What Freedom Really Means: June 29

Year C, Pentecost 3                                   Galatians 5:1, 13-25                                                                    

“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, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” We all recognize these words.  It comes from the prologue of our Declaration of Independence which we celebrate on July 4^th---which we will formally recognize next Sunday.  Normally when we think of July 4^th, we think of freedom.  That is what we are celebrating, right? Freedom? Interestingly, the word freedom never appears in the Declaration of Independence.  But there is liberty, which is just like freedom.  Its right there—listed as one of our unalienable rights.  
   

We hear the word “freedom” a lot when we talk about our nation.  But it’s astonishing how differently we all interpret that word.  The apostle Paul used that word frequently in his writings.  But he used it in much different ways than most of use it now.  Paul wrote, “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” 

The dictionary defines freedom as: “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.”  That was definitely not what Paul was describing. Paul didn’t believe that our freedom meant we could live a life without restraint.  He believed that we are free, but only if we find freedom in Christ.  Living in the Spirit of Christ gives us freedom, but it also requires that we become servants to God and even servants to one another.  In being free, we are bound to serve God.  If you are a little confused right now, that is ok, Paul can often be a little confusing.

One of the fascinating things about the New Testament and Jesus’ message was that everything we once considered true was turned upside down. It wasn’t that things we considered true were suddenly untrue, it was just different. For instance, Jesus said that the first should be last and the last should be first. Jesus was a king, but his crown was made of thorns and his throne was the cross. Death was not a defeat for Jesus, because he was victorious over death.  It was a paradigm shift. Jesus taught, a completely different way of thinking and being. One of those things he taught was the importance of being a servant, no matter how important you may be. He said that the way we treat the least of these is the way we treat God.

For the Jewish people, being slaves was something that was very much a part of their story.  God had led them out of bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land.  That was and is a big part of their narrative. And the Gentiles would have known and understood slavery as well.  That practice was alive and well at the time. Therefore when Paul spoke about slavery--that was not a foreign concept to the people he was talking to. I discussed this a bit last week, how slavery in the ancient world was different than it was in our nation.

Yet, Paul was talking about a different kind of slavery entirely.  It is not forced submission.  One person or group does not forcefully take control of another. For Paul it means that we willingly submit to God, and to one another.  It was and is a completely different way of thinking.  

In talking about freedom, Paul reminded these new Christians of Galatia that freedom was not supposed to be license for self indulgence.  Freedom in Christ doesn’t mean that you can just do whatever you want.  It means that you are free from sin, free from laws that tell you how to be holy.  However there was one law that Paul and Jesus chose to emphasize: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." In accepting this freedom in Christ, we also accept responsibility for one another.  It is a communal freedom rather than an individual freedom. Individual freedom is what we normally emphasize when we talk about it in the context of our nation.

I believe that our nation would be living more authentically as a free nation if we were free for one another, rather than in spite of one another---if we felt some obligation to serve the common good rather than serve our own self interests.  You might say, well that is not what American freedom is supposed to be. That’s Christian freedom which is a totally different thing. I would have agreed with you before I wrote this sermon.  While preparing for this sermon, I read the Declaration of Independence, all of it, not just that first part that is always quoted. The last line reads: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

“We mutually pledge to each other…” Huh, sounds a bit like Paul, doesn’t it? Now, I am no scholar of the Declaration of Independence, but it seems to me that the founders of this country, understood what would make our country truly free, and that is pledging ourselves to one another.  We declared independence from Britain, not from one another.  And even if I am wrong about that, I think we can all agree that when we see greatness in our county, it is when we serve one another. 

There is a reason why the military, the police, and the firefighters are often associated with patriotism….it’s because they serve. It’s because they risk their lives to help other people.  One of my most vivid memories from the days after 9-11 was trying to give blood at the local blood bank. The line was around the block.  People wanted to give something, do something.  At the heart of this nation is not just patriotism, but the kind of freedom that Paul described.

