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.
                                                                                                                                                                  Declaration of Independence 1776


This Tuesday we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  On that day the founding fathers of our country declared their independence from England, from the tyranny of non-participatory government that imposed crushing taxes on the American colonies. Their bold action challenged the legitimacy of England’s authority over us.  It was a claim, not just for freedom from England, but also freedom for self-determination.  We claimed for ourselves the right to determine the structures of civil life that will promote life, liberty, and happiness both for individuals and for the communities that comprise our country.  But freedom isn’t free. It cost lives in the immediate term, and it costs ongoing responsibility to participate in choosing how we sustain our core values. 

Freedom is also central to our relationship with God, though we didn’t have to make a declaration; rather, it is gift without the asking.  But like our freedom as Americans, it comes with cost. We live and move and have our being in God who created us and gives us complete freedom for self-determination.  We are free each day and each moment to choose life or death, to choose life and happiness or enslavement and misery.  Life is entering into relationships with God, others, and ourselves, loving and forgiving as Jesus does.  Death is separating ourselves from relationships through self-centered, ego-driven, control seeking actions.

Our readings today illustrate well the freedom God gives us, both its cost and its rewards.  Jesus in the Gospel pointedly tells His apostles, before sending them out, some of the demands of discipleship.   It is going to cost them.  True disciples love the Lord above all else, above everyone else.  In fact, disciples have to set aside their whole life; be free from their plans, their preferences, their needs for recognition and control, in order to be free for love, to be free to truly live. True disciples are promised a “righteous man’s reward.”  Today’s First Reading reveals what that reward can look like.  The hospitable woman of Shunem, recognizing that Elisha is a man of God, not only invited him to dine regularly with her and her husband when he came to town, she and her older husband constructed a room and furnished it on their roof so that Elisha could rest overnight in comfort.  Free to cling to her wealth, her time, and food, she choose freely instead to be kind and generous beyond any request or expectation.  She entered into lasting loving relationship with Elisha, and in return received a reward beyond any request or expectation, the promise of a baby son.
 
How will you claim and celebrate your freedom this Independence Day, this Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time?  All of us have unfree places in our hearts, places where death looms.  Whose authority do you accept?  What must you relinquish in order to be free to love more?  It is a matter of life, liberty, and happiness in this world and the next. God has given us these rights.  May we live as true disciples, participating in our freedom, embracing its cost.