The Huxford side of my family tree can trace its arrival in the New World all the way back to 1679, when Captain Samuel Huxford, from Long Beedy, Dorsetshire, England, took up residence in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, as the first member of the Huxford family to come to the new world and stay. Eventually one of his descendants would travel south to Charleston, SC. He was the third male named Samuel Huxford. He died in 1785 and is buried in the St. James Episcopal Cemetery in Goose Creek, SC. I assume that, like so many other immigrants from England to what would become the United States of America, Samuel Huxford and his descendants were looking for freedom to make important life choices of their own accord.
This coming weekend, we will celebrate the 250th birthday of our country. It is just shy of 350 years since my first ancestor arrived in Martha’s Vineyard. That is a lot of years to have passed by, one by one, as the ideals of the Declaration of Independence were formed, written down, and have hopefully shown us what it looks like for humans to live under a government where we have the freedom – at least to some degree – to act of our own accord rather than to obey a King on the other side of the Atlantic.
The messiness and tension that characterize our culture today bear ample testimony that sometimes “my own accord” and “your own accord” may not always be the same accord. For some, the government, especially the federal government, is the solution to our conflicts of “accord,” and the church should just sit quietly on the sidelines, minding its own business. For others, government can’t solve any issue, and the church must find a way to legislate Chistian morals into every facet of our society.
What’s an authentic follower of Jesus to do?
Do we really think putting a copy of the Ten Commandments in every public school building and courthouse in the U.S. is the answer? Can we really force feed such values to people who haven’t come to know the God who created the world and everything in it? If something like that would really work, shouldn’t we perhaps put the Beatitudes or The Lord’s Prayer up for the whole nation to see?
Could it be that Paul has a better answer than that? There is this little one-page, personal letter in the New Testament, just before the Book of Hebrews. It is a personal note from the apostle Paul, likely in a Roman jail cell, to a believing friend of his, Philemon. Paul has met and seemingly converted a runaway enslaved man named Onesimus. By providence, Onesimus had run away from Philemon, who happened to be a friend of Paul. Think about that. If an enslaved man ran away from his owner, he likely went to Rome, where he could get lost in the crowd in that city. Somehow, Onesimus got connected with a Christian preacher in jail in Rome and became a follower of Jesus.
Don’t read this to suggest Paul approves of slavery. But, as a “realistic radical” (Ben Witherington, III), Paul can’t risk drawing the ire of the emperor and his massive army over any issue, including slavery.
But there is more to it than that. Paul tells his friend Philemon that as an apostle, etc., he could command him to release Onesimus. Remember, to be a runaway slave put you in what could become a life-or-death predicament. Paul even notes that Onesimus has been “useful” to him in his prison ministry in Rome.
Yet . . . and this is a huge “yet” in this story . . . Paul will send him back in hopes that Onesimus would be freed and welcomed in the same way Philemon would have welcomed Paul himself. Why is that important? “But I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord.” (Philemon, 14) Paul must have believed, as he says in Romans 1:16, that “the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.”
On this 250th anniversary of our founding, I don’t want to sound like an anarchist who thinks all laws are useless. I know that isn’t true, and sometimes, in our country’s historical narrative, we have needed some laws to buy us more time to convince people to do what is right of their “own accord.”
But, at the same time, as followers of Jesus, we can’t possibly think passing new laws that support moral and political agendas, shoving the Ten Commandments down the body politic’s throat, or sitting back as the church and letting the government solve our issues can possibly make us look like the community described in the Sermon on the Mount or the community for which we pray when we say “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Have a great celebration of an amazing accomplishment – we have lasted 250 years! But don’t forget, the church is God’s only redeeming agency on earth.
Image by Angelique Johnson from Pixabay
Wye Huxford 