            Paul wrote, “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.” Right now in our nation, we are biting and devouring one another.  And you know what, Paul was right. It feels as though we are consumed by one another---despite our desperate attempts to distinguish ourselves and separate ourselves, we are consumed.  We are not free.  We think that the might of our nation depends on our ability to protect ourselves and separate ourselves, but our might is determined by our willingness to serve one another, or in the words of the great document we celebrate this week, to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” 

It is indeed a sacred honor to serve God’s children.  But let us never forget that God’s children are all the children of the world.  Love your neighbor as yourself was never meant to be literal. Love every person as yourself.  That was what Jesus meant.  Let us be free for one another, not in spite of one another.

           

Bending the Arc toward Justice: June 22

Galatians 3:23-29 & Luke 8:26-39          Year C, Pentecost 2                                                                

            This passage from Galatians is the reason that people like me love Paul.  “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  It’s a beautiful idea—that baptism is the great equalizer.  It unites us and makes us one.  There is no doubt in my mind that Paul really believed this. 

That is what makes some of Paul’s other comments a bit harder to handle.  In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he tells slaves to be obedient to their masters.  If he truly believed that all were equal when clothed in Christ, why would there be a master and slave?  Why not support the elimination of slavery as a whole?  In Paul’s 1^st letter to the Corinthians, he told women that they should not speak in church, and should be subordinate[1].  In 1^st Timothy, Paul told women that they should not teach men or have authority over them[2].  These are texts that churches still quote to prevent women in leadership.  If there was no longer male or female, how could one be subordinate to others?

            Let’s start with the issue of slavery.  Slavery in biblical times was different than it was in our country.  It was not based on race.  It was not something you were born into. It was a broad term.  Sometimes that word referred to those who were taken as captives during a war.  Sometimes it referred to a paid servant.  For instance, people who were slaves to those in high positions had more power than some people who were considered free. Typically when the word slave is used in the New Testament (rather than servant), the translator is indicating a lack of freedom.  That doesn’t mean that a person was owned by another person (like how it was in our country during slavery), but their time was not their own and they have limited freedom in what they could do and who they could be.

While slavery wasn’t the same in biblical times, it certainly wasn’t a good thing.  It was an unjust economic system that kept some people down while others prospered. Paul argued at times for justice and good treatment of slaves, but he didn’t argue for a change to the economic system which would eliminate slavery, at least not in the writings we have.  I think it was because he knew he couldn’t accomplish that.  It was too big for even him. 

            Changing the economic system of a place and time requires more than one person and even more than a lifetime. We see it in the Gospel reading today as well.  Jesus went to the country of the Gerasenes.  That area was most likely Gentile territory, not a place that Jesus would have been welcome.  As soon he just got out of his boat, he was confronted by a man who was possessed with so many demons that he referred to himself as legion. 

These spirits had terrorized the man so much that he was forced to live among the tombs.  This wasn’t a nice well maintained cemetery that we are accustomed to seeing.  It was the wilderness, away from people.  When he did come near people, they chained him up so he could be restrained.  But whatever possessed him was stronger than the chains and shackles. He was able to break free from them.  That was how strong the spirits were. Yet even the evil spirits bowed before Jesus and Jesus was able to free him with just a few words.  He sent the evil spirits into a herd of pigs who then ran off a cliff and drowned.  As a result, this man went from being naked, violent and living in the wild, to sitting at the feet of Jesus like the other disciples.

            You would think the people of the town would have been relieved to have this possessed man healed. After all, he was tormenting them as well.  Instead, seeing this dramatic transformation scared them.  It’s unclear why they were scared, but I think it’s partly because this exorcism also affected the economy of the region. Who spread the news of the healing? It was the swineherds, the people who were responsible for the pigs that had been drowned. In drowning those pigs, Jesus had ruined their livelihood. 

Their frustration is understandable, but you would think it would have been tempered by the knowledge that a man had been healed. He had been given his life back.  He was free now. Yet it would seem that didn’t matter at all. All that mattered was the money they lost.  Instead of learning more about Jesus, a man who had the power to heal and provide true freedom and transformation, they forced him to leave the town. After all, who knows what else he could have destroyed? 

