On July 3, 2022, I led a service at All Peoples, my Unitarian Universalist church in Louisville. Based on the date, I had to negotiate riding the fence of a sermon that was both timeless and timely -- recognizing eternal values while also addressing the week that was.
And it's been a tumultuous couple of weeks in America.
While I usually keep within the educational lanes for Edtech Elixirs, I do occasionally stretch the focus when I feel particularly passionate about circumstances, and this is one of those times. I was very flattered that my sermon, titled "Torches in the Night," were well received to those attending in person and on Zoom, and several people asked for a copy of my text, so I thought it best to share it here. If it provides any comfort or insight to others, I'm grateful.
The service began with several features, including two readings: an excerpt from Frederick Douglass's "What, To The Slave, Is the Fourth of July?" (from "Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent...." and ending with "Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies") as well as the opening of Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb." The pictures included below are personal photos that I took, which were part of a slideshow in the original sermon.
Tomorrow is America’s birthday. For a moment, imagine that everyone here is on the committee to plan for America’s birthday party. From the get go, there are difficult questions to answer. Who is invited to attend this party and sit around the table? What will be the flavor of the cake? Should we wear party hats? Some anti-hatters will argue that it’s their right whether to wear a hat to the party in the first place, that they can have a good time whether they wear a hat or not, and frankly, no one wears party hats the correct way anyway. And finally, we get to the candles. How many birthday candles should we light?
Well, most will say 246, based on our Declaration of Independence. Others might say 403, if you believe that the founding of America really started when the first African slaves landed on Virginia shores in 1619, sparking the economy and the contradiction that made America possible. And others might say we should have 530 candles, based on a certain day in 1492, when the white Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, landed on nearby shores, and made the New World red with the blood of what he called “los indios.” For those who are critical of the United States, can we find them a better quote to prove their point of American cruelty than this one from Columbus himself, who disparaged the indigenous people he met on his first voyage? “The people here are simple in war-like manners…I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I please.” It is a quote that dangerously echoes down the hall of our history, all the way to the present: a principle of governance based on violence, where the beliefs of a hateful handful can persecute and enslave the majority.
So here we are now at the day of America’s birthday party, the kitchen lights turned off, 246, or 403, or 530 candles ablaze, dreaming of a wish, one breath away from total darkness. We might be, to put it mildly, struggling to celebrate. How can we have a birthday party for a country where today the word “party,” in the context of the present United States, only signifies two political groups locked into mortal combat? How can we balance the moral ledger of an America who has its rightfully celebrated ideals and lofty words in constant contention with the harsh reality of its oft repeated hypocrisy, hatred, repression, paranoia and greed? It is hard to celebrate a birthday for America when we instead may feel we are by its deathbed, as it struggles on life support, waiting for the final line to flatten. We are at the crossroads of a nation with more questions than answers, where a celebration of America may seem unjustified, perhaps even unseemly. As we revisit our American past, from the stone of Plymouth Rock to Stonewall Jackson to the Stonewall Uprising, there is certainly plenty to be shameful of: the scourge of slavery, the Trail of Tears, the Asian-American internment camps, the bloody march for civil rights, just to name a few. But we can focus only on the present of our chronology in order to see there is much to be pessimistic about. As women’s reproductive rights have been reversed, as we wonder if gay marriage will last longer than a single generation, as the voting of people of color is suppressed, as Hispanic migrants and immigrants are exploited and their children are caged, as the economic upper class pits the middle and the lower class against each other, as we lambast a football player for taking a knee more than a police officer killing with a knee, as it is more important to ban books than to ban assault weapons, as anti-semitism and anti-muslim and racial intolerance is becoming tolerated, as we desecrate the environment of this land, your land, our land, from the wildfires of the drought plagued redwood forest of California to the spilling of oil in our polluted Gulf Stream waters, as we are in danger of becoming the land of the homeless and free of the brave, you might very well ask yourself a question: are we at the end of America? Frederick Douglass asked us 170 years ago: what, to the slave, is the Fourth of July? We here today might ask a variation of that question: What, to the Unitarian Universalist, is the Fourth of July? Indeed, to a seeker of truth and justice, to the follower of our seven UU Principles, how are we to love America?
