Independence Day!

Almighty God, whose wisdom and whose love are over all, accept the prayers we offer for our nation. Give integrity to its citizens and wisdom to those in authority, that harmony and justice may be secured in obedience to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

In the Episcopal Church, when July 4th falls on a Sunday (as it does this year), there can be a bit of confusion. While we have a collect and assigned readings for Independence Day, the Calendar in the Book of Common Prayer make it clear that only certain dates take precedence over the lessons for a Sunday and Independence Day isn't one of them. So a church is faced with some choices:

• Ignore the rules and drop the Sunday lessons.
• Use the Sunday lessons, but bring in references to Independence Day in other aspects of worship, like prayers, hymnns, and flowers.
• Ignore Independence Day until tomorrow--the normal rule when Sunday trumps another date.

At St. Christopher's today, we chose the middle way--a typically Anglican response! We kept with the standard Sunday readings for a couple of reasons. First, the rules require it. Second, the readings for this Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary are being used today in many other countries who probably aren't real excited about commemorating the Independence Day of the United States. This way we are worshipping in much the same way with the same readings from Scripture as many Christians around the world.

We processed into the church to the "National Hymn":

God of our fathers, Whose almighty hand
Leads forth in beauty all the starry band
Of shining worlds in splendor through the skies
Our grateful songs before Thy throne arise.

Thy love divine hath led us in the past,
In this free land by Thee our lot is cast,
Be Thou our Ruler, Guardian, Guide and Stay,
Thy Word our law, Thy paths our chosen way.

From war’s alarms, from deadly pestilence,
Be Thy strong arm our ever sure defense;
Thy true religion in our hearts increase,
Thy bounteous goodness nourish us in peace.

Refresh Thy people on their toilsome way,
Lead us from night to never ending day;
Fill all our lives with love and grace divine,
And glory, laud, and praise be ever Thine.

You can listen to an .mp3 file of this hymn here.

At the end of the service, we processed out into the world to America the Beautiful.

While we didn't go as far as some churches and drape the flag on the altar--a practice that I think approaches if not reaches idolatry--we did have red, white and blue flowers and small flags attached to alternating pews.

I couldn't help but be reminded of an earlier Independence Day that also fell on a Sunday--July 4, 1976, America's Bicentennial. I was between my junior and senior years of college and spent the summer at home with my parents in Springfield, Illinois, working part-time at the old Sears store on South Grand Avenue.

That morning, I first went to church at St. Paul's Cathedral. To commemorate the Bicentennial, the Cathedral put on a Eucharist using the Church of England Book of Common Prayer of 1662--the one that would have been used in the colonies on July 4, 1776. They tried to be generally faithful to the way that service would have been held: no "Romish" eucharistic vestments, for example, but they did say that the sermon would be kept under an hour! While the service was interesting as a one-off thing, the service was too dry and sparse for a "High Church" Episcopalian like me!

Then I had to rush home for a quick lunch, before heading to work at Sears. Sears was going to be open its normal Sunday hours at the time--12 to 5--and closed the next day on Monday, July 5th! I thought that was fairly stupid to be open on July 4 but not on July 5, but I don't remember anyone asking my opinion, as amazing as that sounds. I was also a little irritated to have to miss some of the July 4 festivities on TV, which were a lot more than normal because this wasn't any ordinary Fourth of July. Most people in Springfield found something else to do that day rather than come shop at Sears, because the customers were few and far between.

In these days with hundreds of channels on DirecTV, its hard to recall that in 1976, we had four stations to choose from: the NBC station in Springfield, the CBS station from Champaign, the ABC station from Decatur, and the PBS station from the University of Illinois. The first 24-hour news channel, CNN, was still four years in the future. So it was something pretty special when the networks ran hours of live coverage of the Bicentennial festivities.

One of the most picturesque events was Operation Sail's parade of 16 sailing ships from many countries to New York harbor--three of which, the Amerigo Vespucci from Italy, the Eagle from the United States and the Kruzenshtern (or Крузенштерн) from the Soviet Union are shown here.