Jesus left them.  He left them to their fear and their obsession with what they had over who they could be.  If Jesus couldn’t make them see the importance of a human soul over a herd of pigs, how was Paul supposed to convince communities that the economic system that enslaved people might be unhealthy and sinful? Paul knew his limitations.  In the end, he was human like we all are.  Do I wish he would have spoken even more boldly and clearly supported women’s leadership? Yes. Do I wish he could have ended slavery then and there? Of course.  I don’t think he could. Sometimes sin is so entrenched, it takes more than one person to defeat it.

In our Gospel reading last week, Jesus told his disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…”  I think even Jesus knew that there were some things people were not ready to understand, some things that would take thousands of years for us to understand.  That doesn’t mean that he was ok with the injustices that he witnessed, he just knew there were certain truths they could not handle.  So Jesus left them and us with the Holy Spirit that would continue to inspire people and help us discern God’s wisdom, God’s will for our world.

The man that Jesus healed wanted to follow Jesus. There is a part of me that hates that Jesus would not let him.  After all he had been through, why couldn’t he hang out with Jesus for a little while longer? But Jesus knew that his presence in the town would force that community to see what Jesus was capable of. Maybe that one transformed individual could accomplish more in time that Jesus could in that one day. Jesus’ time was limited.

There are times when I read this text from the Galatians about us all being equal in Christ and wonder, why has this been so hard to understand? How did slavery happen in this country when Christians had access to this text?  How did the abolition of slavery then allow for discrimination and just more forms of enslavement when we had this text? Why did it take almost 2000 years for Christians to allow women to be ordained when we have had this text? 2000 years…that’s quite a learning curve.  Why are so many Christians still unwilling to see the beauty in our LGBTQ+ community? Why are people in the trans community being murdered just for being who they need to be? It’s maddening.  Why don’t we know better when we have this text?

Martin Luther King famously said that “the arc of moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” That bend toward justice feels quite flat sometimes.  It’s a slow bend. Yet I do believe that Christians have corrected many of the mistakes of the past. We have opened our hearts and changed course in ways we would never have expected even 100 years ago.  The church and our world has changed because Christians have pushed it to change.  Christians have reminded people of what Paul said in Galatians, what Jesus said on the sermon of the mount.

We are here to continue the ministry that Jesus and Paul began.  Even in the last 20 years, I have seen the Episcopal Church stop arguing about so much that they argued about 20 years ago. We have found new stuff to argue about, but I think that is the way progress happens. It’s a slog. 

I like to think that the man who Jesus left in the country of the Gerasenes eventually got through to people, not everyone, but enough, enough to make a change, enough to bend that arc toward justice.  That’s why we can never give up.  Jesus didn’t suffer, die, rise again and leave us with the Holy Spirit so we could give up 2000 years later. Much like the man who was healed, we continue serving and living in our imperfect community sharing what God has done for us and what God’s love can do for others. Because that arc isn’t going to bend itself.  That’s up to us.

---

[1] 1 Corinthians 14:34

[2] 1 Timothy 2:11-13

Start with glory: June 15

Year C, Trinity Sunday                                                                 Psalm 8 & Romans 5:1-5                                                                                              

There is a theological concept I have always found abhorrent.  There are traces of it in the early church—but was really established by John Calvin who lived in the 16^th century and played a large part in the Protestant Reformation.  I will admit that John Calvin had a lot of great points, but the concept of total depravity was not one of them. In essence, it means that all humans are innately sinful and despite our best efforts always will be.  He went on to say that we could still be saved, but our nature was in and of itself evil.  This theological belief has had a profound effect on many branches of Christianity and you will still see the concept lurking in many Christian churches today---some associated with denominations and some that are not.  It’s usually in the fine print, but it’s there.

Normally, I am not a fan of the concept of total depravity, but this week I started wondering, if maybe Calvin was on to something.  This week has been a barrage of bad news.  We have the conflict in the Middle East that has now expanded to include Iran.  We have ICE raids in elementary schools and politicians who care more about reaching a quota of deportations than the humans that are being deported.  Then we have the United States military in one of our nation’s cities with threats of more to come.  Just yesterday two government officials were gunned down in their own homes in what is being described as “targeted attacks.” Meanwhile our leaders (and I am talking about both parties right now) point fingers at one another with no apparent desire to find a solution, just to prove who has the most power.  I am so incredibly weary of it all.  I suspect we all are.