Today, I will attempt to answer those questions. To the question of how are we to love America, I promise to return to it near the end of our sermon. But I first want to address the question of whether America is at its end. After all, why discuss saving a marriage when the divorce is already decreed? To love America in the present tense – or perhaps better put, to love American in the tension of the present — we must assume it will endure. So as an answer to the question – is America at its end? – I will argue that the despair we may feel in the future of America has always been there. America has always been hovering on the edge of a wish, one breath-blow away from the candles going out. I therefore want to invite you on both a historical and personal journey as I highlight a handful of critical moments of America’s timeline when we seemed on the verge of failure.
Let’s start with a precipitous moment as described by David McCullough in his book that narrated the first year of the Revolutionary War. It’s August 29, 1776. It’s been merely eight weeks since the Declaration of Independence was signed. The biggest battle of North America has ever seen is underway in New York, later called the Battle of Long Island, the first time that General George Washington has led troops on a battlefield….and he has totally failed. There are 40,000 troops deployed on the field. The problem is, only 9000 of those troops are Americans. The rest are redcoats and mercenaries. For two days, the most powerful army in the world has beaten the rebels at every turn. As Washington fretted whether he would be outflanked by land or by sea, in his delay and repeated wrong choices, he now finds himself on the verge of both. Hunkered down in Brooklyn, the rag tag army is encircled by British troops, and only a northeasterly wind that blows fiercely against His Majesty’s navy ships prevents frigates from coming up the East River and annihilating the rebels outright. The eight week experiment of a self-declared United States will be over by morning when the British will surely attack an American army that is outnumbered three to one. With their backs to the East River, the fate of Washington and his troops seems sealed.
What should Washington do? He brings together his war council for a meeting. It is determined by unanimous decision that the only option is to attempt the impossible: a nighttime retreat out of Brooklyn, over the East River, back into New York. The retreat will be so secretive that the soldiers, and even most of the officers, will have no idea of the actual plan.
How difficult was the idea of retreat? A Major from Connecticut summed it up this way: “To move so large a body of troops, with all their necessary appendages, across a river full a mile wide, with a rapid current, in face of a victorious well-disciplined army nearly three times as numerous as his own, and a fleet capable of stopping the navigation, so that not one boat could have passed over, seemed to present most formidable obstacles.” Of course, this had to be pulled off in silence, for if during the retreat the British troops discovered what the Americans were up to, they would pounce on the rebels and it would be all over. Indeed, secrecy was even important for Washington’s own troops, for if the retreat caused panic, the resulting chaos would bring its own destruction.
Night fell, and with it, the rain. The Americans were going on their third night without sleep. Miserable and tired and wet, at seven pm, an order went out. The rebels were to pack up and prepare – and they were told it would be for a nighttime assault. The troops were ordered to proceed in whispers only and to refrain even from coughing. At nine o’clock, the rain stopped, and the wounded and least experienced troops packed up first. But the river current was still too much, so the ragged troops were forced to stand on the shore, waiting, waiting.
Suddenly, at eleven o’clock, the wind died down enough for the troops to finally start crossing over. I want you to imagine for a moment the boats that carried soldiers and equipment and cannon across the river, weighed down so heavily with people, supplies, artillery that the water lapped against the top of the gunnels. Over and over again the boats went back and forth. The troops began to realize, almost against hope, that it was not an assault at all but an actual retreat. And with every hour, the situation grew more perilous. The ranks of the remaining soldiers grew thinner, even as fewer and fewer troops had to keep the multitude of campfires burning, making noise to keep up the pretense of the entire army remaining at their posts. At four in the morning, a message was sent to General Mifflin, in charge of the last remaining troops. Mifflin was wrongly ordered to move his troops out to the river without delay. When Mifflin arrived, Washington exploded. “Good God! General Mifflin, I am afraid you have ruined us!” The order was misunderstood and a mistake. Too many troops were still crossing, and now the entire retreat was undefended at its rear flank. At any moment the British might realize the trick and attack. Mifflin and his troops had to return to the camp. Imagine these exhausted troops, looking at the shore of departing boats, steeling themselves to turn around and go back, to wait even longer for their turn. And that’s exactly what they did.
Dawn was fast approaching, and with it the realization: it was all for nothing. A large part of the army was still waiting to cross. Night was fading, and the only cover that Washington’s army had was evaporating. The ruse would be discovered, the British would attack, and America’s independence would be over.
