Happy 250th Birthday, USA!

I am old enough to remember the Bicentennial celebrations of 1976 when I was eight years old. I'll let you do the math :)) There were picnics, fireworks, patriotic parades, and plenty of the music and fashions that defined the 1970s.

What I love is that fifty years later, much of that 1976 music is still with us. The sounds of the 1970s have found new life with a new generation. A few years ago, my kids asked me to turn on a classic rock station. When I started singing along to songs like Dancing Queen, September, and Bohemian Rhapsody, they were amazed. How did I know all the words?

The answer is simple. That music was playing in the background of the formative years in my life. It was on the radio in the car, in stores and restaurants, on television, and on record players at home. We didn't have cell phones competing for our attention. This is how we had music. It became part of the soundtrack of our memories.

As our nation marks 250 years, music helps us remember the stories and sounds that shaped America.

Celebrating 250 Years of USA!

An honest memory chooses the truth, memories of the bad with the good. What do you hear and remember when you hear the music of America across the centuries?

Can you hear the fife and drum of 1776 as the Declaration of Independence was signed? The wonder and joy of our nation’s independence evoked a declaration of war with England, and we prevailed as the underdog. The flip side of our victory was a dark shadow of chattel slavery, indentured servanthood, and westward land expansion, claiming Native American lives.

Let the fiddle and the bow float in the air to the centennial in 1876. Celebrations of a hard-fought one hundred formative years marveled at our strength to reconstruct and advance in technology after the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and our own horrible Civil War that ended enslavement, ushering in an era of Jim Crow and the back-breaking work of reconstruction of our war-torn land and economy.

The riffs of electric guitar in rock and funk bands carry us into the bicentennial thrill of 1976. We launched into space, put a man on the moon. Life adjusted to engaging in World Wars, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War had only recently ended. While living in the tension of the Cold War era with Eastern Europe and Asia, Civil rights continued a slow crawl in unraveling the residual effects of injustice in our founding years.   

Yet, in all of our struggles, the best of who we are as Americans is found in her people. In you and in me. Neighbors. Friends. Family. Relationships. And our relationship with God guides our care for one another.

In our summer sermon series, we are studying the foundational stories of our faith in Genesis. These early stories of faith reveal the good and bad about ourselves in our relationship with God as God’s people. We are discovering through the honesty of these biblical accounts that on our worst days and on our best days, there is a music that runs deep in us that defines who we are and will always be. God’s people.

God's holy love is the music that runs beneath all creation. It is the melody that gives meaning to every note of existence. It leads us to repent and reconcile with God and one another. The stars sing it. The mountains echo it. The oceans roar it. Human beings are created to embody God’s love and join the song.

So, sure. We remember the good and bad. Evaluate and always strive to do better.

In all of our Semi-quincentennial celebrations across the USA, be led by a deeper melody of God’s enduring love that has coursed through all our times. This song of God’s holy love reminds us, defines us, and connects us in the most unifying party songs of our lives. This kind of song overflows from sea to shining sea, coursing around and through the globe in all humanity.

Bring all of who you are. Memorize the music. Embody it. Carry it forward as a new generation. Redefine it. Be swept up into this sacred, unifying music and celebrate!

Peace, Pastor Kim