Dear American friends, as we watch your fireworks paint the sky in celebration of freedom, which is a different kind of painting from the one russian missiles and drones make in our skies day and night, we in Ukraine understand more deeply than ever the sacred weight of independence. Your Fourth of July reminds us that freedom is a theological reality for the people of God, a divine gift that has to be received and protected, rather than merely a political concept.
We have learned here that independence is a daily death and resurrection rather than a destination. Each sunrise in Ukraine is both a Good Friday and an Easter morning, holding death and life together, suffering and hope, destruction and the promise of rebuilding. The psalmist wrote that “weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5, NKJV). We are still inside our long night, and we watch for the horizon to lighten.
Like the Israelites after their exodus from bondage, we wander in a wilderness before reaching any promised land. Ukraine walks its own wilderness now, and we are not alone in it, since we see God’s hand in the friendship between our peoples, and we remember well what that friendship has meant. Your founders declared that all are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” words that now echo in our own prayers for sovereignty.
We have discovered that freedom is deeply incarnational, since it requires vulnerable flesh and red blood, sacrifice and solidarity. The cross of the crucified God teaches us that freedom comes through sacrifice, and where your forefathers understood this, we are living it. Your material support for our ministry and our seminary-based hubs is sacramental, and your prayers for the Church in Ukraine are priestly intercession. When we defend our cities, we are defending the same principle that founded yours: that every person is created in God’s image and deserves to live in dignity.
So in this season of your celebration we offer more than congratulations, since we offer communion in the mystery of freedom itself. Those of us who taste the bitter herbs of oppression daily understand the sweetness of the liberty you celebrate, and the Resurrection promises that no tyranny, however brutal, gets the final word.
This Independence Day we celebrate your past victory and our shared future hope: the vision of nations dwelling in peace, swords beaten into plowshares, and freedom ringing from sea to shining sea. May the God who leads His people out of darkness into light keep making us instruments of His just peace, guardians of His justice, and witnesses to His enduring love for everyone who cries out for freedom.
Our Mission has not changed. Keep your children away from war.
God bless America.
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