When I get weary of reading the news and listening to our politicians, l love to dive into the apostle Paul.  He would have been a horrible politician. He would not have even made it as pastor because he was always way too honest and probably/definitely a little too stubborn. I kind of love that about him because it makes me trust him and his words.  He was in no way trying to win friends and influence people.  However, that also makes some of his words harder to digest. 

In his letter to the Romans he wrote, “We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us…”  Now if I saw that on a meme or a greeting card today, I would roll my eyes and move on.  I would think, clearly this guy has not witnessed a lot of suffering or he would know that suffering doesn’t always lead to hope.  Paul knew suffering.  He wrote some of his letters from prison cells. A few weeks ago we heard of his experiences being beaten, whipped and chained. More than that, he worshipped a God who knew suffering. 

Before Paul got to suffering and the chain reaction that would lead to hope, he started with glory. He said, “we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” I talk about suffering a lot.  I have also preached my fair share of sermons about hope.  I don’t know that I have ever spent much time thinking or preaching about glory. 

I believe that the easiest place to recognize glory is in creation and the world around us.  We see that in our Psalm for today.  “O Lord, how exalted is your Name in all the world…When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses…”  That is how the psalmist saw glory thousands of years ago. When it’s a clear night and you aren’t surrounded by light pollution or smog…or smoke from wildfires, it’s hard to look at the sky and not admire the vastness and beauty of it all. There is a reason that so many find God in nature. God’s glory surrounds us. Sometimes it’s smaller. I was sitting in my yard writing this sermon the other night and I saw the first lightning bugs of the season and there is something about lightning bugs that makes me giddy at the subtle beauty of our world.  However, that is about where my consideration of glory ends---out there, above here. 

Yet the psalm goes on to say, “What is man that you should be mindful of him? The son of man that you should seek him out? You have made him but little lower than the angels; you adorn him with glory and honor…”  In all our talk of the glory of creation and the beauty and majesty of the world we live in, we forget that we are part of this majestic and glorious creation.  We were God’s last act of creation, the pinnacle of the creation story, made in the image of God, only a little lower than the angels. 

The creator chose us to be God’s presence in this glorious but messy world.  That is why I have a problem with the idea of total depravity even in the midst of a world that feels depraved at times, I know that at our core, we are God’s creation and we are adorned with glory and honor. At the end of the creation story, the author of Genesis says, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”  It is our inability to see that in ourselves and in one another that hurts us and leads us to try to destroy one another.   

I often struggle with the idea that suffering can lead to endurance, which leads to character which ends in hope.  Because I have seen suffering that breaks people instead of strengthens them.  I have also seen suffering where the breaks and the fractures bring new forms of strength, endurance, character and hope. I think it helps to know this text—to know that we can learn and grow from suffering, but also not to beat ourselves up when the suffering leaves us a little weaker.  It’s ok to have some weaknesses.

Perhaps in my desperate desire for hope, I tried to skip glory.  Paul wrote, “we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.”  Boast is an awkward word choice.  Another way to translate that phrase is to say that we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. We are not rejoicing in our own glory.  We are rejoicing in our hope of sharing God’s glory.  Because no matter how much smoke and ash cloud the night sky, God’s glory is still there.

Hope is hard work.  It’s not something that just comes to us. It’s something that we have to fight for. That fight can be exhausting.  What if we could harness God’s glory, like fireflies in the jar---so that we never forget that our world is good. We are good…just below the angels.

In many ways, I think that is what we try to do in worship—harness and share glory.  You can hear it in Parker and Cathy’s playing.  You can hear it in the voices of those who sing, not just the beautiful voices of the choir, but all around you.  These voices have been through it. They have waged battles.  They have suffered. Still they sing.  Still this community gathers and that to me is one of the greatest glories that I have witnessed, it’s the community of faith that continues to worship a God who they cannot see and often cannot understand.  Still we pray words that feel hard to say at times, but we say them because prayer shapes how and what we believe. Sometimes prayer is aspirational.  What I see in this community is people who have not given into despair.  I see glory and I hope you can too.