Temple Church Independence Day Sermon

Good morning. It really is an incredible honour to speak before you today at this magnificent Temple Church, the cradle of common law, America’s church in London, whose history is entwined with the lawyers and ideas that birthed and nurtured democracy, liberty, and freedom in my home country. 

Reverend Griffith-Jones, thank you for your kind and generous invitation. We are so grateful for all you have done and continue to do to strengthen the familial bonds between the lawyers of the United States and the United Kingdom, along with your steadfast support and great love for your considerable extended family at the American Bar Association (ABA). 

To my ABA friends and colleagues, thank you for your support and presence, both in person and by live stream. And no, I will not be preaching a fire and brimstone sermon! 

I bring greetings to all of you from my minister, Reverend Alison Philip and the parishioners of my home congregation, First United Methodist Church in Westfield, NJ, about an hour’s commute (on a good day), from my law office in Manhattan. 

I grew up in New York City attending Salem United Methodist Church, a still thriving intergenerational and multi-ethnic community whose motto is ‘In the Heart of Harlem.’ I would be remiss if I did not mention Salem, my mother church. 

As we begin our time together, let us pray: 

‘May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Oh Lord our Rock and our Redeemer.’ 

As I mentioned, I am a native New Yorker, having grown up in Harlem. I’m what’s known as a ‘church baby’. I spent all day Sunday and many weekdays running around Salem Church. 

I, in turn, raised my own church baby. My son, Parker. One of my favourite comforts about church life is the tradition of giving bibles to children. 

I remember my son’s favourite bible was one that his paternal Grandma Pearl gave him. 

Now, if you’ve ever had small children, you’ll know that when they’re being too quiet, you wonder what they’re doing. So, one day, Parker was being particularly quiet, and I yelled out, ‘Parker, what are you doing?’ And he said, ‘Reading my Bible.’ And I thought, oh, OK, what kind of a mommy am I, if my first thought was the child was getting into something bad?

Tomorrow, 4 July, is America’s Independence Day—or perhaps what some on this side of the pond call the day Americans got into something bad. 

I must confess, it’s a bit disorienting for me to be in the Mother Country for the occasion, but it also provides a fresh and welcome perspective. 

Many of you know last week marked the first anniversary of Parker’s death after a long illness. Some say losing a child is a pain from which no mother can ever recover. 

The story about Parker and his Bible comforts me because it calls to mind and heart my everlasting love for my incredible, wonderful boy who grew up to be an incredible, wonderful young man. 

But on this occasion, I see that it is also a story that connects to motherhood, with all its hopes, fears, joys, tears, and seemingly constant lessons in trusting the process of relinquishing control. Of allowing, maybe even encouraging independence. 

It’s a story of independence that, as every parent learns, stirs in souls well before youth and expresses itself in countless ways both ordinary and unexpected: a baby’s first giggle, a toddler struggling to pour a glass of milk, or tie a shoe (do they even have shoestrings now?!), a child crossing the street without holding hands, a teen leaving home for university. 

Or indeed, a colony breaking with the Mother Country and starting an unprecedented experiment in self-governance—with these opening words from Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: 

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

In this era of hashtags and tweets, can we pause to reflect on the beauty, majesty and power of those words. 

The Declaration goes on to state: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….

At its most basic level, independence means having full autonomy over one’s life. Of course, it is not lost on me, a Black woman, that at the time of this great Declaration, slavery existed, and women’s rights were deeply curtailed. 

1 Peter 2:16 tells us ‘Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.’ That is why we must constantly guard and protect our freedom and independence. 

As we grow from each other, we grow with each other. The covenant is an enduring covenant. 

It’s a story from Scripture told countless times and in countless ways, from Creation to the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, from Exodus and the revelation at Sinai to the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Rachel weeps for her children; but the bond between them endures. 

For America’s lawyers, among the most venerated of places anywhere beyond our own shores is in Runnymede, where Magna Carta was sealed in 1215. In 1957, the ABA solicited donations from members to erect a memorial there to the legacy of Magna Carta. 

Engraved in stone are the words ‘Freedom Under Law.’ Since then, we’ve returned in 1971, 1985, 2000, and for the 800th anniversary in 2015 with our British family (including the Queen!) to rededicate the memorial and recommit to the tenets of Magna Carta. 

The barons and King John could scarcely have imagined that the words to which they agreed would launch the progression of the rule of law. They birthed precepts that made possible the United States Constitution, the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the framework of justice in America, the United Kingdom, and indeed much of the world. The line between Runnymede in 1215 and Philadelphia in 1776 is direct and inseverable. 

For the 750th anniversary, the former ABA President and Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell extolled the close relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom in a speech at the Royal Courts of Justice. He said, ‘In war and peace our nations have sustained the same ideals and the same principles that we proudly attribute to Magna Carta.’ 

As a lifelong Methodist, I mustn’t leave this pulpit without reflecting a bit on our common ancestor, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism who, in spite of his infamous streak of independence from the Mother Church, considered himself a lifelong member of the Church of England. 

Under Wesley’s direction, Methodists became leaders in many social movements of the day, including Abolition. In this sense, he and many of his countrymen were more enlightened by providence than many of America’s equally devout founders who nevertheless were blind to the self-evident injustice and evil of slavery. 

On this Independence Day, we remember martyrs like Crispus Attucks, a Black man who escaped enslavement and was the first colonist killed in the American Revolution. Attucks remains an important symbol in our nation’s struggle for freedom and equality, as does our new federal holiday of Juneteenth, a long-time informal celebration that marks the day, on June 19 in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas were first notified of their freedom, some two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. 

Wesley was an enlightened leader in countless other ways. His coinage of the phrase ‘agree to disagree’ is particularly impressive given today’s age of incivility and sharp divisions. Wesley used the phrase in 1770 in a memorial sermon for George Whitefield, where he acknowledged but downplayed the two men’s doctrinal differences. As he said, ‘There are many doctrines of a less essential nature… In these we may think and let think; we may “agree to disagree.” But, meantime, let us hold fast the essentials…’ 

Those essentials include another maxim widely attributed to Wesley, which I learned as a child and try to live by even now. I will leave it with you today as both a blessing and a challenge: 

‘Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.’ 

It is the bonds between us and the generations before us and after that give the highest and most sacred meaning to independence. 

It is indeed our sacred, moral duty always and in everything we do to promise to protect and preserve our independence and fight for those who are not yet free! 

On the eve of America’s Independence Day, I can think of no other place that I’d rather be than right here, the Temple Church, with all of you. 

As it was said in Matthew 19:6, ‘What God Has Put Together Let No Man (or Woman) Put Asunder.’ 

Amen and Hallelujah!

---