Following Jesus into the Future: 'Look around you, look at the people beside you'

Following Jesus into the Future

‘Look around you, look at the people beside you’

Susan Swann

July 5, 2026

 

How should we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States?

It is a question that cannot be answered with fireworks alone.

Coming to this question as someone who lives with one foot in the United States and one in Canada, I find myself viewing Independence Day from a slightly different vantage point. In Quebec, where I serve as a lay preacher at St. George’s Anglican Church in Granby, late June and early July are filled with national celebrations. Quebec marks the Fête Nationale, while Canada celebrates Canada Day. Then comes the Fourth of July, with all its familiar American rituals of parades, picnics, flags, fireworks, and family gatherings.

These celebrations awaken deep memories. Many of us remember long summer afternoons with family and friends, neighborhood gatherings that welcomed strangers as neighbors, and fireworks that still inspire the same childlike wonder they did decades ago. My own favorite Fourth of July memory is deeply personal: at 8:11 on the morning of July 4, 1996, my newborn son was placed into my arms for the first time.

These memories are genuine gifts. Yet they exist alongside another reality.

When we look honestly at our nation’s history, we cannot escape the broken promises that have marked these 250 years. Promises withheld from Indigenous peoples. Promises denied to enslaved Africans and their descendants. Faith distorted to justify slavery, dispossession, Manifest Destiny, war, and domination. More recently we have witnessed deportations, corruption, political violence, and systems that continue to marginalize the most vulnerable.

An honest love of country cannot ignore these realities.

At the same time, neither can it ignore the moments when our nation has struggled toward justice. The abolition of slavery. The extension of voting rights. The labor movement. The Civil Rights Movement. Stonewall. The countless ordinary people who marched, organized, voted, prayed, and sacrificed so that America might become more fully what it claimed to be.

The temptation in our current moment is to choose only one side of this story. Some wish to celebrate without remembering. Others remember only the failures until hope itself seems impossible.

The Christian faith calls us to something different.

The First Letter of John reminds us that if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves. Truth requires confession. But truth also requires hope. If we lose sight of the light that has always broken through our failures, we deny another part of reality just as surely.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu often spoke of ‘God’s dream’ for humanity—a vision of reconciliation, justice, and beloved community. That dream has never depended upon the perfection of any nation. It has always depended upon people willing to keep walking toward it.

That brings us to the Gospel.

Jesus says, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.’

Most Christians have learned to hear these words as an invitation to sacrifice. Certainly they are. Following Christ means surrendering our own ambitions in order to embrace God’s purposes.

But there is another question hidden inside Jesus’ invitation.

Where is he leading us?

Yes, the road passes through the cross. But the cross was never the final destination.

Jesus always leads toward resurrection.

That changes how we hear his invitation.

To follow Jesus is not simply to endure suffering. It is to participate in God’s work of bringing new life out of places where hope appears to have died. Resurrection is God’s answer to every broken promise, every shattered dream, every life declared expendable.

On a day when we remember our nation’s past, perhaps Jesus is inviting us toward the resurrection of our highest ideals—not the myths we tell ourselves, but the genuine aspirations for liberty, dignity, justice, and equality that remain unfinished work.

This journey is never solitary.

Jesus did not tell his disciples to find their own individual paths. He called them to follow him together. The kingdom of God is always a communal journey.

I witnessed a beautiful reminder of this earlier this year.

Our parish in Quebec has welcomed a community of Ukrainian refugees since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They gather in our parish hall every Saturday so their children can continue learning their language and culture. We celebrate Christmas and Easter together, incorporating Orthodox traditions into our worship. Each February we gather to pray on the anniversary of the invasion.

At one of those services, the leaders of the refugee community, Oleg and Lada, greeted me warmly. Knowing I was from Minneapolis, they embraced me and said something I have never forgotten.

‘You are in all our prayers. We pray for you. You are a light for the whole world.’

Those words humbled me.

Not because America has always been that light. We know too well the ways we have failed.

Rather, they reminded me that people around the world still look for signs that democracy, compassion, justice, and faith can prevail. They look for communities willing to embody hope when hope feels scarce.

That is our calling.

As Christians, our primary citizenship has always been in the kingdom of God. That kingdom does not ask us to abandon our nations. It asks us to love them enough to tell the truth about them, to repent where repentance is needed, and to keep working toward God’s dream rather than our own comfort.

The next chapter of our national story has not yet been written.

It will be shaped by the people beside us: our neighbors, our congregations, our communities, and especially those who have too often been pushed to the margins. We move toward God’s future by walking together with the lonely, the grieving, the immigrant, the refugee, the poor, the forgotten, and all those whose dignity has been denied.

This is what following Jesus looks like.

Not merely remembering the past.

Not merely celebrating the present.

But walking together into resurrection, trusting that God’s dream is still unfolding before us.

Amen

10am Service