On July 4th, we will celebrate our nation’s independence for the 245th year. I think it’s interesting that John Adams, who would become our nation’s second president, predicted in 1777 that we would commemorate our independence day for generations “as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty.”
Our forefathers in the faith also commemorated important national dates, and I think it’s telling that they often did so by calling for repentance and forgiveness. Solomon’s commemoration of the temple in 2 Chronicles 6 calls on God for forgiveness a number of times. And it’s not only the forgiveness of our sins that these Old Testament leaders call for, they also give us the example of praying for forgiveness for the sins of their fathers.
In our culture today, we value individual responsibility, but we can be offended at the idea that we might bear any sort of collective responsibility for sin. However, as Solomon’s speech shows us, the leaders of Israel often took the lead in confessing the sins of their nation. In fact, just as the second commandment, as it is written in Exodus 20 already tells us that God will punish the “iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation,” Leviticus 20 provides the way out: “if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.”
Unlike some of the Levitical laws, we have a number of examples of this in the Old Testament: Daniel’s prayer (Daniel 9:16) records him praying for forgiveness for the sins of their fathers, and Nehemiah (9:2) is another example where the people of Israel confess not only their sins but the sins of their fathers. Probably the most telling example is that of King Josiah in 2 Kings 22:13, where he says, “Great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book (the Book of the Law), to do according to all that is written concerning us.”
Josiah perceived that past sins have present consequences. He responds righteously, and instead of trying to defy these accusations or deflect blame, he tears his clothes and weeps before the Lord, and he repents. In the prophecy Josiah receives from Huldah the prophetess says, “because your heart was penitent and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, … and you have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, declares the Lord.” (22:19) Then in the following chapter, Josiah makes “a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant.” (23:3)
It is a good and godly thing to repent of sin and to acknowledge not only our sins but the sins of our fathers. In doing so, we bring glory to God. When we only remember the good things from the past and glorify the highlights of our history, we turn our past into a false god, and the glory due to the one true God is directed instead to an idol. It is also dangerous for us to deny the sins of our past because in doing so we open the door to deny the sins of our present.
Conservative Christian political commentator David French recently wrote,
It is not “hating America” to acknowledge this [our sinful past] is part of our story. It is not unpatriotic to understand that much of our present reality exists because the legacy of past atrocities does not fade as quickly as their memory. …
When it comes to our great moments, we remember them, we celebrate them, and we teach our children to emulate the courage and virtue of our heroes. We cover the countryside with tributes.
If it is right to celebrate, it is also right to mourn. When it comes to our darkest moments, we should remember them, we should lament them, and we should take a page from Josiah and seek reform to ameliorate their effects. Unless we remember our worst moments, we simply can’t truly understand our own nation, nor can we relate to all its people.
When we acknowledge and repent of the sins of the past, including the sins of our fathers, we bring glory to God. In the words of our liturgy, “if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Can we still celebrate the fourth of July? Of course we can, but let’s be honest when we do.
Our Christian faith and our liturgy give us a framework and words with which we can be honest about our past, present, and future. This means that as we come to commemorations like the Fourth of July, we can both celebrate the good, including the ways God has blessed us, and acknowledge and mourn the bad, including the sins of those who have gone before us. This way we can go forward in forgiveness and move beyond both our sins and the iniquity of our fathers, giving glory and thanks to the God who earned forgiveness for the entire world through the acts of Jesus Christ on the ultimate day of deliverance. And that’s a day we will celebrate for eternity.