Introduction
St. Mark’s on the Campus Episcopal Church, Lincoln, Neb., celebrates the Holy Eucharist on Tuesdays at 12:30 p.m. The parish’s rector, Father Jerry Thompson, asked me to lead worship on Tuesday, July 3, 2012. The liturgy features the memorial of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Writer and Prophetic Witness.
Readings
Isaiah 26:7–13
Psalm 94:16–23
1 Peter 3:8–12
Matthew 23:1–12
Homily
Harriet Beecher Stowe lived in Connecticut from 1811 to 1896. She is most famous as the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852, the nineteenth century’s bestselling book. Despite its formal tone, it depicted in powerful ways the horrific effects of slavery on families. Many Northerners found inspiration in her writings to fortify their opposition to slavery, while numerous Southerners reacted with anger at the message of her work. The escalating tensions soon found their release in the outbreak of the Civil War.
It may be an apocryphal story, but President Abraham Lincoln, after meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, is reported to have said, “So, this is the little lady who started this great war!”
Remembering this author’s life and work so close to Independence Day leads us to reflect upon the power of ideas and words to overcome the forces of arms and actions. Great revolutions always find their roots first in thoughts, which then grow into deeds. Our Declaration of Independence says, “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.”
In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, George Harris, a slave, gives voice to his own declaration of independence, saying, “We don’t own your laws; we don’t own your country; we stand here as free, under God’s sky, as you are; and, by the great God that made us, we’ll fight for our liberty till we die.”
President Lincoln echoed these thoughts when he stood on the grounds of the national cemetery in Gettysburg in 1863 and said, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. …[F]rom these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Taking increased devotion from the honored dead—that’s just exactly what we do when we memorialize our forebears in the faith. So today, we remember Harriet Beecher Stowe for giving written voice to the truth that all people have receive liberty as a blessing from God. With this blessing, God grants us the grace to live as St. Peter guides us, “Do not return evil for evil, or insult for insult; but, on the contrary, a blessing, because to this you were called, that you might inherit a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9, NAB).
Amen.