June 21, 2026
• Rev. Rob Fuquy
St. Luke’s UMC
June 21, 2026
America’s 250th series
Words That Still Make American Great
“All Are Created Equal”
Luke 15:25-32
Father’s Day
Who would have thought that an ancient Greek mathematician, who lived some 300 years before Jesus, would be responsible for the most important statement in America’s founding documents? But it’s true. Euclid’smultiple book series called The Elements influenced numerous thinkers and philosophers in history including the Englishman, John Locke. He wrote a statement inspired by Euclid that became deeply imprinted on the mind of an American thinker 150 years after Locke. His name was Thomas Jefferson and the statement that found its way into the opening words of the Declaration of Independence is “All men are created equal.”(with pic of Thomas Jefferson) Now, I think we are sophisticated enough to understand that’s not gender exclusive. It means all people are created equal.
Almost 90 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
Abraham Lincoln invoked those words at Gettysburg following a 3-day battle that produced almost as many casualties as the entire number of US soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.
Now Lincoln was not the featured speaker at the ceremony. A famous orator was asked to give the main address, Harvard president, Edward Everett. He spoke for 2 hours. The president, who was asked to give a few brief remarks, did just that. His speech took just 2 minutes. Now how many of you remember any part of Edward Everett’s speech? But how many know the words, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Two and a half years prior to that moment, Lincoln said this idea, the proposition of the equality of everyone, was a founding principle of his life and especially his political life. He said that while making his way to Washington for his inauguration. The train stopped in Philadelphia where a little ceremony was held. The president had planned no remarks, but he was urged to speak. He talked about how the words approved just down the street in Independence Hall in 1776 was the bedrock of his life. Then he said this:
If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, it will be truly awful. I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it…I may, therefore, have said something indiscreet, but I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, in the pleasure of Almighty God, die by.
And he did. The proposition that all people are created equal was that important to him. Important enough to die for as it was for other national heroes like Martin Luther King Jr.
What’s interesting is that Lincoln was a student of Euclid. He didn’t just read The Elements, he absorbed them. Lincoln was particularly drawn to Euclid’s First Common Notion that says “Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another.”
The founders of this country believed that was not just a mathematical truth or a political truth but a theological truth. They said, “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…”
Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another. This is established by God, and it means God is not just concerned about our status with God. God is equally concerned about our status with each other.
That’s why I had read this morning the second half of the Prodigal Son story. You may know the first part. The first son, the younger, rebellious one, takes his father’s inheritance early, goes off and squanders it in loose living. But then he comes to his senses, returns home and repents. His dad, who used to look for him every day, welcomed him home and threw a party.
What better story to hear on Father’s Day? This is how the heavenly Father loves us. But God’s love doesn’t stop at the welcome of prodigals, because while the party is still going on, the father is out looking for another son, the elder son. The one who won’t come into the party.
He’s angry that his father would welcome his brother home. After all, he never left. He never did one rebellious or illicit act. And now he’s incensed that his brother would have the audacity to come home, and his father the audacity to welcome him home. The elder son is angry because he doesn’t understand the father’s heart, that the father wants his family together.
And so this story recognizes a gap. A gap in faith, that this Father who loves all his children the same is equally concerned about the love between the children. A lot of Christian preaching focuses on that first part. That God loves all God’s children. God loves everyone the same. But not as much preaching focuses on God’s concern for the way the children love and treat each other the same. And that is where the gap shows up in this story. In fact, that gap shows up in a couple places in this story. First, we are told “Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slavesand asked what was going on.” (Lk 15:25-26)
Right there we see a breakdown in human relationship. There are owners and there are slaves. Inequality is established right there in the story. No doubt the elder son didn’t see that. He didn’t see a problem living in a world with owners and slaves. And when we fail to see inequality, we allow gaps to form and widen in society.
The writer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, lived with a wide gap. While writing the words “all men are created equal,” he owned hundreds of slaves. And he fathered numerous children with one of them, an enslaved woman named Sally Hennings. In fact, when he died, the slaves on his plantation were auctioned off to pay his debts.
Now here is what gets really odd. Jefferson was against slavery. Isn’t that a strange incongruity, to be against something in theory but still practice it. But, of course, sin works that way in all of us!
Jefferson wrote in his initial draft of the Declaration of Independence that the slave trade was “a cruel war against human nature.” Congress took those words out of the draft. Most of them owned slaves. Maybe they didn’t even see the incongruity.
