Dependence Day

A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on July 30, 2025 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

Reading for address: Galatians 6: 1-6

Independence is what the United States is founded on. Independence is also what the assisted dying legislation is all about. Independence is the craving, it seems of every human being alive: the right to be free of external authority and the ability to turn one’s own plans into reality. Independence has come to mean ‘We believe in the right of the individual conscience to have freedom in all matters; we believe the individual’s duly-rewarded endeavours should be unimpeded by taxes and regulation from on high; we believe that all good and worthwhile things in life derive from the honest efforts one makes on one’s own behalf.’ Given that the word ‘independence’ doesn’t appear in the Bible, do we proudly assume independence is something God takes pride and pleasure in, and is it legitimate and reasonable to argue that personal independence is really what Christianity is all about?’

I want to look at the words of St Paul in the sixth chapter of his Letter to the Galatians and recognise there the tension that was later to be enshrined in the United States’ Declaration of Independence.  In verse 2 Paul says, ‘Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.’ But only a moment later, in verse 5, Paul states, ‘All must carry their own loads.’ ‘Bear one another’s burdens;’ ‘All must carry their own loads.’ How can these two statements possibly fit together? Let’s have a look at them both a bit more closely.

We’ll start with ‘All must carry their own loads.’ As a pastor I’ve frequently heard the awful experiences many people have had and the horrifying circumstances many people find themselves having to live through. There’s an honoured place for sympathy and understanding and gentleness and making allowances. But there comes a moment for all of us when we can no longer see ourselves primarily as victims of cruelty, neglect or bad luck. Sometimes what makes a person most admirable is their ability to say, ‘Hey, we all have our own stuff to get through, but you can’t go through life dwelling on what might have been, and whose fault it is that it’s not.’ I once spoke to two siblings who’d grown up together in the same troubled household. One, 25 years later, was full of bitterness and recrimination. She said, ‘I spent my childhood fearing my mother and now I hate her.’ The other simply said, ‘I appreciate my sibling’s point of view, but you can’t blame your parents for everything, especially when they were trying their best – however misguided and mismatched they were in retrospect.’

Let’s turn to St Paul’s other maxim: ‘Bear one another’s burdens.’ I remember once I was in a foreign country and I had a friend who was dear to me come to visit. He hadn’t been there long, and we went to the supermarket just to get a few things so we could make dinner. As soon as I put my shopping bags down on the kitchen counter I realised I’d left my wallet on the checkout at the shop. I vainly searched the farthest reaches of my vocabulary to find a way of expressing my emotions in a way that was vividly descriptive without being unbecoming. But my friend said, ‘Leave it to me.’ In no time he’d called the shop, located the wallet, gone and fetched it, and was back in my flat. He took on my trouble and simply removed it from me and bore my burden. It was a small thing. But it was a beautiful thing. And it taught me a lot about bigger things.

We often use the phrase ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens’ to refer to helping each other out in times of hardship. But we forget that when Paul uses this phrase, ‘Bear one another’s burdens,’ he’s talking specifically about when somebody has really gone astray and let a whole bunch of people down. You’ll remember what the inflatable teacher said to the inflatable student who’d just stuck a pin into and burst the inflatable school: ‘You’ve let me down, you’ve let yourself down, you’ve let the whole school down.’ Paul’s talking about when one person has let their own fragility, their own foolishness or selfishness, damage a whole community, so that other people find themselves bearing the cost of a crisis they themselves did nothing to create. That’s such an isolating moment – when you realise you’re the one who’s made life sad and miserable, not just for yourself, but for a whole host of people, maybe some or many of whom you don’t even know. It’s hard enough to face your own responsibility when you feel so crushed and humiliated. But it takes a very remarkable person to say, ‘I didn’t cause this trouble, but I’m going to carry it as if I had. I’m going to bear the burden with our friend who got us into this mess, and I’m going to take the lead in helping us all see what we can do to try to make things better.’ Paul wants us all to be people like that.

Can you think of a time when someone has made a mess of their life and humiliated themselves and maybe brought shame on a community that you’ve been a part of? What did you do then? Did you avoid them, pity them, blame them, assume they’d have to clear up the mess they’d made? Did you and the Christian community turn out to be more judgemental than the society at large? Or did you seek them out, offer mercy, show tenderness, share humanity, and bear their burden, even at the cost of enduring some of the scorn and derision they were facing? If you did the latter, you fulfilled what Paul calls ‘the law of Christ.’

For many of us, we’re so deeply shaped by the language of independence, that our deepest fear, as we grow old, is of becoming a burden to our children. We’ve heard we must carry our own load. But we’ve forgotten that when Paul tells us to bear one another’s burdens, he calls it ‘the law of Christ.’ According to Paul, there’s nothing wrong with being a burden. It’s no bad thing to be a dependent. Dependence creates relationships. When a person’s sick, or breaks a bone, or has a baby, or has difficulty getting out of the house, in many cases a whole community of care gathers around them, and strangers become friends simply by bumping into one another when bringing in a meal, or having to email one another to set up a rota. If you’re going to be committed to bearing one another’s burdens, you have to be prepared to let other people bear yours.

Here’s the difference between all carrying your own loads, which we call independence, and bearing one another’s burdens. Independence expresses respect, and respect is the foundation of justice, of dignity, of equality, of all the ways human beings relate to one another. But bearing one another’s burdens expresses something beyond respect. Bearing one another’s burdens expresses love. Respect is a fine thing. But when you’ve tasted love, respect feels a bit lacking in flavour. Love should never be less than respect, but respect is a minimum, not a goal. Respect feels like a rather pale imitation of the real thing. As a pastor I sometimes wonder if people who make such a big play of respect, and are so determined to prove their independence, are somehow those for whom love has gone painfully wrong. I wonder whether we demand respect, we long for independence, when we don’t dare ask for love. Maybe this is a moment to ask yourself, What do I want from others – or maybe one other in particular? Respect or love? Am I asking for the one because, deep down, I daren’t ask for the other?

And when we’ve acquired our hard-won independence, what do we long to do with it? This seems to me the point where Paul’s two maxims become one. We carry our own loads, and become independent, for one reason and purpose above all others: and that reason is, so that we may learn to bear other people’s burdens. We become independent, in order that, when we love, it may come genuinely out of care and concern for the other, not our own need to be noticed and needed. We don’t carry other people’s every-day burdens. That would show a lack of respect for them. Instead we carry another person’s burdens precisely when they have made a mess of their life and the life of those around them. In the end independence leaves us alone in the world. It can’t give us the relationships that truly enrich and shape and transform our lives. Independence is fine, but the right kind of dependence is beautiful.

The gospel is that God is never independent of us. God meets us precisely in the most dependent forms of tiny baby in a manger and naked dying man on a cross. And God meets us when we are most dependent – when we have become a terrible and shameful burden to others. It’s a fine thing to celebrate independence, and the respect that comes from it, on one condition: that we never cease to celebrate our dependence on God and our dependence on one another. Because that’s more than respect. That’s love. And that’s what Paul calls the law of Christ.