And here I quote from McCollough:
“Incredibly, yet again, circumstances – fate, luck, Providence, the hand of God, as would be said so often – intervened. Just at daybreak a heavy fog settled in over the whole of Brooklyn, concealing everything no less than had the night. It was a fog so thick, remembered a soldier, that one ‘could scarcely discern a man at six yards distance.’ Even with the sun up, the fog remained as dense as ever, while over on the New York side of the river there was no fog at all. At long last Mifflin and the rear guard . . . were summoned. . . . [I]t was seven in the morning, perhaps a little later, when [the last] men landed in New York. [As an officer Alexander Graydon put it:] ‘And in less than an hour after, the fog having dispersed, the enemy was visible on the shore we had left [behind].’ In a single night, 9,000 troops had escaped across the river. Not a life was lost.”
The British were shocked to discover an entire rebel army had disappeared. More importantly, in the aftermath, the redcoats reveled in their victory. In their eyes, the rebels were cowards who skulked away from a fight and it was proof that the whole ridiculous rebellion would be over, perhaps as soon as Christmas. In truth, it would drag on for eight more years. At the Battle of Long Island, Washington had done the impossible and not only saved the Continental Army to live and fight another day, but quite likely saved the fight for independence. The Revolutionary War and the United States of America would likely have ended right then and there on August 29, 1776. And the image I cannot shake are the campfires of the American troops, tended by fewer and fewer brave souls as more and more troops escaped behind them. In the dark night of an infant America, a few twinkling flames kept oblivion at bay.
Let’s jump ahead nearly a century to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It’s July 3, 1863 – one hundred and fifty nine years ago today! – and yet, again, it is the third day of a battle that proves a pivotal moment in the history of our nation. General Lee, who has proven himself nearly invincible on behalf of the Confederacy, makes a foolish error and orders over twelve thousand of his men across about a mile of open field to the center of General Meade’s Union lines in what became known as Pickett’s Charge. Half of these men will be killed by Union artillery before they even make it to the Union fenceline. Still, there is a moment when Confederate soldiers penetrate the Union line and the fate of the United States hangs in the balance…until Union reinforcements finally repulse the attack. Lee is forced to retreat. Between Meade’s victory at Gettysburg and the victory under U.S. Grant at Vicksburg, Mississippi the following day on the 4th of July, it becomes a question of when, not if, the Confederacy would lose the Civil War, and the question of American slavery will finally be answered with true emancipation and abolishment.
But even though the Battle of Gettysburg definitely qualifies as a pivotal moment when America’s fate was pushed to the edge of a cliff, there’s another reason I bring it up as an example today.
Last year, I was fortunate enough to finally visit Gettysburg for the first time. Walking its beautiful fields and the quaint Pennsylvania town, it was hard to imagine that fifty thousand soldiers were casualties over three days of fighting. To put that in perspective, there were fifty eight thousand American casualties in the entire decade of the Vietnam War. But the most memorable feature high upon a hill was one that I confess I knew very little about before discovering it on my trip: the Eternal Light Peace Memorial.
The Memorial was unveiled in 1938 after the project languished for decades awaiting funds to complete it. (Lacking funds for a memorial is oft-repeated in our American story, as you’ll hear more about soon.) The flame at the top is gas-fed and can be seen from twenty miles away. Its purpose was to celebrate peace between the North and the South, and putting aside whether it succeeded in such an idealistic cause, it certainly inspired feeling. On March 31, 1963, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and other family members drove by the Eternal Light Peace Memorial during a visit to Gettysburg. The top was down, and the Kennedys were all smiles. A local resident ran up and filmed several seconds of the visit, until a stern Secret Service man told her to not get any closer. Later that same year, JFK and Jackie Kennedy drove with their top down in Dallas and a soul was snuffed out, and with it, the end of an era of unfailing optimism in the American Dream. As the nation rushed to build a memorial for JFK, the story goes that Jackie reminded the builders of Kennedy’s visit to the Peace Memorial in Gettysburg, of its construction and its aesthetics. And so the new memorial for JFK was built. From the Eternal Light to the Eternal Flame, the American torch of hope in the face of hopelessness was passed to a new generation.
In 2019, my oldest daughter, who had just finished her high school freshman year, got an opportunity with her school’s drama club to go on a summer trip to New York. My wife and I agreed she could go if I went along as a chaperone. I also selfishly agreed that no daughter of mine was going to visit New York before I had a chance to go myself. It was an adventure full of sights and sounds – Broadway plays, Time Square, Central Park – but none of those I anticipated more than our day at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. And here again we see examples of America on the edge of potential loss and tragedy.