But others have. Frederick Douglass, the 18th century slave who became a freedom fighter once gave a speech roughly 75 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was titled, “What is the 4th of July to the Slave?” He said, "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony." (with picture of Frederick Douglas)
Nearly 100 years after that, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr would say from the shadows of the Capitol Building, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"
So if seeing this gap is the beginning of making our society a place where all people are created equal, where do you see the gap today? Where do you see inequality? Where do you see people being treated differently? Unfairly?
Here is why this is so important: When we fail to see how the humanity of others is lessened, it lessens our own humanity.
We see this happening in the elder son. Notice how the elder son speaks to the father, “But when this son of yours came back” (Lk 15:30). He doesn’t call him a brother. He says, “This son of yours.” He disavows his relationship with his brother. It’s as if he was okay with his brother being dead to him, and without realizing it, his ability to be brotherly starts to die.
This might be the scariest part of this story, because when we stop looking at others as our brothers and sisters, something in us begins to diminish. Our compassion, our willingness to see beyond the faults of others, our sense of responsibility to one another begins to weaken.
This is why the Father leaves the party to looking for the other son. He’s not just trying to save the younger brother. He’s trying to save the older one as well. Because as much as the Father cares that everyone knows their equality with Him, He cares just as much about the equality between the brothers. When a gap forms there, the whole equation starts to break down.
In 1994 the worst genocide in human history took place in Rwanda when over 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. That’s 8,000 people a day! It wasn’t strangers doing the killing. It was neighbors and friends who spoke the same language. Who were Christian. How could such a thing happen?
Well, a long history of tribal division between Hutus and Tutsis was significant. A history of division always gives a divider a fuse to light. An extremist Hutu leader began a propaganda campaign smearing Tutsis as dangerous, but more than that, dehumanizing them. Calling them rats and filth.
Most sensible people perhaps just tried to ignore this rhetoric and wait out a change of leadership, but then enough radical people went down that drain and believed that their Tutsi friends and relatives really were not their equals, and so one day they took to the streets and started slaughtering. And in the process they lost their own humanity.
Now, over 30 years later fascinating studies are coming out of Rwanda as people learn how to live together and trust each other again. There are learnings about what can cause people to act in such a way. They are learning that the victims were not just the ones inhumanely treated, but also the perpetrators. They have had to live with the violence they caused and the regret they carry.
When we lose sight of the humanity of others, our own humanity lessens.
SO what do we do? According to this story, the best thing we can do is join the party. Recognize that we are there because the host of the party, a good and loving Father, comes looking for us personally to come in. That means everyone there has been personally invited too. And what delights the Father is when we treat each other like family.
So many in our world are looking for that. A couple weeks ago our communications team took a clip of my sermon in which I read the Annual Conference’s objection to Gov. Braun’s declaration about Nuclear Family month and put it out on social media. Honestly, I didn’t know they did that, until after 2 days they said, “Rob, you might want to be aware of something. Your clip has had 120,000 hits.” And they started sharing some of the comments with me…
As of a few days ago it is up to…What I find fascinating about that is our Visioning work we did coming out of Covid. We established a new vision “To be an explosive force of God’s radical, inclusive, and just love reaching hundreds of thousands of people, especially those who have given up on church or the possibility of a God who loves them.”
Now there were those, and I have to admit I was one of them, who wondered if the “hundreds of thousands” was a bit much? Well, obviously not! It shows how much people in our world are yearning for a community that makes God’s love real and specific.
One of the people who has come into our church in the past year is Dash Kershner. Listen to him share about what finding St. Luke’s meant to him (video)…
Another way we have invited people to join the party is Freedom School. In fact, the volunteers helping with Freedom School probably feel like they have been invited to a party. Pouring into kids, celebrating their diversity, understanding their value, is a magnificent experience.
Sometimes people will ask me, “Rob why do we have to talk about LGBTQ+ issues? Why do we have to talk about anti-racism, or the inequities neuro-diverse people experience? Why can’t we say God loves everyone? Period. Isn’t that enough?
And, in fact, it isn’t. Because when show people that we actually do see the inequities people experience, it says we see them. And when people feel that we might be safe enough not to lessen their humanity, then maybe we are community that joins God in improving humanity.
That’s what we are here to do, to help people know that All Are Created Equal, so help us God!
Amen.