Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 

This picture was taken in 1965.

Photo of 2 year-old Bradley holding American flag.

I was two years old. Apparently, I was fascinated by American flags. It’s always nice to look back at a time when you were at your cutest.

The photo gives me that warm feeling old photographs often do. The kind that whispers that things were certainly simpler then, before the body succumbs to gravity and that childlike patriotism gives way to a more complex reaction to last night’s fireworks and Presidential speeches. That two-year old lived inside a happy naivete that we wish we was possible again.

It looks like I’m right in the middle of saying something, which may not be a surprise to you. Maybe I was reporting what I had just learned. Maybe I was telling my dad why my sister shouldn’t be allowed to carry the flag in the neighborhood parade. Maybe I was just excited that I got to help put out the flag.

And look at the size of that flag! It’s probably an ordinary flag, but next to a two-year-old it stretches beyond the edge of the frame. I’m holding onto something much bigger than I am.

You hold the flag.

You belong.

You’re safe.

This is your home.

My mom labeled the moment. “Brad, the Flag Lover.” She often captioned the photos which gave a glimpse into what she chose to remember.

This 4^th of July, the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, feels like a day that all of us are trying to figure out how to frame and caption this moment.

We have all kinds of ready captions, each a story in a word; some flooding us with warm feelings; some making our blood run cold. Monitor your gut reaction to the following words:

Flag Lover

Progressive.

Conservative.

Patriot.

Activist.

Native.

ICE

Immigrant.

Trans.

Christian.

Un-American.

I wonder what someone from the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community, one of Gloria Dei’s Indigenous partners, would see in this same picture.

Would they feel the same warm nostalgia I do?

Would that flag say belonging, safety, home?

What would Alex Pretti’s family see?

What would Tom Emmer see?

What would my sister see?

Every frame tells a truth, and every frame also leaves something outside of it.

There are no Native people in this photograph.

There were no Black people in my neighborhood

The frame is simply too small.

…

In Vacation Bible School a few weeks ago, the counselors led a skit that’s been part of the Lutheran camping framework for a long time. A guy is lost at sea and prays to God to save him. A boat comes by, and the man says, “God will save me.” He refused a helicopter and one other mode of transportation that I can’t remember. When the man drowns and goes to heaven, he says, “I prayed to you. Why didn’t you come save me?” Jesus says, “I sent you a boat, a helicopter, and one other mode of transportation that none of us can remember!”

“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance.

We wailed, and you did not mourn.”

John came fasting.

“Demon.”

Jesus came feasting.

“Glutton.”

Before anyone listened…

they had already decided.

John. Demon.

Jesus. Drunk.

The caption became so definitive that nothing could change.

I can’t help but think it’s our framing, even the kind that gives “my tribe” a warm, happy glow, has become the burden that’s killing us all.

Maybe that’s one of the greatest burdens we’re carrying today.

Not simply disagreement. But categories so fixed that we’re exhausted before we start the day.

We stop seeing neighbors.

We start seeing cartoons.

We stop seeing stories.

We start seeing stereotypes.

We don’t even have to know someone anymore.

We only have to know the caption.

And carrying those captions gets heavy.

Very heavy.

You know something else about that little boy in the picture?

Neither the photographer, the labeler, or the subject could have ever imagined

that red, white, and blue would get refracted into rainbow colors.

Or that a tiny, plastic version would get held on a street corner by someone wearing a whistle,

            making sure kids got safely into school in January in Minnesota.

Frankly, he couldn’t have imagined Minnesota winter,

            where a candle held on the corner could melt the power of ICE and illuminate the night in the same way Paul Revere’s candle did at Old North Church in Boston.

He couldn’t have imagined some of the stories told about service in Vietnam, so devastatingly painful and courageously human, that no words can be spoken, only held in reverent silence.

He couldn’t have imagined that an ability to be honest about a nation’s history, even its superpower stratagies to hide greed and power, has more hopeful power than infantile denial that requires fear as its ground.

My mother wrote one caption.

Experience wrote another.

And God takes both to write yet another story.

Maybe that’s true for America too.

 

Every generation inherits the same photograph.

Some see courage.

Some see conquest.

Some see dreams fulfilled.

Some see promises postponed.

The picture hasn’t changed.

The caption could.

And perhaps wisdom isn’t choosing one caption over another.

Perhaps wisdom is discovering that the frame was never large enough to begin with.

Because this nation has given the world breathtaking gifts: the conviction that all people are created equal, the stubborn insistence that freedom belongs to everyone, generation after generation refusing to let those words die.

And it has also carried wounds that still ache—slavery and genocide, exclusion and inequality, promises made and promises broken.

Both stories are ours.

The question is not which one wins.

The question is whether our hearts can become spacious enough to hold them both…

…spacious enough to pray,

“God mend thine every flaw.”

As I read today’s gospel text, I wondered how it would sound if read to a nation at this milestone, where the pen held by the framers of the Constitution is now handed to a next generation, desperately praying for guidance in a heavy time. Of course, Jesus wasn’t addressing the United States of America on the occasion of its 250^th birthday. Yet, in the light of Sunday morning, another Easter dawning, including Pentecost’s always surprising fireworks, maybe he is.

Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Come. Come with your pride.

Come with your grief.

Come with your love of country.

Come with your disappointment.

Come with your questions.

Come with the stories you’ve inherited.

Come with the stories you’ve told about your neighbors.

Come with the stories you’ve told about yourself.

Lay them down.

Because none of those stories—not even the truest ones—are large enough to contain who you are. or who we are.

You belong first to the One whose mercy always extends beyond the frame.

A love that has been placed in your hands, yet cannot be owned or made small,

A love that is more spacious than even our skies.

You belong. You are safe. You are home.

Jesus words from Matthew’s gospel are a common choice for funerals. My ears tend to hear rest as “rest in peace,” that final eternal rest, but this year I heard something different. Jesus isn’t calling us away from life but back into it, he’s inviting us to find our center of gravity in a different place. Take my yoke upon you. Rest your center here.

Pastor Lois, when giving instructions about carrying the cross to some of the smallest acolytes always said, “Rest the weight of the cross against your body.” They always wanted to hold it way out, making the whole enterprise unbalanced and the procession seem treacherous. But when rested on a body, there was a center that made the journey down the aisle possible.

Take my yoke upon you. Let my gentleness and humility be your center of gravity. It will give you a base that you didn’t know you had. Use my body as your strength, my cross as your guide, and my Spirit as your power.

Greatness will be found in sacrifice. Strength in humility, and power in gentleness.

At the end of the liturgy, our Affirmation of Vocation as Citizens is just a longer version of, “Here, you hold the cross.”

I want to get a picture of you. Because right now, you’re at your cutest, or maybe at rest, captured by a frame that extends into eternity. Future generations are going to rest on this moment. Don’t you wish you could tell them, “You’ve got this.” Take a breath. Rest.