrate is received, not earned; it is held provisionally, not permanently. The psalm tells us where to point our thanks.

Our Epistle reading from Hebrews 11 gives us the frame through which the Christian citizen sees his country. The passage is about Abraham and the patriarchs: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8, ESV) Abraham received a promised land. But he never quite lived in it as his own. He lived in it as a resident alien, in tents, with Isaac and Jacob. And what was he waiting for? Verses 10 and 16 tell us: “he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10, ESV) and “they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.” (Hebrews 11:16, ESV) A better country. Not a rejection of the earthly country, but a reordering of it. The patriarchs loved the land they were given; they buried their dead there and prayed for their descendants there. But they held it with an open hand, because they knew the land was not the final destination. That is the posture the Church is called to in every earthly nation: genuine love and gratitude for the country, held with an open hand, because we are looking for a better one.

Hebrews 11:13 names the posture directly: these men and women “all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.” (Hebrews 11:13, ESV) Strangers and exiles. Not enemies of the nation, not indifferent to it, but not finally at home in it either. The Christian is a person of dual citizenship: a citizen of the United States with genuine loyalties and genuine gratitude, and a citizen of the kingdom of God with a prior loyalty and an ultimate home. When those two citizenships conflict, the Christian knows which one takes precedence. When they do not conflict, the Christian gives to the earthly city the best of what the heavenly one asks.

The practical shape of this dual citizenship deserves more than a passing observation. Strangers and exiles do not abandon the city they are passing through. Abraham did not ignore Canaan because it was not the final destination; he bought land, dug wells, entered into treaties, and buried his wife with care. He was invested in the earthly place while looking for the heavenly one. The Christian citizen is not a person who holds back from civic life because this world is passing. He is a person who participates in civic life without confusing it for the ultimate one. He votes, serves, advocates, and mourns for the nation’s failures, and he does all of it from the posture of a person whose final address is a city with foundations built by God. That posture produces a particular kind of civic virtue: the willingness to tell the truth about the nation’s failures because the nation is not the highest good, and the willingness to love the nation because it is not the worst good either.

Which brings us to Matthew 5:43–48, the Gospel appointed for this day. The verse that titles this sermon is Hebrews 11:16: a better country. But the verse that defines what citizens of that better country look like is Matthew 5:44: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44, ESV) Jesus is teaching the crowds on the hillside, and he has been working through the antitheses of the Old Testament law: you have heard it said, but I say to you. He has addressed anger, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation. And now the most demanding one: you have heard that you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. The second part of that saying, “hate your enemy,”  is not from the Old Testament; it is a human extrapolation, likely shaped by sectarian teachings of the time, from the command to love the neighbor. People assumed that if the neighbor is to be loved, the enemy is to be hated. Jesus refuses the assumption. He says: love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.

The reason is stated in verse 45: “so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45, ESV) The God of Deuteronomy 10 who is not partial is the same God of Matthew 5 whose sun and rain fall on everyone without discrimination. The impartiality of God is not indifference; it is the impartiality of love. He does not love only the deserving. He does not withhold sunlight from those who have earned his disapproval. To be sons of the Father is to reflect this impartial love in the world. The Church’s witness in a nation is not to become the nation’s chaplain, blessing whatever the nation does, but to embody the impartial love of the Father in a world that runs on the love of those who love us back.

It would be convenient if loving enemies were merely a private and personal ethic, confined to individual relationships. But the Sermon on the Mount does not operate at the level of private religion. Jesus is speaking to his disciples about how they are to be in the world, and the world he is describing is one of courts, floggings, governors, and enemies. The love-your-enemies command is public before it is private. It shapes how the community of the Church engages with those outside it: with political opponents, with nations whose policies we oppose, with those whose values and ours are in direct conflict. It does not require the pretense that all positions are equally valid or all actions morally equivalent. It requires that even in the midst of genuine disagreement, genuine opposition, and genuine conflict, we do not cease to pray for those on the other side. This does not mean agreeing with or endorsing their actions; it means refusing to let opposition turn them into objects of hatred rather than persons for whom Christ died. The tax collectors love those who love them back; Gentiles greet those who greet them first. The Church is called to something that exceeds the natural reciprocity of human affection.

