Year A, Proper 8, Romans 6.12-23, Slaves of Righteousness

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen

“Freedom” is actually an illusion.

We are not free.

We never have been free.

And in fact, the more we attempt to be free, the greater our bondage becomes.

We are slaves.

The only question is “Who will we serve as Lord and Master?”

Paul writes:   “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?”

And again:  “But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification.”

You see, we will always have a Lord and Master, the only question is what Lord and What Master.

To claim Jesus as Lord, is to be set free from our bondage to sin, yet we are bound to obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ.

To deny that Jesus is Lord, is to willfully accept the reign of Sin in our lives, and to be bound to that which will one day kill us.

We live in turbulent times.

There is no where that this is more evident than in our nation’s politics.

And one need look no further than the reaction to our current president, and our former president, to see the intensity of the turbulence.

He is the best president we’ve ever had.

He is the worst president we’ve ever had.

The problem is that we can’t agree on which is which.

I think that underlying this problem is our illusion of freedom.

People are free to believe whatever they want to believe.

The result of that freedom is that there is no moral compass guiding us, no common understanding of what is good, no consensus about what is right.

If there were in fact, some shared values about these things, we’d actually be able to agree about whether a particular president was the best or the worst, but we can’t. 

We are that divided.

But this freedom to believe whatever we want to believe is in fact slavery to our own natural inclination to sin.

It is in our human nature to seek that which benefits us the most.  This selfishness is a bondage, a slavery, which leads to death.

But we don’t want to admit it.

“You do realize,” God says, “that the path down which you are walking will lead to your destruction and death, don’t you?”

And our response is to claim our freedom, and to continue doing whatever we want to do, thinking that we are free when in fact we are enslaved like no other. 

There are many example of this.

When I was drinking I used to love it when Karla would be gone for a few days because I was then free to drink however much I wanted without having to listen to her complaining.

The truth is I was not free at all, I was simply blind to the slavery I was experiencing to alcohol.

Oh, and that slavery, almost killed me.

Now, I am no longer free to drink, and yet this new ‘slavery’ to sobriety will let me live. 

Slave to the bottle?

Or slave to sobriety?

One leads to death, the other to life.

That was the choice that had to be made.

Scientists warn us today, about the effects of our lifestyles on the planet and the environment.

There is little debate within the scientific community that the planet is warming.  Glaciers are melting.  Weather patterns are getting more severe.

Perhaps the world’s scientists are wrong.

As we hear the dire predictions that they are making, one can even hope, that they are wrong, because if they are right the future may look bleak for many parts of the world.

But what if they are right?

We are so enslaved to our lifestyles that it is almost impossible for us to change.  We don’t want to.  We want to be free to live as we please.  But we are not free at all.

We are in bondage to a way of living that will one day kill us.

I was part of a conversation recently in which someone was maintaining that the scientists were wrong.

Another person, my brother, responded to that person saying “I hope you're right, that the scientists are wrong, but in refusing to listen to what the scientists are saying you are risking the future of our planet.”

Think about it—

What better definition of slavery, of being in bondage, is there than this:  that we are so compelled by our sinfulness to act in a certain way that we will continue to do so even if it kills us.

And yet we are not bound to be slaves to that which kills us.

That is the point that Paul is writing about.

You have been set free from your bondage to sin, that you might be slaves to righteousness and servants of God.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We will be slaves, one way or another.

Slaves to sin.

Or slaves of God, offering our lives to him in obedience.

To be ‘redeemed’ means that we are set free from our slavery to sin, and we might serve God as slaves of righteousness.

Did you know that the term ‘redeem’ actually comes from the institution of slavery.  To purchase a slave was to redeem that slave.  And once redeemed, the slave was now under obligation to serve the new master.

What does it mean to be slaves of Christ Jesus?

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

This seems so simple and straight forward.

Except for one thing.

We remain so deeply in bondage to sin, that on our own we cannot come close to agreeing what is loving, and what is not.