Consider Ellis Island. I stood looking down where a century prior, huddled immigrant masses yearned and breathed. They often came ill. Malnourished. Poor. Unable to speak the predominant language. And yet, they had hope for a better future. To the immigrant, what could better personify that hope than the green coppered lady standing tall on a nearby island just under a mile away… coincidentally or not, about the same distance as Washington had to cross the East River, the very same river referenced in Emma Lazarus’s statue sonnet….or about the same length of the field that Picket charged across to the destruction of the Confederacy. But to consider the Statue of Liberty the American symbol of welcome and hope has significant irony. Initially, she was unwelcomed and the construction seemed hopeless. When France announced the project in 1875, on the eve of our country’s centennial, it was a sweetheart deal: France would pay for the statue and the transportation of its parts to the United States, and all America had to do was pay for the pedestal. Except America didn’t, and the pedestal was stuck in construction limbo. In 1882 they started fundraising with an auction of art and manuscripts, and that’s how Emma Lazarus was eventually convinced to contribute a poem. At first, she struggled for inspiration to write a homage to a statue. But then, she began thinking of her work with Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms from Russia, and she realized she could write from their perspective: seeing what she named “The New Colossus” from the point of view of those seeking relief and salvation on our American shores. Still, the fundraising from the art auction was not enough. In 1884, Grover Cleveland, then mayor of New York, vetoed a bill to raise $50,000. In 1885, Congress tried to raise $100,000, which also failed. The work on the pedestal stopped and the whole project was in danger of falling apart. It was finally Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, that saved the day, who announced in 1885 a fundraising drive for $100,000. His genius was the promise to print the name of every contributor in his paper, no matter how small the donation. In the end, it was children and drinkers that saved the Statue. A dollar was sent by a group of young people, explaining it was money they had saved for the circus. Sixty cents was sent by a girl, the result, as she put it, of “self denial.” $1.35 was sent by a kindergarten class from Davenport, Iowa. Fifteen dollars was sent from a home for alcoholics, while donation boxes in bars brought in a flow of cash, a handful at a time.
It was finally enough to resume work on the pedestal, and in 1886, the completed and assembled Statue was dedicated in a ceremony presided over by our vetoing mayor friend who had now become President, Grover Cleveland.
Back to 2019 when our school group arrived on Liberty Island, I couldn’t stop staring up at her. I’ve seen her in countless movies and pictures, yet there she was, like some kind of beautiful green copper earth-goddess in a pagan robe and funky pointed crown.
My daughter and her classmates went on the pedestal and struck the iconic pose: holding up the torch. I then convinced my daughter to go to the Statue of Liberty Museum. We strolled through the prototype models, the paraphernalia of all that fundraising, historical photographs of her construction…and there was the torch.
The original 1886 torch, before her renovation in the 1980’s replaced it. I had to take a picture of my oldest daughter next to it, and was struck by the perspective. Was the torch smaller than I expected or was my thirteen year old child taller than I had ever thought possible? I remembered Lazarus’s words and thought of both Statue and daughter: “A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame / Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name / Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand / Gives world-wide welcome.”
And I realized that the Statue of Liberty was speaking to me, was speaking to both of my daughters, was speaking to all of us. Here in her iconography is the answer to the question I posed in the beginning: how can we love an America that shambles and stumbles and fails and disappoints? History shows us that we are always on the edge of democratic failure, with our own personal trials and tribulations always lurking in the periphery, with darkness just around the corner. What advice can I give to my daughters when facing that darkness? What advice can I give to myself? To us?
We ignite a torch.
When the flame goes out, we blaze forth again. We thrust a light into the darkness, to speak truth when others are silent, to stand with and for others who are persecuted and desperate and are in the shadow even more than we are, to ignite our own hope by igniting it for others. Unitarian Universalists created the flaming chalice as our symbol in World War II, in one of the bleakest times in human history, and how fitting! Because while we were literally helping those persecuted by Nazis escape to safety, we were metaphorically a torch of hope to others. We know the importance of lighting a torch in the darkest of times. As Frederick Douglass said in that 4th of July speech 170 years ago, “No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.”
But we have a choice with our torches. Torches can be used with pitchforks or tuning forks.
