2nd Sunday after Pentecost Sermon
Episcopal Celebration of the U.S. Constitution
The phrase “Kingdom of God” is one we have heard repeatedly. Many of us think of a world ordered by love, justice, and peace. We imagine God’s reign made visible: a world where every person is treated with dignity, where truth is honored, and where creation itself is respected—a perfect state of being in relation with God, each other, and all the world.
We all know that we are not there yet.
We fall short. Our leaders and institutions fall short. Human beings, even at our best, are imperfect.
But imagine what it would be like if you lived 250 years ago and could create a government. What values would you place at its center, acknowledging that you have virtues and vices, wisdom and blind spots?
The Constitution we have today was born of the people of the time. It was an effort to chart a new course for their lives after having fought and sacrificed in a bloody war for that opportunity.
Remember too that the framers did not just sit down together and, a few hours later, have our Constitution. It was fiercely contested for months in the summer at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. It was hot and for the sake of secrecy, they kept the windows and shutters closed. Making their rooms sweltering hot. Like many important meetings, seems to have involved strong opinions, long heated debates, and frequent visits to the Philadelphia taverns for ale and cider after sessions.
All the framers realized that they had to compromise to be able to come to agreement on how to create a federal government.
The Constitution was the subject of heated debate again in the states during ratification. In some places, it passed by the narrowest of margins. Rhode Island, for example, did not ratify it until nearly three years after it came out of the convention, and then only by two votes.
As all people are, those who drafted and ratified the Constitution were imperfect, and some of those flaws are reflected in the Constitution they adopted.
We should be honest about those imperfections. The original Constitution tolerated slavery. It excluded women from political participation. It failed Native Americans and many other people. It reflected the limits of the society that produced it.
Still, our federal Constitution is extraordinary and became one of the most influential governing documents in the world.
Those who were involved in the creation of our Constitution, about half of whom were members of the Church of England, strove to reflect the values of the Kingdom of God as they understood them while balancing the realities of their time.
Let’s be clear, no government can fully embody the Kingdom of God. But that does not mean there is no overlap. In fact, some of the Kingdom of God’s values are contained, however incompletely, in our Constitution.
The first is a commitment to justice. The Kingdom of God rejects exploitation and the abuse of power. The framers of the Constitution knew what it meant to suffer under governmental exploitation and overreach, having experienced British rule firsthand. So, they built within our Constitution a framework of government that attempts to limit the concentration and abuse of power.
Our system of checks and balances—Congress making laws, the President carrying them out, and the courts reviewing the actions of both—is meant to create accountability and curb the abuse of power. That system’s very design reflects an effort to restrain domination and protect the common good.
A second area of overlapping values between the Kingdom of God and the Constitution are repentance and reconciliation.
How you ask? The Constitution did not begin with any amendments or expression of individual rights. This failure was one of the major sources of conflict over the document.
But the framers installed a vehicle for change. Although not easy, Article 5 created a way for the Constitution to be amended.
George Washington, having experienced the difficulties and horrors of the Revolutionary War, wrote in a letter to a friend that he was “no blind admirer” of the Constitution, for he saw its imperfections, but he “was persuaded it was the best that could be obtained at the time.” He further wrote that “when the defects of it are experienced, a Constitutional door is open for amendments and may be adopted in a peaceable manner without tumult or disorder.”
It appears that many of the framers, including George Washington, who was the president of the Constitutional Convention itself, recognized that human-created government is going to be flawed and in need of change.
In that way, constitutional amendment can be understood almost as a civic, group form of repentance and reconciliation. It reflects the Kingdom of God’s value of the importance of allowing a people to acknowledge where they have been wrong and to move, however slowly, toward something better and a return to a right relationship with Him and each other.
A third area of overlapping values between the Kingdom of God and the Constitution are freedom of conscience and truth. The Kingdom of God does not coerce faith, and it honors truth. The First Amendment is one of the Constitution’s clearest expressions of those principles.
It provides, in part, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. . .”
In the First Amendment, the Constitution protects people’s ability to believe in their truth, to hear about, and express truth. At its most elemental, it is intended to protect those whose beliefs are unpopular and those who point out corruption, deception, and injustice. It creates room for dissent, moral witness, and conviction without the need for violence.
Finally, there are the values of respect for human dignity and equality, especially as expressed in the protection of minority rights.
The Kingdom of God lifts up the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized. As Christians, we affirm that every person bears the image of God. Our Episcopal tradition stresses the importance of care for vulnerable people.
While incomplete, over time, our Constitution has increasingly been changed to extend protection and participation to those who have been excluded and historically lacked power.
The most dramatic example is the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. Ratified in December of 1865, it expressly guaranteed universal individual freedom to all people in the U.S.
The Fourteenth Amendment established due process and equal protection, affirming that government must be fundamentally fair and must not create systems that disadvantage certain classes of people.
The voting rights amendments—the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th prohibit laws that deny the right to vote due to race, sex, poverty and lowered the voting age to 18 respectively. Each expanded access to political participation for groups that had long been denied power, were vulnerable and marginalized.
These changes moved the nation toward a broader understanding of justice, freedom, and belonging.
But be aware: constitutional values can be used either to advance justice or twisted to defend injustice, depending on how society interprets and applies them. We must remain mindful of where we still fall short—where discrimination persists, where there is poverty and violence, and where access to power is still unequal.
But our Constitution and its core principles create space for justice, to correct wrongs, and to honor the dignity of every human being. In those ways, however imperfectly, it reflects some of the values of the Kingdom of God. That is something to celebrate.