Another example from our current political environment.

We consider ourselves to be a great nation,.

We are a nation that has a substantial Christian majority.

And we who are Christians, at the very least, should feel compelled to do that which Christ commanded us to do, namely to love one another as Christ first loved us.

But, what does that mean?

What does that mean with respect to Health Care?

The current debate in Washington over health care reform shows how difficult it is for us to agree on something as simple as what it means to love one another.

We can put the question bluntly.

Should our health care system be loving, or cruel?

Most of us would say, “Well, loving, of course.”

But what does that mean for health care?

Does that mean that we should have universal coverage for health care, so that everyone has access to medicine and the care they need, even if it means that all of us would have to pay for it?

Or does that mean that people should be free to purchase whatever health care options they choose, even if that means that some will not be able to afford to buy insurance?

I wonder if the proposals for health care reform would be different if those writing these laws could only do so while sitting beside a loved one in the hospital.

Our intuitive sense of what is loving is probably most evident when we are sitting face to face with a loved one in need of care.

So imagine, sitting beside your child in the hospital, and what decisions you would make then regarding their care.  Love tends to make a difference at moments like that.

I could go on and on.

The point is that issues of life and death are not issues that we are free to do whatever we want.

We are slaves.

We are not free.

We never have been free.

Freedom isn’t the choice.

The choice is whether we are going to be in bondage to sin, which will lead to death.

Or slaves of righteousness, obediently serving our Lord Jesus Christ, loving as he commanded that we love, loving as he first loved us, which will lead to life.

It should be an easy choice to make.

But it isn’t.

Our slavery is real. 

And only Christ can set us free from our slavery to sin in order that we can live in righteousness with him.

Amen

Year C, Proper 8, Luke 9:51-62, I will follow, but . . .

"First let me go and bury my father."
"Let me first say farewell to those at my home."

Not unreasonable requests.  For each of us who have answered Jesus call to follow him, I would imagine that there were many 'firsts' that delayed answering the call.  And tending to family matters at home would certainly rank high up there on the list.  

As clergy lay out their priorities and boundaries one of the most common convictions is that, first, they are called to be husbands/wives, fathers/mothers.  Their vocation as pastor is seen as secondary to their vocation as spouse and/or parent.  Its a reasonable conviction.

The church has struggled as women, once a seemingly endless supply of volunteer workers, entered the work force with careers of their own.  I'm not blaming women, here.  They have a variety of vocations, as men always have had, and its simply a fact that with women now being gainfully employed, there are simply not that many people left to do the Church's bidding Monday through Friday.  Two things:  I don't think we appreciated the extent to which women were the backbone of the Church throughout those years that they were available for the countless hours of volunteer service that they so selfishly put in.  And second, it is clear that vocational obligations for both men and women, are the 'first' in their lives.  "I have to work." is seen as a valid reason for not being available at Church.  Period. 

Not an unreasonable request.  

"I will follow you wherever you go, as long as my schedule allows."

But in the face of all these reasonable allowances, there stands this radical invitation to follow.  And make no mistake about it, it is an invitation to something that will lay an ultimate claim on our lives.  

Dare we believe that the call to enter into the Kingdom of God is so compelling as to trump all other concerns and obligations in our lives?  

The  Social Gospel movement of the last century was motivated by a deep seated conviction that working to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth was the primary call of all Christians.  That this was conceived of as even possible was a sign of the unbridled optimism of the pre-war years.  All of the ills brought about by the industrialization of this country were seen as solvable.  Unfortunately, that optimistic outlook that the Kingdom of God could be realized within our society was shattered by the confrontation with reality that came with the two world wars.  

In response, the neo-Orthodox movement replaced the Social Gospel movement.  Theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr began writing books such as "Moral Man, Immoral Society" and largely laid to rest the notion that the Kingdom of God would ever be realized in our societies.  That the world would remain essentially as it always has been.  "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." was Niebuhr's prayer.  And perhaps we've embraced that first line about accepting the things we cannot change, too much.  