We know the danger of torches with pitchforks, the malice of the unruly mob. We have seen people fueled with hate light a bonfire of books, out of ignorance and fear. We have seen them burn crosses in front yards. We have seen them burn lynched bodies, murdered innocents dangling from trees.
But we can pair our torches with tuning forks. Instead of striking with a pitchfork, we can strike the tuning fork and find the right pitch. To harmonize. To sing. To come together against injustice, to become a chorus of compassion and love. In modern music they have something called a “torch song.” They were especially popular in the first half of the twentieth century; Billie Holiday even had a 1955 album full of them titled Music for Torching. Miriam Webster defines a torch song as “a popular sentimental song of unrequited love.” And isn’t the idea of unrequited love perfect for us, both as UUs and as citizens of this fumbling, stumbling country, that asks for our gifts at a birthday party we aren’t even sure we should throw?
We have to be unselfish as Unitarian Universalists. When we abide by our Principles . . . justice, equity and compassion in human relations . . . a free and responsible search for truth and meaning....the right of conscience and the use of democratic processes in our congregations and in society at large….these are unselfish acts. More to the point, if we are genuine, we must treat not just UUs but all peoples with these same principles. Even if it is unrequited. Even if they don’t love us back. Even when their beliefs differ, when it is far easier to name-call than to listen and work together. We provide the faith-fuel of Unitarian Universalism for the faithful, for those without our faith, for those with a different faith, or no faith at all. And in that same way, we must love the democratic ideals of America, even when she can act the hypocrite, and even when the times are hardest, and even when she doesn’t love us back.
We must also realize that we should be the right verbs and not the wrong nouns. Because in times like these, we cannot afford to be the noun of the passive so-called patriot, but must be the verbs of truly acting patriotically. Kamala Harris said, "A patriot is not someone who condones the conduct of our country, whatever it does; it is someone who fights every day for the ideals of our country, whatever it takes." With your torch in your hand, you must march. Vote. Speak. Enlighten. Malcolm X once famously asked us, will it be the ballot or the bullet? We might ask, will it be pitchforks or tuning forks? Do we scream, or do we sing? Do we terrorize the innocent, or harmonize against injustice? We should hold the torch, and we must realize that torches are not only handheld, but heartheld. The agape strength in our chest will determine the strength of our torch grip. And yet, when facing the onyx of despair, do we dare to hope? Yes. Because in America, where we always seem to be on the edge of darkness, what has always made the difference? You. You. Us.
In 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote a poem about America in the nighttime. “And the rocket’s red glare / the bombs bursting in air / gave proof through the night / that our flag was still there.” I propose to you a devoutly wished hypothesis: Our flag, our ideals of America, are still there. It may be murky, it may be obscured, and one might even argue that America has always been seen at best through a fog as thick as the one that saved Washington all those years ago, an ideal pinprick of starlight in the obsidian of night and prejudice and ignorance and hopelessness. What we must remember about the stars is not only that they are there, however hidden, but that we are made of that very starlight and stardust from the birth of our shared universe. The light to see is the light within all of us. We only need to ignite that torch of faith and love, faith in the ideals of America, love for a better America, love for the best in America and of Americans. We must light that torch over and over and over again, even if in our grief and despair and pessimism we are forced to fan the flame of our last embers of hope in order to achieve a spiritual combustion, an ignition point for action and change.
Even in this American darkness, in the twilight’s last gleaming that has always, always loomed close by, I say onto you: we still can celebrate the birthday of the United States. It is a birthday celebration of struggle and ideals, and like any typical family birthday party, may involve a bit of arguing and passionate voices. The fight for America is perilous, and loud, and fraught with failure, but it has always been so.
Amanda Gorman was in the middle of writing a poem for an inauguration when the Biden inauguration, and the peaceful democratic transfer of power, and ultimately America itself, was almost silenced. On January 6, 2021, rioters climbed Capitol Hill with the intent to kill America. How do you find hope about America in the hours following such an attack? Somehow, Gorman did. Earlier we heard the opening of Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb.” As I reach the end of my own talk today, I share her closing:
“Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the West.
We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked South.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.
The new dawn balloons as we free it.
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
Gorman asks us if we are brave enough to be the light. Am I? Are you? Are we?
I end today, talking about the birthday of the United States, with a plea.
Light your candles, your chalices, your torches. Make a wish for a better America. Believe in your breath, and blow.
Note: The anecdotes about the construction of the Statue of Liberty were helped by the Wikipedia entry, which reference various primary sources.