Verses 46 and 47 press the point: if you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Even tax collectors and Gentiles do that. The standard Jesus sets is not the lowest common denominator of human affection but the character of the Father himself. And verse 48 names the standard without softening it: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48, ESV) The Greek word is teleios (TEH-lay-os): complete, whole, mature. Not perfectionist in the sense of flawless performance, but complete in the sense of lacking nothing essential, fully formed in the love that God himself embodies. The Father’s teleios is his impartial, all-encompassing love for the world he made. The call to be teleios is the call to grow into that love, to resist the natural tendency to draw the circle of our love around those who are like us, those who agree with us, those who are on our side.

On Independence Day, that call lands with particular weight. National identity is one of the most powerful forces that shapes the circle of our love. We love our country. We love our fellow citizens. We honor those who have served in the armed forces and kept the peace. We are genuinely grateful for liberties that much of the world does not have. All of that is right and good. But the Gospel appointed for this day will not let us stop there. It asks: do we pray for those who persecute us? Do we extend goodwill to those who are not on our side? Do we love with the impartiality of the Father whose rain falls on the just and the unjust alike? The collect already told us the answer we are praying for: the grace to exercise our liberties in righteousness and peace. The Gospel tells us what righteousness and peace look like in practice.

And Deuteronomy 10 gives us the specific shape of that righteousness as the people of God have always understood it: care for the fatherless, the widow, and the sojourner. The God who is not partial takes the side of those who have no power to advocate for themselves. The people who bear his name are called to reflect that particular care in the world. This is not a political prescription; it is a theological one. The question the people of God bring to Independence Day is not which party to vote for but what the God of Deuteronomy 10 looks like when his people imitate him.

This congregation has its own particular relationship to all of this. Many of you served in the armed forces or had parents and children who did. That service is honorable, and the freedom secured by it is a genuine good. The Church does not diminish it. What the Church does is place it in its proper frame. The soldier who served in the name of liberty served a real good. And the same soldier is called, as a disciple of Jesus, to pray for those who were on the other side of the conflict and to refuse to make an enemy of those who were once his enemy, because the Father makes his sun rise on both. The love of country and the love of enemy are not contradictions; they are the two obligations of a Christian citizenship that has been properly ordered by the God of Deuteronomy 10 and the Christ of Matthew 5.

Psalm 145 closes the circle. The appropriate posture on a national day is praise: not to the nation, not to its founders, not to its ideals, but to the God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and whose kingdom is everlasting when every earthly kingdom will have passed away. We receive the gifts of liberty with gratitude and hold them with open hands, knowing that we are strangers and exiles on the earth looking for a better country, a city with foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

What does it look like in practice to exercise liberty in righteousness and peace? It looks like the Deuteronomy posture: caring for the fatherless, the widow, and the sojourner, because the God of this land cares for them. It looks like the Hebrews posture: participating fully in the life of the nation while holding it with open hands, not making it an idol, not depending on it for what only the city with foundations can provide. And it looks like the Matthew posture: praying for those we disagree with, extending goodwill even where it will not be returned, refusing to let political identity determine the limits of our love. These are not partisan positions. They are the shape of a life lived in the imitation of the God whose sun rises on the evil and the good alike.

The collect for today is a good prayer to carry into the rest of this year. "Lord God, by your providence our founders won these liberties: grant us the grace to exercise them in righteousness and peace." That prayer covers the whole range of what citizenship requires: the gratitude that looks back, the righteousness that looks inward, and the peace that looks outward toward those who are also made in the image of the God who makes his sun rise on all of them.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.