What has been lost in all of this is a sense of urgency around the kingdom work, and the belief that the Kingdom of God has anything at all to do with this life.  

If we would follow Jesus we would do well to realize and remember, that at the center of all his teachings was this matter of the Kingdom of God being at hand.  

Back to the notion of burying our father.  This seems like such a reasonable request because we have so watered down expectations regarding the Kingdom of God, that it goes without saying that such matters can wait.  Today, we have a funeral to attend. 

The Church will likely bury a lot more people in the coming decades than we will baptize.  I believe that there is a simple reason for this.  We have become caretakers, not crusaders for the Kingdom of God.  We see our primary obligation as caring for those in the pews, our family, and rarely go beyond that to the transformative work that is at the core of what Jesus talked about as the Kingdom of God.  

If we expect people to leave everything and follow Jesus (and us. . .) we have to rethink our dismissal of the Kingdom of God as only a possibility in the afterlife, that is, it is far off, and embrace Jesus' teaching that it has indeed "come near."

Related to this teaching about the Kingdom of God, what people long to hear is the promise that following Jesus will actually make a difference.

Then, and only then, will they be content to let the dead bury the dead, and seize the moment to follow this one we call Jesus. 

Year C, Proper 8, Galatians 5:1, 13-25, Bound to be free, and free to be Bound

"For freedom, Christ has set us free. . .
       .  .  . but through love become slaves to one another."

Free to become slaves.  

Love is a strange thing.  One the one hand, it is by necessity tied to freedom.  You cannot demand love.  It cannot be coerced or compelled.  It cannot be controlled.  You cannot force it upon another.  You cannot demand it, even of yourself.  For love to be  love at all it must by necessity be freely given, freely received.  And so there is  no greater freedom than that which is experienced in love.

"The whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  Imagine living in a land in which there is only one law, this law.  An oxymoron at its best, commanding love.  

On the other hand, there is no greater compelling force in all of life than this simple thing we call love.  With it we become vulnerable.  Once experienced, it changes everything.  Nothing else is important.  Everything else becomes subject to love, and what love entails.  Love becomes our Lord.  That which I would have never dreamed about doing while I was 'free', I cannot imagine not doing now that I'm in love.  Love calls us to surrender, to submit, to become slaves to one another, freely.  Its hard to imagine 'freely' becoming a 'slave'.  

Love makes no demand of us, except to demand of us everything, even to giving our lives. 

We live in a land in which we are willing to go to any length to defend our freedom.  Wars have been fought.  "Freedom doesn't come free."  People arm themselves with weapons and a whole list of other things, such as security systems, police forces, constitutions, all with one purpose -- to protect our freedoms by restraining others.  (One of the greatest ironies of all in today's political climate is that the right to bear arms is resulting in our police forces being 'militarized', so as to not be outgunned.  In the name of freedom, we are becoming more and more subject to a militarized rule.  The local constable is being replaced with SWAT Teams.  And we call this freedom."

I learned something from a Quaker colleague a while back.  We were discussing non-violence, a central tenant of the Quaker faith.  And we couldn't resist pushing her, seeing if we could get her to admit that there were some situations where she would in fact resort to violence.  "What if you were being raped?"  "Or your child was being raped?"  "No." was the response.  "Never resort to violence in resisting violence, for to do so is to become one with the very thing you most despise.  Its not that you cannot resist, you just do not do so violently."  

Love means that we are willing to be vulnerable.  

This is the thing we do not understand.  You see, if you want to be  truly free, you cannot respond to the threat of someone with an AR-15, by purchasing two for yourself.  

"He could have called, ten thousand angels, to destroy the world, and set him free.  But he died alone, for you and me."

You see, that is what love does.  

This is the mystery.  It is counter intuitive.  To be truly free, you must freely accept vulnerability, for that is what love involves.  This freedom cannot be defended.  

It is a gift.